Becoming Fast in the New Normal

In the new business environment innovation is vital to sustain a healthy economy. The source of innovation is intellectual capital – working knowledge that employees carry in their heads about products, customers and how they work together. Managers translate this expertise into profits by applying proven best business practices.

A business does not have to be an e-commerce or a dot-com to reap the benefits of the new economy. It does have to be fast – to have momentum and velocity in bringing new products to market and responding to customers. In this new business environment management dances with changing technologies and engages nurturing the intellectual capital of the talent it controls.

Management is responsible for creating and sustaining the company reality. If management is weak then employees will fill the vacuum with their own agendas and fragment the company’s performance.

Weak managers destroy viable companies by their inability to manifest a cohesive reality. Staff talent is unused or dissipated and the enterprise loses momentum.

Recovery is difficult, expensive and sometimes impossible.

Staff talent is unused or dissipated and the enterprise loses momentum. Recovery is difficult, expensive and sometimes impossible. In the current marketplace where the talented employee has the advantage, management must be wise, clearheaded and mature in their vision.

Intellectual capital, technology and management are three areas every successful company applies focused attention to become profitable or attractive to investment capital.

A new paradigm of internal business relationships is two-fold. First, management is the customers of the staff. Second, management provides opportunities and technology for staff to apply talents, skills, expertise and knowledge and demonstrate performance. Work is project-based where the resources are managed for completeness, correctness, effectiveness and profitability by both the management and the staff. Management and staff share customers and are each others customers.

Successful companies embody best business practices, professional management, distinct performance standards, provide appropriate technology and proven systems and procedures. In this new business environment manufacturing, construction, trade, services and even government is being called on to evolve in order to attract and retain the best talent.

The purpose of management is to support the staff who serves the customers. Enterprises in this new business environment do not have time for, nor will a talented staff tolerate petty grievances, power politics or mismanagement. So-called brain drain is seldom about money, it is more often about lack of challenges or management shortsightedness.

Having the right team is more critical than ever. Management must treat every employee as a unique set of skills and applications. Every employee must be disciplined, focused and capable of initiating, following through and completing projects within parameters. Both management and staff are team oriented – they share common goals.

The challenge for management and staff is in thinking about intellectual capital. Concurrent with the relentless drive of new technology is the exponential growth of knowledge and application. Management must encourage, support and reward employees expanding their expertise. Employees need to maintain an appetite for new knowledge and apply it for the enterprise. In this new work environment company culture is built on the context that if you are what you know, you’re obsolete. The continuous learning/beginners-mind is addressed by management as a strategy to sustain economic viability. Expertise can be translated into investment cash in this new business environment.

A fast company creates and effectively applies new knowledge or new technology first. We live in the electronically mediated global economy where geographic and many cultural boundaries have been erased. Location is no longer a barrier. The company with a concentration of smart management comfortable with technology and nurtured intellectual capital will attract global challenges and opportunities and be enormously profitable.

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