Lynda Gratton from London Business School quoted “The new sources of sustainable competitive advantage have people at the centre, which are their creativity and talent, their inspirations and hopes, their dreams and excitement. Companies that flourish will do so because they are able to provide meaning and purpose, a context and frame that encourages individual potential to flourish and grow.”
How many Local (Malaysia) companies do understand and practice? Do all the bosses agree? Or do they know their business purpose, other than profit profit profit?
Let’s further discuss about “Purpose Driven Business” next.
Ol’skool focus on profit, profit and profit while modern systems focus on quality, quality and quality.
Another thing to consider is the overall educational and upbringing of a society particularly in Malaysia where the majority are taught to shut-up, listen and follow. Whereas in western upbringing are mostly incline to understand, think, and create.
To be fair, everyone plays a role and it takes two to tango.
Seems like few questions have arises. Shall profit come first or quality come first? Many may agree without profit, company cannot sustain but without quality can profit sustain? Still what is the business purpose?
Well in the past years, do Malaysian educational level and upbringing of the society improved? Even thought may not reach the western level. For example, DIGI seems doing well in creativity, Celcom’s quality seems putting back in-line, one of the Malaysian most proud companies “AirAsia” has well implement purpose driven business of “everyone can fly”.
In a company regardless is Ol’skool or modern system, everyone shall play their role but everyone also must know their role before they can act it well. Not just tango, most games need two to go. Yet without cooperation of two, the game screw. Old Chinese war time, 刘备 group has many talent. Each of them play different role, for example 赵子龙is a general to war (the sales and marketing team), 诸葛亮 is an analysis to think and plan (the strategy and planning team) and刘备is the emperor to make decision (the CEO). The CEO will not ask the strategy and planning team to war because he knows it will lost, and he will not ask the sales and marketing team to think because he knows the strategy will not work well and lost either.