Fact is, the work place to a great extent is “where we live.” We need star accountants. Boffo saleswomen. Over-the-top creatives in marketing and new product development.
I’m fundamentally not interested in the Fortune 500 companies – in US, Mexico, anywhere. The real backbones of economic growth are small and medium businesses.
If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism – the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity.
It may be primarily property taxes in the case of a public library, or state taxes and tuition in the case of an academic library at a public university, but the funding sources of most libraries continue to have a strong geographic component.
The principal reason, invariably, most “successful” giant companies rather quickly become also-rans, or just amorphous blobs on the competitive landscape, is their failure to re-tool in anything like a fundamental way. In fact,
If future competitiveness depends on treating people as an important part of the institution, the least respectful thing I can imagine doing to a human being is asking him to urinate in a cup.
