Our constant focus in this series of notes is on the need to find a different way to think about the imperatives that drive our business and our economic performance. The key to success, and survival even, is to have high levels of comparative Competitive Strength. And the first step to achieving that is to become radically more adaptable, flexible, agile, and changeable.
As it says in our Changeability video, in our web site –
“If you always do what you have always done, you will only get what you always got”.
§ My English teacher will be so shocked – but this message cannot be made more clear by polysyllabic multi-miasmic plurals**t (my disrespectful phrase for academic/management speak).
Never has this been more true or more relevant than in this week of impending doom and disaster in the financial world. So it was with a sense of excited recognition that I read the latest newsletter from Brian Paxton at MBendi – one of the largest and most influential Web Service providers in Southern Africa – please have a look at http://www.mbendi.co.za – maybe their Blog would be a good starting point.
Here is the extract from Brian’s message that made me sit up and think –
“The other thing that strikes me most forcibly as I consider these battered African and American families, is that maybe now the myth will finally be dispelled that the risks of living and working and investing in the developing world are somehow much, much higher than the risks of living and working and investing in the developed world. It's a myth that has been perpetuated for ever and a day by first world based credit rating agencies - perhaps they should be called discredited ratings agencies after their recent dismal performances - to the detriment of governments and companies and individuals around the world.”
I repeat - “If you always do what you have always done, you will only get what you always got”.
“Just as the world's financial systems are about to be redesigned - no doubt with next to no input from the finance mandarins in Korea, China, India, Russia, Brazil, the Middle East and the other future economic powerhouses of this world - maybe it's also time to redesign the credit rating systems and procedures so that they no longer reflect the first world prejudices, subjectivity and, often, ignorance of the past but instead accurately measure risk in a completely dispassionate way. That would also make life less risky for families everywhere.”
This is Different Thinking
There is a need for Different Thinking – NOW
Brian and his colleagues have a unique insight that comes from their geo-economic positioning and the extraordinary array of contacts and intelligence available to MBendi. He is highlighting, from that different point of view, that the “traditional financial models” are bust. He is suggesting that they are so broken that the financial future of our world will be governed by new faces, new minds and new structures in new locations. It is an alarming prospect.
In Blog entry after entry here we have stated that conventional banking and investment analysts regularly miss the point by looking mostly at the numbers, and not the embedded behaviuors and mind sets. We say that Different Thinking is needed to understand the real potential of a business – we say that it is not WHAT the business leadership thinks about their business, but HOW they think about it that counts.
Our Competitive Strength Report cuts through this barrier to understanding better, faster and cheaper than any other tool available. Find out more about The Competitive Strength Report at the Competitive Strength website or with the short video on our web site Competitive Strength page.
Oh yes, I must mention that our friends at MBendi host the Competitive Strength Report and Achievement Network websites.
Have you any idea what the advantages of a South African based web service may be – Different Thinking!
