Introduction
The business world today has changed greatly. This has posed a challenge to the managers to change their ways of managing and adopt new skills that will help them manage companies in the new ways. Traditional ways of managing are usually characterised by a lot of bureaucracy. Traditionally, there were many protocols that had to be followed in managing, making decision, and other activities of the organisation.
This led to slow growth and development of the business organisations. In today’s business world, organisations have to be fast actors and fast decision makers. The world of business is changing fast. The competition is becoming stiffer every day (Thrift 2000).
As a result, business organisations cannot afford to lag behind. Lagging will find a firm being overtaken by rivals, losing customers, and losing revenues. Such an organisation will fail to achieve its goals and objectives. The difference between the business organisations that succeed fast and those that take long to achieve success is how fast the managers act to change.
It is the high time that managers recognize the need for change and the need for acting faster to move with the changing world. Being proactive is much better as it will not be easy for the changing world to catch up with the organisation.
For an organisation to be fast, it should be in a position to adopt and utilize technology effectively (Thrift 2000). It should also do away with the traditional ways of management that used bureaucratic structures and adopt a more flattened hierarchical structure. Involving workers in the management process will also be effective in that the managers will be able to capitalize on the knowledge that the workers possess.
Further, teamwork will be of much importance in this process (Weiss 2003). This article will be answering the question, “How many fast subjects can live on Planet Earth?” It will focus on how fast managers are able to drive an organisation towards success. The paper will also focus on how fast individual managers and persons can achieve their goals and objectives. This analysis will be done with the aid of examples.
How many fast subjects can live on Planet Earth?
Technology has become part of the organisational and individual lives today. In addition, business ideas and activities are directed towards wealth creation. Wealth creation involves capital investments. The business organisations focus on mass investments. They have been able to do this due to the unprecedented abundance of capital today.
As Collins (2000) puts it, “we have arrived at a unique moment in history: the intersection of an unprecedented abundance of capital and an explosion of Internet-related business ideas” (para. 5). Technology has facilitated fast, effective, and efficient execution of business activities through the Internet.
It should, however, be noted that for an organisation to be in a position to utilize technology, the managers have to acquire new skills and abilities that will enable them utilize the technology. Technology is important as it helps in improving the ways organisations produce their goods and services.
Organisations that adopt technology are able to strike gold faster than their counterparts who either fail to adopt technology or lag behind in adopting the new ways of doing things with the help of technology. Such organisations remain relevant because they always satisfy the needs of their customers.
For instance, an organisation like Apple Inc. is one that was able to rise very fast, especially following the return of the late Steve Jobs to the management. Prior to Jobs second spell at Apple Inc., the organisation was arguably struggling to get to the foot that would lead it to the success it enjoys today.
When Jobs came back to the management of the organisation, he introduced the idea of technology and how the same could be used in the bid to achieve the organisation’s success goals and objectives. Another example would be China as a nation (Tsai 2002). China is categorized among the developing nations.
Despite this classification, the country has been able to rise fast to become a world economic power challenging the traditional powerhouses such as the United States. China is ranked second among the nations with the best economies in the world only behind the US. Further, China has been the fastest in growth among the developing countries.
Among the factors that have contributed to its success is the use of technology. It should be noted that technology facilitates innovation. On the other hand, innovation fuels and accelerates an organisation towards success. Innovation is considered as among the life bloods of organisations today.
It will be difficult and almost impossible for any organisation in today’s business world to succeed without the aid of innovation. Innovation helps the organisation come up with better ways of producing and offering services (Thrift 2000).
These are methods that will improve customer satisfaction and attract more customers to the organisation. Adopting new technologies could be complex and slow at times because technologies are facing the prospect of becoming obsolete due to the fast changes that are happening. This might result in significant losses being incurred by the organisation.
Therefore, the management has to consider many factors in the bid to adopt new technologies (Collins 2000). Employees need to be involved in the process. Therefore, leaders need to be in the frontline in helping the organisation adopt new technologies.
One of the reasons why adoption of new technologies becomes a challenge is the failure and lack of urgency by leaders to share their ideas and visions with employees about how technology is expected to change and improve the business (Curley 2004). As a result, employees lack the motivation and the drive towards embracing the new technologies.
In the end, the process of adopting new technologies fails and the business organisation is not able to reap the benefits of the same. It is, therefore, important for the organisational leaders share their vision with employees on how new technologies are expected to improve the way the organisation executes its operations.
They should show employees how technology can help the organisation move faster in its bid to achieve its goals and objectives. They are faced with the responsibility of establishing a roadmap on how technology should be adopted and how it should be helpful to the organisation. Acting in this capacity, managers and leaders become agents of change in the organisation (Hillman 2011).
Change is said to be inevitable. Any successful organisation must be flexible enough to adopt changes as they come. The business world is changing fast and the organisation should also change fast. It is not possible for an organisation to become successful if it cannot cope with the current rate of change.
On the other hand, if managers are to be agents of change, they need to be in possession of new skills and disciplines that will help them become fast actors and act best (Thrift 2000). The business world is characterised by many uncertainties. Any decision making process encounters the challenge of uncertainty.
The decisions made by managers today will affect the business operations tomorrow. In addition, the decisions that managers make will determine how fast an organisation moves towards the achievement of its goals and objectives (Hillman 2011). It is, therefore, inevitable that managers have to make the right decision if the organisation is to succeed in the future.
Decisions will always have consequences. Therefore, the consequence of wrong decisions will be a failure, while right decisions will lead to overall organisational success. Competition in business is higher and stiffer today compared to the same a number of years ago.
Further, the lifestyles of people have changed. As a result, their demands have also changed. It is imperative to note that the lifestyles are also changing at a relatively higher rate compared to the rate some years back (Hillman 2011). Therefore, the demands of organisations are coming with more urgency and increasing pressure.
For an organisation to cope with this pressure, it has to become faster. It should act with more agility and be aggressive in its activities. Not many organisations are able to cope with this pressure. This calls for a manager who is in possession of high quality skills. Managers should adapt to the new disciplines that they can apply to help the organisation cope with the increasing pressures.
In doing so, managers have to be careful. The current business operations are based on foundations that were laid many years ago (Weiss 2003). For instance, the bureaucratic systems were coined by Max Weber, an economist who lived many years ago.
Most organisations still base their operations on the Weber’s principles. Therefore, as the company plans to start adopting the radical changes, it has to consider all possible factors that have the ability to affect the business in a negative way and avoid them as much as possible.
Organisations need to have simple and less complex communication networks to enhance easy and fast communication and flow of information. Information is important in the success of an organisation. Information is also important for individuals who are willing to succeed in different fields.
Only organisations that are able to pass information faster and accurately that are in a good position to succeed on the planet Earth. Information should be free of bias. It should be delivered to the right person and at the right time and should be delivered fast, especially in the current business environment.
In order to facilitate this, the organisations willing to be fast and successful need to adopt flat hierarchical structures (Fielding 2005). These are structures whereby information does not have to move from the top to the bottom or from the bottom to the top in the order of management levels.
Under flat hierarchies, organisational members are able to communicate without having to follow the lines of management levels. For instance, a top level manager can communicate directly to the lower level employee without having to pass the information through the middle level manager. This increases the urgency of communication, as well as reduces the level of bias (Collins 2000).
As information moves across many people or many departments, it is easy for it to be distorted and biased. This might lead to poor decisions and slow down the speed at which an organisation achieves its objectives (Curley 2004). When an organisation makes the wrong decisions due to wrong information, then it ends up making the wrong move.
Realizing that it is moving on the wrong path will force the organisational managers to review the decisions. This will call for another process of decision making, which will involve finding more information. It will, in the long run, deter the speed at which the organisation moves.
Team work is another important aspect that will help the organisation achieve its objectives faster. Two minds are always better than one. Therefore, when employees work as a team, they are in a better position to produce high quality products. A good example of how teamwork can facilitate the success of an organisation is Toyota. Employees work in teams at Toyota Motor Corporation.
They exchange ideas and opinions in the bid to come up with an automobile that will be able to meet the current market demands. This makes Toyota automobile company become among the most preferred companies as they satisfy most needs of customers. The market for Toyota is growing each day at a relatively high rate compared to many other automobile companies in the world.
China can again be used as an example here. The culture in China favours subjectivity than individuality. People are expected to work in teams as opposed to working as individuals in Chinese organisations. Although some people may possess excellent skills in some activities, it is preferred that they combine their skills with those of others (Fielding 2005).
This facilitates production of high quality products that have the potential of being highly demanded. It is for this reason, among others, that China has been able to develop its economy fast. China has stood out in history as one of the countries that experienced the fasted development record.
Conclusion
The number of fast subjects that can live on the planet earth depends on their abilities to embrace the above discussed factors, among others. It is not easy to give a precise number of such subjects as they will keep on varying depending on the prevailing economic, political, social, as well as technological conditions at any given time. Organisations need to embrace the above factors for them to be able to achieve their goals faster.
As the level of completion increases, it is important that the managers are highly proactive to ensure they are not left behind by their rivals. Being proactive will help them identify any potential problems in advance and deal with the problems before they exert their effects on the organisation.
This will be important in helping the organisation move fast towards achieving its mission. Wealth creation has become a primary objective for investors and organisations. Succeeding will take many factors into account. Succeeding faster will require consideration of more factors.
These will include adopting new technology as it comes up, working in teams, and having proactive managers, among other factors. Managers and individuals have to be aware of this and act towards the same.
Reference List
Collins, J 2000, ‘Technology: Built to flip‘, Fast Company. Web.
Curley, M 2004, Managing information technology for business value: Practical strategies for IT and business managers, Intel Press, Hillsboro, OR.
Fielding, M 2005, Effective communication in organisations: Preparing messages that communicate, Lansdowne, Juta Academic, Cape Town.
Hillman, O 2011, Change agent, Charisma House, Lake Mary, FL.
Thrift, N 2000, ‘Performing cultures in the new economy’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 90, no. 1, pp. 674-692.
Tsai, H-L 2002, Information technology and business process reengineering: New perspectives and strategies, Praeger, Westport, CT.
Weiss, A 2003, Organizational consulting: How to be an effective internal change agent, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.