Each morning, from every corner in the world , people get up, get ready, eat or skip a breakfast and head to offices and then around 9.30 or 10.00 am starts the collective intelligentsia of the world, using their skills and intelligence to “grow” and “solve problems”
So a corner in Abu Dhabi to a corner in Mumbai to a corner in Amsterdam to a corner in New York
To a downtown in Delhi to a downtown in Madrid to a downtown in London to a downtown in Dubai
All are “actively” using strategy and intelligence to achieve growth at:
a. Individual level leading to growth at
b. Company level leading to growth at
c. Country level leading to growth at
d. Group continent level – say EU or Emerging market group
This corporate phenomena started about 3 decades back and what have the collective intelligentsia of the world achieved today in 2015?
a. USA in recession and deep debt
b. EU in recession and deep debt
c. Japan in recession and deep debt
d. China and India slowing down
e. Brazil deep in the red
f. Russia – like you, even i don’t know
g. Africa still in hunger and poverty
h. Middle East and Arab world in deep turmoil
i. Canada, Australia and New Zealand anyways were soft honeymoon destinations , who never really shook world economies or caused any political instability
Central Banks don’t know how to service the debt at
a. Individual level which lead to debt at
b. Company level which lead to debt at
c. Country level which lead to debt at
d. Group continent level
So there are short term steroids offered in form of bond buying and playing on interest rates to make liquidity flow for temporary solutions
I think its safe to say that the collective intelligentsia – which spent so much on business suits, ties, presentations, iMacs and iPhones, travelling business class and first class, brainstorming and grain starving, business lunches, signing cheques, sealing deals, making agreements etc with all the attitude and egos, have miserably failed. They have bought us to this in 2015.
They say, often, when the larger picture is seen, the minute things that matter are forgotten.
The intelligent never cease to look below their own nose and which is why today – we have forgotten the basics.
So all of us need to ask ourselves – have we turned too intelligent to understand the very basics of our own lives? Is this mirage that we live in, which makes us feel confident, superior, competitive, one up on another, actually taken away our mojo?
At individual levels, we need to buckle down and see:
a. How do we treat our colleagues
b. Are we fair to our surroundings
c. Is our work and private life in harmony
d. Are we being too intelligent to be one up always
Questions we need to ask:
a. Is growth always the way forward
b. Whats the benefit of distribution vs growth
c. What does being competitive do to us
d. Is quality defined by money alone
e. Are we compromising values for the sake of currency
These are not mere “moral” suggestions, I am not in the business of morality.
But these are real time things we can relate our daily work with.
Is it not really ok to simmer down sometimes , be comfortable, let go, say no, chose between right and wrong, assess the pennies lost to the pounds gained, to be uncompetitive, to be unintelligent vs being too intelligent, to stop monetising our talent always.
If the past decades belonged to intelligence who bought us to this, let the future belong to being unintelligent, use the heart more than the brain, think about small than think about big , put people over cash, be a human to being a money maker.
Reason being – each business today is a peoples business. And by doing so – people will remain people. Because people can be stupid, people can be foolish, people can make mistakes, people can falter.
If you need counselling on this topic , you can email or call me. I charge a fee and its just about affordable. This preceding line is just a joke. Thank god, I haven’t come to it and made a business out of it too.