Monthly Archives: March 2020

The coronavirus awakens a new management mentality

What we thought as not relating to us, as happening in someone else’s backyard, all of a sudden, the coronavirus monster appeared front and centre before our eyes and scared us away from our comfortable normality. Then, we soon realized that no man or woman, no community, no race, no religion, no nation could claim any credentials that would buy them a more favoured treatment or put them in a less precarious position.

As the crisis unfolds and we sense the threat to us and the businesses to be very real, we feel the need to reflect on what is happening placing it in the context of the way we manage and run our businesses given that, especially in recent times, some harsh criticism was directed at businesses and their management.

Our current management, for example, has been criticized for being egotistically short-termist, for not caring for important stakeholders, for not respecting enough the environment and sustainability. The capital system finds itself open to question for allowing top managers to amass the wealth of the business-to-consumer cycle without due regard to the other stakeholders jeopardising in this way the cohesion of the community.

But it is to this cohesion of the community that we turn our attention in moments of crisis. And the questions suddenly right in front of us become graphically clearer and more pressing:

Are our businesses in normal times paying enough attention to the cohesion and strength of the community and society?
Cannot business care together for itself and its community?
Wouldn’t it be that an improved community will in the long term have beneficial effects on the business?
Have our businesses been somewhat blinded by the short-term logic failing to see, develop, and exploit [...]

By |March 18th, 2020|Uncategorized|0 Comments|

Urgency: an ally or a foe?

Oftentimes, we hear that managers are advised to create urgency around the situation they face for the purpose of tackling it more effectively.

Is this conception of urgency a fallacy or is there some truth in it?

My experience shows that:

(a)    when you have longer times to contemplate a problem:

Vision tends to become vague as if diluted in the comfort of time.
Precision and detail become more dominant taking away some of the spirit and enthusiasm of the endeavour

(b)    Contrary when the situation is urgent:

Vision comes closer to us exercising a formidable attraction power toward it, and
In our speedy route to the goal, we worry more about the motion and direction than the niceties of the journey

Thus, faced with an urgency, it seems that we experience a different connection of thought: The closer vision activates the right hemisphere of the brain, and thought on the avenues of the right brain travels faster ignoring details in the quest for pictures, building blocks, and functional linkages. The logical part of the brain is, in some way, demotivated, and creativity appears in a more evident and controlling role.

Can we then say that urgency is an ally we must see as a resource to exploit?

Faster and more creative are attributes very much sought after, and any frame of mind that can help give rise to them cannot but be a welcome ally!

 

 

About the author: Panikos Sardos is the Managing Director of P&E Sardos Business Solutions Int., a management consulting firm that offers advisory services, coaching and training. You are welcome to communicate with us by email: psardos@sardossolutions.com or telephone: +357 99640912, +357 24400884, and to visit us at www.sardossolutions.com

By |March 12th, 2020|Uncategorized|0 Comments|