Strain (9 essential lessons for winning in the midst of change)

Author: Grulk et al. (Auth.), Cai Mingshui et al. (Trans.)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: As the economic belief of the 21st century, adaptability is not a choice but an inevitable necessity! The difference between success and failure lies in whether you adopt an attitude of adaptability. Adaptability breaks the mold and helps you seize the initiative! Adaptability has become the economic belief of the 21st century, yet it alone cannot distinguish you from "the crowd." To thrive today, you need radical adaptability. True, you’ve heard all this before. Some fervent economic consultants once. Thomas Stewart, in his column for Fortune magazine, compared adaptability to a machine and a garden. If adaptability is a machine, companies should design, manufacture, and manage it. If it’s a garden, companies should create conditions for flowers to bloom, and then miracles will happen. In this book, the author attempts to explain that adaptability is both a machine and a garden. It requires a process, management, tools, bold leadership, inspiration, and an open, tolerant cultural atmosphere to achieve success. However, you’ll find that this book is not a blueprint for adaptability, not a technical manual, nor a roadmap to a field called adaptability. You may have noticed that most maps do not accurately depict the terrain. Today’s New York map is almost the same as one from 50 years ago. There are no markings for potholes or traffic congestion, nor for where your radio might be stolen while you’re listening to it. Johannesburg’s maps also lack any indication of where your car might be robbed. The only way to understand the real world’s terrain is to talk to survivors and heed their advice. Perhaps you’re eager to know the structure of this book. Here’s the author’s disclosure: no blueprint can guarantee transforming a successful business into a transformative one, and no secret weapon can enable radical adaptability. Failure may be a powerful catalyst for success. Success, however, likely doesn’t reduce the risks of adaptability. Successful companies seem to have all become gradualists of incremental reform, leaving the wild schemes of radical adaptability to the reckless young upstarts. The author intends to study the practical experiences of great adaptators and find methods that might work in your own operations. But one thing is certain: the more you pursue radical adaptability, the higher your chances of failure. If you want to become a radical adaptability entrepreneur, you must accept a 50% failure rate. What truly matters is not to give up, to learn from failures, to apply those lessons in practice, and to continue taking risks and adapting. But why should we put ourselves and our businesses at such risk? The consequences of not being radically adaptable are severe and will directly manifest in economic performance. Consider the example of South Africa. In the 1960s, South Africa accounted for 6% of the world’s GDP. Today, that figure is below 0.5%. Yet South Africa’s economy has not shrunk year after year—it has simply been surpassed by others in terms of transformation. Those countries spotted the signs and acted swiftly. Today, half of America’s economic growth comes from products that barely existed a decade ago! This ratio has become a measure of national success. Adaptability has become the economic belief of the 21st century, yet it alone cannot distinguish you from "the crowd." To thrive today, you need radical adaptability. This book is about this very point. It describes real people like you and me, who dare to take risks, set, and face nearly insurmountable difficulties. They are just a few individuals and companies leading others toward the future. The author has included stories of individuals and companies with whom they’ve shared their fate. Editors often worked and debated together through the night, with no concept of sleep. This book also features stories of people, like the author, who are passionate about the future. They are willing to share their insights and hope that in doing so, miracles will happen—a kind of magic that entrances their employees, investors, and customers. Through guidance and groundbreaking applications, they turn radical adaptability into a living reality. As a result, these people not only surprise the market and competitors but are often astonished by the levels of transformation they achieve. These individuals set that initially seemed impossible even to themselves. Yet they took action and surpassed those predetermined goals.