• By German Anitua Azkarate
  • Rating:( 2697 votes )

What sort of mouse is your organisation?

Reading is one of the most common hobbies when you are boarded on a plane and you still have several hours of flying ahead of you. The section of job offers published in the popular and specialized press of the country that I am about to leave is one of the readings that has generated most interest to me past 8 years.

In all these years I have been able to see as if in an any given country the management of companies continues to be thought of in a linear way and based on supply chains (despite the fact that the word ecosystems is fashionable in their organizations and the management argues that it knows and dominates the management of its implications), these companies will continue to compete based on both vertical and horizontal strategies through formulas such as integration, collaboration or cooperation. These strategies generate work inertias that demand hiring of profiles, especially engineers, financial and commercial, in addition to a large number of technical profiles to operate in the plant. On the other hand, we find companies whose managers have evolved their management style from a linear competitive way of thinking to a more ecosystems-based thinking and consequently capable to manage the various effects of disruptive innovations. This type of strategic thinking based on ecosystems leads them to demand mainly profiles of economists, as managers of innovation and ecosystems.

After more than 8 years watching these trends in job demands evolve between different countries around the globe, I have managed to identify the direct relationship between two elements of the countries in which most of their companies demand more profiles of economists and innovation managers and ecosystems, compared to engineering, financial and commercial profiles. The two key elements are (i) the degree of progress in which your industry is in terms of how the effect of different technological trends and its ecosystems is understood and determines the variation in sales prices and positioning, and (ii) the degree of scope with which the duality of the country's educational system is applied in these industries.

It will be useless for current organizations to try to promote a good work environment by generating friendly and formal work dynamics among those profiles whose contribution to business competitiveness is already very limited. At present, in order to achieve meaningful levels of business competitiveness, it is vitally important that we assume how we have left behind a world in which “those who get up early, GOD will help them”, to move to a very different set of mind in which “the second mouse will take the cheese”. Understanding this argument and its implications is the first step in initiating all kinds of change in organizations.
 


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