Sunday, 26 June 2016

The Last Moghuls of the shrinking business empires

Her clients visit her when they are in a good mood but also sometimes when they are very unhappy. Happy ones are rich singles or those who cheats their wives. But today, she has a depressed soul to take care. From her experience, this class come to her to talk their mind and most often winds up without having her flesh service. In her initial days she could not make anything out of their talk. But then, even a rock gains some wisdom if wise men whispers into it every day.
She told her 'visitor' her name is Saria that may be her name or may be the 'name of the day'.
Usually she starts the conversation, keeps the guest at ease, and once they start talking it is nonstop and never-ending. She has to just stay awake. These days in between she asks some queries primarily to keep her awake and to let client know she is listening.
“Gentleman tell me, why are you so filled with sorrow and gloomy? You look like an emperor whose empire has gone to dogs”. Her day with the client has started.
Visitors head tilted up, he asked the lady, “You seem to be from Asia, have you heard about the great old empires, the Mughals, the Ming’s, the Samurais? Knowingly well that a slut will have interest only on the thickness of the client’s purse and not in learning about empires.
The winds of change slowly paved way for the new masters of the world and the old ones started to fade away”.
Once powerful and wealthy lords gave way to the new order, decayed then perished”.
Something similar is happening to the business world. The winds of change are blowing out the old feudal lords and the new order is taking shape”.
When one sees a funeral possession, the thought is “Oh it is someone; I have a long way to go”. All prayers accompanying a dead body has one line, It is today me tomorrow you. But the onlookers never care”.
By now she understood the client’s baggage. He is either a long timer in a big company who has been shown the door or someone whose own business is in doldrums. All her clients are from the businesses. In Her opinion this is a very unimaginative class. They only have to talk about businesses and economics even, when they talk to a slut.
What is the change that is bothering you? She gain just asked for the sake of asking.  The visitor continued as if in a trance.
“Graveyards of industrial world are getting filled with corpses of once flourishing companies eliminated “for nothing of their mistake” as CEO of the world’s largest mobile phone company lamented. But the dead souls can be happy in their final resting places because more will follow”.
The visitor stopped for a while. She though it apt to ask a question. “But was it for nothing of their mistake, and what wrongs did they do worth getting a death sentence?”
Visitor felt encouraged by this query from his women of the night. He continued..
“Long ago when your father’s letters reached your mother over a week time, the world was very much disconnected. Big worry for the businesses in those times was risk. The messiahs came, and they prescribed diversification. Companies got into myriad business”.
“Now some magicians came. They connected the world. Connection brought the knowledge about the new markets and came competition. Now messiahs pronounced new pills. You do what is best for you and leave rest to others who are best at it”.
“New magic pill was core competency. Identify your strengths and focus on it, this will help one to do things more efficiently and keep competition at bay. This worked for quite some time until now. But everything under the sun starts decaying after some time and this strategy too started greying”.
“Like the cholesterol clogs arteries and makes the heart weak of a sedentary person, there were somethings that clogged organizations veins and made them prone to decay”.
“To make them more efficient organisations started practising shared services concept where in businesses will be fighting for the services and resources within a company. Idea was to help internal competition and define service levels. But over a period of time this led to the creation of functional Silos. Business supporting services started getting arrogant. The breadwinning commercial person started to get a feeling of being side-lined. Organisations are infected with entrenched power centres and are like an obese human with bloated heart and clogged brain with narrow arteries”.
“By the time a senior executive reach the corner suit he already has enough in life. The worst fear for the top guns is not business but a prosecution due to an exploding plant or loss of face at the posh golf community due to a discrimination suit by an employee. EH & S got cult status in companies. SOP’s became the new bible. And these two became important tools for smart people when they did not want to work”.
“Wall street success became more important than the shop floor success. Smartness became a more important trait than passion and hard work. A bunch of thugs slowly started to rise up in ranks. At least some places the people mix became more toxic with the rapid acceleration given to some highly ambitious and smart females who gave more importance to internal networking stuff than taking care of business.  With all these the business started drifting away from the customers like a boat away from shoals of fish”.
The old big business will not collapse all on a sudden. Though the decay started very early and the business are pregnant with criminal inefficiencies it is not that the roof will come falling over. Entry barriers due to the capital scarcity and technology helped organisation to survive till this moment.
But like the old empires could not resist the winds of change, the free minds, disruptive ecosystem and capital availability will spring many more teslas, bitcoins and bring down many a hundred year old companies…
By this the man got ready to go, paid his days fee and got up to leave. She thought, be it happy fun seeking customer or spent men vomiting wisdom both the inoculations are anyway waste with her.
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