Companies around the world are living today a great dilemma between being anchored to the past using the same methods as always, or incorporating within their principles and strategies an inescapable reality: the world changed and only those that adapt to this new reality are the ones that will survive.
The big problem of many companies is that they are still in the ‘past mode’, with the absence of a collective gaze, they operate in an environment where it only matters to generate profitability and economic benefits, without worrying about the people who make up their teams or how to build a better society. While other companies that are in the ‘new world mode’ They internalized that, in the current context, the collective is much more important than individualistic practices.
What does this mean concretely? What characteristics should New World companies have? Through participation and reconstruction, they should bring together the following principles:
First, they must focus on the cause and the people. Their basis should be human beings rather than numbers. Understand that, beyond productivity, they are able to help solve the pains, injustices, inequalities of the world through their daily work.
Second, they work to empower people. In this new scenario, the leadership that is really valued is one that manages to empower others, delivers tools and helps develop talents. They are companies that deliver power, that believe in their people, that create leaders.
Third, they are loving companies, concerned with shapes, care, details. Ideally, this affection for the teams could be included in the company’s manifesto, which is a factor that is measured, encouraged and not lost sight of.
Fourth, they are companies of real diversity. Diversity delivers a 360° view. The more similar we are, the more we think and see relatively the same. In the past this model worked, but not anymore. To cooperate and collaborate, difference is today the best attribute.
And fifth, these companies are increasingly moving towards a cooperative of communities as a model of development, because they know that they work with the people and not for the people. Co-creating, putting all talents and visions at the service of the solution, is perhaps one of the best ways to generate commitment, link, and thus together push towards the same goal.
The pending work for companies is to rethink their work and implement improvements that benefit themselves and the community. Some will do it from scratch and others already have part of the way forward. But as representatives of the private sector, generators of employment for thousands of people in the country and important engines for reactivation, economic development and technological advancement, they can no longer continue to marginalize themselves from this reinvention.
The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
