STORIES
The Respected Donkey
Posted: 14 Sep 2008 05:06 AM CDT
A village potter used to make pots and planters. He would go to a near by
town to sell his wares. He had a donkey on whose back he would load the pots
etc.
Diwali was fast approaching, so the potter decided to make some statues
of Lord Ganesha and Goddess Lakshmi, to sell in town. He made some beautiful
statues and painted them in bright colours. He then loaded them on to the back
of his donkey and set off towards the city.
On the way, he crossed many people. They would invariably fold their
hands and bow to the statues of Ganesha and Lakshmi. By the time they reached
the city, many people had bowed their heads before the deities.
They reached the exhibition ground where the artisans could exhibit their
things. Soon the potter was able to sell his statues for a good sum. He was
pleased indeed!
The potter took his donkey by the muzzle and set off on the road leading
back to the village. Every time they would cross anyone, the donkey would stop
and preen himself prettily as if he were a model. But what was the matter! No
one seemed to as much as glance at him! Why were people not bowing their heads
before him anymore? Desperate to catch their attention, the donkey started to
bray louder & louder...
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He-haw, he-haw...... He went on. The passers-by started pelting stones at
him in annoyance. The potter was bewildered too.
The poor donkey had thought that everyone was bowing to him, little
realizing that their reverence was directed to the idols of God tied to his
back and not to him!
Many of us make this mistake. A person occupying a seat of power, often
finds people saluting him. If he thinks that the salutations are in his honour,
he is living in a fool's paradise, like the donkey in the story!
The respect is given to the chair and not to the person occupying it. As
soon as he steps down from the position, the people around him vanish.
Frogs croak only when it rains, as soon as the rain stops, they vanish.
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This Too Shall Pass
Posted: 14 Sep 2008 05:07 AM CDT
Contributed by: Bharathi Sarkar (bharathi.sarkar @ netafim-india.com)
Have you heard the story behind the phrase "This too shall pass"? Here is
one version of the folktale:
One day Solomon decided to humble Benaiah ben Yehoyada, his most trusted
minister. He said to him, "Benaiah, there is a certain ring that I want you to
bring to me. I wish to wear it for Sukkot which gives you six months to find
it."
"If it exists anywhere on earth, your majesty," replied Benaiah, "I will
find it and bring it to you, but what makes the ring so special?"
"It has magic powers," answered the king. "If a happy man looks at it, he
becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy." Solomon knew that
no such ring existed in the world, but he wished to give his minister a little
taste of humility.
Spring passed and then summer, and still Benaiah had no idea where he
could find the ring. On the night before Sukkot, he decided to take a walk in
one of the poorest quarters of Jerusalem. He passed by a merchant who had begun
to set out the day's wares on a shabby carpet. "Have you by any chance heard of
a magic ring that makes the happy wearer forget his joy and the broken-hearted
wearer forget his sorrows?" asked Benaiah.
He watched the grandfather take a plain gold ring from his carpet and
engrave something on it. When Benaiah read the words on the ring, his face
broke out in a wide smile.
That night the entire city welcomed in the holiday of Sukkot with great
festivity. "Well, my friend," said Solomon, "have you found what I sent you
after?" All the ministers laughed and Solomon himself smiled.
To everyone's surprise, Benaiah held up a small gold ring and declared,
"Here it is, your majesty!" As soon as Solomon read the inscription, the smile
vanished from his face. The jeweler had written three Hebrew letters on the
gold band: _gimel, zayin, yud_, which began the words "_Gam zeh ya'avor_" --
"This too shall pass."
At that moment Solomon realized that all his wisdom and fabulous wealth
and tremendous power were but fleeting things, for one day he would be nothing
but dust.
The story I am more familiar with goes like this:
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a
sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all
times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass
away."
Why do I recount these stories about that phrase? Because that phrase is
all too true in the world of business. Where once businesses thrived and
brought great joy to customers, investors and employees alike they now close
their doors and move their jobs overseas. Management teams once considered
"masters of the universe" have become vulnerable and uncertain - uncertain
about what they need to do next and uncertain what is important.
What changed over the years? Many of us can remember back to the 50's and
60's when people had their struggles but there were some certainties in life.
You graduated from high school, got a job in the local factory, bought a house
and raised a family. You ordered a car built in Detroit from the local auto
dealer, waited 8 or 12 weeks to have it delivered and then watched it rust over
the next four or five years. Kids played unsupervised until dark and neighbors
watched out for the safety and behavior of all the kids on the block.
All of that has changed. Kid's activities are organized. We buy cars
built all over the globe from dealers we don't know. People graduate from high
school, go off to college and never return to their home town. People don't
just drop in to visit any more and the parents of neighbors don't raise their
voices to other people's children.
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You may wonder how we got to where we are. We did it just like we do most
other things – one step at a time. And just as the general culture has evolved
so has the expectation of the customer.
Look at the automotive industry in its early days. First we had Henry
Ford willing to sell a car of any color as long as it was black. Then William C
Durant formed General Motors and offered a variety of styles and colors. Henry
Ford had to close his doors for a year and retool in order to compete with the
new set of customer expectations.
In today's world we are talking about mass customization where a customer
can pick and chose options for his/her car and still have it delivered in a
couple of weeks.
The changing competitive environment spells disaster to those companies
that cannot adapt. Obsolete products and processes mean shrinking market share
and reduced profits. We work with established companies that are experiencing
either sales or profit problems or are uncertain about how to sustain growth
over the next few years. These are companies that started years ago, had
success, grew and then over time saw the bloom fade off their rose and know
troubled times are at hand.
The problems these companies are facing are not due to a lack of effort
or intelligence by the management teams and the employee workforce. Quite often
we see some of the hardest working people busy in companies that are going
under. And it is precisely for that reason that these people are working so
hard. They are baling out the water that is trying to sink them. They don't
have enough time to do non-urgent and important activities because they are too
busy doing the urgent and unimportant tasks at hand. They are caught up in the
daily tactical cycle putting out one fire and the next and never having quiet
moments to figure out what problems are at the core of the business.
A frantic work pace becomes the norm. The thinking of management takes on
a more critical view of their workers. Those employees who go home at the end
of the scheduled workday are looked down upon. Apparently they don't share in
the sense of urgency felt by others. The people who really understand how
important work is stay late for the survival of the business.
Company executives have tried everything they know without gaining the
results they are looking to achieve. Years have been invested in creating and
trying to execute new strategies only to see little, if any, progress. Now they
are willing to try something slightly different.
Sometimes the problem exists because the executives of these companies
lack the understanding of what the overall competitive environment was like
when the business was first started. They don't know the context of the company
in those old glory days. Because they don't know what it was like back then,
from a business perspective, they fail to understand just how much the
environment shaped the business design. Now fast forward and take that business
design from those long-passed glory days and insert it into today's world. Most
of those designs no longer work.
This is apparent in Tom Peter's book "Reimagine". Mr. Peter discovered
that of the top 100 companies in the US in 1910 only 18 survived over the next
seventy years and only 2 outperformed the stock market. He further
substantiates that point by noting that of the S&P 500 companies in the 1950's
more than 80% failed to exist 40 years later.
This tells us that business designs do indeed become obsolete. What
worked 70 or even just 40 years ago no longer provides what is needed in
today's world. When customer expectations, competitor offerings and/or new
materials change so must designs.
When you look at how relevant the business model of a successful company
is today you can be rest assured that as the competitive environment changes
"this too shall pass".
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Fun on the World
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