Circa 1979. One of the most famous coups de theatre in recent business history occurred when a very senior Sony executive paid a visit to his engineering department to challenge the ingenuity of the people there. Like a fairy-tale king visiting his alchemists, he produced a small rectangular piece of wood and dared the engineers to design a tape player of the same size.
” No bigger than this “, he declared. The techies went to work, but soon came up against a seemingly insurmountable obstacle: they could not devise a speaker that would fit into a tiny package.
Then, one of then one of them had an intuition, inspiration, illumination, revelation, epiphany- whatever. He asked himself: ” Why does it need a speaker at all ? Let’s do the job with small earphones!”
Whereupon one of the all-time great inventions, the iconic Sony Walkman was born!
In fairy tale scenarios of course, the hero of such a story would be the person- a bullied youngest son or step daughter- who solved the puzzle and saved the day. Here, however, defying fairy-tale morality, one could argue that the real hero is the king- the manager. It was he who ” thought the unthinkable “. A tape player that you could carry in the palm of your hand, or in your shirt pocket or strapped to your arm, or clipped onto your belt. It was he, who had the panache to ” present the unthinkable ” in the theatrical way he did, using the block of wood as a vivid prop.
Managers across organisations are being increasingly called upon to exercise self-reliance, flexibility and imagination– that is, creativity. They’re being asked to stretch and grow-to jam- to help their companies improve in today’s rapidly evolving global economy. Its all about challenges: setting them and meeting them.
The era of predictable competition, steadfast investors, docile customers and slow-footed change are well behind us. The need(or knead?) of the hour is for brands and organiations to live in a permanent state of mobilised awareness– of themselves, their competitors and of course their customers.
Corporate landscape is littered with the psychic corpses of the unfortunates- those who did not either see the chasm or bridge the chasm to embrace change and compete with that groovy genius wearing six ear rings on her left ear and working on the next game changing…err game design while subsisting on Pepsi and Chips!
Contrary to perception, almost all managers can carry off leadership by challenge. And in the current business climate, they must. As we all know, fear is a reaction, creativity is a response!