In 1975, a Kodak engineer, Steve Sasson, created a functional prototype of a digital camera. His manager said “how beautiful, but don’t tell anyone.” One of Kodak’s senior managers dismissed the digital camera asking skepticism: “Who will want to take photos that cannot be seen on paper?” When Kodak wanted to react the massive adoption of digital photography by the public collapsed his business. Thus, in 2012, after dominating the world of image for more than 130 years, Kodak was forced to declare himself in bankruptcy.
In 2010Blackberry It had almost half of the world cell phone market and a stock capitalization of US $ 110 billion. Three years later, it fell to 6% market. Today is zero and the company does not exist. Reasons? Two: errors of Management And the entrance to Apple’s Mobile industry with its first iPhone (in 2007) and Google, with its Android operating system. When in mid -2008 the iPhone went out to the market, many in Rim laughed. “It has no keyboard, no person wants to typing on a screen. It is impossible to write there. It will be a failure.”
Three years later Rim tried to compete with a screen keyboard in 2011. It was already late. Closed in 2022.
Blockbuster videofounded in 1985, was a giant in the video rental industry. In the 1990s, with more than 9,000 physical stores worldwide and a business model that monetized with membership and fines for default positions, with a wide selection of titles.
Netflix It began in 1997 as a DVD rental service by mail, with an innovative subscription model for flat rate to rent DVDs.
In 2000, Netflix owners sell their startup to Blockbuster for 50 million dollars. They were rejected for being a market niche in the midst of “a hysteria of the completely exaggerated point.”
In 2007 Netflix decides to move from physical rent to streaming. In 2010 Blockbuster was declared in bankruptcy and today Netflix It is worth more than US $ 500,000 million.
If we include the correct reading of the always complex national context, we could include other cases from the automotive Siam Di Tella, through Pumper Nic and without leaving Garbarino. This note speaks of learning.
Putting ego’s own name
Interpretations and reasons There are many: denial of change, technological arrogance, contempt for competitors, shielding to learning culture, confusing to innovate with renew continue.
“It is very difficult to change what we cannot even name.”
The executives of successful companies are at the same time human people and role, and there is an internal debate that deepens the collective with the latent risk of “we believe to know almost everything, it is hard for us to listen, it is difficult for us to recognize, we are often overwhelmed and other issues that shield us reason and emotions”.
Let’s land again in the concrete. Ryan Holiday, author of “The ego is the enemy” and expert in markets and media, proposes to look at the treatment of the ego from three moments:
-The moment of aspirations, when you were not yet successful
-The moment of success
-The moment of failure
We have just shared three cases that arise post success. Perhaps the most risky moment, because when you aspire you are not yet and when you fail you are less than when you aspire, and that helps you stop better in reality.
How was that manager formed?
In the book The Death of the Ego, by Agustín Parigi and María Noel Carrizo, Pablo Maison, Vice President of Human Resources of Unilever Latin America pointed out that “for years the companies have sought to touch that internal nerve of their employees that awakens the ego of the people in order to create the need to occupy a social place from the position they have in the company”.
Only the best can ascend, have benefits, be admired and be able to make decisions that influence a whole company.
All stimulus to a type of “omnipotent” leadership.
Now let’s put such leadership in a business context where:
The complexity and uncertainty in the “macro” and the context and in the evolution of the businesses is relevant, so much so that to subsist and grow depend on how you “associate with others”
You are part of a leading and successful company, where there is more talk of achievements than failures, and where “the trade is known”, although sometimes the success was achieved by some who were before us.
And finally, let’s put the management and management multiple short -term, demanding and with little learning spaces, which absorb intensity and its focus.
What is the main risk? To take care of our self -confidence, the spirit of the team and its affiliation and not to give up our own speeches and decisions of the past “we negotiate dreams for improvements, transformations by compromise solutions”, and unconsciously the client ceases to be the center and becomes “function of the feasible.”
That anesthesia professionally, we no longer feel “strategic pain”, that pain that reminds you that the gap between your value proposal and the market expectation and the client is very visible, and that mobilizes you to go for more.
From the ego we “know everything”, we are omnipotent and superheroes, we do not need others and that isolates us in our environment. Then we define on this a measurement system and rewards for the short term, which increases the size of the fences, and guides behaviors in the same direction.
Do we think that the result can be an open, unprejudiced mind, that stimulates creative thinking and stimulates an open search for potentials outside who we are and always did?
Let’s not confuse vulnerability with strategic self -knowledge: If I want to achieve something I hope to develop all my competitions or do I look for excellent accessories and put all my energies in building a common purpose?
If we manage to imagine a different value proposal, that combines the “best of ours” with “the magic of others that we recognize, listen and value”, sharing a common purpose and constructed from a model based on trust and collaboration we have a possibility. Let’s start by lowering a change.
Propose the control of the organizational ego as a cultural lever
How many times do we ask ourselves how much we want our company to grow patrimonially, as should be perceived and defended by its customers within five or ten years?
In his book Elm, Orlando Correa, he asks us: How to work the ego and tame it, recognize that we cannot always lead the ecosystems approach requires that we be active followers?
In my experience, it is only resolved with concrete actions that arise from senior management and build or consolidate values and culture as “corporate policy.” That the manifestation in concrete things of that culture, the “how we do things here” that combines self -knowledge, self -esteem, enthusiasm and feeling of belonging, with large doses of organizational humility, personal and professional development spaces, desires for learning and respect towards others with which we can share the path.
Let’s start diagnosing ourselves: which of these actions today “I feel and check” that travel my organization.
Verbalizing repeatedly and with examples the purpose we pursue and its impact on clients, employees, suppliers and society, so that our words and decisions mark the right path.
Ask, promote and stimulate a culture of real and reliable feedback.
Decide based on hierarchical opinions.
Review the tone and style of our communication. Do you have the proper dose of humility, sobriety, stimulus of the role that you learn, and the mistakes they educate, alerts about superb behaviors, thanks for what we achieve as a team and passion for what we are not yet and what we are going to do and learn with others and the discipline and rigor to sustain strategic paths?
Exercise conscious and responsible leadership of promoting behaviors and commitments, putting teams over personalisms and giving listening to all voices and stimulating their development.
Look outside our company, with the intention of searching, learning, surprising with other companies, competitors or complementary, admiring what they do good and ask ourselves how to combine the best of each.
By Gustavo Calveiro
