I just finished working with a group of 63 Chinese business people in Kunming, China. One of the major points of focus during our time together concerned the question of how do we sustain business success in an economic climate such as the one we are experiencing today.
I've addressed this notion of sustainability in earlier postings and think it's worth revisiting. I've come to define sustainable success as the process of developing the capacity to continuously start over. This has significant implications for management and leadership in an organization. The capacity to start over that I reference applies fundamentally to ensuring that the organization's culture is adaptable. Particularly in terms of being able to deliberately and intentionally deal with the disrupting questions of "What do we hold on to"? "What do we let go of"? or "What do we take on"?
Each of these questions will produce jarring change and require great courage. Of course, the meta contextual question that holds all three is "For the sake of what"? are we doing any of this in the first place. This has to be absolutely clear and the answer is never about just making money or surviving.
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