“Social Strategy” – a step in the future!

A couple of days back I was on Facebook. Yes it happens when you are too occupied with work and commitments are such that you are socially cut-off – even if you do not want to. I checked Facebook update of one of my friends – Nishant Jain, a Supply Chain specialist with HCL – “Outsourcing is dead. Co-sourcing is the only way to go” by Vineet Nayar. This comment of Mr Nayar and subsequently sharing the statement by Nishant makes an statement that we are going to grow together, there is no other way out! I wrote on this earlier – Collaboration in logistics… What we call competition or what we see as “servicing clients” is actually helping client perform their duty better and there needs to be more ‘open-ness’ and involvement in what service/product we are offering. I started writing my blogs with the same concept (Refer – Why this title?).

…“When Ferrari and Honda run on the racing track competing for the first spot, they are not eying at the first spot, they are racing to offer best product to their customers.” The Buddha’s teaching on ‘Dependent co-arising’ teaches me this. “Each one of us is a rung of a ladder to the other and vice versa, hence for self development and moving higher up, one’s ladder should be strong enough, even one’s competitors.” I believe this will be the extension of P&G’s present approach of Connect & Develop in future; working on various fronts with the competitors such as IPR – strategically innovating – besides others…

I requested Nishant that would it be fine if I refer you in the blog? He is kind enough to say yes. Around the same time, when I was drafting this blog I happened to read an article in McKinsey Quarterly – The social side of strategy.  This article, Nishant’s facebook update and my owns earlier blog connected all the dots. I could see the relationship between Business and the Buddha in another dimension yet again.

According to the McKinsey article companies are trying their hands on social strategy. Further it states that such strategy planning efforts would be more inclusive, action oriented, detailed and of course measurable. The other advantage of such efforts would be enthusiasm people would have; it would provide ownership to the execution. The reason for these strategic initiatives to be far more measurable is that these would increase accountability. Everyone in the organization would review progress of each initiative resulting in improved quality.

Effectively, we are moving toward a more inclusive society and more inclusive organizations. Caution – the idea of open strategy or social strategy is to provide a platform to the organization for brainstorming, yet the whole idea is not yet completely evolved. So, companies need to open up slowly in some regards such as intellectual property.

As Indian philosophy states – Vasudhev Kutumbakam (one-world family), I sincerely hope to see that happening.

I would continue this in future blogs, too. Until then thank you for reading.