What’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,’ said Neil Armstrong on 20 July 1969.
Over the next few years, eleven other astronauts landed on the moon and got back to earth. Certainly no mean feat then and no mean feat even now.
But can it happen again? Why is it that we haven’t had humans back on the moon since 1972? David W. DeLong in his book, Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce, 1 has a very surprising answer—NASA no longer knows how to! He writes:
That’s because sometime in the 1990s NASA lost the knowledge it had developed to send astronauts to the moon. In an era of cost-cutting and downsizing, the engineers who designed the huge Saturn five rockets used to launch the lunar landing craft were encouraged to take early retirement from the space programme. With them went years of experience and expertise about the design trade-offs that had been made in building the Saturn rockets. Also lost were what appears to be the last set of critical blueprints for the Saturn booster, which was the only rocket ever built with enough thrust to launch manned lunar payload.
Wow! Can you believe that?
Do you know whether parts of your organization are reinventing the wheel, not learning from past experiences or making repeated mistakes?
Well, if your organization is even a few years old, this must be happening unless you put in place a robust knowledge management practice. Managers leaving or moving to new assignments always take valuable knowledge with them. This is not because of malice but because they just don’t know how much they know that the company would need. Neither does the company.
Esta historia es de la edición November - December 2018 de The Smart Manager.
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Esta historia es de la edición November - December 2018 de The Smart Manager.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Building A Quality Culture
A strong company culture defined by its values, beliefs, and behaviors, has a profound impact on its products and services. More so in today’s VUCA world, where to stay relevant and maintain a competitive edge, it is critical for organizations to build a culture that focuses on quality. Suresh Lulla, author of Quality Fables, elucidates through significant examples how creating a culture of quality is imperative to driving success and productivity.
Customers For Life
The history of General Motors in India can be traced back to the 1920s, when it became the first automotive company to set up an assembly plant in the country. The relationship since then has not been as fruitful as GM would have hoped. GM’s flagship brand, Chevrolet, was introduced in India to build upon the success of the popular Opel marque. However, success has been fleeting at best—an issue that GM India is determined to rectify. It aims to do so by adopting a two-pronged approach: using customer feedback to influence product development, and delivering a superior sales-to-service experience.
The Digital Shift
… technology will radically disrupt HR in the near future. Indeed, it is already changing the way HR works and the role it plays and opening the door to a new type of “digital HR” function.1 The rise of digital and social media is changing the dynamics of HR and creating new ways of hiring, engaging, and retaining employees.
The Story Of Telling
“The best brands are built on great stories,”* this remark by Ian Rowden best captures the strategy of diligent brand building. Much more than attractive logos or the products themselves, what builds a brand is how successfully a story is woven around it. Brand marketers have to be good storytellers indeed.
Complexity Is Simpler Than You Think
Kay Kendall and Glenn Bodinson, authors of Leading the Malcolm Baldrige Way, shatter myths about excellence models such as Baldrige and EFQM.
Proponents of Isolation Never Become Victors
Multilateralism in the political and economic space has always led to frameworks that favor the mighty. WTO was no exception. With agriculture kept out of its purview, it could never become a truly fair and free trading system. China was the only large emerging economy that exploited relative openness in low-cost manufactured goods to take full advantage of the system. Other emerging economies could at best garner minor gains.
A History Lesson (From Year One) for Trump and the Brexit Crowd: Isolationism Has Never Worked!
Professor Stephane Garelli on growing isolationism.
A Win-Win Game
Business is not a sport where some stakeholder has to lose or fare badly for others to do well. Building an atmosphere of trust and transparency between all stakeholders will help companies retain them even during adverse times.
A Sustainable Model
With a total market value of $4.3 trillion and an employment base of at least 1.3 million direct employees and millions of others indirectly employed, platforms have become an important economic force.*Companies today are constantly looking for ways to build platforms—Infosys Ltd announced its plans of monetizing its platforms to make them a $2 billion business by March 2021. But are all platform businesses successful?
Custom Made
…three in four consumers said they receive too many emails from brands, and one-fifth said they could not handle the current volume…69 per cent have ‘unfollowed’ brands on social media, closed their accounts or cancelled subscriptions.*In these times, when the market is flooded with products and services, the most efficent way to engage customers is to offer them customized content. To achieve this, brands need to focus on observing the nuances of individual preferences.
