A Warrior’s search for Synchronicity

This book answered a question for me – being a philosophy graduate I get the question how did philosophy help you in your job, usually with a tinge of sarcasm and my answers were sloppy.

Authors emphasizes in this book that the transfer of philosophy behind a process or way of working is more difficult to transfer than the technical know-how. ‘Andon chords’ from Toyota Philosophy or ‘Freedom fighters’ from Southwest Airlines philosophy is difficult to copy than the less material processes.  And companies who built their excellence around a set of philosophical values  like Honda did with  ’kaizen’ (continuous improvement), find themselves immune to competition who can copy everything else but the underlying belonging that the employees feel with an  abstract  concept which drives their tangible  behaviour which forms the cornerstone of the organisation’s strategy or what can be called as it’s soul.

The authors also debates the importance given to talking and how many identifies talking with ‘doing’, quoting legendary Jack Welch who kept the ‘talking to minium’ and simple and emphasized ‘doing’ more. Celebrating the knowledge that comes from ‘doing’, promoting the informal communication and informal learning sessions and valuing them and playing down internal competition and driving that energy towards external warfare are some of the aspects they touch upon quite rightly and with great insight.

Limelight time in an MBA class room when you are called upon to comment on a certain issue (where your grades depend on an intelligent contribution) drives the behaviour and mindset to know how to smarttalk, but not to execute. When “Execution” is key to business success in any environment – you like me doubt whether you should spend money and time on an MBA which is only good enough to land job interviews.