Key role of teamwork and creativity in company growth

Earlier every company used to pay special attention to increasing productivity, now the strategy of attracting customers with innovative products is tried. Industrial age corporate management has undergone fundamental changes but all governments of the world still run on bureaucracy. A government bureaucracy is a government bureaucracy that strictly adheres to government laws and regulations but has unlimited power to interpret the rules. In the private corporate (i.e. company) world, managers have more flexibility in their management as they are hired on the basis of their performance. At the beginning of the last century, the company management was oriented towards mass production and mass marketing, so the management practices were focused on saving the cost of production and distribution. For this, the main focus was on increasing productivity and efficiency and on cost cutting, making the labor a part of the machine itself. Man-based productivity (productivity per manhour) was often measured. The main emphasis in management today is on the job satisfaction of the company’s employees. If the work of the employee of the company is unsatisfactory, he is given intensive training. It is no longer the case that earlier company management used to dismiss weak employees easily. Rather, the company’s HR department (formerly known as the personnel department) is blamed for hiring weak employees in the company. The importance of recruitment, selection, right man for the right job, psychological counselling, etc. has been accepted in companies as the personnel departments of companies have now been superseded into human relations or human resources departments. Job enlargement, job enrichment, job rotation, etc. techniques have increased in companies where the importance of job satisfaction is increasing. In short, Douglas McGrath, about 60 years ago, formulated the traditional Theory X which exploits humans and Theory Y which centers the worker. Most companies have now adopted McGregor’s anthropocentric theory and developed the concepts of job satisfaction and work life balance.

Concept of Stakeholders

The sole aim of industrial age companies was to make more and more profits, whether the process involved exploiting workers or polluting the environment, or forcing suppliers to get their money back, charging higher prices to customers, or cheating the government in paying taxes. Now is the time to strike a balance between the interests of different stakeholders of the company. Earlier only the interests of the shareholders of the company were given priority. Now a company’s stakeholders include its employees, suppliers, customers, government, environment, neighborhood in addition to shareholders. If the company makes a lot of noise or pollutes the environment or disturbs the people living in its neighborhood or spreads coal dust on the roofs of the neighbors’ houses, the public is forced to accept it. In short a company has to protect the interest of all its stakeholders. Making big claims in product advertisements is also scrutinized by the government and consumers. Reputable companies of the world are now afraid of making false claims about their products or services.

Innovation-centric company culture

In many companies in India and around the world, till now the emphasis was on productivity. Product variety was also emphasized. Now in every reputable company in the world, the passion for increasing productivity has been replaced by the passion for innovation in the production process or new product discovery. Now a company cannot come forward based on its past grand performance. Now the progress and fame of the company is not only based on its sales or profit but on the new products that the company has discovered and put in the market. Even if the product is old but the work of improving it is also considered as a form of innovation. Our home appliances like refrigerators, mixers, washing machines, microwave ovens, air conditioners, new models come out every year or two. Now, with the help of AI, the world will start a cascade of new products, new services and brand new corporate governance methods. Until now, there were thousands of companies that wanted to follow the order of learning organization, but now not only learning but innovative organization companies will become the ideal model of the world. There is a difference between an innovative person and an intelligent person. A person with high intelligence does not necessarily have the power to innovate, and a person with a high creative quotient does not necessarily have to be highly intelligent. In today’s corporate world, R&D accounts have started to be set up in a rush and a big company which does not have an R&D department is considered an old-fashioned company. We can’t make everyone creative but by building a team of intelligent employees their creativity can be enhanced. In short, instead of individual work or individual success, teamwork creativity has become the ‘hero’ in the company.

Modern companies are now making various choices in the design of their management systems. Bureaucratic system is now outdated and replaced by matrix organization, learning organization, boundaryless organization, networked organization, creative organization etc.