The Fittest don’t Survive

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IN THE PRESENT SCENARIO IT’S NOT THE FITTEST THAT SURVIVE. INSTEAD THAT GLORY IS RESERVED FOR THE “ADAPTABLE”. IF YOU ADAPT, YOU CAN ‘FIT’ IN ANY ENVIRONMENT & SURVIVE

“GO ON BE A TIGER” proclaimed the tagline of Accenture - said to be the largest consulting firm in the world with more than 1,86,000 employees and branches in 52 countries, with 96 of the Fortune Global 100 companies as its clients. The advertising campaign was seen as a perfect fit between the celebrity (Woods) and the client (Accenture). Tiger Woods was known world over for his strength, mastery, discipline and relentless focus on winning – much similar to Accenture and its business performance. This was 2003. Last month the tagline took on a whole new meaning when the world came to know about Tiger Woods’ frolic with porn stars. On the night of 13th December 2009, Accenture become the first company to drop Tiger Woods from its multi million dollar endorsement deal. For a company that for years had built its whole advertising campaign around this one man – the move was a strong indicator of how Wood’s popularity had sunk.

Tiger Woods surely knows what it feels like to hit rock-bottom. From being a cynosure of all eyes, the perfect celebrity endorser has become a toxic taboo subject overnight. So has Woods outlived his utility for the brands which he endorses? Moreover, is it time to rethink the celebrity endorsement industry as a whole? Well, the correct answers to these questions are still not clear. What is clearly emerging however is the impermanence of it all. Someone whom the media (and the rest of the world) called the epitome of success was labeled a “loser” in a jiffy. Herein lies the secret of real success. As Winston Churchill once said “success in not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.” The world will be watching Woods and how he continues after his fall.

FALL – YOU WILL
The road to success is long and difficult, but if you are determined to succeed and if every part of your being longs for that, then there is no one who can stop you from succeeding. If you have the courage to follow your heart and know what you truly want to become, everything else becomes secondary and every step you take will bring you closer to success. However, with success come great responsibilities and with success also comes undisputed failure. A truly successful company or individual is one who knows how to manage his success and failures equally well. There is no law of nature that states that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Almost everybody faces a fall. But then success is what Nelson Mandela said: “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” It is true for individuals, for corporations and even for kingdoms and empires.

Look at some of the greatest companies. Apart from their ‘greatness’ as a common denominator, they also have one more thing in common – each one of them have taken at least one tremendous fall at some point in time, but found a way to recover. Be it IBM, Disney, Boeing or Xerox, each of them have stumbled but have refused to give up. Each crisis has only taught them some new lessons in leadership.

The reason for fall may be different for different companies. As Leo Tolstoy very rightly quoted in his book Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Merck, for example, faltered because it became obsessed with growth. It grew so fast that it was not able to find the right people to sustain this sudden spurt in growth. Much like the Roman empire, which once seemed invincible and indestructible under Julius Caesar. But according to some historians, it was the empire’s rapid growth that caused its eventual demise. Its colossal size made it near impossible to manage and protect.

IBM fell in 1980’s when its top leaders refused to accept that times were changing and new companies and products were slowly edging it out. Scott Paper thought it was the best in making paper towels and no one could touch it. Companies like P&G and Kimberly Clark came out with products that attacked Scott Paper and still the company refused to acknowledge that things were going wrong. The result: from being the most successful and commanding company in paper-based consumer products, the company went into total oblivion. It didn’t take its competitors seriously.

That’s something Kalanithi Maran, India’s undisputed leader of regional broadcasting never overlooked. “I don’t take competition lightly,” he said. When everyone (including Zee Network) rejected his proposal of starting a regional channel, the man believed in himself and went on to start SUN TV Networks. Today, his collections of 20 satellite channels and 46 FM radio stations have helped him dethrone Zee and become India’s most valuable listed media company with a market capitalisation of $3 billion. If Zee wants to hold on to the top place, it needs to be careful not to go the route IBM traveled in the 80’s. IBM needed a great leader like Louis Gerstner Jr. to pull the sinking company back into form and his book ‘Who says Elephants can’t Dance’ showed how when everyone suggested he break up the giant, the man slowly infused life back into it and showed the world that even elephants are manageable!

THE DINO BLUNDER
An old adage goes that it’s all about the survival of the fittest. But when you look at dinosaurs, the adage is proved wrong. Fittest means in ‘best physical shape’ which is what the dinos were in. But as in business, so in nature it’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but one that is most adaptable to change. Survival is a choice, an option. You decide to adapt, you survive. Madonna, adapted and changed and today she still tops the charts. Big B changed from the ‘angry young man’ to PAA and just look at the man today.

If corporates want to survive, they need to change too. They need to adapt with changing times and not make the same blunder that the dinos made. An interesting study by Aries De Geus reveals that average Fortune 500 corporations survive for less than 50 years, while special corporations like Nokia survived for centuries. The difference was in the attitude, in the way they looked at success. For these hardy survivors the sole purpose of an organisation was not just to make money, but make a difference to the world they were living in; not to look after Wall Street, but after their people; not to just help their employees make money, but to make a ‘life’. This was how they defined success and every time they failed these are the thoughts that brought them back from the brink and helped them survive not just for a few years, but centuries. These corporations were ‘living organisations’.

So as we ready for the New Year, let us make a choice. Let’s redefine what corporates are meant to do, let’s redefine leadership and in the process, let’s build ‘living organisations’ that would not perish with one fall but would rise again and again and again. After all, we do know that survival is a choice and it is not always the fittest that survive...

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