D. 12 Rules of Bill Gates for Succeeding in the Digital Age
Just like Tucker, Bill Gates is also predicting the future of business anything but usual and in his new book, Business at the Speed of Thought, he offers a 12-step program for companies wanting to do business in the next millennium.
For knowledge work:
1. Insist that communication flow through the organization over e-mail so that you can act on news with reflexlike speed.
2. Study sales data online to find patterns and share insights easily. Understand overall trends and personalize service for individual customers.
3. Use PCs for business analysis, and shift knowledge workers into high-level thinking work about products, services, and profitability.
4. Use digital tools to create cross-departmental virtual teams that can share knowledge and build on each other s ideas in real time, worldwide. Use digital systems to capture corporate history for use by anyone.
5. Convert every paper process to a digital process, eliminating administrative bottlenecks and freeing knowledge workers for more important tasks.
For business operations:
6. Use digital tools to eliminate single-task jobs or change them into value-added jobs that use the skills of a knowledge worker.
7. Create a digital feedback loop to improve the efficiency of physical processes and improve the quality of the products and services created. Every employee should be able to easily track all the key metrics.
8. Use digital systems to route customer complaints immediately to the people who can improve a product or service.
9. Use digital communications to redefine the nature of your business and the boundaries around your business. Become larger and more substantial or smaller and more intimate as the customer situation warrants.
For commerce:
10. Trading information for time. Decrease cycle time by using digital transactions with all suppliers and partners, and transform every business process into just-in-time delivery.
11. Use digital delivery of sales and service to eliminate the middleman from customer transactions. If you are a middleman, use digital tools to add value to transactions.
12. Use digital tools to help customers solve problems for themselves, and reserve personal contact to respond to complex, high-value customer needs.
The essence of these 12 rules can be explained in one sentence; use digital tools , and it is true that these rules are important in transforming the companies for the new millennium. His book s premise is: Thanks to technology, the speed of business is accelerating at an ever increasing rate, and to survive, it must develop an infrastructure what Gates calls a digital nervous system that allows for the free movement of information inside a company, and being easily available to everyone throughout the company. Gates writes that The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose.
After reading these 12 steps, I came to realize that there were some overlaps with the materials we read in class as well as some of the other rules I mentioned earlier. This is mainly because the solutions for bettering the future organization is not a secret to anyone. If one were to examine and study the trends and just take a closer look at what is happening at today s business world, one would come to realize these steps, or key elements for success in the 21st Century.
In the chapter Knowledge Transfer of the book Working Knowledge by Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak, authors mention the importance of what they call the water cooler talk , the spontaneous meetings of workers at unexpected places; that is the importance of knowledge and information transfer inside the company. Gates talks about the same issue in his second step, and emphasizes the significance of gathering data at every step of the way and in every interaction with the customers. Davenport and Prusak explains this as; In a knowledge-driven economy, talk is real work.
Since the 21st Century businesses are going to be mainly knowledge-driven , talk across the different departments of the company is going to be crucial. Some companies like British Petroleum has already taken some steps towards maintaining information and transferring data across different departments.
The BP Virtual Teamwork videoconferencing system is essentially a tacit knowledge pipeline, a mechanism for linking the people with knowledge to the people who need it. Another use of technology to transfer tacit knowledge can be seen in efforts of several organizations to record the stories and experience of its senior practitioners on video or CD-ROM before they leave the company.
To be part of a network, and to be able to effectively exploit the information that circulates in the network, has become even more valuable than being able to generate new knowledge autonomously. Gates mentions this in his fourth step and gives examples that run from Coca-Cola s ability to download sales from vending machines to Microsoft s own internal practices, such as its reliance on e-mail for company wide communication and conversion of most paper processes to digital ones. Microsoft has reduced the number of paper forms from more than 1000 to a company-wide total of 60 forms.
Most writers on organizations have long realized that to be adaptive and able to respond rapidly, most organizations have to decentralize. This is not a new idea, but with the new technologies it is more possible than ever.
Also the importance of education and highly skilled workers with high IQs is
another factor that Gates keeps in mind in his company s hiring process, and the word Bill clones came out of this.
Furthermore, Gates also sees the importance of a more sophisticated range of customers in the new millennium and reconfirms the significance of the Customer is the king theory and the importance of just-in-time business processes. Overall, Mr. Gates agrees with everyone else on the notion of change; the redefining of business and economy in the next millennium.
4. Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Any time there is change, there is opportunity. So it is paramount that an organization get energized rather than paralyzed says the CEO of General Electric.
To get you organization energized, but not paralyzed; this is the challenge for the manager of the new millennium. It is true that historically speaking at least, people get excited and at the same time worried at the turn of every century. However, this is a unique one, not only because it is the turn of a millennium, but also history of humanity has never seen such advancements in so many fields, as the ones that have occurred this last century.
One thing is sure. The organizations of the next century are going to be very different from the ones which we knew in this one and much of the analysis and research done on this subject will be irrelevant. That leaves the business people of today with very many questions, and core challenges. I have talked about redefining the meaning of Business and Economy throughout this whole paper, and this is the challenge. We have to rethink what an organization is, conceptually, and why it exists, for what and for whom. It seems to me that this is a question and a task for a philosopher more than a researcher, or a business person. However, I believe that the main challenge for the 21st Century organization will be for entire firms to be involved in innovative transitions, while experimenting with new forms of organization.
As I have mentioned at the very beginning of my paper, all the talk and arguments on the future of the organization is hypothetical and based on inquisitive scenarios. These scenarios provide us with insights, but they do not provide facts. Yet, both the analysis and scenarios on this subject should be taken into consideration as we are entering into the new millennium.
In the book, The Organization of the Future, Charles Handy, who is also the author of the book Beyond Certainty, talks about the new science, new language and the new contract. According to his theories, everything will change in the way we do business. However, Bill Gates suggests the importance of what he calls the digital nervous system and how with the help of technology, and of course at this point, we should remind ourselves that Bill Gates is the one who owns a technology and computer giant like Microsoft, and he will be the one to benefit eventually we can increase the velocity of information, which will be the basic element of new way of doing business.
Furthermore, according to an article in USA Today, the defining business trends in the 21st Century will vary;
Eight in 10 opinion leaders (involved in three or more political and social activities in the past year) believe entrepreneurial activity will be the defining business trend in the 21st century. According to Roper Starch for Ernst & Young, 76% say technology is driving the trend, 53% say growth economy/low inflation, 45% say social factors (two-income families, etc.), 33% say globalized economy, 25% say big companies’ inability to innovate, and 22% say government deregulation.
However, whatever will define the business trends of the new millennium, I believe that my original question of where do you want to go tomorrow? will be the main question that every business person must ask themselves, before taking any further steps, or following any new trends. This may be tough for no standard answers will be possible and available. But as long as the organization knows where it wants to be in the future and for whom and for what it exists in the present, the organization will be able to determine its own destiny in the new millennium. After all, as Charles Handy says; we can not reject the future just because it is uncomfortable.
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