Let's make things better

Philips, a multinational company, have released this:

"Anyone who makes anything is driven by a common instinct. From the infant attempting its first scribble to the multinational manufacturer. It is an instinct as fundamental as taking your next breath. It is taking the next step and making whatever it is you are making, better.

As we seek to understand, we create, we enhance, we progress. And as we do so, we make the world a better place.

Whether we are infants making better drawings, scientists making better medicines, governments making better laws, manufacturers making better products. All are making someone somewhere somehow happier.

So, when the people say "Let's make things better", they speak from the head. And from the heart.

Isn't it a very innovative ad? An organization's commitment to common goals and shared values could not have been better stated.

Globalization and liberalization have now made countries mere neighborhoods. In the ensuing Internet era of the crumbling borderless world, as very beautifully illustrated recently in a public lecture at Jakarta by Dr. Kenichi Ohmae, the Japanese "Mr. Strategy", how spectacularly an organization's goal can grow and blossom from the "customer-satisfaction" a decade ago into making our planet a better place to live.

"He who stops being better stops being good," said Thomas John Watson of IBM. If everyone of us attempts to make improvements, whether at home, office, factory, school or government, we actually add to the global wealth.

The urge to do better should be encouraged in all organizations. Matsushita Co. tells its employees: "Think about your job; develop yourself and help us improve the company." Praise and positive reinforcement are important part of their philosophy. I understand Matsushita's Suggestion Scheme, generated over 25 suggestions per employee in one year.

People who do their jobs know best how to make things better. What is required is just enough motivation on the part of management to make their employees think.

The key to success is thinking. Focus on positivism but avoid perfectionism. Compulsive perfectionism may actually lower performance. A perfectionist is rightly defined as a person who takes infinite pains and gives them to others.

Positive thinking also influences our subconscious. "Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible," says Henry Ford.

D. CHANDRAMOULI

Jakarta