A past business acquaintance of mine always stated that ‘if you constantly learn then you will always improve’. It is an old adage; if you learn something everyday this becomes a driver for change, which is after all the only constant thing.
My friend was from a past generation where, just as today, the integration of new technology into everyday life was as fast but in a different way. Previously those factors were tangible in that you could “see” and bring together the new raw materials and the end product. The skill of the workforce, in a more labour intensive way, achieved the goal.
An increased importance on the contemporary development of smaller, more receptive and stronger raw materials has now become more important than the physical product itself. An exponential growth in data and digital techniques has produced a smarter environment in industry, commerce and society.
The 4.0 industrial revolution brings an additive motor to drive business forward with a cocktail of energy, raw materials and digitalization. Managing this new environment includes utilizing the skill of the workforce; encouraging an attitude to smarter practice and openness to networking with others.
Wisdom is as equally an important a factor as the knowledge that new technology breeds and one that past industrial revolutions recognized and encompassed. Embracing and exploiting past experiences needs to be nurtured in order that future openness in business continues. This is especially true in projects of any scale undertaken with an initial, exaggerated expectation.
Emphasis on the inflated end result, before the sum of all the parts involved are added up, is one of the reasons projects stall or whimper off on to the scrap heap. This will then impact on and amplify any lack of strategy. Encouraging the softer skill of acknowledging the basis from where you start and how that impacts on timescales will reduce problems in future planning.
All businesses are required to achieve something greater. Exaggerating the result before the project is functional is apparent in many aspects of modern life but not smart business practice. To achieve a result a business needs to embrace the wisdom of knowing that requirements change constantly to enable a system to drive smarter production, boundless creativity and actually allow it to happen.