"I truly believe that going forward ‘lean, mean and hungry’ is the best way to thrive" - Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies..
A Lean, Mean and Hungry China has taken the world's manufacturing industry by storm and is now known as the manufacturing capital of the world.A Lean, Mean and Hungry Luxottica SPA., Italy took over the world's finest sunglasses brand, RayBan from its fat and comfortable rival, Bausch & Lomb Inc, USA, and turned it into a profitable business in no time.
In today's competitive world, the success of a business is viewed more by their ability to survive and sustain over the long term at the same time delivering the promised ROI to the investors and on their commitments to the society.
Any business that survives on wafer-thin margins, high burn rates that result in spends more than the revenue generated, risk the problem of running into operational losses, working capital squeeze and devalued creditworthiness.
Companies that work on low capital but high value added through service related efforts have a natural ability to sustain over long period as they let their ammunition much longer than those who spend away their surpluses or run up cash losses.
Those companies that are lean, mean and hungry end up agile, adaptive and flexible to fine-tune their strategies and remain efficient and effective.
A bullet moving fast towards a focused target, is million times more dangerous than a huge boulder moving towards a much bigger target ( hence easier to reach).
A 13 member team (read Instagram) creating a 1 Billion USD valuation in just under 2 years is no more unthinkable in today's IT enabled full of enterprising business persons.
Instagram's success has opened the eyes of the world to the need of being a lean, mean and hungry operation that leverages the power of breakthrough idea, followed with sustained passion and focused efforts to create a unforeseen valuations in a short time.
It is a nightmare for today's companies to face lean, mean and hungry competitors with low overheads, rapid market action that could take the ground off their feet, eating into their market shares.
Nirma, once a virtually unknown brand of detergent powder, created a rapid dent in the market share of the Market Leader, Surf, with its low overhead, low priced, high volume strategy that shook the Unilever's marketing might no end, till Unilever responded with Wheel detergent powder.
High family running expenses, huge wastage in the economy, low saving rates are some of the problems that have led US economy down a few notches during the recent recession, while countries like India and China managed to keep their head above the water with much superior growth rates while the western economies struggled. This is because of the very low survival needs of a typical Indian and Chinese family, that would ensure them to live comfortably with much smaller incomes.
A fatter and a comfortable enemy is the wish for any company as it would mean that the competitor does not have the necessary hunger to go after the business growth and also is pulled down by the weight of the bureaucracy with in.
Today's successful organizations are taking every possible step to keep the operations lean, profitable and enterprising by inculcating an entrepreneurial culture across the organization, by encouraging the employees to take ownership of their sphere of operation, take calculated risks, think innovatively and take responsibility with accountability for their performance.
To fully realize its innovation potential, Google encourages all of its employees to think and act like entrepreneurs.
Cutting down layers in an organization, encouraging networking among employees and enabling them to work in flat networked structure rather than in hierarchical structure, focus on brilliance and competence rather than on age and experience alone, cutting down inefficiencies and excess flab in the system, that does not add value to the customer and the ultimate consumer are some of the strategies followed the companies to remain lean and agile in today's competitive world to outwit competition and sustain a long term growth trajectory.
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