right direction can the vitality of the organization be radiated?

A company can't be on its own long journey without direction. But it is impractical to demand absolutely the right direction.

None of us are prophets, either in our lives or in the business we are engaged in. We mostly learn from history. We use a backward-looking glass to predict the future, so how can we possibly be right in our direction?

It's not easy for a company to be heading in the right direction.

Just as Kodak could not see the general direction of the total film replacement by digital technology and decline.

The Nokia mobile phone empire failed to see the general direction of smartphones represented by the iPhone and crashed to the ground.

Microsoft could not see the general direction of the Internet and mobile Internet and struggled until it saw and grasped the general direction of cloud computing and regained its life.

How many big companies have fallen in the wrong general direction?

Human evolution is also the result of going in the right general direction. We've probably all seen the picture below. The evolution of mankind is clear at a glance, starting with the crawling apes, standing straighter from left to right, one after the other, to modern Homo erectus.

There is no absolute correct direction for human evolutionary evolution, only a roughly correct one.

Human civilization has developed to the present, and the future is even more uncertain.

In the face of a digital society, an intelligent society, and a more uncertain future, many company executives and business management scientists are reflecting on and reassessing the role and value of strategy.

First, the biggest enemy of success is not the lack of opportunity but the lack of immediate action.

Strategy is not less important; it is more important. But how you look at strategy itself and drive its execution in a constant state of adjustment is even more critical. I summarise the following points.

① True strategic choices necessarily involve fear and unease.

② To develop a real strategy, leaders must walk on thin ice, make tough choices, and even make bets. The goal of the strategy is to increase the chances of success, not to eliminate the risk altogether.

③ When faced with a strategic decision dilemma and out of risk aversion, managers often rely on familiar tools to calculate the direction of the business.

There is no guarantee that the direction will be correct, at best it will be approximately correct, and in some cases, there will be deviations. However, we still have to win the strategy, and the organization must be dynamic in this process.

What is a vibrant organization?

The whole organization is dynamic, especially the decision-making team.

The uncertain future is becoming more and more challenging for strategy formulation, and it is not easy to be generally correct. The implementation of decisions needs to be dynamic, and the formulation, implementation, and adjustment of decisions need to be even more dynamic. The decision-making team's openness, hard work, self-criticism, and personal efforts should be used to make up for the possible lack of strategic capability.

I believe that, among other things, the lack of dynamism, lack of efficiency, lack of final responsibility, and lack of resilience in the decision-making organization is quite a big problem, especially when it comes to facing some strategic areas, such as cloud, such as safe city, as AI.

The expansion of such key business areas is very similar to entrepreneurship. Even the most capable entrepreneurs cannot think of everything before they set out, and even if you have thought it through, many changes can happen once you start doing it. Most companies succeed in a very different direction from the product they initially envisaged.

Entrepreneurs need to improvise as they go along, depending on the market, consumers' reactions, and even their competitors' dynamics.

This adaptability is an essential organizational dynamic that we are increasingly losing.

I would like to conclude with a famous quote by Clausewitz: "In the face of the unpredictability of war, there are two essential elements of a good commander, neither of which is visible in peacetime, but which are useful in wartime. The first is the ability to see the glimmer of light even in the darkest times. Secondly, the courage to follow that ray of light".

As I understand it, for the individual good commander, the former is wisdom, and the latter is courage. Still, for the organization, the former is the general direction to be correct, and the latter is the organization to be dynamic.