Perform or Perish…is it ?

Perform or Perish…is it ?

We are so used to some old adages and sometimes even quote them often in awe of the great wisdom of the wise ones. Yet as the world becomes a global village , as technology advances the word ‘perform’ itself no more means just being better at the things that you do but in fact perform becomes old wine. The new adage should read ‘transform or perish’.

Let me give an example. I do not want to go as early as the IBM or General Motors story though it is just about two decades old. At one time when internet was through computers land lines cable manufacturing, cable laying was big business. Then came mobile phones, then wi fi and now even cloud computing where data storage has become a matchbox case. Another example is that of photography. Again I am not mentioning the old film roll and washing. I am citing the digital age , the social media and the speed with which information flows today. Your cell phone is the office tool. The Nokias, the Kodaks were iconic. In fact Nokia was so busy in perfecting their cell phones that they never even realized when the touch phone technology just pulled the rug off their feet and in no time taken over by Microsoft. Hacking is another big thing – remember the saga of Sony pictures having to cancel the December 25 release of The Interview because of security concerns from threats related to the film.

I am consciously quoting big names – the too big to fail types as well as well entrenched players . Take the case of Amazon . Amazon began selling its own smart phone, the Fire, in late July,2014 but failed to entice anywhere near the number of customers it had hoped would be interested in the mobile device. The company took a $170 million write-down during the third quarter of 2014, much of it attributed to unsold Fire smart phones, Amazon announced in October, a month after the online retailer dropped the price of the phone with a two-year contract from $199 to just 99 cents. The company reported it had roughly $83 million worth of unsold Fire inventory as of the end of the third quarter. Do you think they would not have done their own research? Yet somewhere down the line one incorrect decision can cause a big hole in profitability.

From the Jungle Raj to today we have come a long way. Now it is not enough to say that ‘the lion has to be faster than the slowest deer but the deer has to be faster than the fastest lion’. Now the rules of the game have so drastically changed that one has to not just perform but TRANSFORM or perish. What you did in two years has to be performed in half that time at double the speed is ‘performing’. Yet while doing so one eye has to be on the changing technology that throws up both – new opportunities as well as challenges.

So I guess the new mantra is : Transform or perish!

Anagha Hunnurkar

November 2, 2015