The Hindu Business Line : Decimate the debilitating diktats

Here are a few maxims that are etched in the minds of many in business: “Always trust your research. Teams create the best solutions. Follow the leader. Success breeds success. It’s okay to put up with jerks if they’re talented.”

These pithy edicts are ‘repeated and sanctified and followed blindly by employees and management throughout the world,’ but it is time to take a hard look at these debilitating diktats before decisively decimating them, advises Death to all Sacred Cows (landmarkonthenet).

The book is not about the lovable bovine; ‘sacred cow’ is a saying, motto, or aphorism about how business should be conducted that is widely assumed to be unassailably true, explain the authors David Bernstein, Beau Fraser, and Bill Schwab of The Gate Worldwide, an advertising agency.

‘Sacred cows’ come in all forms, watch out. “They can be old technologies, tired products, rigid processes or dated services. They are the living embodiment of ‘we don’t do things that way here.’” One signature trait, however, of these ‘beasts’ walking the corridors of business is that their bloodlines can be traced to boardrooms!

It may come as a shocker that one of the ‘cows’ being slaughtered in the book is the time-worn phrase ‘the customer is always right.’ Slavishly kowtowing to the idea that the customer is the ultimate authority on how your business should operate is a sure way to wind up with an inoperable business, the authors reason.

Approvingly, they cite the success story of HCL Technologies, which has a new corporate policy with an emphasis on employees, thus: ‘People first, customers second.’ Every HCL employee has access to ‘an interactive computer forum wherein they can ask questions and make suggestions to management.’

D. Murali

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