Flanders DC - Inspiring Creativity

Was the current financial crisis predictable? Some content that it was. In his bestseller 'The Black Swan', Nassim Nicholas Taleb drew attention to the danger of a domino-effect in the financial world. Still, Taleb is convinced that, in spite of all the analyses, such a crisis is unforeseeable. So, what lessons can we draw from it? in a plea for maturity, Professor Herman Van den Broeck lays the stress on more realism and a tempering of blind ambition.
 

The macho paradox

Masculine thinking partly accounts for the financial crisis but is only one of many causes. It's a paradoxical phenomenon that managers and business leaders often argue for healthy competition, while their ambition is to capture the market. A few months ago, when the first signs of the financial crisis were already visible, AIG maintained that everything was just fine for them. In a global economy where systems are all linked together, that's a bold assertion. Look at the situation that the company finds itself in now. 

Russian Roulette

Innumerable small investors felt betrayed when they saw the value of their shares go up in smoke. They took a risk when investing their money, but the trust in their personal adviser must have been bigger.
Taleb's advice: "You are better off investing the greater part (90%) of your funds in businesses that are safe, and then perhaps you can play Russian roulette with the rest." You might hit the jackpot, but most people lose. Until recently people assumed that nothing could go wrong.  

Healthy ambition

It's good to be ambitious, as long as we keep in mind what the impact of our actions can be. A lot of companies (even in the top 500) go bankrupt. Why wouldn't this happen to you when you start up a business? When you are really focussed and follow the false guide, we only look at the elements that corroborate our choice. Investigating why we shouldn't do something might be a better idea and testifies of more realism and less destructive ambition.

Accumulation of market deception

The fear of being a loser is deep-seated in the competitive model, which you see in companies and in politics as well. The field of innovaion management has known for a while now that it's not important whether you are the winner or loser, but that you follow more than one road in order to arrive at a singular idea that can create added value.
As harsh as it may sound, 11 September was, for many companies with problems, a gift. Suddenly they had an excuse for laying poor results on the table. Shareholders that only want to hear nice stories about growth should become aware that they's also contributing to self-deception.
They need to pay more attention to  the lessons that a company draws from projects that have failed! 

Challenge of feminine thinking

It's time to take the step towards feminine thinking which is (by nature) more holistic and mature, and by which decisions are not taken at the expense of everything else. There are scores of companies that are focusing on their core activity and creating added value with that activity. Colruyt for example is able to apply ethical management in practice. You don't need any flashy stories from them, but they employ a long-term vision.
Others use ethical management as a PR tool, but it goes further than just observing the law. The higher you go in a company's hierarchy, the more you encounter people with an individualistic set of values.
By contrast, ethical management means that you do business as an organisation, as a manager and as an individual. Only if you evaluate the consequences of your decisions and actions on the long term, you will do worthwile things. 

Build-up of emotional scraps

We live in a society in which we have everything and that makes us worry about petty things and not about essentials. For example: if one teacher oversteps his/her authority, the Minister of Education is held responsible and resigns.
The past year, what we observed in politics is evidence least of all of maturity. Everyone wants to dominate in discussions and be put in the right without considering the waste of energy and money.
Newspapers are full of personal conflicts between politicians while a real drama might be going on.
Our society has an interest in everyone showing maturity, considering the impact of actions and searching for motivation do to something!