Fluxo Soluções
 / March 2017

Positive B Plans?

The year 2017 may surprise us. There are already some indications in this direction. We are starting the year differently. Already at high speed, no waiting. Without waiting for the end of the holidays. Not waiting for carnival. The long period of recession that we have been experiencing seems to be helping us to shape a different attitude towards the uncertainties, instabilities and rapid changes that increasingly characterize the times we are living in. If we had any hope of stability, it gradually faded, leaving in place an attitude of readiness, of being prepared for whatever comes. It seems that we are all convinced that times of continuous ups and downs and many surprises are here to stay. They will now be part of the lives of all of us from now on.

But... are we all prepared to react quickly to these ups and downs? How is our collective creativity? Is it not essential to navigate this new world – full of surprises – that is emerging in an increasingly intense way? To make our collective creativity leap, we will first need to put aside the “structures” – many of them centuries-old and based on a mechanical, hierarchical command and control culture – that stifle the creativity of our teams and the “structure” itself. ecosystem” of stakeholders that make up our organizations.

On the other hand, even if collective creativity is released, we cannot take months to create what is needed. We have to develop conditions to improvise and create new, high-quality solutions practically in real time, as things happen. Preparing for this instant creation seems to be another priority. However, the development of this new type of creativity, highly intuitive and fast, still seems to receive little attention in our organizations.

For the speed of making it happen to reach the necessary levels, we may still need a special type of “prevention”: anticipatory thinking and the creation of various types of “plan B”. And here we are not just referring to negative Plan Bs. Our recommendations lately have also been in the direction of “positive Plan Bs” in the event of rapid and unusual growth in the business context. (This was the essence of the end-of-year message we sent to our network of partners, customers and friends). The provocation that we have been making is expressed in this question: “Is your organization prepared to take full advantage of all the opportunities that a faster recovery of the economy will open up? or is your organization stuck in a culture of pessimism and got used to making 'plan B' only downwards, in cases of worsening of the general situation? How to reverse this culture in the direction of a more constructive and proactive general attitude?”.

To conclude, there are still other provocative questions in the process of thinking about the future: “Are we always passive subjects (within the greater whole) who simply react to external events?” Along these lines, there are other derived questions that help us get out of our comfort zones: “Who are these external events generated by: abstract institutions or people – like you and me?”. “If we are aware that we are part of this whole, which generates such 'external conditions', are we acting to make events go downhill or to new levels of development?”

Nowadays (or should it always have been this way...?) it seems essential that we look beyond the borders of our organizations. Not only in the sense of reacting quickly in relation to the external environment, but to make these external conditions improve, transform – continuously – for the good of all.

How about transcending the idea of plans B to react to changes that come to us and start thinking about alternative plans for proactively creating an external environment much closer to the ideal, to our dreams? How about becoming a mega-team of activists, in order to, together, build the best for our country and for the greater whole? To what extent will we have to transcend all types of selfishness – including the “collective selfishness” that holds us within the limits of our organizations – in order to get involved as active citizens in the process of true cleaning of everything that has been preventing a process of evolution of external conditions at the level we want and deserve? Is it not also by overcoming all types of selfishness that we will become extremely active in the construction of “external conditions” that will make the best happen for everyone and for the whole? Wouldn't it be from a great effort for the development of our country that we will be generating positive surprises in a continuous way that will make us even change the traditional concept of “plan B”...?

Oscar Motomura is the founder and CEO of the Amana-Key Group, an organization focused on radical innovations in management, strategy and leadership of business and government organizations.

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