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Lessons From AT&T, Enron
"Thriving on chaos" is a dangerous game — it breeds short-term opportunism. Just as dangerous is the slavish pursuit of stability. It stifles innovation. And somewhere in between is sustainable entrepreneurship. Is it achievable on your project?
More than ever before, sustaining success in today's marketplace demands that every company build capability for sustainable entrepreneurship. Yet this capability seems to be extremely elusive. Why? When studied from the right perspective, some real lessons can be gained from looking into the failures of AT&T and Enron. Enron saw itself as an entrepreneurial enterprise, but it collapsed. AT&T is a very old, bureaucratic company that has been struggling — with little success — to become more entrepreneurial ever since divestiture of its local operating companies in 1984.
Each company illustrates a very different kind of problem. However, both failures can be understood using a simple model of societies and organizations developed by anthropologists and sociologists. The model also provides some critical insights into how to create sustainable entrepreneurial enterprises. The model is based on: 1) the degree to which members of a society or organization have a sense of group belonging and are interconnected; and 2) the degree of diversity, individuality and expression that's acceptable in that society.
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"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." - Winston Churchill |