James Drogan

In my presentation of  Managing the Business at the 2008 Conference on Cutting Edge Issues in Shipping I ended my remarks by displaying the following.

A theme through the paper and the presentation was the primacy of the person as the driver of business success, and the consequent responsibilities of education to produce such people, and the subsequent responsibilities of organization to treat people as assets.

In December 2007 The McKinsey Quarterly published The organizational challenges of global trends: A McKinsey Global Survey.  This article dove tails nicely with Managing the Business, hence I bring it to your attention.

Here is the abstract of the article.

"Companies around the world are struggling to confront the organizational challenges presented by global trends such as growing competition for talent, shifting centers of economic activity, and an increasingly networked business environment, a McKinsey Quarterly survey¹ shows. Although the challenges are manifold, two themes—how to move quickly and how to deal with geographic and regional diversity—emerge most frequently.

Yet more than two-thirds of the executives we surveyed say that their organizations do not have a clear view of the changes needed to meet these and other looming social and economic developments. Almost half admit that their companies have not installed the right people to lead a response, and around a third do not know who’s accountable for dealing with such issues.

Nonetheless, nine out of ten executives insist that organizational change is either “extremely important” or “very important” to building or maintaining competitive advantage."

This article is useful to both students and business people alike in addressing actions necessary to maximize one's potential.