Survival and the Firm

Its been almost a year since I posted something on this blog. That is an indication of how busy I have been in the past year.

Survival and the Firm

I just thought I would share this thought with readers. The though has to do with survival. What is the purpose of the organization? That was a question that I was asked once by a Lecturer. The purpose of the organization is to survive. That was an interesting thought. The most succesful companies in the world have one thing in common- they survive. Take Siemens for example. The fabled German tech company has survived its factories being bombed in WW II. Many of the units of Standard Oil are still around today - Exxon Mobil, Chevron. BP is over 100 years old. It was previously Anglo-Iranian Oil and before that Anglo-Persian Oil. It survives to this day.

In the past year we have seen the goats and the sheep seperated on Wall Street. The goats are Bear Stearns and Merril Lynch and a good example of a sheep would be Goldman Sachs. What separates them? The answer is the quality of decisions they made. Who makes decisions? People make decisions and they are supposed to do so in the context of systems. Senge notes that there are no bad people only bad systems.