【汉贝托专栏】前瞻性思维——FORWARD THINKING GM's Column
前瞻性思维
FORWARD THINKING
作者:ICC瓷砖总经理汉贝托(ICC GM Humberto Valles)
一般来说,人们会与自己不了解的事物斗争,常常会不断与他们的习惯不同的设计和事物打架。
无论是什么扰乱了自然的人性和人们正常的生活,对变化的不可避免的恐惧无疑会在许多不同男人和女人的头脑中形成一道障碍,让他们难以接受一个新建议、新设计、新布局或者他们以前没有见过的颜色。他们立刻会开始问这样的问题:这行吗?这是不是太多彩了?这感觉对吗?这设计适合中国吗?这发布的产品对吗?这是正确的策略吗?
所有这些事情都是完全可以理解的,很多时候你会让人们感到怀疑甚至不舒服,因为我们的业务在中国,你在这里会有成百上千的竞争对手,迫使你几乎所有时候都要用完全新的方向和战略去指挥,这会给企业总部和我们的经销商带来很大的压力,你需要帮助每个人理解这是做事情的最好的方式或最好的方法。
这是一项伟大的任务,也是一个巨大的责任,但这恰恰是推动我的动力以及我作为ICC总经理的实际工作。我还想您知道,永远不要轻易做决定,在我对公司和我们业务的战略和未来做出重要决定之前,我会从多个不同的来源收集信息。我提出许多问题,与不同的人交流,我们的销售人员、经销商、市场推广和设计部门以及产品研发部门等等,还从其他不同来源获取反馈,例如意大利的设计公司、墨西哥Interceramic的合作伙伴。我也阅读很多关于我们正要做的决定的话题,在互联网、杂志上,以及来自最重要的机构和协会,他们是与我们业务相关的不同行业的权威。然后我利用所有这些信息,做一些假设,承担一些精心衡量的风险,然后把它们融合在一起,而最重要的是,利用我在这个行业34年的经验,对我们做的任何事情做出最后的决定。
在这个比以往更极其困难的时期,我们更需要做一些让人兴奋的事情,让人们关注我们的品牌,这可能带来更好的销售和一些业绩上的突破。以设计为例,我们知道好的设计总是起作用的,对大多数品牌来说是有帮助的,但伟大的设计无论它是产品、展厅、应用还是布局的挑战,会改变我们所在的整个行业的观念。
作为我们公司的领导者,我必须绝对有那么些活在未来,或者至少比其他人更好地诠释它,为了给ICC更好的机会,让它在竞争中保持领先,引领潮流,成为权威,成为参考,带来我们在上述说到过的所有兴奋点。
但这还不是全部,我还需要确保并帮助我们企业总部的员工、客户和经销商克服对未来、对这些新事物、新设计、新方案的恐惧,建立信心,并鼓舞他们。
同时也分享我在商业上的所有经验、我周游世界看到的不同风景、企业和设计公司,它们在我的脑海中创建了一座巨大的图书馆,帮助我转译新的想法和设计,帮助我们品牌更进一步的思考到未来。
市场上有一些很棒的设计师和品牌在诠释现有的趋势上做出非常好的工作,并通过不做过多的事情或许稍稍改变一下指针的方向来安全地表现。但对我来说,更重要的是思考和做事,思考比这些更长远的、关于未来的事情,推动我们整个行业向前发展。
挑战是巨大的,工作是艰巨的,不经历几次跌倒和失败是不行的,但如果我们想要成为引领者,这是唯一的方法。
伟大的思想来自具有前瞻性思维的人,他们敢于挑战常规、跳出框框思考并创造出他们想要看到的世界而不是屈服于当前传统做事方式的局限。
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Generally speaking, people struggle with stuff they don’t understand, they are usually in constant battle with design and things that are different that they are used to.
Whatever disturbs the natural human nature and the normalcy of life of people, the inevitable fear of change creates without a doubt a barrier in the minds of many different man and women to accept a new proposal, a new design, a new layout or color they have not seen before. Immediately they start asking questions like: Would this work? Is this too colorful? Does it feel right? Is this the right design for China? The right product launched? The right strategy?
All of these things are perfectly understandable and many times you can make people feel doubtful and even uncomfortable, because in our business in China where you have hundreds if not thousands of competitors, force you to absolutely own and lead with a new direction and strategy pretty much all the time, and this creates a lot of pressure and stress in the corporate office and our distributors and you need to help everyone understand that that is the best way to do things or the best approach.
This is a great task and huge responsibility, but this is precisely what drives me and what I do in my real job as the General Manager of ICC. I also want you to know never take decisions lightly, I gather information from multiple different sources before I take an important decision regarding the strategy and the future of the company and our business. I ask many questions, check things with different people, our sales people, distributors, marketing and design departments, product development and so on and also get feedback from other different sources, like design firms from Italy, our partners from Interceramic Mexico. I also read a lot about the topic that we are deciding on, check on the internet, magazines and the most important institutions and associations that are the leading authorities of their different industries related to our business. Then I use all this information, make a few assumptions, take a few well measured risks, then blend it out together and MOST importantly use my 34 years of experience in the industry, to take the final decision in anything we do.
At this extremely difficult times and more than ever before, we need to do things that create excitement and get people to pay attention to our brand that may lead into better sales and some breakthroughs in performance. Regarding design as an example we know that the good design is always functional and works fine for most brands but GREAT design regardless if it is product, showroom, application or layout challenges and changes the perception of the entire industry that we are part of.
As a leader of our company must absolutely kind of live in the future or at least interpret it better than anybody else out there in order to give ICC the better chance to stay ahead of the competition, lead the way, be the authority, be the reference and bring all the excitement that we discussed above.
But that is not all, I also need to make sure and help our people in the corporate office, customers and distributors to overcome fear of this future, these new things, designs, proposals, develop confidence, and inspire them.
Also share all my experience in the business, of my travels around the world looking the different landscapes, companies and design firms that have created an immense library in my head that help me translate into new ideas and designs that help our brand think out further out into the future.
There are out in the market great designers and brands that do a very good job interpreting the existing trends and playing it safe by not overdoing things and maybe moving the needle just a little bit. For me dough, it is more about thinking and doing things thinking much further out there into the future and about moving our ENTIRE industry forward.
The challenge is big and the job is huge and does not go without a few falls and fails but if we want to lead the way that is the only way it can be done.
Big Ideas come from forward thinking people that challenge the norm, think outside the box and invent the world they want to see rather than submitting to the limitations of current traditional ways of doing things.
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