Building Culture, in a connected world
Peter challenges a company that believes “Change is Courage”
If you have heardPeter’s speeches so many times, you’re confused as to whether you’re hearing the same things again. I thought if it was the case, and finally figured out that it’s not. Not at all. His content is not really the same, but his call to action is, and that’s why they ‘feel’ familliar.
At the end of all of Peter’s speeches, you tend to feel only one thing, the desire to do something different, because of the impending disruption, be it in business, or in the very fabric of society.
MAS Innex was no different.
What is MAS Innex?
Innex is the annual innovation conference organized by MAS holdings- the apparel manufacturing giant, headquartered here in sunny Sri Lanka. MAS is the largest private employer in the country, and is second only to the Sri Lanka Army (by number of employees).
And Innex is extremely important to MAS. See, the company is so huge, and innovation happens within so many of its sectors, that it’s impossible for one division to know the innovations in another divison, through smalltalk or even organized meetings.
You really need an exhibition to show off all the innovation that happens within the company. and mind you, SLECC was full! And the kind of innovation that was showed there, warrants airport-grade security. Because that’s what it was. In fact, even tighter than airport. No phones allowed. They took my phone away when entering the hall. And, the stalls were for MAS staff only. (Peter got a little tour, because he was a speaker).
Peter was initially found the big crowd to be a bit intimidating. In all honesty, we didn’t anticipate an event of this scale. The whole conference was broadcasted, SirasaTV style, to all MAS factories around the world.
Peter’s topic was “How to build culture in a connected World”
What drives the connected world?
Peter first wanted to clear out what this connected world meant, and what was driving it. Of course, it would be easy to assume that the connected world meant social networks or something to that effect. But before that, Peter explained that there are three major developments that’s driving the ‘connected world’.
1. Computing Power
Firstly, computing power. processors have become exponentially more powerful, and proportionately reduced in size. This is the first enabler of the connected world. to put it into perspective, the processor that’s on our phones, is a thousand times more powerful than the processor that powered man to first land on the moon.
2. Networks
secondly, networks have become so advanced, that they’re now able to take this massive computing power, and deliver it anywhere, even in the tiniest of devices. We call this cloud computing, and with the advent of 5G, we will see computing reach all new heights.
3. Platforms
Thirdly, platforms, the youngest concept in computing, is what’s at the frontlines of this connected world. Platforms like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Uber, are completely eating away older industries, and are making exponential reuturns from the low cost of computing.
And add to these drivers automation, and MAS is facing the complete disruption of the apparel industry.
A lesson from the past
And to understand how technology disrupts businesses, Peter drew an example to N*Able. When we founded N*Able 10 years ago, we introduced technologies that completely disrupted the IT landscape. But now we see, that our dependance on those technologies, and with it- the business models, will not take us into the future. We will have to disrupt ourselves, in order to stay relevant, in this rapidly changing future.
For N*Able, the question is what is it are we going to let go? What businesses, which even today makes a considerable sum of money for us, are we going to let go, in order to catapult us into the future. To answer this, we asked ourselves what our purpose is, and what our core capabilities are. We then asked ourself, how can we add value to the end user of our services — the customer of or customer — the general public.
If MAS were to do the same exercise, the question Peter raised was, how much does MAS know about the end consumer? How can MAS use data to understand the behaviour of the final consumer, and understand the impact on MAS’s business. And data is only the beginning. Getting insights from the data, is what really matters.
And there are other challenges too, that MAS has to address. Learning. Collaboration. These are sometimes tall self-made hurdles we have to jump over, in order to be relevant.
The challenge for MAS
Now onto challenges that MAS has specifically, and happening at a grassroot level across the world.
Firstly, fashion is declining. There was a saying called “clothes maketh the man”. That’s because people expressed who they are, their wealth, identity and their emotions through what they wear. Fashion played a huge role in how people expressed themselves. Now, technology has enabled people to express themselves in other ways, and hence, the value placed on fashion is slowly declining.
The second is that clothes are becoming all purpose. The idea of “work clothes” is diminishing, as most companies start to embrace ‘casual workwear’.
Finally, people are increasingly spending more on consuming content. Services like spotify and netflix, tend to have higher priority in the millenial’s wallet. And to add to this, the industry is becoming aggregated, with a small number of fashion retailers capturing nearly 100% of the value, in the fashion value chain.
Making it more than a tagline
In closing, Peter challenged MAS’s business model itself. With the rising behemoth of China, can Sri Lanka compete at that scale? Smaller, more agile manufacturers are now moving towards boutique manufacturing, where they leave the legacy mass manufacturing systems, to smaller, leaner, flexible manufacturing-as-a-service (MAAS. Pun intended).
The real question is however, Does MAS truly have the courage to change?
