As a corporate actor who is principally a lawyer, there are certain words and phrases that I initially classified as colloquial, especially when it came to my function of recording corporate meetings. Later, I came to realise that perhaps I was making too many assumptions and could instead classify them as “business jargon” rather than colloquial. By the way, I still maintain my formal language in minuting but the contextualization has been enhanced by my understanding of the use of business jargon. You could say that this would be a demonstration of the attribute of “adaptability”…not so?
As an illustration, a certain colleague I once worked with often said:
“We thought that perhaps we could add some colour to our submission by… ” or; “The main drivers of the spike in the performance are …” and ; “We hope to leverage on the opportunity created by …”.
In the minutes of the deliberations, I would replace the word “colour” with “detail”, the word “drivers” with “factors” and “leverage” with “use the support of”, in the three cited phrases respectively.
Today, the discussion is on the component of “leverage” in corporate self-discipline and how corporate actors can use it as part of their strategy to remain consistently efficient with their delivery.
I have read and watched posts from leading speakers on entrepreneurship and strategy and picked up some thought-provoking propositions. One of the propositions is that an enterprise needs generally physically “lazy” actors because they are always looking for ways to discharge their functions with minimum energy, forcing them to be creative and innovative! For example, they would come up with ways of moving something without doing it themselves and as quickly as possible, so that they can return to their comfort zones! I will leave this one open to debate, but one thing is clear…there is logic in the result of their laziness being the creation of efficiencies!
A corporate actor must have the discipline to always make things better and should not be shy to collaborate and leverage on those collaborations. Gone are the days of “corporate super men and women” if at all they ever existed. Modern working emphasizes team work as the vehicle for high performance and excellence. This requires active identification of areas that would benefit from useful networks and partnerships and having the impetus to reach out and extract that benefit!
Leverage can only be effective if there is diligence, curiosity and ingenuity among other things, to accompany the effort of reaching out for the benefit. That is why the concept of “discipline” for the corporate actor is best internalized for optimal benefit.
At this stage of our journey in this series, connections with the different components of corporate self-discipline should be seen. A holistic appreciation is the most preferred way of application.
Let’s share!
