First business meeting wants Colombian companies to prioritize conversation

First business meeting wants Colombian companies to prioritize conversation | Image taken from eltiempo.com

On August 28, the event will be held in which the aim is to gather ideas from local strategists in the firms and take them as an example of development and thus improve the business situation.

On August 28, the business meeting on the art of conversation will be held, which seeks to gather ideas from Colombian strategists who in specific cases have found the way for companies to create value and grow profitably.

According to a recent survey by EL TIEMPO, the University of Rosario and the Centro Nacional de Consultoría (CNC), Colombians have as a priority to create value and collaboration in a business network of 5 million mini-companies designed, which seek to provide good employment and grow outside of an environment of obstruction and conflict that is expressed, for example, in the 230,000 demands to the State for more than 200 billion.

The survey that asked the country's rating in knowledge management, business creation, equity and wealth mobilization yielded three findings of additional interest: the mobilization of the country's wealth depends on companies, and the achievement of this growth purpose lies in collaboration between companies, Government and universities, and public opinion does perceive the lack of capacity to move its wealth as a priority, considering it the worst performance in the country.

At the business meeting, we want to put at the center of public discussion the urgency of teaching firms to grow profitably and to create an environment that is conducive to them since they are living beings and depend on said environment.

For human beings, the environment is the conversation. And for companies, it is the conversation that is had about them. In Colombia the majority is not happening, since relations between the Government and companies are characterized by mistrust.

So a new conversation is necessary that creates an environment conducive to the growth and profitability of companies.

Primer encuentro empresarial quiere que las compañías colombianas prioricen la conversación | Imagen tomada de eltiempo.com

The Chinese example

One way to see the impact of environments on companies is the case of China. Under Mao, there was an adverse environment that resulted in 30 million starving to death. Deng Xiaoping, in his pursuit of wealth, established an environment that unleashed the creativity of his people and lifted China out of poverty. He created a mental framework for growth that made the Chinese miracle possible.

The Colombian business fabric is made up of just over 5 million very small companies, in an adverse environment that prevents them from growing. Therefore, a change in mental framework is necessary: ​​from one of obstruction to one of growth.

The environment of obstruction is not natural because the human condition is made for collaboration, conversation and growth. Indeed, an important finding of science is the affirmation that the human brain developed in relationships with others.

For this purpose, language and conversation arose, over hundreds of thousands of years, to collaborate and prosper, long before there was talk of capitalism and socialism. In the essence of the human being there is a mind oriented to growth, collaboration, progress and freedom.

This will be the meeting

The group that convenes the meeting on the art of conversation to grow profitably in the company is made up of a group of companies and foundations from Colombia dedicated to using and promoting conversation as part of their growth strategy.

The ideas that will be presented at the meeting are local ideas. For example, Alejandro Salazar's emerging strategy has been applied in more than 200 companies in Colombia; The integrative negotiation strategy, presented by Alberto Merlano, has been used to resolve the most critical problems.

The way to detect and instill in a company a mental framework for growth, or the way to establish constructive dialogues with the communities of Claudia Jiménez; the use of artificial intelligence in the company, presented by Luis Gabriel Caro and Pablo Lemoine, or the need for empathetic discernment in the company, presented by Alejandro Arango, are all ideas created and polished in practice with success in Colombian companies.

The topics of the meeting are: a new way of thinking and understanding the organization, in which Salazar explains how to break an old habit of having strategic plans that are never fulfilled.

To do this, he recommends knowing what your company does well and who knows how to do it. This way you will have found the seed that creates value and has the potential for profitable growth and then make the difficult decisions to eliminate what is done poorly or regularly. And what has no vocation for profitable growth will be found, and thus a new innovative and competitive company will emerge.

Strategy, according to Salazar, is a permanent conversation in which we discuss and talk about winning, not simply about playing. In it, productive questions are asked and there is generous listening, focused on understanding and not convincing, admitting and dealing with uncertainties and complexities.

The fundamental statement is that collective intelligence knows things that it does not know that it knows, and when they are found through conversation, the knowledge that can make the company grow profitably is found. So, for example, Argos discovered that it knew how to expand in the United States and developed that strategy.

The first and most important step is that companies depend on their ability to create value, that is, benefits for their customers, and that the possibilities of creating value are infinite.

The second is that, from the country's point of view, the problem is how to convert its wealth into profits, that is, how to make companies emerge that convert the country's wealth.

Colombians, although aware of the need for equity, consider it a higher priority to develop the ability to convert their potential wealth into value and benefits. For example, Colombia's mining potential is greater than that of Chile, but its mining income is much lower. The same can be said of timber production, agriculture and industry.

Primer encuentro empresarial quiere que las compañías colombianas prioricen la conversación | Imagen tomada de eltiempo.com

The conscious negotiation

Integrative negotiation is a process that involves the recognition of the validity of the interests and the acceptance of the dignity of the other. The approach seeks to create a space where both parties can find common ground that transcends their differences: for example, in negotiating with a union, the future of the company.

The negotiator must see the interconnections of the conflict, look beyond the conflict and seek solutions that not only solve the immediate problem of individual positions, but benefit the entire system.

The negotiation conversation requires training, openness that allows you to see the other not as an adversary but as a collaborator in the search for a solution that benefits the parties. Integrative negotiation transforms conflicts into opportunities for growth and learning.

As an example of the success of the method, at the height of the guerrilla violence, the method allowed there to be no strike for 12 years at Ecopetrol, nor the need to go to arbitration courts, convened by the government, even overcoming cases of murders. of union leaders carried out by paramilitarism.

The conversation in companies

For many companies, the most difficult task is establishing a constructive relationship with the community. Claudia Jiménez has achieved this in the mining sector in the Dialogue Group on Mining in Colombia (GDIAM), which has maintained a conversation of growth and collaboration, as well as an impact on public policies, and that example has all the potential to be scalable.

Pablo Lemoine tells us that it is in companies' best interest to take advantage of the tsunami of new technologies. Otherwise, your competition will make them obsolete.

An additional use is to create the company's artificial intelligence, which is built and enriched every day by consulting and adding information. Its use is unlimited to program, correct proposals, consult information and, in general, bring the necessary knowledge at the time it is needed.

But we must be careful: ChatGPT and similar models can tell lies and have disorienting hallucinations and, beyond this, they are machines and this changes the way we converse.

Luis Gabriel Caro shows, in a specific case, the implementation of software that allows establishing the company's knowledge maps and recording conversations to avoid repetition syndrome, that is, talking about the same topic many times without those conversations being translated. in action.

Alejandro Arango will resume the discussion of agreements, since companies are made up of human beings who are moved by commitments that need coherence and discipline for the company to function and grow.

The theme of the Minister of Cultures, Arts and Knowledge, Juan David Correa, will be the closing and will be focused on how our society can evolve and get out of the trap of discord and begin to play as winners in the field of cooperation , progress and peace.

In the future it is expected that there will be two more meetings, one on education and the other on creating a strong civil society.

Carlos Julio Lemoine - Founding partner of the Institute of Conversation and Centro Nacional de Consultoría

Article taken from eltiempo.com

By: El Tiempo

https://www.eltiempo.com/economia/empresas/primer-encuentro-de-empresas-tiene-como-prioridad-crear-valor-sobre-el-arte-de-conversar-3373815

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