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There are no more secrets in business, according to Marvin Zonis, professor emeritus of business administration. “Everyone knows everything. Every business has access to the world’s best of everything. It’s only through human capital that we are going to be able to maintain our prosperity and not hit a market stall, or a market collapse, or be driven out of business.”
Zonis gave the morning keynote address October 13 at Gleacher Center for a day-long conference on the book Return on Learning: Training for High Performance at Accenture, an inside look at how the firm revitalized its corporate training program. Zonis played an advisory role to the staff at Accenture who developed the book.
Business change is ubiquitous and accelerating rapidly, driven by technological innovation, globalization, and increasing global prosperity, he said. Zonis pointed out that in the 1920s and 1930s, the average company lasted 65 years on Standard & Poor’s; in the 1990s, a company might typically last only 10 years.
Competition between companies has become intense, he said. “The issue to me is how do you recruit, retain, train, and motivate the best human capital there is? To me, that is the crucial factor in business success.” Successful recruitment is about bringing the right people into the fold, Zonis said. “Your businesses have to recruit people who care about achievement and mastery because that is the proper activity and source of satisfaction in the workplace.”
Getting people to change their behavior is also pivotal, he added, saying that’s not done with recruitment or with training but rather through leadership. “The role of leadership in business is to energize, enable, motivate, inspire, and get people to commit with passion to the mission or the tasks from which they need results. The goal of leadership is to get the people who work for you to want to do what you know they have to do.”
—Jenn Q. Goddu