Kasim Tatic, Ph.D.: We need lateral thinking

We live in a time where information is rapidly shared and technologies change quickly. In such a world, changes are necessary, for both workers and employers. In order to improve this for all of us, we looked up for an answer from Kasim Tatic, Ph.D., an expert from Amaximus association.

Kasim Tatic, Ph.D. is the Head of the Department of Microeconomics at the University of Sarajevo and the expert of the Association for the development, creativity and environment – Amaximus. As the name of association suggests, the reason for its establishment is neglected or insufficiently identified importance of personal growth. The founders of the association stated that the need for its establishment arose from the fact that most people are not at all aware of their mental potentials, nor they use them appropriately. The average person, according to scientific research, uses only three to five percent of their mental potential.

Towards the end of 2014. Tatic has held one of its most recognizable and interesting lectures on the theme Changes: Opportunity or danger - the role and importance of change management, which was attended by directors of private companies, as well as students. It was a very interesting and unusual lecture, and wouldn't it be, when Tatic, wishing to better explain his main messages and recommendations to the listeners, wasn't afraid to take in hand guitar, and to play and sing a few of he Yugoslav pop rock hits.

DANI: Professor Tatic, the fact is that many people are afraid of changes in their professional life. Why are changes important?

Tatic: My basic message could be that the change is the essence of life. In a changing world, the only constant is change itself. Therefore, change is inevitable. The second message is that there are two types of changes, those induced outside the system of organization, to which you have to react or to adapt. Another type of change is the one that you induce, acting proactively, meaning that others have to adapt to your changes.

DANI: Let me ask you more specifically: Which and what changes are necessary for Bosnian employers and workers?

Tatic: They need a mindset that will equally emphasize the importance of adaptation and proactive approach. One of the ways in which leaders must change their thinking is that the elements or characteristics of a successful company can be reduced to two basic set of facts. The companies are, in English, smart or healthy. The word smart means clever, but it is also an acronym of the classic functions in the company - management, strategy, accounting, finance, technology. These are the common functions of companies that have tangible results and leverage, which operate in the company. My message is that they surrender too much attention, but leaders must understand that they are not sufficient as a source of constant or permanent, long-term competitive advantages. We live in a time when information is exchanged very rapidly, and the technology is changing rapidly. If you now make a step forward, the others are coming soon, too. We in the Amaximus, have underlined another aspect, which is the health of the company, to which leaders, unfortunately, do not pay too much attention, as employers and as leaders in terms of maintenance and management of business processes in the company. The health of the company is a broader concept of corporate culture, and the basic aspects of the health that are being neglected, according to many authors and international consultants in large companies, are very important for the long-term profitability of the company.

There are four segments of the companies' health, and their characteristics to a minimum are reduced to what is called backdoor games, politicizing the company, outside circles stories, or what erodes the company from the inside and creates bad relationships.

Another aspect is to achieve what is missing in a large number of companies, and it is the clarity of their goals. Workers need to know what exactly is the vision and mission, and which way to go, which increases employee's morale and motivation, productivity and reduces fluctuations of good personnel.

DANI: The facts you are talking about, I suppose, are not peculiar only for Bosnian companies. Have we adopted the wrong principles from the West?

Tatic: The results of the so-called XQ questionnaire or, execution coefficient of a company, in a survey conducted among 23,000 workers in the United States show that 37 percent of them fully understand what their company wants to achieve. One in five respondents is thrilled with the team goals, and only one in five respondents understands in what way his duties are coordinated with the objectives of the team. Only half of the respondents is satisfied with the job at the end of the year or week, and only 15 percent feels that their company enables them to achieve their most important goals. This suggests that we behave like robots. For example, if we apply this information to the football team, then only four of 11 players on the field would know what their goal is, only two of them would care about the game, only two players would know their position and what they should do, and in the end, all of the players, except the two of them, would play against their teammates, rather than against the opposing team.

DANI: Many managers have degrees and theoretical knowledge acquired on public and private faculties of economics. Why can't they be successful in practice?
Tatic: Leadership is a skill. It is a problem the whole education in a world faces, and today the world is seriously considering the issue of education and its adequacy. Today's education, not only in BiH but throughout the world, is decontextualised, reconceptualized and uncreative. In the book The global educational gap, Harvard professor Tony Wagner interviewed business people to discover the key skills which the employers request from a modern employee. According to his research, those are, primarily, critical thinking in problem-solving, teamwork, deftness and adaptability, initiative in entrepreneurship, effective oral and written conversation, data access and their analysis, as well as the curiosity and imagination. People do not have these skills because the education system is not tailored to adequately prepare them and to convey such skills.

DANI: You claim, also, that the numbers in the business of a company are not the most important. So, what does it matter instead?

Tatic: Why does a company exist? In the lowest form, we would say that the goal of the company is to maximize profit. This goal is unquestionable, but should not be dominant. Employers and workers have to be satisfied, as well as the community and suppliers. The company should not operate only to create a profit, but to effectively act on improving the life of the whole community. Every company, regardless of whether it is large or small, should have a social responsibility, and not only through donations but also through the relationship with its employees. It's not a platitude when we say that the workers are the biggest capital of the company. The problem of firms is their short-term orientation. Many companies today in BiH misuse bad economic situation and huge numbers of people in the labor market, blackmailing workers and not paying them adequately. Therefore, intellectual capital remains unused.

Such firms achieve certain results in the short term, but these results are not even close to good, nor for owners of capital nor the firm. The results of the company would be much greater if the owners would allow the right use of workers' intellectual potential. Workers' salaries are treated as expenditures, investment in employees as an expense, which is absolutely inappropriate. It should be treated as capital expenditure. Investing in workers is an inevitable process that is in today's economic sphere called the economy of knowledge. How will you be creative if no one has invested in you?

DANI: When we started already the subject of moral crisis, answer us please, how it affects the companies' businesses?

Tatic: The workers must be able to find the motivation, gain knowledge and be more competitive. The biggest problem in our society is morality and ethics, if the morality is zero, then the intellectual capital is zero. Then your knowledge is in vain. The overall social problem is the low level of morality. Some workers also, when they can, behave immorally, they goof off, not giving the maximum and having an immoral relationship with their colleagues in order to progress. Also, employers will abuse the position in the labor market and the huge number of unemployed, and they will not pay wages on time, and when a worker asks for a salary, he will get fired.

DANI: Is it the answer to the question in what kind of capitalism we live and work?

Tatic: World problem, especially in the most developed countries, like the US, is an uneven distribution of profits. We measure it with Lorenzo's curve, which shows that Pareto's rule 20:80 is no longer valid, in the sense that the richest 20 percent control 80 percent of the wealth in the United States. This relationship moves, and 10 to 15 percent of the population controls 85 to 90 percent of the wealth. However, there are no social unrests in the US, because social well-being is achieved by exploiting the whole world, using oil from the Middle East and using military power. So, the US can use energy sources quite cheaply. The essence of capitalism is that it has an embedded weakness that leads to an imbalance in the distribution of income. Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to UNDP, is at the threshold of poverty (up to 70 percent of the population), and 20 to 30 percent in a middle class.

We have an absurd situation in which people with university degrees should not ask the boss about the amount of their salaries because the bosses do not like these questions. This is very bad and symptomatic of our society. It is the morality of which we speak. And what a worker can do then? To change his position, the worker has to change some things in himself. In this environment, it is very difficult, but we have to pull ourselves by the ears to get out of the mud in which we are. On the Internet and in modern technology you can find appropriate things for education that are not just theoretical. My motto is that nothing is more practical than a good theory. It's one false dichotomy because the theory has its limitations and must be tested in practice, and the practice has limitations because it can not be solved without a theory. I broaden my knowledge on the basis of papers, books, articles published by professors who are consultants in firms. These are practitioners who constantly test their theory in practice and who observe what are the problems in practice, in order to solve them better with the help of theory.

DANI: All in BiH generally suffer, due to poor business climate and high taxes. How will such an environment be good for anyone?

Tatic: There's a famous Kennedy's statement: Rising tide lifts all boats. Employers need to understand that it is in their interest to create a better working environment and using the potentials of the workers can not be achieved by de-motivation of workers. A good leader must eliminate demotivating factors and get the best from the workers. Again, we return to the creation of the context in which workers could prosper and that employers also realize that it is their interest, too. That's why education is important, and the key thing is to acquire competencies through the process of education. The EU has classified 28 competencies into four basic categories, the so-called cognitive, emotional, social and labor action competences. It is, in fact, a capability of applying knowledge. We need, also, more tolerance, because in every area of life in BiH, if someone disagrees with you, you are exposed to sharp attacks, and we urgently need a different perspective. Association Amaximus and I are committed to increasing the importance of lateral thinking, which arises from the standpoint that the biggest mistakes are not result of a lack of logic but because of misperceptions. The aim of Amaximus is to promote the need of introducing the so-called lateral thinking in the education system. The basis of this opinion is that a good thinker views one single thing from different angles in order to gain knowledge of a whole. Only after that, one can make judgments or attitudes. By becoming good thinkers, people in BiH would become more tolerant, which would reflect in the company's operations, where new ideas, as a condition of creativity, would easily come to a fertile grounds. Also in politics we would have better results, because the politicians would listen to what the other side says. If we had a greater tolerance, then we would get what our society is missing, and that is trust at every level. People initially do not have confidence in themselves. This reflects the lack of trust in other people, and then in the institutions and the society as a whole.

DANI: Besides tolerance and trust, what else do we lack to be more successful?

Tatic: We lack the five basic skills. First, learning skill, then thinking skill. Thinking is not equal to intelligence. Intelligence is a potential that can be used through the operational skill of thinking. The third is decision-making skill, the fourth is creative problem-solving skill and the fifth is the use of four intelligences, you have to be able to convey and communicate all your potential, and this is a classic mental intelligence, emotional, collective, network, or spiritual intelligence.

DANI: We have adopted a lot of bad principles from the West, shouldn't we have turned more to the East?

Tatic: Do you know what is the difference in solving problems in a Japanese company, in comparison to Bosnian or any other company around the world? In Bosnian company, everyone will come at the meeting with already formed opinion about an issue. And of course, we are highly burdened by whether someone will show up with the opposite opinion and we will defend our attitude at all costs. If our attitude is not accepted, we will sabotage other people's attitude to show that we are just right. In Japan, people come to the first meeting about some issue without an opinion, but only with information about the issue. In Japan, two to three meetings can be held just to collect information. Only when all the information is collected, each of the participants forms their opinion. If opinions are different, the decision is made by the leader of the company. It's a corporate culture in Japan. Other members of the management of a company consider leader's decision to be in the best interest of the company and forget their opinion, which was different. They don't feel their ego has been hurt. Here people do not initiate change because they fear they will not be right, and accept the status quo. Our society lacks the right to a mistake, you can not be creative if you do not have the right to make a mistake. The lack of trust is one of the key issues in every aspect of life, so I have to mention the concept of ancient Greece - ethos, pathos, logos because the philosophy of influence is realized through these three stages. Ethos implies that you should be a model of credibility, which means that workers should not listen to what the leader says, but instead look what their leader is doing. When you are a model of credibility, you build confidence that people have in you. That confidence follows pathos, which implies that you should primarily try to understand other people. When people see your desire to understand them, you will reach the logos, which implies that people use their logic, to be understood by it.

Source: Magazine DANI