A prelude to my next saga: “Corporate Strategy as an art”.
Good morning. Hope you had a beautiful week.
During this week, I have been posting certain things on Twitter @eliescalantech in relation to the Presidential Elections. Nevertheless, my priority has been to prepare the next saga topic. I have been reflecting and analyzing, to discern the themes for my next saga “Corporate Strategy as an art”. It is going to be very thought-provoking because instead of doing a metaphor about the characteristics and concepts of art and applying it to corporate strategy, I will take you to sail to the arts´past, adjust our gears to navigate in the present and see the future beyond our limits. The past will offer us a paintbrush of what has been art until the year 2000, then we will proceed with the actual context of art immersed in the digital disruption era, and we will continue our journey to grasp and discover out what could be the future of art, art expressions, and artistic productions. Additionally, I will try to submerge you into the contemporary education of arts by performing an art-education contextual analysis. Irrevocably, we will move forward with why I consider corporate strategy as an art, and how can we develop the acumen of designing and implementing our corporate strategy as artists in our business endeavors.
Artists live in a unique playroom, they passionately generate movement with the dance or write unfathomable literature without leaving the poetry behind. Some chisel sculptures or play music in traditional orchestras or bands. Others sing extraordinarily well, and we listen to unworldly acuity with their musical notes. For those involved in painting, their oeuvres de créativité have evolved from capturing life as a snapshot when a photographic camera did not exist to expressing through a dynamic canvas, a whole new idea about our realities. Each artist lives in his or her own asteroid. Some have been trained formally, others have been street learners, autodidacts of their own refined talents. And we can´t fail shortly about finding out why corporate strategists from the top consulting houses in the world as Bain, McKinsey, Deloitte, PWC, and others, must include the application of artist mental frames (of beauty and rebellion) to humanize their mandates in the milieu of the new Industry 4.0 and the gig economy. Our world requires to appreciate the good things of the artists´ “mental frames” in their business or organization corporate solutions.
As a parenthesis, our Presidential elections, celebrated on 3F (February 3rd) were won by the youngest of the candidates, Nayib Bukele, 37, who was previously Mayor of San Salvador City. He has promised tons of gifts under the Christmas tree for Salvadorans. It is true, believe me. Bukele´s plans require at least a minimum annual budget of 7.5 billion dollars (USD 7,500 million) per year. Our actual tax collections hardly arrive at approximately USD 4.4 billion dollars annually, which means he will have to look for other sources of funds: additional Foreign Direct Investments, International Cooperation Non-Reimbursable Aid or additional low-interest rates international loans, and encourage higher levels of the local private sector investments. Why did Nayib Bukele win? Most of our citizens were disappointed with both extreme political parties from the right and the left, and after 30 years, our people got tired of it. The extreme right (ARENA) and extreme left (FMLN) received a red card from the Salvadoran referees. People were angry by corruption scandals and the perceived lack of results from the past administrations. More than 1.3 million Salvadorans voted for a new figure (independently if this personality was Nayib or not), with the optimism of resolutions for the most difficult problems of El Salvador.
Una sola golondrina no hace verano, y no marca el inicio de la primavera (A single swallow does not make summer, and does not mark the beginning of spring).
Repeatedly, I have shared with you the most crucial troubles that we have in town. Those are reflected in the signs of extreme poverty, violence, and organized crime, an embryonic law enforcement system, a still incipient-frail judiciary/prosecutor organization, the low levels of education and health standards for all, and of course, a pathetic entrepreneurship ecosystem and unemployment. The problems of El Salvador are severe and grievous!. The Bukele new government plan is echoed in the following website Plan Cuscatlán (it is in Spanish, and my suggestion is that his team must translate to English). We expect Bukele will be able to tackle the real causes of our problems and not only the symptoms. Otherwise, his future presidential job will demerit the highest expectations of our Salvadoran community. He has to arrange tremendous efforts to unite the political forces and pave the commencement for an ideological reconciliation. We don´t expect a superficial paintbrush as in the past, neither nice advertising campaigns in social media, but a newly rebuilt structure of our deficient systems. The roots of the causes have to be solved. Good Luck to Bukele and his new team.
As previously announced, this week we will start to sail a new epic again, “Corporate Strategy as an art”. I hope your expectations may be fulfilled. Wait. Stay with me.
Thank you.
Eleonora Escalante Strategy 