With the ghost of a smile on his face

resonating within my mind. Firstly Zara’s culture is described as one of “immediacy”. How often are important corporate decisions debated to exhaustion prior to any decisions being made? On a more individual level how often do I avoid making difficult decisions—choosing instead to deal with simple aspects of a task first? By centralizing design activities at the central office the common excuses of being unable to find the appropriate coworker, or adequate resources, are rendered invalid.

This quotation segues nicely into the second: “Zara’s process allows designers the chance to fail quickly and relatively cheaply”. This cultural leniency further promotes the original point of immediacy. I will be less likely to put off a decision if I do not fear the repercussions of a mistake. This will allow creativity and quick decision making to occur with out the ever-present question of ‘if this goes wrong, will I get blamed’? By seeing success and failure of individual items as functions of the equation rather than final results the corporate culture is able to complement the supply chain in allowing decisions to be made with the same rapidity that distinguishes their production process.

Ray Lamontagne: Lesson Learned

Musical Inspiration for this post.