Technology has given the world a new religious order, that of the code. In most activity domains, efficiency and perfection go through the filter of a technology chip. The last overwhelming change in people?s lives had come with the innovation of electricity. Night time and darkness are irrelevant in stopping anything. Technology?s pinpricks are introducing discomfort today, turning the world upside down inspite of people trying to protect their habits. When workplace automation was introduced, people just couldn?t sit on those discomfiting enemy pinpricks of technology in the fear they?d lose their jobs. In time technology created its own avenues, very much like nature?s storms and waves, proliferating into newer spaces. Who would have thought of technology in traditional areas like marriages? Weddings are conducted in cyberspace now, without the neighbourhood priest?s help.

Indian consumers are exposed to discomfort from many quarters. A few years ago when I saw a newspaper displaying Madonna and Britney Spears kissing in a public concert, I wondered how Indian women would perceive such an act. In Indian culture, women are taught never to be honest about their desires, to suppress them. Surprisingly, my different consumer interactions here have revealed that women could enjoy such a fantasy.

If consumers are accepting the discomfort of sexual expose, are Indian manufacturers keeping pace by addressing them with new understanding? Are they analysing deeper psychological and sociological impact to inject it into business? Somehow, I?ve found Indian organisations to always be in a questioning mode: Will it work? Has our Indian consumer advanced to this level? Do we have the capability to do that? Will everyone in the organisation or trade unions support this? Will the trade accept it? By sadistically defending their inaction, Indian organisations avoid discomfort. The protected economy seems to have paralysed our competitive killer instinct. In today?s competitive scenario when global companies are steadily overtaking market share in every category, making incremental improvement may not be adequate for a company. A radical transformation is required to upgrade intellectual human capital along with a working process that co-opts and drives the consumers? latent trend.

There is no single way of driving discomfort into an organisation?s culture. Western headquartered global organisations proactively play with discomfort as they experienced positive results when they?ve co-opted the demands and desires of society and the masses. When organisations change their culture to better serve consumers, they go through dramatic discomfort. But consumers are oblivious of this and it?s of little consequence to them. Just consider your wife/husband, mother, sister, brother, son, daughter as consumers, they expect and demand quality products and services, period.

Compared to the past, the West today is saturated of discomfort, and somehow snoozing in material comfort. People are preoccupied with social fracture, sex related disease, terrorism, their initiative to work is deteriorating, the avant-garde character is missing. I visualise tremendous pressure from the extreme right wing. If you look back at history, Nazism was born in the lap of German recession. The extreme right has always taken advantage of economic reasons like unemployment and recession to hook people through psychological rationale. Unemployment is growing, but poor productivity is making European countries hire immigrants to support labour-intensive work. That raises political issues, so the new method is to outsource to India and China. Yet they worry about how India and China will become future economic powers that will harm their economy. Even when no physical danger exists, Europeans somehow create discomfort in society as though it?s a need. Unfortunately, extreme economic pressure has made love and affection very artificial there. The fear of AIDS makes them feel vulnerable and insecure. In India where livelihood is the priority, a conjugal relationship may become mechanical. Discomfort can break the monotony of married life, re-vibrate a couple?s world of fantasy and re-ignite passion.

What?s the comfort zone? It?s continuous incremental improvement. The discomfort framework has seven requirements: (1) Be deliberately curious. This can be achieved by obliging people to dramatise things so as to see them differently. (2) Value lateral action. Apples always fall from trees, but one man, Newton, used this falling phenomenon to discover the laws of gravitation. (3) Make the unstated obvious. Penicillin is fungus. (4) Belief in commercial value. Diagonal reading makes you aware of the usage benefit and saves time. (5) Change work culture. Prioritise discipline to structure creativity that results in a process that facilitates mass scale change. (6) Work with a sense of urgency with every moment operating discipline (EMOD). This will result in continuous cycle time reduction. (7) Time bound. Be driven by the day you have to deliver, don?t count in weeks and months, but in days.

Let?s come back to your business. The basis of human evolution has always come from discomfort. Unless managements are deliberately pushed to dive into discomfort zone, it?ll remain a gossip metaphor, not serious action. Initially it would seem esoteric to go outside the routine, but you?ll soon realise you?ve become the actor rather than the audience. After a certain effort discomfort becomes your chronic link that delivers exceptional growth. Revive your strategic planning to deal with discomfort as a project. Create a task force that?s totally aligned with the consumers? latent trend, with the clear objective, in a given time frame, to surprise the market with a deliverable that disturbs the competition to make your product benefit higher than the competition. Discomfort is pinpricks in your backside, you cannot sit on it, you just cannot ignore it, you have to deal with it in a hurry to bring change into the world.

Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top managements. Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com