Success- a magic spell or more.

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration. This is the perfect line to express my point of view about success. In reality, success has never been a coincidence. Business world can surely relate this because at the end, it is always the hard work and struggle that pays off. one can achieve without putting all the pieces of the organization together in a smooth and collaborative way. In fact, success is achieved through the effective utilization of the minds and positive energies of the human resource or in other words, the people who makes the efforts, efforts which are collective and has a shared understanding of the vision among the people. Many organizations in Pakistan have been achieving remarkable results, growth trends, and sale volumes and enjoy the glory of being successful. With the same special achievements, the industry has witnessed that success is not a constant factor or inherited by any organization unless huge amount of research & development and proactive problem solving is executed by the leadership or management of the organization. The reason of using the word Proactive is the key to continuous improvement in the way an organization works. Many a times, the business acumen or the leadership of the organization is fully engage and focus towards the business, numbers and external stakeholders. During this process of growth and putting all the energies in external factors, the internal stakeholders and customers, which I am referring to the employees at all levels, are not given due priority where the leadership or management engage with each employee, understand how the employee feels about the company, feels about the culture, feels about the bonding with the organization, feels about taking full charge of his/her role and contributing at its best. If we look into the success of top organizations in Pakistan, Asia or Europe, the one common practice every successful organization did was to keep changing as the external factors and business norms changed, international market penetrates with better quality and low cost, indeed, China is one of the most successful example that has not only penetrated but has produce from a small screw to biggest telecom equipment or manufacturing equipment. Thus, with the interventions of such fast and effective international players, the trends in Pakistan brought quick changes and to stay on the top and compete with International players, the local industry and companies definitely needs to re-visit the business and operational strategies and bring change in ways of working. The question is to know how to change and why to change? A thought comes in the mind, we did well in past without any change or new idea, we shall do well in present and future as well. The answer is simple, survival of the fittest which can be rephrased as survival of the smartest. What requires is continuous improvement in the processes, systems and people. This concept of Continuous improvement is from the theory of Total Quality Management, which is a well known process in manufacturing and other sectors.

During my experience with many Multinationals and translational employers, I used to ask one question to all most every employee, what is the vision of the company and do you feel that you are contributing towards it? Honestly, most of the employees would know the vision and could relate their specific role to the vision and business strategy. The bigger question is, what makes the employees feel so great about the vision and is driving them to achieve? In simple words, its the culture of the organization that keeps every employee close to the vision. The deeper one goes, what makes a culture where sharing of information and expertise is an organizational norm. Its the people trust in the organization that makes the culture and the organization. It is equally safe and honest to say that many organizations either do not have a vision statement or the vision statement is nicely mounted on walls and employees have no in depth understanding of the vision. Coming back to the point of leadership engagement with external and internal stakeholders, one needs to have strategy that strikes a balance between the two. Both the stakeholders are equally important and needs equal time to detail and attention. In fact, the latter is the power to do more and achieve more in order to grow. There is a famous management quote, if we keep repeating what we did in past, it will not make a difference in present and future. Business growth and reaching on the top and then staying on the top requires and demands to review internal as well as external factors which includes key business clients, political and economical circumstances, international players business intelligence and internal factors such as the first and most important, your core talent, peoples satisfaction, operational processes that leads to en efficient, effective and result oriented organization.