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Leadership
Booklet authored for The Week, June 26th 1994
Most of us have a rather heroic concept of a leader. He is a person with magnificent qualities of the head and heart. Though these attributes are of great value, they are inadequate in today's changed business environment. True leaders have an awesome ability to transform their businesses. They can take entire organizations from mediocrity to excellence and greatness by creating the right conditions they can unleash the power of creativity, productivity and innovation. Ultimately, they change their people from average performers to people who take pride in their work. As the owner of your business, you are its leader. Therefore, it is in your power to initiate and sustain the transformation of your business into a profitable, productive, high performance organization, which responds quickly to changes. A capable leadership is your best competitive advantage. The following guidelines can help you be an effective leader in whatever business you are in: Leaders do the right things. Managers do things right. Develop a written vision for the future for your business and share it with everyone in your organization. Your people can help you in developing that vision in the first place. Communicate all the time, with employees and customers. Become a good listener rather than one who just gives orders. Don't get trapped in routine. Always be on the look out for change. And last but not the least, attach great value to learning. Remember learning is lifelong process for you and those with whom you work.
Do not confuse learning with accepting information. The difference becomes clear when you read a book on swimming. Having read the book, all that one has information on is the theoretical technique. But the reader certainly has not learnt how to swim. Learning, therefore, goes far beyond reading and storing information. It has to do more with assimilation and known when and how to apply the information learnt. In today's fast changing business environment, a successful business is one that can apply and disseminate new knowledge the quickest. In other words, it has to become what in today's management jargon is called a learning organization. But the question could well be asked, especially by the small businessman, why he should transform his small set up into a learning organization. Firstly, every person in an organization has an infinite capacity to learn if the right conditions are created for learning. After a certain level, to many people, money ceases to become a primary motivator. It is at this stage and people look for a larger role to play. It is here that you as the leader of your organization have a major role to play. For unless your people grow, financially, intellectually and skill-wise, your business cannot grow. Secondly, with the worldwide explosion in information technology, the only constant in any business environment is change, though the pace of change will differ depending on your field of activity. It may come as a nasty surprise to readers of this booklet that there is a 50 percent change that your present business or organization may cease to exist during your working careers. According to a study conducted by Royal Dutch Shell, the average life span of the largest industrial companies in the world today is just around 40 years. In the last 10 years, nearly one third of the famous Fortune 500 companies have simply ceased to exist. And if that can happen to the big companies, smaller business will have an even shorter life cycle unless they learn and change constantly. In other words, become a learning organization. Insights
Think of your business as part of your system. Problems and solutions too are part of the system and not an outside occurrence. But also remember that change is not easy. The harder you push, the harder the system you have in place will push back.
If you persist with compartmental thinking, which separates parts of your business and view problems and solutions independently, the solutions of yesterday will come to haunt you as today's problems. For example, a sudden increase in sales due to a discount offer may produce a slump in sales once the discount is withdrawn, which in turn could have an adverse long term impact on your business. There are no short cuts to success. Faster can actually be slower as every system has an optimal rate of growth. If your system is growing faster than the system can handle, stress and breakdown are inevitable. Look for continuous improvements rather than quantum leaps. The Japanese call this process Kaizen and it is now recognized as the key to the worldwide success of their business enterprises.
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