Success: What Makes The Difference?
Waldemar J. Ramírez, PE, CC
What’s your definition of success?
Everyone defines success differently. So, it would be impractical to expect everyone (or even a majority of us) to converge on any proposed definition. With that cautionary advice, let me present the following characterization for your consideration:
Success, in the context of a business enterprise, is ensuring the health of the various elements of the organization as a whole; i.e.,
· Strategic clarity and agility: Identifying and prioritizing where is change and improvement needed for sustained competitiveness. Clearlydetermining appropriate courses of action for achieving organizational goals and objectives, thereby accomplishing the organizational purpose.
· Culture: Creating a work environment where the personnel is satisfied and enthused to come to work, proud of their accomplishments, able to co-create their own career path to follow, and trusting of policies and management practices.
· People: Building strong and empowered teams of highly skilled and committed employees.
· Customers: Fostering satisfied and delighted customers, repeat business, referrals from existing accounts, and feedback highlighting effective staff assistance. A continuously expanding customer base.
· Cost and Efficiency: Effectively rationalizing and controlling costs, understanding the cost structure and breakdown, identifying and eliminating activities that don’t add value, and anticipating and controlling unexpected events that could affect budgets.
· Profitable growth:Generating positive net income on a consistent basis. Being able to effectively execute growth initiatives thereby converting ideas into revenue growth. Viewing the competitive landscape from an increasingly dominant position.
What’s your formula for success?
To make a success of your business endeavor is obviously a tough proposition. You need “juggling” skills - but you’ll be tossing and stirring much more than balls or beanbags. Aside from having sufficient money to fund your undertaking, you have to put lots of deliberation and energy into it all to keep all the components running.
First of all, you need a great idea, an appealing value proposition that will provide your business a solid positioning. You will also need competent associates, if for no other reason simply because it is impossible to be an expert in the multitude of knowledge areas that comprise business management. You must also develop the right contacts and capitalize your networking.
You need to put together a workable business model, the fundamental principles that describe and govern how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value. In its full expression, it comprises core aspects of the business such as purpose, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, buying and selling practices, and operational processes and policies. You need as well to identify the proper technology to support your business model.
You need to ascertain the right level of and timing of publicity and promotional investments. And the formula calls for a certain bent of mind and attitude to ensure that one does not buckle prematurely; we may call it perseverance. This last ingredient is probably the most difficult to obtain, for it is something you cannot buy, delegate, or hold back for a later time. To obtain this persistent determination you have to learn how to manage your emotions so that the inevitable ups and downs of a business cycle (particularly in the case of startups) don’t destroy your dream. Perseverance is the glue that keeps it all together. It represents that “juggling” capability we mentioned earlier!
Developing Perseverance
The need for perseverance calls for an effective personal development plan to strengthen your personal inner core, so that you are able to endure and stand strong in the face of adversity. Any such personal development plan entails the following three steps:
Step 1 - Know and reaffirm your purpose,your reason for starting or modifying your business. Your purpose drives your motivation. Be specific, be deliberate, and be honest with yourself. If the purpose driving you is not deliberate but rather it is based on an emotional response, be aware that when the emotions change (and they will), so will motivation. It is not enough to lead and run a business just because it makes you “feel good” to be the boss. You have to want it to fulfill something deeper, a long-term destination you want to reach,an underlying aspiration that propels you a higher level in your own personal development.
Step 2 - Set “ongoing goals” to pursue changes in your personal effectiveness that will then strengthen your business. Most goals set by business managers have to do with accomplishing a task or arriving at a particular performance level. You may call these “fixed goals.” But there is a level of goal setting that goes beyond simple outcomes. Think of the process of losing weight. When you drop your twenty pounds, can you then go back to the way you ate before? If you want to accomplish and sustain your real goal, you have to continue this endeavor indefinitely by making it part of your lifestyle. The development of your business emerges from your personal development. The areas for which you may want to set “ongoing goals” include: managing your emotions, managing your physical and mental stamina, and managing relationships.
Step 3 - Fortify your “Personal Development Toolbox” to get faster to where you want to go. Once you know your purpose, the long-term destination you want to reach, and the “ongoing goals” that define the kind of person you want to become, is time to put together a personal development toolbox, i.e., the skills that one must develop to operate at a higher level. There are too many to list them all individually, so let’s identify them in broad terms by referring to the following five categories:
· Emotional skills, those that help us have control over our feelings and emotions.
· Physical skills, those that relate to behaviors and practices that improve our health.
· Mental skills, those relating to our ability to acquire, store and effectively use knowledge.
· Social skills, which deal with our ability to communicate and relate to others.
· Spiritual skills, which have to do to with our sense of inner peace, generosity and sharing.
Adopting a life process that continuously develops these skills will generate in you the bias to be successful.
… All right, you may have noticed it. There has to be a 4th step: Act! Once everything else is in place, the only thing missing is to carry it out. Knowing the formula is a great place to start, but keep in mind that success does not happen because of what you know. It happens because of the person you become through your sustained actions.
You will know you are there when you acknowledge and face the desire to quit, but start looking for options to succeed. At that point you know you will be able to persevere, no matter what.
The 3 Big Differentiating Factors
Assuming you have addressed all the abovementioned success factors, and reckoning that you are affirmatively developing your ability to persevere, what else could make the difference in your pursuit of business success? While I must admit there sure is quite a diversity of opinions in response to that question, I want to share what – in my experience and direct observations – are the “three big differentiating factors” that can significantly beef up your success odds.
· Zero Tolerance for Ego Trips
Do not tolerate among your staff attitudes that manifest a need to amplify their power or draw attention to their own importance (real or imagined). This urge to be recognized as the main character in the show, to be the protagonist, kills the sense of trust and collaboration necessary to work as a team towards common objectives. Allowing anyone in your staff to go into these ego trips will send your best talent into another kind of destructive trip, i.e., a trip to hesitation, suspicion and cynicism. Success does not mix with anyone’s hunger to “steal the show.”
· Eradicate the NIH Syndrome
The “not invented here” (NIH) syndrome is characterized by a persistent rejection of worthy ideas and solutions of external origin. This is in fact our “public enemy #1”, inasmuch as our ineffective political system is driven by this aberrant principle, where the ideas of the other parties must be ignored or – simply – squashed. Do not let this malady infect your organization.The implicit principle behind the NIH Syndrome is the nonsensical pretention that “we have the monopoly of good ideas.” Be wise and recognize a good idea no matter its origin. Be generous and honor its proponent no matter where he/she is located.
· Continuance & Follow-through
As part of the natural flux of organizational evolution, responsibility for the execution of action plans will occasionally switch hands. New players enter the scene, bringing with them this urge to imprint their personal touch of excellence, wanting to show they are worthy of the trust deposited in them to attain peak results. And they may go for some premature change in plans, with its sequel of confusion among those who were executing the previous orders. Do not let changes in strategy and plans reign freely! As long as business conditions and opportunities remain significantly unaltered, do not change lanes for the sake of change itself.
“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli
