3 Rules of Business

Some people pointed out that most of time I stick with the figure of 3 in my writings, thats true. In fact last semester one of my students came to me by end of class and told me that she downloaded slides of every lecture and they made only 3 pages in word document for each. Strange enough is that since start of my career I have always been working on 3 dimensions. Need not to say that have 3 ladies influencing my life! But truth is I feel that a common human brain can not handle more than 3 issues independently with success.

Any how during my very recent visit outside the country I met some very professional people, like Mr. Ahmad Jawad, and some highly unprofessional. To the pity of the day the unprofessionals got much more resources than the others. What I learned and then suggested made the 3 Rules of Business.

I’ll go at organizational level although these lessons can be narrowed down to personal success level also. I define Rules of Business as ‘terms, conditions and operation modes’. An organization or a person without them can be successfull only through extreme favour of his/her luck.

The first and most important rule in this regard is to ‘record’. One must record the data about anything happening related to him (although highly successfull businesses keep an eye on irrelevant events also). This implies that any correspondence, any meeting or any decision must be recorded. A lot of meetings just end up paving the way for the next meeting. A meeting must serve its purpose. In this regard I suggest that you may read a simple and brief chapter from my book, Project Management - Anchor the Success. The chapter is about progress meetings and can be viewed by clicking at Chapter: Progress Meetings.

The second issue is to make sure what ever is recorded is correct and agreed. Many minutes of meetings or decisions do not portray what was discussed or decided. In case any modification is required the final version of recorded document must contain the original thought/discussion as foot note. Its always desirable to get the document signed by those who were involved.

Lastly the third issue is of ‘follow up’. Followup is single most important missing stone in the building of success. People or organizations which do not follow up their decisions or opportunities end up in failure. Followup may lead to closure of certain assignment but it should be done. Any such closure may free up resources of all the parties involved. Followup on the events and stakeholders involved are of equal importance. Many organizations waste their resources on projects and products which become less important for beneficiaries with time. However as the organization have not been following they face greater loss.

Below a view from a successfull business, Terminal A at Dubai Airport

Success in Life

Success in Life

3 Keys to Success

Those who still remember the use of transistor radios can easily see that there were two absolute necessities to listen to your favorite channels.  The first one was to have the power supply either as electricity or from the batteries. In case you do not have it, no matter how sophisticated and elite your transistor was you could never listen to it. Secondly in order to listen to your favorite channel you needed to be at the same frequency as of that specific channel. There were dozens of channels transmitting their programs but one could listen to his/her choice only if the transistor radio was also set at the same frequency.

In case of personal success or success in career the same two rules are valid. First of all you need to have the ‘power supply’ i.e. your skill and energy. In case you do not have necessary skills or develop them in time you’ll not be able to jump on the opportunities lying in front of you. You need to foresee the future demand and develop your skills accordingly, but in time. Once you have the skills or power supply the next move should be to adjust your frequency to the frequency of success. We may find many people around us who are quite successfull in spite of having skills of lesser degree than many unfortunates. They in fact found the frequency of success and tuned themselves accordingly. The most important way to get this frequency is to spend time with those who live by that frequency. There is a famous saying about wealthiness, ‘your wealthy companions make you rich or kick you out of their circle’. They’ll kick you out mainly because of mismatched frequency. It does not correspond that you should also be involved in some if any unlawful activities but it means that your brain also starts thinking, deciding and acting in the ways theirs do.

The third prerequisite in my opinion is to complete the tasks in all aspects. Giving an example of one enrolled in a medical school we know that he/she needs to take a certain number of courses and pass all of them also. The degree will never be awarded if any course is not taken or failed. In our lives while working on any task whether related to career or personal development we must take on all issues and resolve all of them. The trick in this sense comes from the chemical process known as titration. In this process certain chemicals need to be added with some specific amount to get the required product.

Therefore in summary, one must develop the skills required (power behind the engine), should be consistent with the success frequency (right surrounding and right attitude) and should take on all issues dealing every issue in full. 

3 Cornerstone Issues of Change Management

Change to survive or change to perish... this has been a dilemma of this subject for centuries. In history we see big empires vanishing from map of earth as they could not keep pace with the changing conditions. Some managed to survive only through changing their positions and acquiring new status. Same is true for companies, organizations, institutes as well as the people who make all these. Inefficient entity has minimum chances of survival. Whether its organization level or personal level, change management needs careful planning, implementation and followup along with modifications done on time on the route. Following are the three issues I call corner stones of Change Management.

First of all and logically you need to know ‘why you need a certain change?’. For organizations it could be change in external as well internal factors. Internal factor may include change in strategy, change in top level decision making staff etc. Strategy is the single most important issue regarding internal change. Michael Porter, the renowned and well respected scholar from Harvard puts five forces theory behind any strategical shift for organizations. I invite persons to apply it to their personal lives also, its equally good!. Coming back to the first issue, the real hard question is why any need is required? The alternatives could be, ‘can we survive without this change, for how long and in what state?’. This is silver bullet!

The second  we can say as golden rule of change management is to ask yourself or your organization ‘what will be changed?’. and changed for good and bad both. There must be side effects of any change plan so one should be aware of them as much as possible. Whether this change will bring efficiency or chaos, it would be good or bad in short, medium and long term? This can be asked at organizational as well as at personal level.

Lastly the third and platinum rule of change management is to consider an organization (or all aspects of life for a person) as a whole or to consider whole organization (or all aspects of life for a person)... Confused? let me describe through examples. 

Lets say that an organization intends to make a change in its marketing strategy. It has several departments like production, finances, HR, PR etc. The two questions would be whether the change should be made by considering organization as a whole or the whole organization. The second approach is most commonly used and its the root cause of failure of most of such efforts. In this approach (which is quite unsuccessful) people heading every department are asked to streamline their individual departments which at the end does not correlate to the planned or required change for the whole company. The right approach would be to consider company as a whole and change in one direction is applied to it.

Similar would be the case for personal change management. When people try to improve certain aspects of their life - lets say physical enhancement, they concentrate on physical exercise only. One needs to apply any change management plan to himself/herself as a whole. All aspects of his/her life should improve towards some common goal!.

Chasing the Success - for new comers

There are many beliefs about success including availability of financial resources, vision or taking the risk and most famously ‘taking right step at right time’. 

Financial resources seem to present a good advantage if someone have them but they never can alone guarantee the success. Many people who started their businesses and ventures with small loans made millions and even billions later in the life. On the other hand we have examples of people who inherited good amount of wealth and were left penny less within few years.

Vision can be considered as most important success factor in life of successfull people. However again we can see many successfull people who started with one thing and ended up with doing completely different. In fact they are in category of those who took right step at right time. Vision combined with financial resources however increases the success chances by many folds!

Taking the risks is most widely used term by successfull people. In our daily life when we speak about any successfull person we proudly say, but he/she dared to take the risk. Yes sometimes under some special circumstances taking risk has helped people to succeed. Their determination or acceptance of a certain act as ‘last resort’ helped them to climb the ladder up. However we also have many and many more examples of people who took risks and then lost, as compared to those who succeeded.

Then what could be the factor for success, luck? yes luck is another key factor but this factor can be improved through hard work and intelligent moves. In general whenever a new comer or fresh graduate wishes to start any venture he/she goes for a feasibility study. Feasibility study gives a good idea about success or failure chances of a certain project/idea. However feasibility study lacks the information about actual path. It can not tell if on the way something more interesting can come out (un expectedly)  and such and such modification in the original plan can lead to greater success. It fails to address the issue of try and see yourself. 

Many experts put up a simple formula saying, think, plan and act. This provides a good combination for success. Starting from thinking, one may need to think outside the box but without ignoring the contents of the box itself. A practical advise to new comers or fresh graduates would be to write down every single idea they have in mind, and I mean it-every single idea. The right to enter new ideas in the list should remain valid till they themselves expire. The most important advantage of keeping such a list is to implement an idea written at some time back but which became implementable at some future time.

Let the list grow on one side, they should start discussing the ideas with their friends and if possible with experts. They can search a lot on internet. They can find free feasibility studies done about different projects by government, commercial and non-government organizations. These studies even done in different countries can provide them the basic idea about success chances. 

In addition to the draft list they can always keep the following (or similar) table updated. This table should have details about ideas which has been discussed at the initial stage.

#	Main Idea	Initial Response % Positive % Negative	Main conclusion of any feasibility study	Major Success factors (in your case)	Major Constraints (as per your condition)	Decision
1
2

Next two steps very crucial for success are i. to finalize your product and ii. to identify your niche. Many people at different levels of business life are still not sure about their product. In order to be successfull, one needs to be sure about what products he/she is offering? Same for services. Advantages and disadvantages of the product as compared to other competitors should be well known to its producer or marketing person. Once you know it, then identify your niche. No matter how good a certain product is, it has no chances of success in the wrong niche. However as per marketing strategies there are two approaches in this regard, one is to find a niche and market your product while other is to create a niche for your product. The later no doubt is harder one and was the one chosen by Steve Jobs also. It requires much more courage, determination and involves greater risks. For the new comers I would say, stick to the first approach till you come up with some product/service for which you are quite sure a niche can be produced.

Once you are sure about product and niche then the most difficult but most crucial step is required, i.e. do it, implement it, ship it. Many people prepare wonderful feasibility reports, can see clear chances of success but their lack of ‘acting’ leaves the niche to someone else.

Connecting the dots....which way?

In his landmark speech at Stanford in 2005 Steve Jobs mentioned how he took class on calligraphy which made no sense at that time but later helped him to design the perfect key board. This was a clear example how the dots could be connected backward. There is a less known English saying, ‘tools find jobs to be done just as jobs find tools(to be used)’. Connecting the dots backward is something very similar to this. It implies that you collect the tools which seem irrelevant at that instant but may help you gain a success in future. 

I agree and fully agree with the term and its usefulness. However the times of Steve Jobs and before him collecting tools was good enough as market was not so competitive then. Now as days are passing the market is becoming more and more competitive and people are required to achieve more in lesser time. Hence connecting dots onward is becoming more important than connecting them backward. Yes a tool gained un-intentionally could become a great asset sometime in future but right tool attained at right time can increase chances of success and reduce wastage of time.

Giving a simple example one can plan his/her career by going through forecast reports telling what would be in demand in future. Getting ready for future is the single most important tool to have the future. When Steve Jobs was sent out of Apple he established Next and Pixar. Both of which were not for connecting the dots backward but for meeting a future need and filling a gap. Similarly when he was back to Apple after a while he started thinking about iPad and iPhone which were all connecting the dots forward not backward.

In summary its not a bad idea to collect few tools coming on way for any future potential use (to connect dots backward) but one should actively find and create dots that help him/her to connect them to future.

3 Great Lessons from Hazret Steve Jobs

In this so called modern era marks of Hazret Steve Jobs can not be avoided unless one is living in some pre-historic and non discovered region of the earth. Most strikingly although world wide web (www) was not discovered by him but it was developed on a computer known as Next produced by the company with same name and owned by Steve Jobs. Later his venture led to invention of wi-fi. Taking these two products down from shelves would immediately change this era from modern age to the middle ages.

I was reading a wonderful book about him entitled, ‘Steve Jobs -The man who thought different’ by Karen Blumenthal recently. Although whole book is wonderful but three lessons extracted by the author about Steve Jobs were amazing. I could not resist myself from sharing them here.

The first one is about focus. In fact Steve Job’s point of view in this regard coincides with that of Ibn Khaldun stated about 700 years ago. Ibn Khaldun wrote in his book Muqadimmah that time has come (!) when there is a great pollution of information. A lot of information is becoming available to every one. People are using it without knowing how to analyze or produce it. Steve Job also said similar thing while describing focus. He stated, ‘People think focus means saying yes to the thing you have got to focus on - (however) focus means saying No to the one hundred other good ideas there are. You have to pick carefully’. He stressed upon rejection of non-related issues resulting in focusing to the required one. It is simple to understand as rejecting the non required and distracting issues would help one to concentrate and handle the one he/she should have been doing. 

Being easy said, it is not easy enough to implement. This is explained well by the second lesson explained in the said book i.e. ‘simple can be harder than complex’. This explains a lot of things why humans intend to make complex analysis, decisions and products. It is easy to do so because this involves a lot of constraints and dimensions and any related failure can be blamed on one of them or one of the unknown complex reasons. However once your analysis, decision and product is simple, it becomes more difficult to find a reason for failure or an issue to blame. Creating simple thing is difficult and so is defending it. For simple products if they don’t serve the purpose they are not of any other use! Thats why simple devices thought by Steve Jobs when served their purposes were hot cakes.

Lastly Steve Jobs believed that if someone does not keep planning for future he wouldn’t have any! It is also restated by some other experts as ‘failure to prepare is preparing for the failure’. One always need to plan for future and most of us may do it quite well. However the success comes to only those who dare to risk failures in their quest to implement those plans.

Lastly may I dare to disagree with Hazret Steve Jobs famous saying ‘dots are connected backward only’. This is true but there are other ways also to connect the dots for success. This issue I’ll be explaining hopefully in my next blog soon.

Exposure and Wb Formula

Taking it from the end of last blog where I quoted a professor of mine Prof. Coskun Yurteri stating, ‘America is all about exposure’ I can elaborate further and say ‘life is all about exposure’! In our acquaintances we can easily find people who had exposure to experiences of life or different conditions. When compared one can easily notice the difference in behaviour and perspectives of those who had the exposure and who did not get such a chance.

We also notice that many people with higher level of education (merely degrees) behave and act in much worse manner than those who although do not have education but have exposure and knowledge. Exposure in its own state is a very powerful tool towards creation of a successfull personality and when and if it is combined with knowledge, a person of very fine texture comes in to being like my good friend Mr. Fahim A. Balkhi.

There are three types of exposures, Intentional, Un-intentional and Reactionary. Intentional exposure is active exposure where someone shows his/her willingness and effort. It can be attributed with ease to people who travel around the globe  for sake of seeking the knowledge or having new experiences. Unintentional exposure is the passive type of exposure where one does not make any effort but is left to certain exposure for good or bad. No one would like to have bad exposures intentionally but for the later type bad exposures are risks. 

None of the exposure goes in vain. As well documented by life of a legend of our time Steve Jobs the founder of Apple, nothing went un-connected. Exposures become really useful if one strives to gain knowledge from them and uses the experiences gained as building blocks for future use. Being exposed to certain situation, place or reality is much less important than the analysis of that specific experience. The analysis of any situation would lead to the gain of knowledge. The most simple tool for this is called Wb by me. Wb stands for ‘whats the benefit?’. It is easy to remember as World Bank (WB) also works on same principle!

Wb requires that anyone going through a certain good or bad experience or exposure should withdraw the conclusion based upon ‘whats the benefit (for him/her)?’ from that specific event. People are exposed to many situations but this exposure serves as building blocks for future only if situations are analyzed, the issue of Wb is addressed and some type of record is kept about it. Non-recorded experiences is lost experience! While analyzing any bad or failure exposure one may record the failure and the reasons behind it but more importantly should concentrate on question of ‘how it could have been avoided or situation improved’. 

The last type of exposure is Reactionary which can be intentional or unintentional i.e. active or passive. It may switch between both types from time to time. The common examples of this type of exposure is someones involvement in a certain issue after some event i.e. as a reaction. Most striking example of reactionary exposure is of Mr. Arnoud van Doorn after he noticed world wide protests against the film he supported against Islam few years back. His reactionary exposure led him to discover very different aspects and changed his whole life.