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