“Attitude
is a little thing that makes a big difference”. -- Winston Churchill
Success is very essential component
of our life, in every field and at every stage. All parents wish and work
hard to give best possible education to their children and want them to do far
better in their career and lead better quality of life. As children progress to
professional colleges and universities, in home country/ abroad, things become
costly and very competitive. Here young students learn basic education and
theoretical concepts of chosen field of interest. They also learn about
personality development, co-existence and competing among students from diverse
background, countries, states, social status, culture and financial
backgrounds.
Towards completion of their academic
studies, they select a career as per their choice/ capability. Some do not get
the right choice but pick up some job for immediate take off with a hope to
switch for better career as soon as possible. Some important aspects related to
success are given in alphabetic order in the following sections:
·
Alignment to Organizational Goal. Asa
new entrant in any organization, institution/department, you got to work hard
to fit well in the team and learn on-the-job from those who are already there.
You must demonstrate positive attitude, sense of commitment, dedication, and
good application of knowledge/skills, duly aligned to the goals/objectives of
the organization. As you move up the corporate ladder, you should keep learning
new skills, do multi-tasking and remain current to support your team and
contribute significantly for achieving organization goals/objectives.
·
Attitude. In real world,
attitude is more important than aptitude. You should develop more positive
attitude towards people and events happening around you. You must demonstrate positivity
in your approach where you can convert risk into an opportunity and help in growth
of your organization.
·
Be
the best. Whatever, whenever and wherever you do a task, it should
be done with your best effort. Although
you can’t always get expected result, yet you must do your very best. Demand the best from yourself since others
will demand the best of you. Similarly, demand best of your team. Successful
people don’t simply put in hard work but their best work to deliver on-time and
within budget.
·
Change Agent. Most people have resistance to
change and remain contented with status quo. However, change is spice of life and
when you feel stagnated, you should plan to shift and have new job which has
better career growth. When you move out, you do carry experience of past job to
new job and embed that knowledge appropriately to benefit new organization. In
private job, you may be sent to various sites, locations or even other
countries as per your career profile. As you are chosen to side step to a new
job, you should accept it cheerfully and move on and not show inertia for
remaining stuck in one location and in one job because of your
comfort-zone.
·
Contingency Plan. At times, events do not go as
planned and, you should have contingency plan (plan “B”). It is good to do
scenario based planning and carry out “What If analysis’. It helps to
immediately put plan “B” into action if Plan “A” fails. This approach is
followed during military operations, expeditions and any high-risk activity.
Liddell Hart wrote “Take a line of operation which offers alternate
objectives.” – As one of the eight guiding
principles of military success.
·
Delegation to optimize. By
judiciously delegating jobs/tasks among team members you can get the best out
of each team member. Do not try to be “know-all” and do everything yourself,
just because you think you only can do it meticulously. You should not become
bottleneck holding back flow of project/job and under-utilize talent of other
team members.
·
Determination.
In any challenging job/task or race, it is the determined person who
puts an extra bit to achieve the goal while others may quit just short of finishing
line. In words of
George
H.Lorimer “Go to bed with satisfaction and get up every morning with
determination”.
·
Dreams.
You must have a dream and there is no limit, since it is not controlled
under any rule or regulation. Dream
gives you inspiration to climb new heights.
·
Effective
and Efficient. As a manager/team leader you are to be effective to
control and direct the teammates to keep the project /task on track, Efficiency
saves in cost / material and speeds up success.
·
Fast thinking and decision making. In
today’s highly competitive global market, you are to think fast, take faster
decision, take faster action and move faster to the market to maintain business
leadership. As a manager/team leader you are expected to deliver more with
lesser resources and do it fast. Faster does not mean go out of breath
and collapse in a race but to remain alert, well informed, and take fast but
not hasty decision. You must anticipate and take proactive action to be ahead
of your competitors. This will help to study the market trends and make fast
decision for winning strategy. In case you consider you are fast in thinking
and action but your organization is slow in response to any change, you may
move to other organization which is progressive and you will get more job
satisfaction.
·
Forgiveness.
It is the best policy to forgive others and ignore their small mistakes,
They will become more faithful and help in your achieving
the success
·
Goal
achiever. You
must have a realistic goal and go for it with all the available efforts. Do not
waiver,remain focused and keep going.
·
Gratitude. It is sign of maturity and good
moral values to express your sincere gratitude towards organization and your
seniors who provide you opportunity to perform and grow.
·
Honesty.
Being honest and loyal to the organization and teammates will strengthen
trust and support for your growth.
·
Honour your commitment. As
an employee, you are required to make commitment and declare your Key Result
Areas (KRAs). You should do regular self-audit as how are you moving ahead to
fulfill your commitment.
·
Improvement.
Work for continuous improvement. There is no limit to improvement, so go
for achieving the zenith.
·
Incentive
for innovation. Encourage innovation and be happy to bear the cost.
Allow team members to experiment with their new ideas and show creativity. Give
good incentive even if it is a small idea.
·
Initiative.
You are to lead to succeed. Instead of waiting for the phone to ring,
you better pick up the phone and ring them up. Make things happen. Likewise,
peace or happiness doesn’t just come. You are to create right atmosphere for
it.
·
Innovate to be market leader. To
stay ahead of your competitors, you and your team should be continuously
looking out-of–the-box and evolve innovative solutions which attract the
customers. Innovations are not long drawn discovery/ inventions but short and
quick development of product/service to give better look and feel as well as
better value for money to the customer. It could be doing different
things than the existing ones ordoing same things differently.
·
Integrity toward organization.
There are people who bring happiness to organization when they join while few
are those who give happiness as they leave the organization. You are to align
yourself with policies and goals of the organization and be part of the winning
team. While you serve in an organization,
you should be seen by others as fully committed to the customers, organization,
seniors and inspiring teammates. Never leave an organization on a bad note
even if you have resigned for personal reasons or your contract has not been
renewed for the next term. This helps during your background check when you
would apply for next job.
·
Join hands. Joining hands draws lot of synergy
and ensure enduring association and business deals.
·
Leadership. As a leader of a team, it your
ability to lead from the front, set the pace and take along the whole team to
complete the journey/ Job.
In the words of Charles Cooley –“All leadership takes place through
communication of ideas to the minds of others”.
·
Lessons from the past. It is
very useful to learn
from the past and plan for future. Most successful organizations
maintain records of various activities of past projects / services/products.
Lot of lessons can be learnt both from failure and success of past
projects/ventures. This encourages reuse of available assets and there is no
need to waste effort in reinventing-the-wheel. Make sure you pick up the best
out of job done by your predecessor and give him/her credit for that. Do not
start from scratch for the sake of your ego.
Winston
Churchill had said “The further backward you look, the farther ahead you can
see”. It is not to be misunderstood with slowing down, rather he has
stressed that learning from past improves your ability to imagine what lies in
the future.
·
Life.
Life is not a sprint but a long journey. Plan to have a good company,
face obstacles as they may come, go around those and reach the destination as
scheduled.
·
Listening
to others. If you carefully listen to points made by others, you
can pick up lot of additional inputs to make you point of view stronger. While
listing to someone, you should also watch the body language of the person
talking to you. He/she will feel comforted because you listen to him/her. Good
listing helps in better understanding of the issue being discussed and better decision
will emerge. This will also help in
conflict management and maintaining healthy work environment.
·
Love
All. When you are in love with someone, expect less and
give more. Love your organization, your seniors, your team, your job and your
family. You will be ever happy and successful. Love begets love.
·
Manage Commitments. As a team leader / project
manager, do not micro-manage your team. You should delegate work to the team
and save your time for other important tasks/ responsibilities. Let you team
members discuss and distribute work among them and report to you.You should
rather seek commitments from team members and manage their commitments.
·
Motivation.
If you stay motivated in doing your job, your teammates will follow you.
To keep your team motivated and best performing, you should know them well,
facilitate their job activities and take care of their welfare.
·
Ownership.
If your own your organization, your team, your decisions, your job, you
will put your heart and soul to achieve given targets without being reminded or
supervised. If your own, you will not let it down.
·
Price
to pay. Noting comes free. There is always trade off and you should
be ready to pay /get the right price. Price can be monitory, physical hard
work, sacrifice of comforts. Remember famous quote - “No gain without pain”.
·
Promotion.Indeed, we all need quick promotion
to climb the next rung. Put all your efforts and resources to promote yourself
but do not demote others. They too want promotions.
·
Risk
taking. Take risk, grab opportunity and do your best. Don’t
bother what others say and be ready to face the outcome.
·
Running
the race. It
does not matter whether you win or lose, what matters is participation in the
race and competing it.
·
Skill Building. Do not try to be super
specialist in any one area as that would restrict your growth. Infect, you need
variety of exposure to take up higher job/responsibilities. Therefore, keep
learning new technologies and new business practices to stay relevant to
emerging market scenario. Keep, upgrading your profile and enrich your
portfolio to gain better mobility and success in career.
·
Strength of self. If you challenge yourself to take
on a most difficult task, you may be happily surprised to discover what
strengths you have. Always have faith in self.
·
Success is not final. Neither failure nor success is
final. You learn more from failure than from success to get up, recoup and try
again. Success neither just happens nor comes through your wishes. It is you to make it happen by your determined
actions.
·
Team
wins. It is not you alone but your team which wins. It is
all about how you groom and deploy tour team.
·
Time. Time is most precious resource and
itdoes not wait. You are to plan time sharing and time saving. Being ontime and
every time is most important aspect career growth.
·
Victory
sharing. Victory comes through shared vision and collective
team effort. Give credit to others too.
·
Waiting to happen. Success happens by your determined
effort. Instead of waiting for incoming call take initiative and you make a
call. Always take initiative and be in the lead.
·
Win -Win policy. It is healthy business practice to have
win-win strategy while negotiating for any alliance/joint venture.
·
World of words.
Today’s world is of words. In any career, the words you speak and write
matter a lot in winning people and doing business with them.
Dr. Sarbjit Singh
Former Principal of Apeejay
College of Engineering ,Sohna, Gurgaon , India www.knowledgeshareindia.com ,
sarbjit@knowledgeshareindia.com
Author of books-- Now available
on www.amazon.in
1.
“A2Z-
26 Steps for Assured Success”
2.
“career
challenges during global uncertainty”
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