Beholder's definition matters most!

The field of business management has created an ocean of concepts , jargons and buzz words. Most often the terms such as leadership, business, product, team, group etc invoke different perceptions among different set of people. Even the educated elite bicker with their contemporaries about the preciseness of the term's meanings and definitions. Leadership is an apt example. What leadership meant in 1950s is different from that of the 2000s.

1.

1. Leadership is “ the behaviour of an individual … directing the activities of a group toward a shared goal” (Hemphill & Coons ,1957)

2. Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how it can be done effectively, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish the shared objectives. (Yukl, 2002)

Which definition is best or better? We can argue for a decade and still not reach an agreement.

Concepts such as leadership, business, customer, product, value etc are 'live' and not rigid like dead wood. Such terms have the atrribute to assume contextual meaning. The experience from our workshops make us feel that, we should not waste our time being adamant on the preciseness of the definition, but to allow the beholder to hold the meaning as it is and nourish the meaning to grow as the contexts change. Only the beholder's definition matters most in the field than the academically nailed definitions. We need not force a Consultant's / Business school's definition on to the person-on-toes in the sphere of business. The experiences will enable the beholder naturally change the perspective and we need only to facilitate that transition.

The value of business sense

Every employee of a company agrees without fail that they work to bring results. Usually the results are equated with the completion of tasks assigned by the superior. The employee tend to feel that ' complete the assigned task and see to it that the boss is happy'. Completing the assigned tasks is the primary objctive of the job holders. In many organisations this feeling runs length and breadth of the hierarchy. This organisation is in danger: not because it is a bad organisation, but because it is disconnected from the business.

The sense of business must pervade the organisation, then only the organisation can sustain longer and reap benefits. The business sense is a readiness that revolves around customer satisfaction, profit / gain maximisation and innovation for value. Without these no organisation can last longer. Every employee must develop business sense and follow it in their daily activities, else it will end up as wasted efforts. Business sense affects all the activities carried out in the organisation.

feedback to : margatreya@yahoo.com

Who is a Business Person?

The question looks very simple but I felt the answers available in the environment does not satisfy the thought factory.

I checked the web for the meaning of business person. The results I got were the following.....

1. A businessperson (also businessman or businesswoman) is someone who is employed at usually a profit-oriented enterprise, or more specifically, someone who is involved in the management (at any level) of a company. The term businessperson almost always refers to someone with a "white collar" occupation.

2. A person engaged in business

3. a person engaged in commercial or industrial business (especially an owner or executive)

When I checked the authoritative dictionaries such as Cambridge/Oxford etc the result was the same.

These three definitions look very academic and does not enthuse .

I asked this question to at least a score of common people from varied demographies. The common theme running through their musings was '.... a business person is always profit oriented.... a business person has profit making in his or her blood..... at any cost the business person ensures the profit..... ......... ' It went so on.......

A professor from a Business School gave an interesting definition.. ' a business person is one who is engaged in an economic activity for gains".

The word 'economic activity' in the definition incites and a feeling of satisfaction flashes in me. Still I feel something is missing.

The common factor in most definitions was the 'profit' and obviously the profit here is the business person's profit.

For the time being I abandoned the analysis of the term 'business person' and browsed some Business quotes...... I felt many of the quotes are not connected to business, still they are classified as business quotes. But I found some quotes very interesting and they are listed below.

business quotes

A lasting buisness is built on friendship

A lasting business is built on friendship

Alfred A. Montapert

Business, that's easily defined - it's other people's money.

Peter Drucker

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

Henry R. Luce

Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness.

Stanislaw Lem

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.

Henry Ward Beecher

People will buy anything that is 'one to a customer.'

Sinclair Lewis

Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.

W. Edwards Deming

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Confucius

The quotes by Alfred Montapert, Henry ward, Sinclair Lewis, Edward Deming and Confucius gives me insights. But the quote from Peter Drucker seems very frivolous, may be he has quoted it in a lighter mood.

My search lead to yet another interesting article http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13110436

The heading of this article answers our question " who is a business person? ' the heading is "Manners maketh the businessman". This article is worth reading though it ends in a pessimistic note. After reading the article do not forget to come back to the blog ' Business & Leadership insights.... inspirations" http://margatreya.blogspot.com/

Then my search went on to another term Business Developer. There too I was presented with information explosives. Some collections I am sharing here.

**************

" Business development is among the foremost concerns of any organisation, and a a manager, much of your attentionwill be devoted to developing and exploiting the business opportunities that are presented to you and your company.

Business development and making your organisation successful is reliant on good knowledge of best practice and management theories.

Business development management involves asking yourself some searching questions. Are you prepared to change to realise the vision created by your business development strategy? What must your business excel at? How does that affect processes, people and customers? What does the planning and controls the implementationof the business development ideas, answering to which goals, actions and measures?

Perhaps most significant of all, you have to decide whether to be radical rather than incremental - are you revelutionery in your skills as a business development manager or are you more evelutionary?

***************

I felt, my search for a practicable definition of a Business Person is leading me nowhere and I felt I have to rely on my experience and hard work. I am forced to provide a definition for the term as one of the axiom that guides us is ' Every person can be a business person".

For the time being I will settle for the following definition..

A business person is one who attracts, creates, satisfies or retains a customer / customers for a mutual gain.

Every person in the organisation can be a Business Person!

This stance opens a floodgate to me and new possibilities in business world are visible for me. Hope you too get this.

Become a business person, enjoy and create wealth!

Contributed by : Sasikanth Prabhu

Simplicity gets results

A couple of months back I saw a small trader in the Ernakulam market place (kochi - India), who has started a new business there. He was so excited that he was able to acquire a breathing space in this part of the city to run a business. He feels elated that he has about 40 sq.ft at his disposal. A casual glance at his kiosk made me feel that his merchandise is not matching with the excitement he has. All sort of things are there. Children's toys, hangers, strings, torches, mosquito bats, battery, etc. In one glance I could view at least 20 items. The items are displayed in nauseatingly cluttered way.I just asked him how is the business? He said it is OK. On further interview it was found that he is not able to 'break even'. He was of the belief that one has to keep all the items a customer asks. It may be good to keep all the items under one roof, but the trader has only about 40 sq.ft.

When a walk-in customer come to the kiosk and asks for a particular product, often it seems that the item demanded by the customer is not available or that the available product does not suit the customer's choice. At the departure of the unsatisfied customer, the trader immediately updates his stock as per the required of the flown customer. Thus day by day the inventory increased but the sale dwindled. I felt sad at the plight of the trader and entered into a conversation with trader and suggested to specialize in one or two products / product clusters because of the paucity of space and also the confusion it creates in the minds of the customer. The trader seem to have got some flashes as result of this coversation and consoled me he will do the needful.

Last week when I saw him at his kiosk, he has somehow liquidated his earlier inventory and right now has lesser number of products. I again asked him how the business is? he said the sale is less but some customers are doing repeat buys from the kiosk. He looks very optimistic about his business. Now the kiosk looks more tidy. And intuitively one could understand that this shop sells perfumes and related products. There is a range of perfumery products available in the kiosk. It has a welcome look now.

Mark Gottfredson and Steve Schaubert in their book "The breakthrough imperative" asserts simplicity as the one of the fundamental laws of business. This is beacuse human beings can't effectively focus on more than three or four things at once. The simplicity attribute must pervade the whole business; be it product issues, organisational issues or process issues. An organisation with too many products and options drives up costs and confuses its customers. Similarly, an organization with too many layers of management will probably be unable to take quick action, even when the need for action is obvious.

Great business persons always keep it simple.

All businesses inherently are simple and straight forward. Complexities arises when we deviate from our business or when we are ignorant of it. When there is joy, ease and lightness in what we do, we are minding our business. The moment we lose any one of these, take it that we are away from our business.The prospective customer must be able to do business with your organization as simple as possible. If it is not, the chances are that even the most loyal customer might one day leave you. Hence it is important to make the business dealings as simple as possible and as cheerful as possible.
Simplicity gets better results than complexity.

Driving simplicity in the organization:

• Study the customers' needs in detail

• Find three things the customer really cares about and do something about it intensely

• Develop products and services that would solve the needs of the customer

• Set no more than three to five critical imperatives for your organization, and communicate them so that everybody in the organization can remember, recite, and buy into what the company is trying to accomplish.

• Adapt your organizational structure, decision-making responsibilities, and critical business processes to ensure clarity, speed, and efficiency in meeting customer needs better than anybody else

Here is a site that tells more about simplicity in action http://rpc.blogrolling.com/redirect.php?r=16496b548dee948366e5c33591d13962&url=http://simplicityitk.blogspot.com

contributed by : Sasikanth Prabhu