The Other Side of Success.
Its 2 PM on a cold sunny winter afternoon in Lahore-Pakistan. As I sit on the dinning table, sipping my morning coffee I couldn't help but wonder in the thoughts of the previous weeks events/ shortcomings/ hurdles & achievements. I gaze upon the view of my living room window, look beyond the balcony to the main road. The traffic seems far less, on a Sunday afternoon than any other regular weekday. The nature is evident & the winter is beautiful.
Yet in this beauty I cannot fully enjoy be in the moment of this beautiful awe, because my thoughts are conflicted & tied up to the commotion of the previous day. As I turn on my cell phone, there is a long list of unread work messages and multiple missed & unattended calls from last night & today morning. As I skim through the list, it amazes me to see most phone calls & messages are from work acquaintances & clients. My inbox keeps on popping with the emails which I have yet to read & revert. In modern business era, everyone knows and follows it religiously to revert back to emails within the same day preferable in the first few hours of email receipt. I shut my phone, & look back at the beautiful view, to enjoy the bliss which lies in front of me. There is calmness in the winter, in its beauty & solace!
I wonder how life has changed. we are far from being free. We are captives of the our imagination cell. The one I feel with time & stress keeps on getting smaller & smaller. The weight on my shoulders keeps pouring in. I keep telling my self it is a state of mind and I need to pull my self out of it. But some how the more I try, the more I push my self deep within. and yet in the midst of all this i have so much to say. There is so much to say. But i keep shutting my self up. But today, its different. I believe I have some thing to say, that i believe in. My mentor always said this to me to get the bad news over with first, so that you can deal with it full energy, response & wit. So here goes "We are less of ourselves now & every day, then from where we started. Some where down the road we have lost the originality of ourselves"
I was hired back in 2010 on a consultancy contract for textile organisation. I was fresh out of college, enthusiastic, passionate , inspired and full of energy. I had recently moved back home from abroad after good 10 years and was adapting to the new old way of life. Like any other fresh graduate, every thing seemed possible. There was a potential opportunity in every thing that I came across. I longed, yearned, waited & worked to create opportunity in the multidimensional scope of industries. I applied in the banking sector, FMCG, advertisement, construction, finance. But the professional opportunity came to me in the field of textiles. I didn't know the basics of textiles. I had no idea how things went by in that industry and yet i took it up as a challenge. While studying it never came across my mind that I would one day be working in a textile manufacturing industry. I started off with an idea that working in textiles will just be a temporary thing, but little did i know that the world of textiles will become my professional world for the next decade or so. See that is the beauty of life and opportunities come by from where you least expect them to do. My first work opportunity came to me through a close acquaintance. I was handed over a code of conduct for one of the leading garments brand of the west and was asked to implement that standard & its covenants in true practical spirit at the facility. I worked extensively and due diligently and before long scored the first professional ace of my career, by getting the facility certified on the customer code of conduct. Work started pouring over and opportunities started knocking my door. Soon I had more contracts and was working with 2 to 3 organisations on multiple standards, certifications and conducts. I met a veteran from the industry in the early part of career, who had more than 2000 certification and customer audits under his belt. That guy became a mentor for me in the field of implementing compliance standards. He said to me " You & I are Blessed. We get to work for some thing we Love"
I didn't share the same the same level of enthusiasm like him as I was still principally on the thought that working in textiles is just temporary, but he said if you survive long enough within this industry you will get to love the work that you do. Today as I recall those words, they help me guiding back to an important place & to an important truth. I have learned to care less, and do what needs to be done for the work that lays ahead of me. In doing so my pivotal focus is on the targeted results and I am pretty good in getting the job done. A few years back as an opportunity & a challenge I switched over to marketing department from customer auditing and standardisation. I took it upon as a challenge as I always felt that my communications skills were one my biggest professional assets. Many people who knew me professionally advised against my decision, since I was heading 4 departments: HR, OD, T&D & CSR & held the position of Strategic Manager. Coming into marketing felt right for me as I had set up a few new milestones for my self to achieve. I did excel in the new field as well but as much as I learned, the coldness & rigidity of getting the job done also grew in me. Its beyond arguments waged upon the work that we do, and how being what you are is absolutely essential to fit in the role given to us. its beyond the huge salary payouts, incentives and other benefits that we receive for the work that we do. I am peoples person and I communicate in groups and gathering far better than most. I am sure as i say that I am better actor than far more people who are working in the acting industry. As I sell hope, dreams, aspirations and motivation. I am really good in public speaking. I do it with conviction as I help keep people on their tracks set forth to achieve the desired business goal. As much as i excelled, some thing always felt out of proportion. A feeling I just couldn't shy away from. I kept burying it because I knew if I dug up this hole, a world of mess would come out. But today its different. I have gathered up all my courage to face my demons. Today as I write this I cannot say what is required to say or rather I want to say what needs to be said and done. I am talking about some thing I don't talk about, we don't talk about.
"We are loosing battle from every thing that is personal, real & downright about the business". Irrespective of the industry that one works in, the dynamics may be different but the cultural stigma is the same. The bench mark of irrationality & workable structures are the same that have been adopted by so many industries. At the end whatever it takes to get the Job done!!!! Everyday I can look at a long list of calls, message partially returned or missed all together. Driving back home, my focus keeps on shifting on the things that i missed out or not accomplished rather than what i achieved during the day. The gnawing feeling has made home to my heart. We are all pushing numbers, doing our best for what needs to be done. We never lose sight of the target or desired goal. The clock keeps ticking and we continue like machines to achieve that illusion of satisfaction. But honestly what good is this success without real pride. Is there any real satisfaction in a success that exists only when we push the messiness of real human contact from our lives and minds? Whether it be a client or our own personnel, why is that we we learn not to care enough about the very guy we promised the world to, just to get him to sign the deal, or win a contract, or win a sale.
3PM: What am I doing? Why am I writing this?
I may not finish writing this, and there is a good chance that I wont publish it. But if I haven't stopped till now and you are reading this then know that I was unable to stop my self from saying what I felt within. A lot of times while walking the hallway of my office many staff members do approach with different queries & questions. They do so as I hold a strategic position in the company and the personnel feel at ease talking about their concerns with me. Mostly I revert back to them in the manner that I usually do & I probably end up saying what they needed to hear or what was essential to say to them to keep them motivated on the goal. Certain times when things do go sideways, I end up making them realise that the blame lies within them selves. Not only does this serve the purpose of check and balance but also helps people not sway away with false expectations. Mostly whatever I have said, It wasn't the Truth. As it wasn't what i felt. In reality I wanted to to say so much. There is so much one can contain inside and I think that I held it in better than most and far longer than most. If you ever wondered about the drawbacks of being quiet about important things, talk to yourself in the mirror some time, say the truth. Yell the truth to yourself, when no one is listening. See how good it feels?
They say crisis is a powerful point of transformation. Every time we face a hurdle or end up being in a problem we are at the point of transformation. We can come out bigger, better, stronger and wiser or we end up swinging in the paradox of the problem and let the situation take control & drive us in vivid directions. It happens to everyone, even the best of us. Today as I write this, i know for a fact that my company like so many others is at a point of transformation. The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the realms and structures of business and markets all together. No longer can we go back to the primitive ways through which the business was once conducted. In a blink of an eye the familiar world that we know so well has changed all together. The old robust structures no longer yield the same output they once did. And transformation is required with adaptability to work, to thrive and survive. As I sit and write this, I couldn't help but wonder on own being, my own self. I may seem happier with how one may perceive me externally. but am I really happy or just Alive? My life has been neutral. I have done what is necessary to be where I am today. In my personal life yes I have embarked upon multiple horizons. faced mountains and survived. The scars may be there but I am proud to have them as they are medals for the challenges I encountered, came over and survived. But professionally I think I have said later to most things which required a true sacrifice. Work is proceeded as it should with defined approaches to configuring the problems and most importantly the work cannot stop. The work may not stop for something that might interfere with the restless and relentless pursuit of forward motion. Of greater success. Make no mistake, I am a huge fan of success. But today as I write this, I propose a better kind of success. I may be wrong, but if you keep on reading and I keep writing, we might get there together. And then you can be a better judge of my approach.
The secret of success for Job or Business is :"Personal Relationships"
We are all some sort of agents. Some agents of information & communication. Others agents of products and manufacturing. Somehow we all are interconnected and the role seems familiar to an agent irrespective of the field or department that we work in. A man is the sum up of all the experiences he/she has encountered. We are all driven by goals. Give me a goal, and I will achieve it. That has been my secret design for most of my life. Perhaps you are the same. We’re all goal-oriented. Today I present a different type of goal.
How can we do something inspiring surprising, and memorable with our lives? How can we turn around our jobs, in smaller but important ways, into a better representation of ourselves? We are our jobs. That’s obvious from the late hours we all keep. So then, it is bigger than work, isn’t it? It is about us. So the question is how do we wish to define our selves? How do we wish to define our lives? At the end of this life the last thing i want for my self is to have a regret. More importantly if i were to look back at the age of 60, 70 or 80 (God knows how long a life i have) i want to look back and be happy for all the things and the difference i made during my active part of professional life. I want my self to be remembered in the best of ways not just a slave to the commerce of the industry i worked in.
A few months back I was asked this question while interviewing some one for a role in sales and marketing. "what do i stand for"? I had a number of text book answers to this question but i was reluctant in giving an answer. because i didn't want to give a response which was probably what the person wanted to hear or was coached from a mentoring seminar or some thing i read in the biography of people who inspired me. I could answer this question without hesitation from my heart when i was younger or when i graduated from college. But today, well today its a different story. I am blown away that today after so much that i have achieved and come across in my professional career in the last decade that i am short on words to the simple question "What do I stand for"?
Today I don't have an answer to this question. I find my self lost.
As I seek the answers today, I can sum it up with a true objective that we recreate every thing that we are currently about. I find my self working in an organisation which is on the top of its game for a medium size enterprise. To go bigger, we are all set with installed capacities, man power and state of the art machineries. We have amazing clientele with direct business relationships (no middle men or intermediaries). We have an amazing product line that caters to the needs of the best brands in the fashion wold today. We are competing with organisations bigger in size and better in structures & yet our product and service stands out. Traditionally people do one thing at this point in their success. They try to like hell to maintain the market share they have while keep moving forward. Their personal and intense road to success, their original inspiration (which is at the heart of every success) is now lost in the pursuit to keep the money machine smoothly rolling forward. Delivering crisp green sheets of greater and greater amounts of fortune. But there is a problem with this stage in the success game. In so doing this maintain-success cycle, they forget the original glimmer of passion that got them there.
Historically, no one successful ever pauses to think that they might tumble like everyone before them who forgot. The whole success cycle dooms the very thing that causes the success in the first place — it puts shutters on the windows of reality. It makes us all forget that monetary success comes from something very pure. It comes from a desire to do well, to make life better, not just to do well with financial regularity.
It is not easy to let go of a winning formula. But all great business models, once they hit a plateau, they change the game. They make it harder for themselves. They raise the bar. They work not just harder, but they work smarter. That is why the great athletes, politicians, musicians, philosophers all got stronger instead of more weary. We must do the same. And for those wondering when I will propose an answer to these many questions, I must ask you simply to hold on. Because it’s coming.
I have just poured another pot of coffee. Coffee seems to rhyme with my thoughts coming out in words as i write this. I have kept on writing till now, which means i didn't stop or gave in to my own fears of rejection. I am writing this because its coming from my within, its coming from my heart. The heart has no rejection, neither it fears one. And neither is this article equivalent to assembling any story with a mess of words. This is my heart writing a love letter to the business and industry i gave 10 years of my life.
While writing this, I just popped into my inbox to check for further emails. surprising how they keep on pouring even on a weekend. Queries, updates and status required. if I tap into it so begins the game of flattery, soothe & stroke. It is part of our jobs, so part of our lives. We need to assure to maintain the level of confidence of our client at any cost. The game of marketing is a tap dance at the end. most times its us doing the dance and however other times its the client. But as I sit here writing this, the answer to the future is rather obvious. If the tap dancing becomes less constant, less furious, less necessary, what will the result be? The result will be more honesty, more focus, and satisfied clients. Because the new day of honesty will create a machine more personalised, more truthful, and the client that wasn’t bullshitted this year, has a greater chance of greatness next year. Sales targets will seem easier as the confidence of the client will be at a new high. We must crack open the tightly clenched fist of commerce and give a little back for the greater good. the truthfulness doesn't just begin or end with clients. it pours down to our own people as well. We need to be honest with them as well. The guy working for us, giving us the long hours, managing the over exerted work tasks, managing stress and giving up a significant part of his social life to improve the numbers to get to the targets required for the organisation. That person deserves far more respect than anyone else.
They say "“To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.”
So what is winning at the work place.....?
Winning Numbers?
Winning Contracts?
Sales figures?Winning at the workplace is not just about financial numbers. Winning the work place is about promoting talent, flourishing & growing the talent, motivation & many other factors. Many in our industry confuse reward management only through financial means: i.e big payouts & incentives. If money was the only factor then employees would never disengage or leave big financial tycoons. It isn't always about the money. Monetary rewards are a close second. Maslow hierarchy of needs, possibly one of the best theories on motivation clearly identifies the pointers towards human behaviour & growth: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self- actualisation needs. So monetary incentives are a part of motivation, but individuals need far more than just financial success to work with full aim towards a goal.
Its a thought that I put into writing today: "you build a team by maintaining key personal relationships". Know the person, work with them. Lift them up not when they perform well, but when they fall down, because that is when they need you the most. Maintain a relation beyond the work space. our personal life and space is developed on maintaining and growing personal relationships, then why should the work place be any different. The person working with me, for me is not just a machine punching numbers. He/she is a human and basic human need is recognition & personal attention. Why is it that we focus all our attention towards a client and leave none for our own. Why is it that a few selected people in the organisation remain in the lime light while others just fade away in the hierarchy. Isn't equality suppose to be everyone? The companies and their respective management who work on the middle management are the ones that are eying for the future. Not just do they keep their people engaged, but are preparing them for the targeted future. We saw in the recent past, when Covid-19 hit and the world froze. Majority of the companies downsized. The first hit was always the blue line workers and middle tier white collar workers. Even before the Covid, whenever a situation arose which required downsizing, in most companies operating in different industries people working in the middle tier would be effected the most. Why is it in most companies, rewards & recognition on goals achieved are kept for the end of quarters or annual closings where as blunders / mistakes are dealt immediately usually severely & normally equates to a reprimand.
This has to stop! In-fact this needs to stop! what sort of lessons are we giving out. We are mentoring people that there is no room for mistake and if one makes they will be severely dealt with. we are mentoring people to follow the same principles if they are at a leading position to do the very same. Isn't making mistake part of being human. Then why the double standard in a professional life. I still remember being a kid when I participated in any event, sport or activity. Everyone was there to cheers us on: the teachers, the kids, the principal, the parents, the staff and whoever was remotely associated with us. They kept cheering us on. Even if we didn't do well, we were taught there will always be a next time so chin up as you did your best. Making mistakes was part of the learning and if you failed. it wasn't taken as a stereo typical image against you.
"Failure was never a person, but an event. yesterday ended last night"
Some how these words just vanished as we grew up. Most of the time, we are creating some thing out of nothing. We are shoving digits around around the clock. They say you don't get paid by the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to an hour. So if we are working like machines then what intrinsic value are we really bringing to the table. To address the growing pains of our business, and to create a new way of looking at what we do… because these growing pains could easily be dying pains. We are meant to live where we work. Our work actually does have an effect on people. In a cynical world, we make people happy. We let them know that one person makes the difference. And some how the meaning of this phrase has taken into some other context where a handful of people who are usually in the lime light making a difference where the rest are just professional dummies. In reality its the team that matters not just one person leading. In the truest spirit every person of the team matters!! We need to learn to adapt with the approach of knowing our people. This is the stuff of the relationship that I keep emphasising upon. This is what will matter. People always respond best to personal attention, it is the simplest and easiest truth to forget.
The same applies to the clientele we hold. Personal attention is the key to success. We need to focus on our deliverables. And the key deliverable in not just an optimum service but focusing on how to build a client. The numbers will all add up in the end. If i am true to my word to the service I provide, that builds the confidence one client needs and deserves. All sales and targeted projection will need less effort as my focus would be to provide the client with optimum attention. Responding a call to customer wont be about the sales pitch but it will be about a deserving person needing my undivided attention & it would be an honour to share their time And that will be what the road to greatness feels like. Think how good it will feel to wake up in the morning and know that when the phone rings, it is not Client demanding a tap dance. It will be Client , whose life we know and share. A satisfied client will always give you business. We will be the first on his/her list in terms of developing new opportunities/ prospects together. We will be bigger than a supplier. We aim to be a strategic partner.
Let us be honest with ourselves. Let us be honest with them.
Forget the dance. Focus!!!!!
I propose this as the very heart of the Statement that I am writing & is flying across my screen. I am not a writer but I can’t stop from writing this. It is something pure, some thing I believe and is from the deepest part of me. Nothing matters more than this.
It has to be right, and as one of the Senior Manager's at at my company, I want my people to hear this. I will share this with all of them & if I am wrong, then they can grab me by the collar and tell me why they disagree. And I will happily talk with them because we would be finally talking about something that matters. I feel the pride of ownership, the pride of owning this world that allows me to type this message to you. And perhaps propose a better way of conducting business. It is a great feeling, not just that wretched desire to survive, to out-swim the huge wave that may drill me into the sand below the water, but to seize this time. To set the agenda. To say what I feel. I feel so happy in not erasing this.
Business is not just about building up numbers and growing in size. Like all life cycle methodologies, there is one principle which applies to us all "Learn, Earn & Return". I believe all organisations once they reach a certain size and gain maturity they need to give back to the community. By community the first deserving are your own and the clients. We need to give back to our own. We need to develop a system where employees and clients are given the environment where they can grow. Employees need to be given that confidence to perform. They need to be guided and motivated when they come across the hurdle and fall down. Own Your people, Own your company. Same has to be said for the clients. Give the confidence to the client not just by giving a service but giving them environment to prosper. Make their goals your own and I promise you the sales figures targets will happen on their own. A lot companies lack depth even with financial prosperity. The false illusion that I would be happy, or feel better when I am rich. The equation never equates. That happens when we don’t listen to the loud sound of the quiet voice inside. Life, is not a club where we forget the difficulties and anxieties. Life is the duty of confronting all of that within ourselves. I can say that I have been successful financial and otherwise , but I am hardly the happiest. I met someone in college who was working to create the first zero carbon city of the world. I was amazed by his focus, his goals. He didn't have the desire to create some thing so big through which he would gain the most financial success. His goal was different. He wanted to create and then offer the same to develop for the rest at cost feasible solutions. I asked Him "wouldn't you want to patent such a remarkable creation". His response was no, as he said that he had a higher purpose to serve. He wanted to a brighter carbon free future for the people. In 20 coming years he wanted to reduce the carbon emissions by a significant amount. Mind you, such creations require huge amounts of funding. There wasn't any tap dance about his line of work. Today as I recall, I am inspired by his vision and want to replicate it in some way in my working industry. There is simple truth in creating some thing worthy. The simple truth which improves the quality of life. I hope that I have not overstepped my boundaries by writing this to you. This is an attempt to reach out, and say loudly the things that have been festering within. And once you begin to speak these things, it’s hard to stop. I have never been a writer, but I can see how this great lost art will never truly die.
Putting words to paper is a sacred thing. It’s more than a phone conversation, it is a document.
I am wondering what that exact moment is when we truly, truly love our jobs. Is it during the day, or at the end of the day, or is it years later looking back on all we accomplished? I think perhaps truly loving something is the ability to love it at that moment. It is an elusive ability, something I have never been able to quite accomplish. I must go home, and take my experiences like a squirrel, and consider them, before I can truly enjoy them. I must work on this. The daily journey is everything. Being able to enjoy enjoyment while it is happening.
So what is required essentially for the proposal I am discussing. Trust me, it doesn't take much. Come to think of it, its is only a slight adjustment, an adjustment in our minds. An adjustment in attitude. An adjustment to point where we can discuss the things that really matter to us, and our many clients. Let us really reach out. Let us celebrate the clients, our own people that have meant more to us because of this small adjustment.
Let us work less hard to sign the clients that we know won’t matter in the long run, and work twice as hard to keep the ones who will. I believe in these words, and while they may not yet be true for you, they are true for me. And I ask that you read this with that in mind. I am dictating not what I want us to be, but what I wish us to be. There is a difference. You can only get there if I have written this correctly, and if you are inspired. I am reaching out to you, personally. I choose to be passionate again. I choose to reclaim everything that was once exciting about the vision I had for a job. I wonder if this might just be the best idea I’ve ever had. I hope you understand.
“A life is not worth living until you have something to die for.” (Martin Luther King)
A life is not worth living if you are sleepwalking through it. Because that is what feels like death. It is the feeling of sleepwalking. Of others living life around you. We cannot sleepwalk. We cannot just survive, anything goes. We can take control of our lives, we can quit sleepwalking, we can say — right now, these are our lives, it is time to start living it. It is time to not second guess, to move forward, to make mistakes if we have to, but to do it with a greater good in mind. I am not saying this for the sake of it, I am saying it as I am prepared to live for a cause. The cause is caring about each other. The secret to any job is personal relationships.
I wish you all & success, wellness and prosperity. Stay Safe, Stay Strong.
Muhammad Bhatti
24th January, 2021
