The Hindu Business Line : `Keys to success different for each person'

WINNING HABIT: (from left) Mr Y. Konda Reddy, Correspondent, Royalaseema Institute, Major S. Lakshmanan, Executive Director, Madras Management Association, and Mr V. Srinivasan, Principal.

Chennai June 15 The keys to success are different for each person. The set of factors responsible for a person's success is dictated by that particular person's attitude. The keys to success, therefore, can never be the same for everybody.

Further, success is not a constant situation but is dynamic. As a result, the keys to success have to be reset periodically. This constant resetting is what is called habit, said Major S. Lakshmanan, Executive Director, Madras Management Association, Chennai. He was speaking to students of the Royalaseema Institute of Information and Management Sciences, Tirupati, on the topic, the `Key to Success' at a lecture organised by the BL Club.

Quoting Stephen R. Covey, Major Lakshmanan said: "Habit is the intersection of knowledge, skill and desire."

Further, he said, knowledge tells us what to do and makes us ask the question, why we should do a particular task. Skill tells us how to do a task and desire denotes the keenness to do a certain task. We are what we do repeatedly. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit, he said quoting Aristotle.

Speaking about inter-dependence, he said: "We all exist because of inter-dependence. Every one of us is inter-dependent." Among the character traits of successful people was the desire to win. They played the `game' only to win it.

Besides, they made winning a habit. Further, they were keen to acquire new skills and they could be trusted to stick to their commitments. They had the ability to prioritise their work and always kept first things first.

Successful people stood out as change agents and had the right attitude for this.Unconsciously incapable, consciously incapable, consciously capable, and unconsciously capable were the four stages of the Capability Model. The fourth one was more important for success.

To make winning a habit, one had to become a proactive person and take initiative in one's own hands.

`Be the change'

According to him, if anyone wanted to see change, they should bring about the change themselves. "Be a change agent. Change with the times. You also have to change the rules of the game," he said.

The lecture was attended by more than 300 MBA and MCA students, besides Mr P. Niranjan Reddy, the Head of the MBA Department, and Mr K. Raman, Head of the MCA Department.

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