The Hindu Business Line : Right environment for a successful company

By a steady and continuous challenge of its own prejudices and predilections, the successful company gradually evolves an objective and dispassionate mechanism to encounter the virulent and volatile aspects emerging from the environment.

R. Devarajan

The capability of organisations to perceive what is happening in their environments, to think through the implications of such happenings, and then, to formulate appropriate strategies based on such perception and acquired knowledge — these three steps constitute their basic and vital advantage for success in the competitive game of business.

Most organisations lack this genius and betray a deplorable disadvantage in this respect. On the contrary, only those companies that identify this gold mine will move ahead as the winning organisation in the rat race for success.

The bottleneck lies in their inability to recognise that they are performing at a low level far below their promise and potential.

Managers have become so conditioned and accustomed to mediocrity that they are simply not aware of this disability. They are locked into a loop that acts as a smokescreen preventing them from observing what is wrong and where.

Bias and bad habits imprison the managers inside a world of inertia and suboptimal performance, which drives their companies initially towards a state of pathological deterioration, and perhaps an eventual demise.

Creating the climate

Managers in the successful company, however, learn to assimilate a broad understanding of values and ethics, besides developing a holistic vision and ethos of business paradigms, so essential to triumph in this turbulent climate.

The successful company creates and induces, when warranted, an artificial climate of complexity and uncertainty as a training input, which enables its managers to focus their energy and vision on the challenging issues confronting them.

Such companies initiate necessary action to break open and overcome the paranoia associated with the old and orthodox style of management.

Change and challenge

If there is one thing about which there can be no doubt or dispute, it is that the 21st century business world is subject to a constant and considerable change and challenge.

Companies that operated so successfully yesterday are not there today, just because they did not realise this momentum and, hence, were caught unawares. No matter how glorious the history of an organisation may be, the focus is always on its future. The game never remains the same.

Winning requires a continuous watch of ways and means to stay ahead of the competition. Being in tune with the latest trends, an indefatigable zeal to innovate, and the genius to make possible the impossible — these are the distinguishing marks and the insignia of the successful company in the current century.

(The author is a Chennai-based freelance writer.)