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Rewind
Traits of Business-wise
(April 2016)
Amit still proudly refers to his tenure in Calcutta Presidency College as “those days”. In my “those days”, there were two classes of students – “Wise” and “Other-wise”. The classification existed historically and even today this behavioural distinction is apparent in students. “Wise” spends all the college hours attending regular classes, visits the library during lunch hours, discusses future career plans during carefree chat sessions (addas), is not aware of the nearby movie halls and is a stranger to the local Coffee House waiters. After two decades of passing “those days”, I can shamelessly declare my “Other-wise” profile!
I enter the corporate world and to my surprise, I again meet two classes of people: “Business-Wise” and “Other-wise”. The difference was equally pronounced and the characteristics distinct. There are people who have natural and/or adopted characteristics of looking at the world from business perspectives. Their actions follow accordingly. I call them Business-Wise. The other category of people do their job - some perfectly and some not-so-perfect, some with speed and some not-so-fast, some with energy and some not-so-engaged, some with understanding and some without; but they do the job. They are the people who are wise in following directions and do what they are asked to perform. They are Other-wise.
The CEO of a reputed software company visited my place when I was in London about eighteen years back. He came in a BMW cab, fitted with a satellite-tracking system. The tracking system was a new innovation those days and BMW was quick enough to have adopted it. He opined that companies like Rolls Royce would not be able to sustain their share with traditional focus and a company like BMW would win the market and possibly Rolls Royce. He went back and within a few days the company was actually sold out. He sent me a small note highlighting the same. The timing was coincident but he could rationally analyse and visualise the industry dynamics. Even a casual cab ride made him think of the business perspective and implications!! I call him business-wise.
Let me share another example. A few of us were in a picnic on a Florida beach. It was a crowded beach with people swimming, surfing and relaxing… a typical day at the beach! A two-seater plane was making rounds over the area carrying an advertisement banner. One of my colleagues asked me “Do you see anyone here watching the plane? I think business may not have taken the right approach and it is possibly a fruitless effort.” It was true as there was hardly anyone in the beach who was looking up at the advertisement. It is not whether his comment was right or wrong but the very concept of seeing and analysing things in the business way is important. He is business-wise.
If you start looking out, you will find similar incidents and anecdotes to identify businesswises around you. Interestingly, it is not a characteristic that these people are born with, but most of them develop it. It requires individual and in most cases organizational effort for developing clear business focus and the willingness to view things professionally from others’ shoes.
The “Otherwise” know and do the job given and can highlight possible problems in performing the activities. It is the “ business-wise” who sees and creates opportunities in the problems. I once worked for an “otherwise” who used to be personally and emotionally hurt when a team member resigned from her team. She believed that attrition was driven solely on the personal relationship with the manager and it signified her failure. In the later part of her career she became business wise. She tried to retain her team but in case of attrition, she would maintain a good professional relationship with these people and look for opportunities in the future. In fact, she has used those relationships to grab new businesses very effectively over years. She is a successful business-wise today. While individual effort cannot be undermined, developing business-wise characteristics is a key task of the organization. It nurtures, grooms and develops the potential of other-wise people to include business-wise behaviour as well. There is no hard and fast rule for instilling the behaviour, but some companies show the traits of driving this behaviour. Learning from making mistakes, alignment of individual goals to business goals, implications of individual behaviour on the business potentials, independence in performing roles, execution of coach-protégé framework... there are many such initiatives that successful organizations drive in order to instil the business-wise behaviour in their people.
Some organizations do it more wisely than others. Over time, a few such organizations show the characteristics of business-wise in the market. The reflection of the business-wise behaviour of the organization is felt by its customers, employees and stakeholders and the perception about the same incidentally goes beyond. Intel, Dell, Toyota, Google ... we can name quite a few giants that demonstrate the business-wise behaviour today. And certainly my earlier story reflects the business-wise behaviour of BMW.
The reflection of the organizational characteristics is more pronounced in the IT sector where the customers directly interface with larger section of employees of the organization. It may not be enough to just do your job well. In this era of globalization, we do not need two separate classes anymore. The concept of two different groups needs to go. We already have a huge and competent “otherwise” workforce that is essential for growth. All we need is to instil business-wise behaviour” in them.
Recently, I met a senior American customer at the airport. Tricia was returning after the first face-to-face meeting with her offshore IT team. According to her, “the distinct behavioural difference in my India and US team is that the India team accepts work without questioning and performs diligently. The US team, on the contrary, always asks for the reasons and implications of the action and often makes suggestions. Both perform the work to the best of their abilities, but the understanding of the business perspective is built in the US team faster. Clearly, she wants to instil business-wise behaviour in the other team.
The need is particularly imperative, especially with the changing nature of outsourcing.. from its cost-arbitraged resourcing model to a value-added global delivery framework. Tricia has just highlighted this value-add!
(The view expressed by the author is personal)