Four ps of business excellence

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THERE IS absolutely no doubt that every rational business person aspires to excel in their chosen field of endeavour.

THERE IS absolutely no doubt that every rational business person aspires to excel in their chosen field of endeavour. There is an ocean of a difference between desiring to excel in business and actually excelling.

The word excel in Latin is excellere or in Middle English it is excellen. Both the Latin and Middle English versions of excel carry connotations of being very good, being excellent, being brilliant, being outstanding, being skilful, being talented, being proficient, being expert, being pre-eminent, reigning supreme, wearing the crown, standing out, being the best, being unrivalled, being unparalleled, being unequalled, being without equal, being second to none or being unsurpassed.

An excellent business person is not just a good corporate citizen; he or she is a discerning individual who distinguishes himself or herself by doing the best while others are busy doing the rest. No one can excel in their chosen field without deliberately making excellence an essential ingredient of their day to day routine. Much as Rome was not built in a single day, achieving excellence is not a stroll in the park or something that a person or an organisation achieves over night with sweat and willpower.

According to Thomas Edison intelligence is one person inspiration and ninety nine person perspiration or sweat. Far too many folks who are naturally good give up before they hit a gold mine in their lives big time. Much as it is a fact that sweet comes from sweat, it is also a truism that excellence is worth more than a pound of determination, tend pounds of focus and millions of pounds in patience. The import of the foregoing is that to excel one has to keep trying even if one fails many times.

Failure is not what many folks think it is. Failure is actually an invitation to polish up one’s skills and focus better in order to succeed some other time. Failure in business is really a springboard of future success. Nearly all current self-made billionaires failed dismally at the genesis of their odyssey to a life of fame and being celebrated.

Many successful business people have had many frustrations that would have discouraged them from going forward with their dreams. What distinguishes winners and losers is not only the fact that winners win or that losers lose; it is also the fact that winners have a never say die attitude towards life.

Winners in business believe so much in what they are doing to such an extent that no amount of discouragement can dissuade them from pursuing their dreams. Tenacity and focus in face of turmoil and turbulent circumstances mothers a successful business venture. The lessons a business person learns when chips are down are instrumental to sustainable success when the business is flourishing.

There are four P’s that explain why those who succeed in business or any other venture are able to replicate that success regardless of time or place.

The first P is place. All rational human beings have the potential to excel in, whatever, they set their mind to achieve. In business, parameters that augur well for success are clearly defined by national, regional and natural laws of human interaction as well as human needs and wants. For a business to succeed it must start from where it is or from the place where it is currently operating. In English they say charity or lovely acts begin at home.

Home is the place where one must practice excellence not abroad or some faraway place. If a business person has a rural shop or business concern and has a habit of treating his or her clients with disdain just because they do not have a lot of money, this is likely not to change even when an opportunity arises for the same business person to serve an affluent community.

The second P of excellence is people. Business is about people skills. How a business person treats people that his business draws determines the height of his or her success.

People skills make it imperative that a business person understands the culture, mores and aspirations of people in a particular community. Much as one cannot go to a community where people attach cultural value to trees or forests and begin a lumbering company, one is expected to engage in those business activities that add value to a community’s experiences and livelihood.

The third P of excellence is the past. The past as documented in business books and other secondary sources of information forms an invaluable library of lessons on what to do and what to avoid. A smart business person always seeks to learn from the experience of others.

This type of learning prevents the wasting of time and valuable resources since it is vicarious or observatory in orientation. Learning experimentally in the world of business can be fatalistic. For instance, one does not need to form a Ponzi Business Scheme to know that it does not work in the long run. Case studies of disgraced businesspeople such as Charles Ponzi, Bernard Madoff, Allen Stanford and Ivar Kreuger provide ample lessons on the perils of get-rich-quick schemes and the dangers of allowing greediness to dull one’s vision and cloud one’s conscience.

The fourth P of excellence is power. No one can succeed in business if they do not know where power is located and how power can be channelled in their direction. There are various types of power in the modern world. Some forms of power are physical while some forms are non-physical. Money or capital is one form of power that is absolutely necessary to ensure business excellence.

The question is how does one get money before they actually make it? There are generally two ways in which all human beings get money. You either make it yourself or you get it from others. Making money to use as business capital entails first doing a job of one sort or another. Some of the income is then set aside as savings to facilitate future business operations. This is the strategy of choice of all businesses that start small.

Nevertheless big dreamers realize that success is not an exclusive goal or experience but a journey best shared with others. Where there is a clear vision there is usually a way in terms of resource people or shareholders that are attracted by the visionary to his or her dream. Both the visionary and the follower have power.

The visionary has power to dream meaningful dreams while the follower has the power of resources which may be money, effort, connections or marketing skills. When all is said and done, it is a symbiotic visionary-follower relationship that determines business success.

 Ian Ndlovu is an economics lecturer at the National University of Science and Technology. His research interests cover business, development, economic and e-commerce issues. He writes in his personal capacity.