LETTERS: Organisations must keep up with changes and strive to ensure sustainability.
Produce more with fewer resources than before by reducing wastage, be it manpower, money or materials.
FIRST, an organisation needs an effective leader who is visionary. Former United States president John F. Kennedy was one such leader. Riled up by the fact that Russians had put Yuri Gagarin in space in 1961, he challenged Americans by setting a vision that by the end of that decade, an American would be the first man on the moon. Sure enough, Neil Armstrong stepped out of his lunar landing module in 1969 and said: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
A leader must always be hungry for new ideas and bring about changes to achieve them. Steve Jobs, the late Apple co-founder, in a commencement speech at Stanford University, the US, in 2005, advised students to "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
SECOND, an organisation must provide a conducive working environment.
Last year, American TV host Ellen DeGeneres was accused of producing her shows amid a toxic work environment. This year, a former worker of Tesla claimed that he had to endure racial abuse, while Amazon workers complained of its toxic work culture.
So managers need to show a caring attitude. Make known to employees that they are part of the family. Appreciate, compliment and recognise employees for their contributions.
Nothing can be achieved alone. There is no success without teamwork. Former US basketball player Michael Jordan said: "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships."
Stress that success could not have been possible without employees' contributions. Employees must feel important. Otherwise, future cooperation will be a problem.
THIRD, capitalise on employees' strength. Tap their potential and talent, and choose the right people for the right job. Former Arsenal football manager Arsène Wenger spotted talent in Frenchman Thierry Henry as a striker who was then playing as a winger.
Under Wenger's coaching, Henry went on to become one of the greatest strikers in the history of the English Premier League.
FOURTH, review past strategies, successful as well as non-successful ones, to find out the reasons for success and failure, and take corrective measures.
Jim Collins, in his 2009 book How the Mighty Fall, argues: "The signature of the truly great versus the merely successful is not the absence of difficulty, but the ability to come back from setbacks, even cataclysmic catastrophes, stronger than before."
The fall of Kodak is a classic case of failure in reading the tea leaves. Contrast this with Fuji, which went on to adopt the digital photography that Kodak had invented in 1976 but discarded because it was besotted with its film business.
In 1942, Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter warned us about the gale of creative destruction.
There is no fixed style of management to achieve excellence. Strategies set today may not be applicable tomorrow. Renew and change whenever it is necessary. A leader who has vision, confidence and determination will find success. However, success today does not guarantee success tomorrow.
Excellence must be achieved on the back of advances in technology and the current needs of the situation.
DR LEELA ANTHONY
Deputy dean Faculty of Medicine, AIMST University
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times