Excellence is essential

Published: The Hindu
On: October 10, 2012
At: Chennai, Hyderabad

To read The Hindu online, click here.

Top minds of various industries speak on how to identify people with zeal to excel and share tips on achieving excellence:

So, how would one identify the employees who can make things happen? Rohit Gadia, CEO, CapitalVia Global Research Limited says, “Excellence can be drawn when work is done with dedication, determination and self-confidence. When an individual says that he will ‘try’ in the initial stages of the task, it indicates that he doesn’t believe in himself. However, when an individual initiates the task stating that he’ll ‘do’ it, he means business. Such people do not bother about results and certainly deliver the best. They leave a profound impact and that makes them different from others.”

Tony Mira, Group CEO and founder Ajuba Solutions, considers honesty, integrity and ability to work in teams as factors that govern the achievement of excellence. He says, “Someone with ego and feelings that he or she can do it alone is not the right person.

No one can achieve excellence without the support and participation of others in the company. Also, the person has to have essential skills, expertise and experience which will help in giving the best to each and every task that is undertaken.”

Delving deeper into the traits that distinguish a zealous employee from others, Subhro Bhaduri, Executive Vice President and Head – Human Resources, Kotak Mahindra Bank says, “Individuals who have a zeal for excelling constantly look out for opportunities to learn. They don’t focus on turf issues but look at collaborating with others to get the work done. Individuals who want to excel exhibit an inclination towards action, impact and also think and remain sensitive to the impact their actions would create in the short and long term.”

Inspiring employees to pursue excellence and encouraging them to keep up their pursuit are constant challenges for managements that are passionate about excellence. Mr. Gadia says, “In CapitalVia, we encourage our employees to achieve excellence by respecting their thoughts, making them a part of decision making, boosting their knowledge, appreciating their efforts, rewarding their achievements, delegating authority and responsibilities and promoting them as per their competencies”.

Mr. Mira explains the virtues of active listening to inspire excellence. He believes that it is more important to listen than to talk. He says, “When employees know that you care and value their opinions, they will in turn want to do more and achieve excellence. Excellence is a team process where we will have to work our way with the team to excellence. People by nature like to be recognised and honoured. It is very important to recognise the efforts made by the teams to keep them motivated to deliver a constantly improvised performance.”

Subhro Bhaduri believes that the first step towards inspiring excellence is to build a workplace, which encourages everyone to express their views and opinions openly. He adds, “It is important to create an environment where employees can experiment, innovate, make mistakes and focus on the learning that comes out of initiatives. Here, it is also important to provide regular and timely feedback on areas of improvement. Lastly, we expect our leaders to walk the talk and exhibit personal excellence before expecting their colleagues or team mates to strive for the same.”

Achieving excellence involves relentless pursuit of one’s passion. It encompasses hard work and intense practice. Sharing some tips, K.K Rajesh, Director – Sales and Marketing, Decorative Paints, Akzo Nobel India says, “The starting point to achieving excellence is to breed a great sense of desire ‘to excel’ in oneself. Without this desire, there can be no delivery of the objective. This desire should be followed up by sharply focussed actions aimed at achieving excellence.

Identifying these actions requires a lot of self-work and guidance. While pursuing these actions, one must be ruthlessly focussed and committed hundred per cent. One must be sure that the path chosen is the right one.” Here, he also makes an important differentiation, “Becoming proficient in a field is to excel, but achieving excellence is about the ability to do the same thing at the same level over and over again so that it becomes a habit.”

Tony Mira believes that people must be honest with themselves and with the organisation. He says, “They should constantly question themselves and find new and innovative ways to do things better.

One must be a team player and bring the enthusiasm to the organisation that others will want to follow and achieve excellence. Immense passion and commitment to the work and the organisation is indeed very important.

Finally, the ability to push in hard work and perform under pressure always proves to be helpful.”

Excellence is essential

Published: The Hindu
On: October 03, 2012
At: Hyderabad, Chennai

To read it online, click here.

Today, excellence is a virtue that is considered an essential ingredient at work. What is excellence? Why is it so important? Are some people born with special gifts and talents that lead to excellence? Can it be inspired? Experts from industry share their insights about excellence in this two-part article.

Mr. Rohit Gadia, CEO, CapitalVia Global Research Limited says, “When a person delivers a result, which is more than expected, it leads to excellence. To deliver excellence, a strong determination must be generated in one’s mind to perform a task, since there is no substitute for hard work with smart efforts.” He further adds, “Time is changing extremely fast, technology is developing rapidly and generation is becoming advanced. Hence, there is no place for average, good and better. Everyone needs excellence since the best outcomes can be drawn with best made efforts.”

Tony Mira, Group CEO and founder Ajuba Solutions says, “In business, excellence means being conscious of your business surroundings and having the readiness to change accordingly. Change is needed to improvise on services and provide the best to customers. Any business that does not focus on excellence will find itself obsolete.” Emphasising on excellence, he says, “In today's business environment, competition is fearless. The rules have changed; organisations are not competing with competitors in their own country, but the world. Unless they demonstrate to customers that they can be faster, better and cheaper than their competition, organisations cannot survive. Excellence is the only way to achieve such results. Only through an emphasis on excellence, businesses can have more efficient operations while providing better services and results to their clients.”

Subhro Bhaduri, Executive Vice President and Head – Human Resources, Kotak Mahindra Bank says, “Excellence is the inherent desire and endeavour of an individual or a team to be aware of opportunities to improve and constantly learn and stretch to make things fundamentally better keeping in mind the impact in the short and long term. Hence, excellence is not an end goal but an ongoing opportunity to do things in a better and more efficient and inclusive manner. We are moving towards an environment of knowledge super specialisation. To achieve excellence, individuals need to be knowledgeable about the job they do and also endeavour to keep themselves updated of the latest in their fields.”

Are there any inherent skills and traits to attain excellence? K.K. Rajesh Director – Sales and Marketing, Decorative Paints, Akzo Nobel India explains, “The starting point to achieving excellence is to breed a great sense of desire to excel in oneself. This desire should then be followed up with focused actions, complete commitment and a total conviction that the path chosen is the right one. Having become proficient in the area to excel, the gap between excelling and achieving excellence is about the ability to do the same thing at the same level over and over again so that it becomes a habit.”

Subhro Bhaduri considers three primary skills that every individual should exhibit to attain excellence; building in-depth working knowledge about the job and always looking at doing an end-to-end job, holding a belief that he or she can make a difference and constantly being aware of opportunities to make things better.

Excellence can set yourself and your organisation apart from the mediocre. It can lead to higher profits and higher employee morale. Are there any factors that inspire excellence? Tony Mira says, “An individual in any business, first and foremost needs to have a fire in the belly that constantly wants to excel. To continue to survive in business, individuals must compete against themselves. Unless you compete against yourself you cannot compete against your competition.”

Subhro Bhaduri, says, “The rapidly changing environment and the availability of copious information all around us makes it imperative for us to chase excellence. So, I don’t think that in the new information age, there is a requirement of any external or internal stimulus to inspire an individual to chase for excellence, but excellence is the new norm of this age. It should become a part of life for everyone if they don’t want to be left behind.”

As K.K. Rajesh sums it up, “Excellence is about the highest quality of proficiency in a chosen field, and requires a combination of will power, smart planning, ruthless execution and the humility to make it a habit. While the reason chosen to achieve excellence may be external (competition, winning in sports, and so on), a big driver for excellence comes from within. While excellence may manifest itself physically, it originates from the heart and the mind, always!”

Let us see how to recognise people with eagerness to excel and gather some tips on achieving excellence, in the concluding part of this article.