An Enduring Business versus a Successful Business -- What are the Misconceptions?

At the beginning of this month, Rebecca Morgan published an interesting book for manufacturers entitled Manufacturing Mastery: The Path to Building Successful and Enduring Manufacturing Businesses. This book is a dynamic guide for manufacturing leaders who want to develop a realistic, progressive, and responsive thinking process that enables success. It provides a business operating system framework that is the foundation for connecting the many pieces of a manufacturing business into an effective, profitable operation. Rebecca walks through the elements, relationships, capabilities, and mutability 21st-century manufacturing requires. 

When I spoke with Rebecca recently, I asked her: "What are leaders’ biggest misconceptions about an enduring business versus a successful business?" Here is her complete answer:

Most of us consider a business successful if it is profitable. And if it’s profitable over several years, it must be enduring. But endurance isn’t simply a run of profitable years. It is the result of intention and commitment.

Businesses that endure focus on a mission that matters, not on building a bigger today. Perhaps that distinction is why so few manufacturing businesses stand the test of time.

Of course, an enduring business earns profits to fund its future but distinguishes accounting profits from strategic profits. They focus not on maximizing profits, but on leveraging profits in alignment with core values to accomplish the mission. Earning, saving, and investing strategic profits facilitate forever. Maximizing today’s profits does not.

Endurance requires growth. Not the financial growth that many view as success. Growth for the leader and every employee. Relationship growth with all five constituencies. Growth in value provided. Growth of capabilities, of thinking, and sometimes into a more evolved mission. 

Successful companies are profitable today; businesses that last are continually perceived as integral to a healthy future. That confidence does not reflect technical capabilities, but rather attitude, exploration, and sharing, and true partnering to develop expertise in anticipating and addressing opportunities. 

A significant distinction is the commitment to serve the mission by always preparing the organization for passing the company baton to the next generation of leaders. “Don’t drop the baton” is very different thinking from “if it hits the ground, we’ll just run a different race.” 

That commitment is an eternal challenge for the enduring business. It relies on developing strong leaders with an unwavering focus on mission and core values, never forgetting that baton. It can all be ended by one poorly prepared or chosen leader not quickly addressed. The mission is bigger than any one person.

What do you think of Rebecca's perspective? Does your company leverage profits in alignment with core values?

Are Evolving Stakeholder Expectations Affecting Your Business, Its Products, and Its Leadership?

In January, Raj Aseervatham published a thought-provoking book entitled Leading Tomorrow: How Effective Leaders Change Paradigms, Build Responsible Brands, and Transform Employees, which addresses the evolving expectations of the stakeholders -- such as, customers, investors, society, governments, and employees -- regarding businesses and their products and how leadership must respond.  These stakeholders are increasingly making choices about if or how they support businesses – through the purchase of their products and services, shareholdings and financing, regulatory approvals, and even experiences working for them – based on not just what a business does, but how it does it.

Raj's book considers how the emerging generation of leaders must change paradigms and transform their employees to do more than just operate a business. It examines how to effect culture shifts that are necessary to innovate businesses so that they simultaneously meet market needs while meeting stakeholder expectations on concerns as varied as ethical business conduct, labor practices, climate change, responsible use of diminishing natural resources, and contribution to socio-economic challenges in their market catchments.

When I spoke with Raj this month, I asked him: "How are stakeholder expectations changing regarding supporting businesses? What paradigms must leaders change to meet these new expectations?" 

Here is his complete answer:

The three most significant support groups for successful businesses are customers, investors, and employees. These stakeholder groups are part of a larger ecosystem; our increasingly interconnected, increasingly knowledgeable society, and the communities of which we are a part. 

Societal awareness of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) problems that society faces grows daily. As the world’s population increases, these problems grow and exacerbate each other. Climate change, ecological breakdown, water contamination, air pollution, pandemics, corruption, infractions of human rights in the supply chain, gender and cultural discrimination, and many others take a compounding toll on society. 

Unsurprisingly, an increasing proportion of stakeholders demand to know what businesses are doing to diminish these problems. They disassociate from those businesses that worsen the problems and migrate to better-performing competitors. Their insights improve continually. Greenwashing and PR are more easily seen through. 

As this awareness extends across and deepens within society, customers, investors and employees are making more informed choices about who they will buy from, who they will invest in, and who they will purposefully work for. These trends amplify as older generations give way to younger generations and new values supersede old ones. Commodity markets, money markets, and human resource markets adapt to these inexorable trends. 

Business leaders are seeing these ESG issues as the new frontier of strategic management. Responsible businesses are more likely to sustainably prosper. 

Leaders must now understand the myriad issues and own the most important ones in the context of their business stakeholders and business strategy. Then they must authentically lead their employees to meet or exceed rapidly changing stakeholder expectations of responsible business practice. Growing and harnessing such societally attuned business cultures will increasingly define successful business leaders. 

Like any journey of authentic and transformative leadership, the first steps are taken within the leader. This book provides illumination to guide those first critical steps to leading tomorrow.

What do you think of Raj's perspective? Have you seen a shift in your customers' and stakeholders' expectations? What steps are you taking to address these new expectations? 

What Is Missing from the Current Leadership Mindset?

This past June, Payal Nanjiani, published a thought-provoking book entitled Success Is Within: The 21 Ways for Achieving Results, Prosperity, and Fulfillment by Changing Your Leadership Mindset, which argues that success depends on changing one’s mindset in key ways. She essentially encourages business professionals to "mind the mind." 

I spoke with Payal this month and asked her, "What Is missing from the current leadership mindset?" Here is her complete response:

We are in an age where companies struggle to compete in today’s fast-paced, complex global economy where information about leadership, success, and business is right at the tip of our fingers. Resources are bountiful and communication is swift. Despite all of this, when we look around us, we only see a handful of people that reach the top of success in corporations and businesses. These are the people who achieve their goals and progress ahead. They lead fulfilled career lives. They not only survive, but they thrive in this challenging global economy.

The reason for this gap between the “successful few” and the “unsuccessful many” is not a matter of lack of passion, hard work, or training. Rather, the gap exists because the “unsuccessful many” have not applied the wisdom of the right techniques to achieve success. We all possess this wisdom, but we seldom tap into the right insight at the right time and the right place in our work-life. Tapping into the success within our selves makes all the difference in our end results. Wisdom must guide our thinking, our karma (actions), and our mindset. 

"Success Is Within" is my mantra. My new book presents 21 ways to activate this mantra, to achieve the success that is already within our selves. We must all claim the power of this mantra so that we activate wisdom. We must condition our minds to take control over our karmas (actions) so that we achieve our desired results. 

During a time when businesses and brands are being disrupted with great speed, our mindset is the only element that will help us navigate and define our place in a complex corporate world. Mindset is that hidden aspect within ourselves that shows up in our results. If we tap into it, then it gives us an edge over others. I believe that we are all destined to win regardless of our circumstances. We can all become the “successful few."

Whatever comes and goes in our professional lives, we can take strength from within ourselves, trust ourselves, and achieve unstoppable success. Once we take this strength, we achieve what we want and deserve: we achieve results, prosperity, and fulfillment. We become leaders who have changed our mindsets to move from becoming the “unsuccessful many” to become the “successful few.”

What do you think about Payal's ideas on attuning our minds with specific actions?  Do you agree that "success comes from external factors" is a prevailing myth?