QUALITY CONSCIENCE – BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY

Dad is supposed to present a paper in a conference on QUALITY CONSCIOUSNESS FOR QUALITY PRODUCTION... The flip-side of being a journalism student:

In today’s world of means and ends, they say it’s the intention that matters but it’s the deed that counts. We’ve all become modernistic heroes who in order to achieve a good end result abandon righteousness when it comes to the means. In such a context, re-establishing the classical hero is important i.e. one who would take only the ideal path to reach the ideal goals.


Goal Selection

The above statements stand on the pre-supposition that one’s intention is honest i.e. there are no ‘hidden agendas’ while selecting one’s goal. But such is not the case, for if it were so, philanthropy wouldn’t have existed. Unfortunately today, Philanthropy is a way of the extremely rich to relieve their conscience. Coming back to Goal Selection, one should aim at the greater good of mankind over selfish interests. Or better still; make the greater good of mankind one’s selfish interest. For instance, I go around stating the purpose of my existence as the strife for a Utopian World. Why? There is a lot that needs to change. And why should that bother me? I can’t see the suffering of mankind. Or simply put, I’m happy when I make others happy.

From the above example we come to another important point. Set short-term goals in order to achieve the long-term i.e. first try and change yourself before you set out to change the world. As every individual in the institution becomes accountable towards the institution, the institution’s working also becomes transparent and hence adds the attribution of legitimacy to the overall system.

No doubt you’ve heard all of this jargon time and again. But ask yourselves “What do I want from life?” Surprisingly it’s the most difficult question to answer. Ironical, isn’t it, that we don’t know our purpose of existence.


Goal Execution

Once we’ve chosen our goals, it’s important that we stick to them religiously. The time-table you made yesterday demands from you that you should be studying Economics and not sitting and making another time-table. If we abandon our goals somewhere in the middle they would become lost causes, wasted investments.

This is the stage where the majority of the minority of us that boasts of having a goal loses out. We lack determination, run away from hard work, and are insincere performers. We seek the easier way out, look for short-cuts to success when there are none. We might be excellent at theorizing, but we remain poor practitioners. India’s systemic failure is purely due to lack of implementation and lack of application. Principally we are very strong.
Another very important factor here is failure. Failure is always temporary and success is never permanent. Failure should hence not deter us but act as an immunization. The point is, let’s not just aim towards utopian goals but let’s also make the journey worthwhile. There is so much scope for creativity and novelty of thought yet we continue to imitate, steal from others efforts, plagiarise. Not only does that count as an unethical practice but it also leads to lower levels of satisfaction. I do not imply that we should work in isolation and not learn from our predecessors; only we should acknowledge their achievements and our short-comings before we add or subtract to or from either.

What can we do to increase our levels of satisfaction from our work? If you ask me, it’s all in the mind. We all have a different level of priority towards work against responsibility. A responsibility has to be met, work can wait. No wonder then that work always seems more tedious than responsibility. This is to a certain extent due to our being more accountable towards our responsibilities than towards our work. If we work responsibly or rather consider work as our responsibility, not only would work seem lighter it would also be more satisfying. Let’s pledge to treat work as worship.


Goal Achievement, Goal Maintenance and Goal Improvement

Once we have achieved our goals by fair means we should share its benefits with others. We shouldn’t become greedier, for the more we have, the more difficult it becomes to handle, and the easier it becomes to lose it all. The more we distribute, the longer it sustains. Also value additions are possible only if we make our successes available to the masses.

I hope we all agree that in business, human being is himself no more than a product. Why not then treat this resource objectively and conceptualise a QUALITY CONSCIENCE – a code of conduct which every individual implements on himself and monitors himself with. This in turn will develop an overall sense of ‘Quality Consciousness’. Quality In = Quality Out. Voila! Your Quality Product is ready! Sounds like an advertisement, doesn’t it?

Fantastic as all this may sound, it is as real as you and me; for it is you and me who make it real. The idea of zero-defect might seem unattainable but let’s at least start moving towards zero…
Amen!