Define Success

When deciding to write this topic, my questions are whether a success is an incident or a series of incidents and so how can we apply to our lives and contribute to society?

It also came to my mind that:

1. Will this definition invite controversy? Yes, i believe so.
2. Will there be a better definition for success than mine? Yes, definitely
3. Than, why still many people trying to define it? For Individual’s inspiration or for a cause or for a business purpose or for whatever reason.

So what, my mind iterates for a while, if I don’t contribute my thoughts, how am I going know how whether my idea is acceptable or not? And also this additional contribution will be another definition for people to refer and compare too!

Definition

I think no matter how I define, the definition of success will be somewhat correct and somewhat wrong.  Here the definition goes …

“Success is when producing of the creative values within the given constraints”

Notice that:

1. “When”
   1. a specific time is used to when we talk about whether a status is successful or not;
   2. another meaning of “when” is the just-in-time of the occurrence.
2. “Producing of the creative values”
   1. the values need to be creative to bring genuine impact to the world;
   2. a net gain (value created exceeded expenses incurred from such creation) can more scientifically to determine the extend of success;
   3. the scope the net gain covers however depend how individual perceive it to be.
3. “Given constraints”
   1. it is contradicting, but the truth prevail, creativity needs constraints to show its worthiness;
   2. a dream runs on non-constraint platform but cannot produce any real value, consider worthless at that point;
   3. while a creation’s wilderness moves are restricted in the reality, it is when it evolves and survives within the reality boundary, can we consider it as a creation.

Questioning the Definition

The above definition can refer as an incident or a series of incident, it can be an individual and/or a business life journey.  Does it makes sense? Let’s see the compare below:

“Success can be as simple as getting a 50% mark in a history test for a child who never achieve 20% mark in the whole life VS a great scientist who invented a time machine where it’s benefits outweighed its side effects”.

Now more questions pour in:

1. Is the success means to achieve something?
2. Can success means happiness?
3. Is money equal to success?
4. Is healthy means success?
5. Being a president means success?
6. A great scientist means success?
7. A high profile spiritual leader means success?
8. Having extrasensory perception (ESP) is successful or monstrous?
9. and so on

I advocates all workings on value creation through normal course of actions are the attempts to build success.  Whether for a business or for an individual, keeping everything internally and externally in harmony and able to create values is consider success.  As per the definition, the “Given constraints” and “When” lay your conditions internally and externally, and one need to produce values exceeded the expenses incurred within thoes conditions to make successes.

Therefore having any of the above alone may consider having a success of an incident.  However we need to discount the possibilities of these success incidents set on the expenses of others or cause harm to the humanity and the environment.  Simply achieving things without concerning about humility, environment, and timeliness leads to disastrous inevitable.

When the warm light falls upon our cold body, we find a sense of secure and comfort.  The same warm light falls upon our heaty and sweaty body, we are both frustrated and aggressive.

Therefore the just-in-time occurrence is essential.

We had covered also everything about the above definition.  I welcome constructive criticisms and supports, feel free to post your comments.

What’s Next

Is there something call sustaining a success?  This becomes even harder to define, with more parameters to work on and priorities set by people.

1. How long can the success result sustains?
2. What if the subsequent success result backfire?
3. Will the same action leads to the same success?

We shall look at this in the next post.

Working on Business Strategies

I just went to search on the Internet for a quick summary of different types of business strategies.  To my surprise, I was caught in the scene of chaotic school of thoughts!

1. Some people view key strategies are bounded by business levels: Corporate strategies; Business strategies; Operation strategies

2. Some people view strategies as functional strategies: HR strategies, Sales strategies, Marketing Strategies, Financial strategies, Operation strategies, and so on

3. Some people went into breaking down the strategies further to like price scheming, diversification …

I advocate integrated approach when viewing the business strategies.  If we view the strategies separately, it is less meaningful useful and there is a danger of developing imbalance development within the organization, which is quite destructive.

Here is how it goes from an integrated approach to handle the business strategies:

I only see 3 positioning strategies … growth, contraction, and maintenance.  Any position strategy will impact all business levels, business functions, and sub-strategies.

For example, let’s go for a growth strategy!  What can we expect from here?

1. A strategic positioning to move the company from current to the future.  This may be to increase the market share by 30% more in the existing segment, 50% more in a new segment, but a reduction or maybe an exit of the sunset market.  (Notice the growth position strategy can includes contraction and maintenance strategies too!)
2. Marketing strategy may run in phases and integrated manner to handle all the 3 different market segments to produce synergistic marketing campaign.  A mix of pricing scheming coupled with product differentiations and co-branding with the recent acquired subsidiary …
3. Disinvestment through selling one of the existing business unit to the operation management team for a management-buy-out.  We can engaged them as outsource partner to boost the company’s strengths and at the same time to manage the sunset market.
4. Business restructure to streamline certain departments while the HR’s strategy is to increase headcount in another departments.
5. and so on …

All levels of the business are covered, across all functions are integrated and different time lines need to insert into the plans.  This is what I call business strategies.

That’s how I work with my clients and normally I’ll produce the business blueprint and roadmap as the output of the strategic planning process.

How can you develop the most appropriate strategy for your organization?  Below are some thoughts flash by:

1. Be very creative;
2. Do not view things in isolation manner;
3. Need to be realistic;
4. Sound methodology in developing strategies;
5. Able to mobilize your team to put on their thinking caps;
6. Have a very clear mind with clarity in business direction;
7. Capable to view thing from holistic viewpoint;
8. Able to align all strategies into a focus point to deliver significant successful result; and
9. Communicate well.

This is the end of this short post, cheers.  Below is something to confuse you a little.