Healthy Respect for Success.
Business management is a science for those who are meticulous and skilled and is is an art for those who are creative and humanistic. It is partially inherited and it is partially acquired or learned. However, those that insist that it is neither they would reach failure much sooner than they could expect.
Therefore, I feel that business failures can never be excused by circumstances because a skilful business leader is basically responsible to adapt the enterprise operations to a variety of changing circumstances.
There is no substitute for fairness, thoroughness, toughness, perseverance and hard work when managing a successful organization or enterprise. If a management perseveres to be fair, tough and intends to put in hard work continuously then the chances are that it will create an atmosphere where a lot more can be accomplished and achieved without politics, where talents can be employed positively and strategically. This is how the capable would always succeed.
No management can ever take salesmanship as either ignoble or an outmoded skill because, let us face it, salesmanship is tactful and persuasive. We all perform this vital task in our daily activities. The person who can find new strategies, workable ideas or useful products and then with the needed imagination and persuasion convince others of their inherent value that individual is destined to perform a noble management task.
Some modern firms do not have a separate Human Resource Department because they do not wish to let the personnel department make any decisions on their behalf and be in charge of managing the most important resource of the enterprise, the people. In fact successful management stays in charge of the people of the entire organization in order to stay close to the morale, control, selection, training and compensation of employees.
These new types of managerial brain feel that process or procedures, although important but not so than the people they employ to work for them. So they see that bureaucracy is now in large supply and that their enterprise is somewhat fading and needs to be restored. They honestly keep a proper balance among the four elements of bureaucracy namely hierarchy, specialization, rules, impersonality, and the four main ingredients of their enterprise, which are incentive, idea, person and process.
Having said the above, no one should think that working in any business is easy, more so in a family business. Being the son or daughter of the boss makes it twice as hard to show and maintain success. It imposes an obligation for performance much higher than other employees do.
I do not think that Parkinson was wrong when he stated that work would expand to fill available time. Generally speaking it is the busiest person who has the time to spare and many managers are amazed by how much could be done by a few and how little can be accomplished when a large number of persons share a management or policy role.
Therefore, in all my managerial accomplishments I made it sure to give the highest respect to success. I felt that anyone could ask relevant questions or suggest alternative ways to do something and they could even look very smart in doing it but I have seen many lousy managers who have made careers by asking irrelevant questions and fouling up good operations. If something is working or is continuously successful, then it is proper and useful to have great respect for those and the managers who are in control.
It is therefore not very wise managerial strategy to be tempering with success stories but always give them healthy respect.