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January, 2005 |
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The Turning Point |
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Maximising Organisational
Happiness
BY L P Bhanu Sharma One of my friends is in his late forties and
owns about five mid-sized organisations. He has earned a lot compared to
society standards, has a good family and almost everything a common Nepali
can dream of. If wealth were the measure of success, he is a very successful
person. However, every time I meet him, I see a gloomy face, a face that has
not smiled for a long time. When I ask him the reasons, he says that he is
not satisfied with anything he has achieved so far. Someone else has more
wealth, a better car, a more profitable business, a more beautiful wife and
a better degree compared to him. He starts complaining about the relatively
low morale, inefficiency and low performance levels of his employees,
mounting debt recovery problems and difficulties in settling taxes. This has
left me pondering on what success really is and if any human being can
honestly say that he has achieved what he wanted to. Pursuing success is more like shooting at a
series of moving targets. Every time you hit one target, five more pop up.
The traditional view that only wealth or fame could be regarded as success
has totally changed now, and recent studies show that success needs a
multi-dimensional outlook. During recent years, traditional career paths
suddenly became pointless. Professionals found themselves over-worked and
under-satisfied. Many businesses have started discovering that they were
using the wrong measures to gauge success. Many people still assume that
success depends on putting all your energy into achieving one goal, be it a
single-minded focus on your job or a commitment to pursue some social work.
However, this view is slowly changing now. An article in one of the recent issues of the
Harvard Business Review defines success as the right mix of happiness
(feelings of pleasure or contentment about one’s life), achievement
(accomplishments that compare favourably against similar goals others have
striven for), significance (the sense that you have made a positive impact
on people you care about) and legacy (a way to establish your values or
accomplishments so as to help others find future success). Interestingly,
the surveys show that the primary benchmark of whether a person is
successful or not is whether he is genuinely happy. Only a deep sense of
happiness can bring enduring success. To find out if one is successful, one needs
to look at life in totality, and not just in terms of wealth or other
achievements. Everything we do, in organisations or in the society, has an
impact on our lives and this impact builds up over time. Similarly, our life
patterns and how we perceive life affect the way we work in organisations
and in the society. Individual and organisations are tightly inter-woven in
this way and one affects the performance of the other. An enduring sense of
happiness in life is the goal of each individual and is the best measure of
success. The reason I do something is that I think I will be happy by doing
that particular thing. The moment I find that particular thing not giving me
happiness, I will simply switch over to other competing activities, which I
think will bring me happiness. This way, I will keep changing my preferences
till I perceive that I have hit my target. The most important factor inside an
organisation is the employees. The employees are the ones who create
organisations, run them or destroy them. So, any issue confronting these
employees is the issue concerning organisations and businesses as a whole.
Conduct an organisation study and understand what human beings need and try
to satisfy them on a progressive basis. Latest research on organisational
behaviour suggests that organisations are there to serve human beings—to
maximise their happiness and achievements. Since organisational goals cannot
be different from individual goals, organisations should also have an
objective of maximising its stakeholders’ happiness. This may appears as
an out-of-the-world view, but it becomes obvious when we look at the
relationship between organisations and human beings. In my friend’s case, he has earned a lot of
money and certainly some fame too. It is not that he does not experience
happiness but what is seriously lacking is the sense of enduring happiness,
achievement and significance that is crucial to taste real success. To conclude, success is a dynamic concept and
can be measured through a balance between various factors. Organisations
must work towards maximising its stakeholders’ happiness if they are to
serve the real purposes for which they were created. (Sharma is Chartered Accountant, Management and Financial Consultant, Trainer on Organizational Development and Positive Living) |
Send your feedback to the editor: bizline@mos.com.np |
