The Holistic Manager Part IV – Blog Post #338 by Asrar Qureshi

Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #338. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here.

Disclaimer. The discussion and opinions expressed are entirely my own. These are based on my experience, observations and learning over long years. These may not be entirely unique. However, any resemblance is unintended and coincidental. If a material is taken from a particular source, it is properly referred to that source.

Continued from Previous……

Holistic Management, in my view, places itself on the following tenets.

• Concern for Achievement
• Concern for People
• Concern for Values
• Concern for Environment
• Concern for Innovation
• Concern for Social Responsibility

I have deliberately not used any adjectives or superlatives because genuine concern is enough concern; high or more or serious is not needed. Secondly, the sequence of placement does not indicate order of priority. Holistic Management considers all factors together; the allocation of time and resources varies as per need. Thirdly, Holistic Management applies to all functions; not just Marketing and Sales, although I may be referring to business more often. Current thinking in any case dictates that all functions of an organization should understand their connection and responsibility towards organizational performance. This is an important shift from previous view of Marketing alone being responsible for performance.

Concern for Achievement drives the Holistic Manager to deploy all resources towards achievement of desired objectives/ agreed goals. The Holistic Manager understands that achievement is the lifeline for all that will follow later. All enterprises are for business and profit. Even not-for-profit organizations need to earn profit to keep surviving and thriving; the differences are that the profit does not go to shareholders and profit is not the primary reason for existence. The goals description has also become more elaborate and multidimensional. In Pharma business, we used to have simple value targets, then the focus shifted to unit wise achievement, then to area-wise achievement, then to customer-wise performance, and then to indication-wise performance. When MBO (Management By Objectives) was introduced, it was 90% weight for sales achievement and 10% for product knowledge, reporting etc. it kept changing every year, adding more weight to other parameters. Now KPIs are in vogue and these are more detailed and cover larger spectrum of work elements. Concern for Achievement is not just blind, ruthless quest for performance; it is achievement regulated by other concerns.

Concern for People drives the Holistic Manager to take the people along the same trajectory as that of achievement. Growth of people is of similar value as growth of business, sometimes even more. Growth of business in limited to a certain time frame while growth of people is an overarching, longer lasting and deeply impacting factor for business at all times. Concern for People includes various sub-factors.

• Engagement factor creates psychological, emotional and physical attachment to the team and to organization at large. Engagement builds on satisfaction of physical, financial, social and developmental needs. In the Employee Engagement Survey Questionnaire developed by Gallup, 6 out of 12 questions relate to developmental needs which shows the seriousness and emphasis in the minds of employees. The Questionnaire appears at the end of this post.
• Recognition factor takes care of emotional need. Recognition is done in multiple ways; financial reward, status reward, appreciation, acknowledgment, and trust are some. At all stages of career, recognition is required because no one is completely immune to the good feeling it creates. True that some people are more dependent than others on recognition to sustain, but it is a stimulating factor for everyone.
• Inclusivity factor satisfies security need. Knowing that we belong to the group closely increases sense of belonging and sense of security. Exclusivity triggers opposite sentiments. If a manager includes some and excludes some, or the team members do so and are not stopped, the excluded ones will quickly lose confidence, they may feel threatened, lose confidence, lose performance and may leave early.
• Fairness is a critical factor in team building. As is commonly said, our world has been damaged by unfairness more than anything else. Same is true for team. Fairness does not mean equal treatment; it means following the principle of justice. Justice brings fairness automatically, and like justice, fairness should not only be there, it should also be seen to be there. Relationships, flattery, bribery and palm-greasing kill the fairness in body and spirit but is gaining ground in organizations of all kinds and sizes. Doing house chores of bosses, bringing seasonal fruits, presenting gifts on phony pretexts are not uncommon. The bosses are forcibly inclined due to such practices; some actively solicit these things. Even when the team members start such a practice, it should be immediately and firmly stopped by the team leader.
• Level Play It is part of fairness but is more than that. Providing a level playing field means providing comparable potential, comparable resources, comparable coaching, and comparable support. In summary, it is giving equal opportunity to all team members. The team members should not need to get ahead and grab opportunities; these should be distributed fairly. If plum opportunities go to blue-eyed subordinates, the others get black-eye in performance.

Shall Continue InshaAllah……

*Taken from Gallup