Dear Colleagues! This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #339. 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……
Concern for Values regulates the behavior and keeps it within the framework of values. Human values have been around since the beginning of society. These are attributed to religious teachings, social learning, legislations, and other means. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (605 -562 B.C.) is credited with making a charter for societal and human interactive behaviors. In the present day, adopting and propagating a set of values is seen in many organizations, particularly the larger ones. It is good to see the effort to inculcate certain values in the staff. However, it may also be contested on the ground that why does an organization choose few values only and not go by the standard social values; why don’t they simply say, ‘WE FOLLOW ALL HUMAN AND SOCIAL VALUES’? having said that, something may be termed as better than nothing. The issue here is that the values remain written on the walls and stationery of offices; these do not become part of everyday interactions. Holistic Management themes are interrelated and support each other. Concern for People will automatically bring Concern for Values into focus. It is important to focus on values holistically. Another variation in presentation is the title ‘Our Core Values’. It is an effort to segregate some values from the total and present these as ‘our values’. It may probably be this myopic focus that is causing widespread abuse of rights. If Concern for Values is there, it should be there for all values; not just a subset.
Concern for Environment is an attitude for respecting the world we live in. it is not just going green in selective places, which seems to be the prevailing sense. The organizations are going to great lengths to act green, think green, do green and become green. Basically, it means reducing the use of conventional sources of energy and use more renewable energy sources. Using solar energy, wind energy, using more daylight, conserving energy overall, are some examples of this. This is easier to do. Paper is the biggest enemy of environment and photocopiers/ office printers are biggest enemies of paper, but there is no attention towards it. We see so many useless prints and photocopies in every office that it is simply heartbreaking. However, this huge environment-enemy segment remains out of focus. Another important part of environment is water. We are fast depleting freshwater conserves by washing cars, floors, roads, and buildings mercilessly. At the same time, we are actively polluting water sources by releasing contaminated affluent water without first treating it. The treatment is mostly shown on paper, but it is neither done in reality nor is considered necessary. Our usual attitude is to damage a big part of environment for a puny, little financial benefit. Concern for Environment in holistic sense shall mean really taking care of environment as a whole, not just a part.
Concern for Innovation is important for business and people both. The business always benefits from innovative thinking. It could be in the product offering, service offering, customer satisfaction, manufacturing procedures, cost-effectiveness measures or any other area relating to business. Innovation helps the organization to stay fresh, energetic and ahead of competition. Innovation brings new ways of creating customer delight, reducing costs and improving efficiencies. Innovation is good for people because it forces them to keep thinking, within the box or outside the box. Innovation keeps minds agile and helps prevent boredom and burnout. As a society, we tend to shun innovation. Our religious themes, interpreted in a certain way, try to push us back in time. It is selective though; dressed in 1820, sitting in a car of model 2020. This contradiction has been confusing for common people and this is seeping everywhere. Concern for innovation was always integral to holistic management; it has now become mandatory due to ‘Disruption’ factor. During the last twenty years, so much innovative disruption has been done by small startups that it has pulled ground from the feet of hundreds of years old businesses. The disruption continues relentlessly. Another phenomenon is the evolution of support system for startups. Several agencies have come up which are offering technical assistance and funding to those who have promising creative, disruptive, or creative-disruptive ideas. This is a big shot-in-the-arm for startups which are almost always looking for money. But this is a wake-up call/ alarm for conventional businesses to take steps to protect themselves.
Concern for Social Responsibility is wrongly understood and wrongly applied in Pakistan. The Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR is considered akin to Charity here. Most organizations have put up schools for children in less-privileged areas or established free dispensaries for general patients. This is certainly not CSR. Cynics say it is actually an effort to save taxes by diverting funds to such projects. CSR is taking care of the society from where you are drawing resources; it is not just returning but taking care of them and building their future. We see huge contradiction here. Many large companies hire workers on daily wages directly or through labor contractors. These workers remain daily wagers for years and thus remain deprived from benefits such as medical facility, paid leaves, provident fund, EOBI, social security etc. The CSR requires to first take care of these poor workers. The charity has to begin at home. Doing charitable work in other places and not taking care of your own staff is not CSR, it may be something opposite. CSR would motivate the organization to take care of education needs of their staff’s children so that they become better placed in the society. CSR means establishing technical schools for related skills so that the workers become certified skilled workers and eligible for better jobs. The technical schools could offer free education to their children also if they opt for it. It will develop the trade and develop a useful source of adequately qualified personnel. CSR means to provide renewable sources of those ingredients which are taken from nature. These are some general themes of CSR but there are many more which would be specific to industry.
In the next part, we shall sum up the discussion on Holistic Management.
Shall Continue InshaAllah……
