Different aspects of business, including sales promotion, building mutual trust with prospective buyers on the strength of the customer feedback, effective communications, honouring the organizational ethics, and use of emotional intelligence for handling people, prove the basic point that all business is about human beings&mdash; conducted &lsquo;by and for the people&rsquo;.&nbsp;
Even funding, business diversification, and mergers involve individuals as investors, planners of growth, and negotiators from the two sides.
Successful businesses ultimately owe their gains to a set of persons who took right decisions at the right time and who are knowledgeable about the market and the competitors.
This required them to be information savvy&mdash;a quality that only human beings could have.
In the era of Artificial Intelligence and &lsquo;Machine Learning&rsquo;, it was data analytics that held the key to productivity but it worked within the fundamental principle that results would be dependent on the information &lsquo;fed&rsquo; into the system.
The gift of &lsquo;imagination&rsquo; that only a human mind possessed, could make all the difference between success and failure and could never be overestimated.
Imagination has the base of knowledge but only those who could see &lsquo;the wood behind the trees&rsquo; would visualize the opportunities and risks that lay ahead and put the business on the path of progress by embracing the former and avoiding the latter.
The success of any business is traditionally judged by the extent to which it can sell its product or service but for it to hit a benchmark three basic parameters have to be unfailingly met.
First, promotion must be free of &lsquo;lies&rsquo; though it could accommodate some &lsquo;exaggeration&rsquo; within an &lsquo;ethical&rsquo; limit.
Secondly, there should be an awareness of the need for the business to earn the reputation of a &lsquo;brand&rsquo; so that expansion or diversification could be supported by investors.
And finally, arrangements must exist for an ongoing study and analysis of the competition developing around that business.
All these ingredients of success are heavily dependent on the quality of communications that the leaders and representatives of the organisation had with their clients, customers, and the general public, interpersonal relations that prevailed within the corporate body across the vertical hierarchy and the system the organization has established for garnering information of relevance that is available within and outside of the business entity.
Communications have acquired a new-found significance in the age of online functioning. A good communication in all situations must conform to three requirements&mdash;it should be &lsquo;unambiguous&rsquo; which means it should not permit more than one interpretation, it must be &lsquo;concise&rsquo; within the precept that &lsquo;brevity cannot be there at the cost of clarity&rsquo; and it should follow the &lsquo;need to know&rsquo; principle where mandated.
The reputation and image of a &lsquo;brand&rsquo; depend largely on the consistency of its promise, use of the feedback for improving the product or the service, and the ability of the company to stand up to the competition in terms of pricing.
For all of this to happen the leadership must make knowledge-based decisions using information that is made available to the corporate body by those who studied and analysed the competitive environment. It should, in particular, make adequate use of whatever was there as &lsquo;exclusive&rsquo; information in the possession of the organisation.
The operation of the human factors in business is manifested in the new trend of corporates using the data on customers and their purchasing history and preferences, to reach out to them through personalized communications and keep up their loyalty by offering what they are seeking in particular.
Online follow-up with customers to ascertain their requirements is a useful way of enhancing outreach and ensuring customer retention.
However, there is a sudden spurt in promotional activities on social media platforms and there is an impression in public that some of it is meant to push untested products into the market&mdash;thus reflecting poorly on the ethical side of the business.
It is also true that monetary inducement is being used by business houses to get the better of the competition.
On the strategic front social media has attracted adverse notice for becoming an instrument of &lsquo;proxy war&rsquo; and &lsquo;misinformation campaign&rsquo; that is meant to hurt the security interests of the target country and even bring down a regime.
Its potential in creating a &lsquo;business warfare&rsquo; is certainly to be watched out for in the times to come, because economic security is an essential ingredient of national security, and covert attack on the opponent&rsquo;s economy is now a part of the said &lsquo;proxy war&rsquo;. Digital marketing has come to stay and businesses are already in the thick of using Artificial Intelligence to enhance their output and expand their operations.
For most mortals, life is a continuum of decisions&mdash;big or small&mdash;required to be taken at work or home on a day-to-day basis.
More than half of these involved contacting or communicating with another person.
This person may be a colleague, a boss&mdash;a customer is a &lsquo;boss&rsquo; too&mdash;or someone who served you.
In any human interaction, three things come into play&mdash;attention to the conversation which one will not be able to provide unless one is a good listener, use of &lsquo;emotional intelligence&rsquo; to understand where the other person is coming from and an analytical mind that enables you to evaluate a developing situation.
A person working for you giving a curt reply which is not like things, might lead you to discover that something happening at home has upset him.
The boss-subordinate relationship is subject to a set of do&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;ts for both sides. A senior can &lsquo;task&rsquo; the subordinate but should be available to give legitimate guidance wherever sought by the latter. The boss&rsquo;s interest in the subordinate as a human being should enable the former to have at least a minimal knowledge of the situation the latter faced at home so that the relationship is not lacking in empathy.
In dealing with peers one should come off as a trustworthy person willing to help the colleague without compromising with the organization&rsquo;s ethical norms. If the corporate body has clarity about a fair distribution of credits for good work, interpersonal relations within the organisation will exist on a firm footing. To ensure that this happens is one of the most important tasks for the corporate leadership. A transparent system of credit-sharing enhances productivity.
Since all business is human activity, success there is rooted in a good handling of human relations.
People in business at any level must have a sound understanding of human nature and psychology and must be interested in communicating with people.
They must have the skill of reaching out to the targeted group or individuals by working out a way to do it&mdash;like identifying their needs and preferences and enlisting the help of possible &lsquo;intermediaries&rsquo;.
Business intelligence will help them in all of this by providing the necessary information or data.
The leadership of the business entity should be information-savvy for we are in the Information Age that mandates that success is anchored on knowledge-based decisions.
It looks for information that makes a difference between a decision and a guess and makes special efforts to access it.
The use of cyberspace and social media has added to the importance of competent analysis of credible information available in the public domain for gaining business insights.
Today, businesses have to have coverage of a vast number of knowledge points for making decisions&mdash;ranging from government policies to socio-cultural trends&mdash;and most of these ultimately derive from what some human beings were thinking while heading the political executive of the regime or representing the voice of citizens. We are truly in the midst of a &lsquo;knowledge economy&rsquo; that is human-centric.
(The writer is a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Views are personal)
&mdash;IANS
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Success of any business is judged by its ability to sell a product(s) or service(s)

Successful businesses owe their gains to people who took right decisions at the right time

The Third Eye | All Business is Human Activity

Successful businesses owe their gains to people who took right decisions at the right time

January 19, 2025 | 13:46 IST