The power of people - the success secret of any company or corporation

     The success of any company/corporation or organization depends upon its quality of man power and effective management of its people or employees. Bill Gates says that his wealth goes out every evening and come again in the next morning. But, the top management of any company will be concentrating only on few vital appointments, and the other routine appointments are done through its HR departments after consulting with the concerned regional head. It’s the procedure followed by many companies and the practice may differ from company to company. But, it can be said straight away that unless a company could get the best talent and able to retain them, it can never be successful. The success of any company depends upon its talented and committed manpower. So, the HR department plays a very vital role in getting the right talent or facilitating the appointment of a right person. The officials of the company, who are involved in the process of recruitment, should not have any ego or jealousy and they must be in a position to recognise the talent immediately and wherever it is. Many companies concentrate on retention or as to whether a person works for the company for few years if he is recruited. I don't think that it is a good strategy and the best strategy is to select the best talent and trying to retain him at any cost. The success of many big entrepreneurs depended on their ability to use talent, recognise talent and retain ultimately.

     It is only with this quality of recognising the right talent, many big companies or corporations were born. Bill Gates could not have become very successful without his emphasis on talent retention and management and examples are plenty.

     Infosys could become a successful company and every one knows about its inception and as to how the young and talented guys have started the company with hope. So, success will not come in this corporate world unless the talent is recognised, managed and retained.

     The top management, the HR department and the young entrepreneurs should lay due focus on recruitment and talent retention.   

     I have seen some cases where talent is ignored literally and as how the HR department processes the recruitment.  

     To emphasize the importance of people and talented people, I would like to show the management style of Lee Iacocca. Everybody in the corporate world would know about Lee Iacocca. When he was with Ford, Ford was the 2nd largest Motor Company in USA. When Lee had to leave Ford, Chrysler was at 10th place and it was literally bankrupt. When Lee has joined Chrysler, he has rebuilt the company and he could take Chrysler to 3rd position from 10th and it was a big success story. Lee Iacocca had focused on recruiting talented people, giving liberty to the right people, retaining the talented people and giving due credit and recognition to the talent.

I quote the initial 6 paragraphs of Chapter XV - Building the Team - of Lee Iacocca's biography as under:

"In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits. People come first. Unless you have got a good team, you can't do much with the other two.

When I came to Chrysler, I brought along my notebooks from Ford, where I had tracked the careers of several hundred Ford executives. After I was fired, I had prepared a detailed list of everything I wanted to remove from my office. Those black notebooks were clearly mine, but it could be argued that they belonged to the company. I didn't want to take any chances. Henry and I were not on speaking terms, so I brought the list to Bill Ford and he gave me his permission to take the books home.

I went back to those notebooks as soon as I learned that Chrysler was in urgent need of first-rate financial people. A few months earlier, as president of Ford, I had asked J.Edward Lundy, our top finance man, for a report on the best financial talent in the company. Lundy had been one of the original Whiz Kinds, and he, as much as anyone else, was responsible for Ford's excellent financial system. On the surface, my request was perfectly routine. But, in retrospect I wonder if I knew on some unconscious level that I might soon be in a position where this information would be valuable. As it turned out, Lundy's list was a godsend.

I opened the notebooks and started reading down the names. Lundy had ranked everybody A, B, or C. There were about twenty names on the A list, but I wasn't sure I wanted any of them. I respected Lundy, but his priorities and mine were different. The A list consisted of first-rate bean counters. What I was looking for was a little more than that.

Looking through the B list, I noticed the name of Gerald Greewald. He was only forty-four, but he had already accomplished a great deal, I had met Greenwald on a number of occasions and I liked him. I remembered that he wa always trying to get out of finance. Once I had helped him expand his range of skills by sending him over to Paris to take over Richier, a farm and construction equipment company we had bought. The company failed, but that wasn't Greenwald's fault. It was simply a bad operation, and eventually we had to sell it.

Next we had sent Greenwald to Ford of Venezuela. He was an aggressive manager, to the point where Ford's market share in Venezuela for both cars and trucks was higher than any other Ford subsidiary. At the time, gas in Venezuela was fourteen cents a gallon, and I have always kidded Jerry that under those conditions he couldn't miss. In France he had drawn the bad end of the stick. In Venezuela he got the golden end. But the truth is that he showed real business savvy in both jobs - he was obviously more than jut a bean counter."