Guest talk by Zafar Aziz Osmani CEO Excelerate

Mr. Zafar Aziz Osmani currently working as CEO Excelerate (Pvt.) Ltd. joined the Leadership class at IoBM, for a guest speaker session. He is a well renowned, seasoned business professional and carries vast management and leadership experience spanning over thirty years. In this session he spoke on “Why leaders Fail” He has served prominent organizations in senior management and leadership capacities in the Human Resources, Organization Development,
Marketing and Project Management functions so that he served us best knowledge what mistake actually leader does so that the fail to achieve target.

The session starts with the Question “What is a Job?” the answer to this question is Adding Value. Adding value is the goal of all of us in a business. We want to add value, we want our work to be important, to have a purpose. The enhancement that is added to a product in a process is the added value. When it comes to career advancement, the biggest question has to do with your value to the organization. What are you doing to contribute to the bottom line? Remember, as an employee, you’re an investment. Your company pays you a salary and they expect a return. The more value you contribute, the better the investment and the more likely they are to continue investing in the future and potentially invest in a bigger way. That means raises, promotions and job security for you.

Your actions in the workplace have an impact, whether you realize it or not. The more you can create measurable, positive, powerful outcomes through your actions, the more people will sit up and take notice. The more they’ll want to keep you happy and acknowledge you for your efforts. While your job description may appear to be a list of tasks, those tasks are designed to achieve specific, valuable outcomes for the company. How you do them influences the amount of value the company receives and thus, the level of value you’re contributing and your overall worth to the organization.

Creating value is what we as business people/entrepreneurs do when we start our businesses. Creating means creation, not addition. Starting from scratch. Making something new where there was nothing before. But it is not just the owners that create value. What did YOU and your team do so that something positive would happen? What you did that resulted in something positive happening also added or created value. It’s your job as an innovation leader to identify what drives your customers, and to create offerings around those drivers. Pay attention to exactly what customers find compelling. Deliver that compelling offering by finding more, better, or new value, emergent in the coming together of buyer and seller.

Now a days leaders have been facing some challenges that may directly hit them in their goals, In future, leader would lack the skills that lead from a place of influence rather than authority. When you only use your authority your position as boss, or VP, or director those around you will often only do what they are required to do with employees not an efficient use of time. However, when you lead from a position of influence, using your relationships, knowledge and people will do their tasks to the best of their ability. Leading and managing change effectively is a fairly global challenge and in organization up to 70% of all change efforts fail! But it doesn’t have to be this way. Communicating and operating across teams and across the organization is the difference to fail the leaders and working across the organization, breaking silos down in order to work as a larger team and network to really utilize the resources of the organization.

Leaders tend to think that they have or need to act like they have all the answers, what the reality is that they don't have the answers, and they shouldn't act like it, Listening is not a strong suit for many new leaders, and too often they jump in quickly, rather than listening, learning and building on what they see. It is pretty easy to understand that a leader preaches "work comes first" who is last-in and first-out of the office, sows seeds that reap resentment. Leaders who fail to keep their word are not considered trustworthy by their teams, so they fail because of reliability.

Leaders who reject every suggestion for improving processes and performance alienate their team. Without any input on what they do or how it is done, people often disengage, which damages their satisfaction, productivity, and enhances turnover. Leaders are more concerned with how they look to their boss rather than their team are unpopular with their followers. These tend to be credit-hogging, under-the-bus throwing leaders whose greatest fear is being outshone by a subordinate so they fail because they don’t want to change or adapt new things.

Leadership is a great way to build team morale, develop a sense of purpose and show people they have a stake in the company’s future. Think about how leader can create an innovative culture, where people are trusted to try new things and are rewarded for coming up with ideas and improved ways of working.