Dian Gomes’ recipe for good management
Dian Gomes who came to dominate the business landscape of the apparel industry of Sri Lanka a few decades ago, this week recalled how things had changed over the years with new technological innovation and other factors seeping into business modules.
“The corporate world has changed completely during the past 17 years when I was the CIMA President. If you look at the IPhones and other technology, these have completely transformed the way we think. Within the next 10 years everything is going to change further and how our kids are going to look at things and how they manage people and so forth,” he said at a business forum organized by the Chartered Institute Management Accountants (CIMA) Colombo held at the CIMA auditorium recently.
He was of the view that when people move up the corporate ladder what becomes important is all about competency skills and leadership of managing other people. “You can go to top universities in the world and learn theory but if you cannot manage people at your organisation you become a dead person.”
He said several big apparel organisationa that he ran had a workforce of more than 6500 in each of them. “I had to go into villages and transform myself to practice leadership skills. I set up plants in Kenya, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Indonesia including in Sri Lanka where variables differ from one another.”
He said the five practices that he learnt from his Harvard Guru were modelling the way, leadership to philosophy by following through on promises and commitment, challenging the process, enabling others to take decisions. “In Asian societies we do not challenge others. We have become a nation of followers.”
Mr. Gomes being the president of the Sri Lanka Boxing Association related his own experience in running a boxing association and several top companies where principles, practices, or the theory remain the same. He said the first lesson one learns is humility and humbleness. He recalled while as a boxer, he was floored by an unheard boxer in a ring fight in 1976 when he was only 17 years old. Thereafter he hung up his gloves.
He also remembered an incident where a Corporal in the army after winning a gold medal at an international athletic meet aboard tied the same medal on Dian’s neck… this was because Dian was known for his social work in the villagers. He said to succeed in life one must have a positive attitude and should not be discouraged by initial failures in life. “I always tell people not to give up.”
Asoka Peiris, former Group Chief Executive Officer, Singer Group Sri Lanka, said one has to formulate a business strategy in the direction where a company is heading. “We formulate a strategy and then implement it. Business strategy involves constant interaction between the internal factors of the organisation such as the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and the external factors such as the political, social and economic factors.”
Speaking about marketing mobile phones in 1990 he said it ran into technical difficulties where the whole mobile venture was a flop which they gave up in the early 2000’s. Three years later they started selling mobile phones and again it was a flop. Having returned from Hong Kong in the 2010 he realized that mobile phone market was 53 per cent bigger than the refrigerator market. “This gave me the justification to tell everyone that mobile phones will catch up here like in Hong Kong. Thereafter we bought mobile phones from companies and started selling it.”
“We formulate a strategy and then implement it. Business strategy involves constant interaction between the internal factors of the organisation such as the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and the external factors such as the political, social and economic factors.”