In the corporate arena, one of the most outstanding examples was the employee buyout of Exxon in 1992, led by Shaukat Raza Mirza to create a brand new company called Engro. Not only was the task highly complex, it was made more so by the fact it was taking place in Pakistan. Most challenging of all, it required the cash investment of every single employee, from the top executives to the operators on the plant floor in Dharki. It required Shaukat Raza Mirza to have the technical expertise and know-how, the leadership and credibility to win the confidence of every single employee to the degree that they would be willing to invest a significant amount of personal funds in the buyout. That was the vision he had and through the process of transforming the company he achieved this extraordinary feat. It is for this reason that he was asked several years later by the government of Pakistan to lead PSO. Today, Engro is one of the largest, most valuable and best run companies in Pakistan.
Pakistan as a country needs many more such people: we need to cultivate and nurture change and growth in every little corner and at every level in this country. We do have many such people, but the challenge is that we do not recognise them as assets to the country, and lesser yet, we do not promote the idea of growth and change.
Transformation in the corporate arena is the process of unleashing massive growth and evolution on several parallels: people, processes, systems, paradigms, and leadership. This translates into a higher quality work ethic, faster and more efficient processes, and finally, exponentially higher quality results. The synergistic effect of fine-tuning multiple factors creates a geometric outcome. It is not simply increasing profits - it is the redesign of the organism.
The mechanisms that make this possible, however, are a far more complex and technical matter. This is the difference between transformation and change. Change is a largely random and undirected process: you can have good change, you can have bad change, and you can have accidental change. Transformation is the idea of change, but with the goals and desired outcomes defined; it's change with a purpose. Every group, organisation or procedure requires individual treatments through this process and every course of action lays out the steps according to the goals and needs of the people in question.
When current passes through an electric grid, before it comes to us it goes through a device called a transformer. The transformer has only one function: it takes an alternating (AC) current and turns it into a direct (DC) current, which is used then to run electronic devices. The process by which it does this is at once simple and complicated. It is based on the simple idea that running two streams of current side by side will create a magnetic field. This field then applies a force that converts a current from an alternate to direct (or vice versa). Like most scientific discoveries it finally came down to a very simple equation, which required someone with the intelligence to see it. The idea is simple, but building a transformer is a tricky business; one needs good copper, induction coils, and other components to make a machine that works.
When one looks at an organisation, or group of people, that requires change, it is helpful to view them in a similar way. Any organisation or group of people is essentially a collection of potentials. No matter how well an organisation is performing, there are always untapped reserves that are inaccessible because the mechanisms don't exist to exploit them. However, when an organisation is not performing, meeting its financial or other targets, then what becomes apparent is that the mechanisms that are supposed to bring out this potential are defunct, and evolved mechanisms are needed to address the new needs that have now arisen.
In Pakistan, the idea of tapping into the inner potential of people is only slowly catching on, but Pakistan has no lack of visionaries. I believe with the advent and spread of information technology, and particularly the internet, enabling the communication needs of this diverse and populous country, we can see a bright future where Pakistan and its people live up to their incredible potential.
(The writer is the Chief Transformation Officer at Wateen Telecom)