Best policies to manage organizations unveiled

By Surekha GALAGODA

Intuition, love and affection, empowerment and trust are the best policies to manage an organisation was the opinion of all Managing Directors and CEO’s who spoke at the Business Leaders Forum.

Joint Managing Director and Brand Strategist, Dilith Jayaweera sharing his thoughts at the Forum in the session of the IPM conference titled 'The evolving New HR agenda' said that “Love and affection was the best way to manage individuals. It is freely available, therefore, use it for the betterment of the organisation and the country.”

He said “ HR is foreign to me and my organisation and we don’t have an HR department.

We have 3900 people and I call them my group.

We shouldn’t take everything foreign and put it into practise. We believe that organisations are there to share everything with one another.

Our organisation is built on love, affection and trust and we have no hierarchical structure We started with nothing and have risen to what we are today since we don’t have an HR department”.

Jayaweera said that in the Sri Lankan context, some of the foreign theories cannot be justified.

“ HR happens in an organic manner at our organisations and not in an artificial manner and the philosophies are based on Buddhism.”

Managing Director CEO Lanka Harness Company (Pvt ) Ltd, Rohan Pallewatta said that his organisation was built on a trust culture and since he was of the view that human beings should not be monitored, his company doesn’t have a supervisory grade.

The core business of the company is manufacturing impact sensors for automobile air bags and seat belts and his customers include the best automobile manufacturing companies.

The quality requirement of the products manufactured by the company are 1 ppm which means only a single defect will be tolerated for a million produced..

This achievement is unique since it is the first time a Sri Lankan company has entered the international market with a 1 ppm quality product.

He said that he employs around 250 and all of them have visited Japan on training. “ I never get them to sign a document but before they leave for Japan, I get them to my office and look into their eyes and say I trust that you’ll will return and they have kept their word. This is intuitive knowledge and it has worked well for me ,”said Pallewatta. “In western countries, everything is based on logical knowledge while in the East it is based on intuitive knowledge.”

Director MJF Group, Dilhan Fernando said “I am marketer and I don't have qualifications in Marketing. Marketing for me is not being seated in a Board room but visiting super markets and other places where the product is sold to understand the consumer, which is a must to survive.”

He said “From the tea plucker to the sales director, everybody in the organisation has one vision and looking after the needs of staffers is a priority in our company. Everybody working in the organisation, from my father to the labourer interact closely with each other, which has made our brand well-known around the globe, as everyone works with a passion”.

Director Janashakthi Insurance Prakash Schaffter said that the Company recruits people without skills and personality and moulds them investing a lot of money.

He said “Our Company was like a Club and we have many gatherings and outings as we want our people to feel that coming to work is an experience.

There is a lot of communication. We maintain discipline by making each individual understand how their job impacts on the others, which is giving good results”. He was of the view that if an employee is delivering the goods, the shackles should be taken away. We empower our staff to manage themselves.”