The Spirit of Entrepreneurship

During my 21 years of professional career, I have interacted with countless entrepreneurs, in my opinion, Quest is the key word that describes an entrepreneur. Whereas, challenging their ability to keep excelling is the key skill. Highly successful entrepreneurs I met were those who regularly re-evaluated their performance and whenever required changed their strategies to achieve their ultimate vision.

In their book, The Spirit of Entrepreneurship, Nandram, Sharda S., Samsom, Karel J. say that;
"the human side of entrepreneurship venturing, in our opinion an underexposed subject both in terms of serious research as well as descriptive writing”

They quoted Jerry Engels and David Charron of UC Berkeley who said that
“entrepreneurship is a team sport”

Isn’t that true? Yes I guess would be the answer. An entrepreneur achieves his vision through a game plan, and the major successes factor in the winning a game depends on the effectiveness and co-ordination of team players!

Please share your opinion: hammadlinks@gmail.com

SWOT – A great tool for Strategic Planning

Changing dynamics of personal and professional environment keep us on our toes all the time. In this situation, our futuristic vision may remain intact; but strategies for continued growth require a constant watch and alignment.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are four variables used for developing a Risk : Opportunity matrix. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors and opportunities and threats are external factors. A genuine analysis of these factors helps in developing a realistic strategic plan.

One major lesson that I have drawn from various readings and experience is that
if we learn to convert our weaknesses in to strengths and threats in to opportunities, our careers and businesses can see an exponential growth.

I had an excellent interaction with Mr Tariq Ikram yesterday at a workshop I attended in which a session on “The Role of the Board in Setting Strategy” was facilitated with Mr Ikram. I have known him for many years when he was the chief of Reckitt Benckiser. Most recently he served as Minister of State and Chairman of the Export Promotion Bureau of Pakistan. He is currently the President of Textile Institute of Pakistan (www.tip.edu.pk) (detailed CV is available at: http://www.tcd.ie/iiis/documents/documents/Introduction%20to%20Mr%20Tariq%20Ikram%20May(24)2006%20(2).pdf)I was so astonished to learn that Mr Ikram also loves SWOT and has been using this tool for developing strategic objectives.

I conducted a workshop sometime ago to cover SWOT; a video clip (in Urdu language) is available on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gajngiwou5k. And was also picked-up by http://sciencestage.com/v/14513/swot-analysis.html
Looking forward to your views at: hammadlinks@gmail.com

Leadership at its best!

Leadership at its best!


If we google “leadership”, we will fined enormous documents, videos, articles and books on this subject.

Some suggest that leadership entails visualizing the goal and effectively communicating that goal. Few would attribute it with the art of getting people to move together toward a goal.

Some say that the biggest difference between managers and leaders is the way they motivate the people who work or follow them, and this sets the tone for most other aspects of what they do.

Interestingly most writers and researchers agree that leaders have some unique qualities that make them “LEADERS”. Common qualities are (not in any particular order):

- Vision
- Risk taking
- Integrity
- Motivation
- Love
- Passion
- Energy
- Sharing

In my opinion most of these qualities human experience is at the age between 3-10 years.

How many toddlers do you see with low integrity?
They are highly charged and motivated.
They express love and expect the same.
At younger age one is ready to take any risk.
Passion to learn and to excel is at the highest level.

In my opinion, Leaders are created at a young age.

What is your opinion? Share at hammadlinks@gmail.com