Why "Pwede na" is equally important

Maybe some of you have heard of the saying "Huwag 'pwede na', dapat 'pwede pa'." "Pwede na" roughly translates to English as "that will do" or "that is enough" while "Pwede pa" translates to "We can still do more." It is used to admonish people not to settle for mediocrity (pwede na) but to always strive to exert more effort (pwede pa) to improve quality.

While that may be true in relation to the pursuit of quality, we should not just summarily dismiss the "pwede na" attitude but instead reframe it and give it a new context that will prove that it is also a worthy phrase to look into.

In the Davidic Growth Paradigm, we have the T.H.R.I.V.E. initiatives which are the things that a business or an organization seeking transformative growth should look into. T.H.R.I.V.E. points to six transformation initiatives that should be pursued and these are:

1. T-ranscend quality targets - We all know the importance of quality management in a business. They lead to a more marketable position because they enhance your products and company operations. Quality management may help your company's brand and reputation, secure it against threats, boost efficiency, increase profits, and conserve materials. Innovation and transformative digitalization can help you further improve how you are currently achieving your quality goals and transcend them.
2. H-arness resources for optimal impact - The activity of allocating and managing resources in the most cost-effective manner is known as resource optimization. Resources may be both human (employees) and electronic (software, computers) in many organizations, including IT companies and digital agencies. Maximizing productivity by cutting labor and other costs is the goal of resource optimization. Productivity is a simple word that means "amount of output in a firm compared to amount of input." On the surface, it is a straightforward notion. In reality, productivity improvement means accomplishing more with the same amount of input. Even more beneficial, transformative digitalization may help a business maximize efficiency while reducing costs. Harnessing technologies for more efficient implementation can help you achieve more from your resource optimization efforts. You can also better serve your customers and boost performance by harnessing your resources for optimal impact.
3. R-e-enginner business processes - BPR (business process reengineering) is a management strategy that aims to improve how work is done in order to boost organizational efficiency. BPR aims to assist corporations become more competitive by identifying and removing unneeded or inefficient steps in business processes, before redesigning them to boost efficiency. BPR is a process of identifying ways to streamline and make an organization's current business processes more efficient. It involves a comprehensive examination of the organization's current operations. Automation of processes and the elimination of human labor are common outcomes of this strategy. The redesign of workflows and procedures, as well as the reorganization of an organization's structure, may all be part of BPR. Sometimes, it may be necessary to re-engineer business processes first as part of a company's overall digital transformation strategy.
4. I-nvigorate company culture - Digital transformation and obtaining success from it will not be achieved by pushing employees to optimize their performance levels while preventing them from enjoying the proper work-life balance. This will just result in employee burnout. Following on the heels of the Great Resignation experience, companies in the US have been experiencing another debilitating phenomenon called 'quiet quitting'. It refers to the growing practice of employees to do no more work than one is contractually bound to perform. Sometimes, the practice is even doing no work at all while being present in their place of employment. Research have shown that the main reason for quiet quitting is a desire to spend more time on personal activities. Transformative digitalization can help mitigate quiet quitting by harnessing the power of technology to equip, enable, and empower employees to do their work well and make them aim for their best without resulting in burnout, and while achieving a work-life balance at the same time.
5. V-alidate business model - Sometimes, a company's way of creating value for its target market may diminish in its effectiveness. This will result in the business not being able to generate profit as much as before. When this happens, it is time for the business to re-evaluate its business model. There are several factors that may cause a business' current business model to lose its effectiveness. Changes in market conditions is one. Better business offerings from competitors that challenge the company's business model may be another. Transformative digitalization may point to the need to look at a business' current business model and reinvent itself or innovate to become more competitive.
6. E-xceed customer expectations - Of course, customers being the lifeblood of any business, introducing innovations to ensure customer loyalty and trust becomes of paramount importance. In my previous article 'Understanding the C.L.I.E.N.T. Journey', I mentioned that nowadays, it is not just enough to satisfy customer wants and needs. We need to continuously innovate to make sure that we are enabling delightful experiences for our customers.

Let us focus on the first two.

The phrase "pwede pa" aptly captures the drive not just to meet quality targets but to exceed or transcend it. It points to an attitude or a mindset where people should not be complacent or satisfied with achieving a certian level of quality but to always be open to further improve their service, product, system, process, etc.

But what we might be missing when we remove "pwede na" from our mentality because we think only in terms of its bad connotation, is that it can be an attitude of working with whatever meager resources we may have and pushing ourselves to produce more in spite of constraints. "Pwede na" is about recognizing that we may have been dealt a bad hand, but we creatively and resourcefully work around the limitations imposed on us to go beyond expectations. "Pwede na" is about the H in T.H.R.I.V.E - harnessing resources for optimal impact.

"Pwede na" and "pwede pa" can work hand in hand to bring us transformative growth in our businesses and in our organizations.

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At The Davidic Growth Paradigm, we apply a framework that helps businesses identify their problems but more importantly, guides them into focusing on those problems that when solved will give them the right impact. Our proprietary tool provides a data-informed method of analyzing which of the T.H.R.I.V.E. initiatives they should focus on. By doing so, we are able to craft a transformative roadmap that can immediately give them results on their first year of implementation.

If you want to dive into the possibilities of digital transformation for your business but don't know where to start, feel free to chat me up here on LinkedIn or better still schedule a more extensive conversation through an online call. Check out the comments for a link to my calendar and find a schedule that fits your availability.

*Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay

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