At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring to our community some of the finest stories from the leadership world. As part of this endeavour, we invited Ashish Gaur for an exclusive interview with us. Ashish is a Proven Leader, Consultant, Domain Expert, Trainer and Approved Partner. He is the Managing Director at Normes Decodees. Let’s learn more about his inspiring journey, his background and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Ashish:
Talk us through your background and your journey, please;
My professional journey so far has helped me cross-pollinate ideas across a wide variety of industry sectors, including engineering, food sector, packaging, logistics, hospitality, retail and consumer products like home and personal care products.
After my education from HBTU at Kanpur, I joined the production, quality and research segment in various industries and within 5 years got the opportunity to work with the world’s leading certification bodies like Intertek, Bureau Veritas and SGS.
These opportunities helped me span a wide variety of management system domains from strategy to operations.”
Currently, I am leading the Normes Decodees which is a consulting, training and auditing firm working with both local and global clients and growing at a rapid pace.
How did you discover your passion?
Initially I was unaware of this management system related field but my colleagues and management always believed in me and provided me with varied assignments where I started the activities from Zero.
Over the last 17 years of my working with management systems, I have taken up numerous projects in almost 33 countries. In due course of time, these initiatives helped me identify the areas of my core passion – training and auditing.”
It was essentially about arriving at a just to explore what really resonated with my personality and life choices.
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives you?
Working in the most ethical manner with full dedication to fulfill all our commitments is key to our success.
We do not believe in short cuts and support our clients in a way which is good for their business and growth in the long term. This is how we earn the respect, support and trust of our clients including even those delegates who join us for 1-day courses. Our clients should get the full value of their money and then only we can grow with them.
We at Normes Decodees believe in sharing Joy and generating Trust for great motivation and so the results. I believe all individuals and industries are capable of change. It is important to understand people are shaped by their experiences and circumstances.”
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
My life is influenced by different personnel, my father and his achievements were my inspiration and told me the value of hard work and perseverance, my wife supported me to take bold decisions and belief of my seniors, colleagues and client in my ability and their continued appreciation of my work motivated me to excel further.
By working with global leaders of this field as a team helped me in becoming a good strategist.
Please share with us a unique challenge you faced in your early career?
The initial 9 years of my career were really very challenging for me. If I evaluate myself, I may fall into a category of people who are very polite but at the same time, they are firm on their decisions especially when it comes to working ethics and self-respect etc.
Initially, I found seniors who wanted me to focus on office politics, reporting unnecessary things about others to them but fortunately or unfortunately I remained focused on my task and therefore they were not happy with me and never gave me better opportunities.
However, I kept on working my management skills, communication skills, technical skills and joined a comparatively smaller organization with less salary as in that organization I was able to get involved in all kinds of activities to run an organization be it accounts, marketing, manufacturing, liasioning, technology transfer etc. and I tested myself and got more confidence which I was able to use in the latter part of my career.”
When I joined MNCs, it was a very different setup but luckily, I was able to adjust quickly and could get support from colleagues and seniors including foreign nationals due to my improved skills and capability to adapt quickly.
They offered my work against different standards and I never let them down and so this continued and I learned so many standards, worked with personnel with different cultures and ways, knew the do‘s and don’ts and became part of the global centre of excellence team.
This experience also built a good range of cultural sensitivity in me. In my present organization, I got immense support from my clients and training delegates. I believe that today when I am somewhat successful, I am still learning and this will not stop.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
My motivation comes from the timely and successful completion of tasks on hand because I enjoy it. The motivation to work hard, improve my skills and stay disciplined comes from the desire to master my skill to keep learning something new, and my genuine enjoyment for my purpose. I try to set boundaries which take practice so that I don’t get bogged down by my client’s problems.
I go into the details of all the projects managed by my team, discuss various concerns that they may have about the projects, and try to suggest some practical solutions using my experience and acquired knowledge. I support the team wherever they feel the need for the same while managing proper delegation of work to them with authority to make decisions.”
I also read a lot- not only the standards but experiences and success stories of others work by people I admire with uplifting material that reminds me of the power we all have within us.
Last but not least, when I see my clients having a moment and I get the privilege of witnessing their breakthrough, it’s the most powerful stimulant I can imagine.
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
Look at your field of working not just as a job function. Identify the requirements of the profession, focus on your strength, continuously try to learn and improve your skills. You should be able to identify the key skills and personality traits required to succeed in your profession.
Most of the professionals do not work on their skills, do not try to learn new things and so after 5-7 years they find stagnation and find it hard to switch roles after that. Career decisions require a long view of what comes after and a good understanding of personal skills and ambitions. Make informed choices do not hesitate from taking calculated risks and build a professional life that empowers your lifestyle.
There is so much to be shared, but this conversation limits how much I can communicate on this platform. Students and young professionals regularly reach out to me on LinkedIn with their specific queries.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
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