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Achievement orientation is a concern for working well to surpass standard of excellence. Achievement oriented leaders
prefer to put effort and design the process for achievement rather than leaving it to chance, says M R Chandramowly.
It was an August evening of vacation at a green and cool location in south of France. I was dining with Srinivasa, Mr
Desme, his wife and daughter in their spacious garden stretched out from the back of their house. It was a comfortable
cold evening for some time, before small trickles of rain drops sparkled on our table. Mr Desme, our host quickly went in
and switched on the auto- canopy, which started unfolding above us, while we continued to chat. Mr Desme is a quality
manager of a manufacturing multinational. He has spent years working with people of different cultures around the globe.
His colleague Srinivasa is also a quality manger working in France and Bulgaria and we were talking about human
achievement and about how people display sense of achievement globally. I asked Mr Desme, who had spent many years
working in Japan, to differentiate the leadership success of people in Japan, comparing with those in other countries like
France, China or India. What came out from him was more interesting than the French bread, mozzarella cheese or the old
wine that Mr Desme pulled out from his cellar collection. Mr Desme said that a Japanese manager thinks first about the
achievement for his country and then, about the goals of his organisation before finally he links up to what he must
achieve himself. On the contrary, Mr Desme said, it is mostly in the reverse order in other countries. Though he did not
mention India, I felt it could fit well too. We think about ourselves and then consider others around us and very few
expand their achievement orientation band to national and global level.
One of the fascinating phenomena of leadership success is the intense need for achievement. Why only some people
display high need for achievement and majority have l