"Many organizations strongly believe that the customer is God. However, running a company with this attitude is risky because when you alienate employees there is no one left to satisfy that God."
Dr. James Nitit Mah Tweet
Dr. James Nitit Mah founded Intellegend Inc. after gaining extensive experience in marketing and managing for global companies. He aimed to help businesses prosper by treating people as the most valuable resource. Most investment firms consider capital to be the most valuable resource.
Dr. Mah is a successful entrepreneur and has numerous academic degrees. He is one of the few individuals who have made significant global contributions in the fields of diabetes control, eyesight enhancement, and overall body transformation. He has received U.S. patents for products in all three areas in a little more than a year — a significant achievement.
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Table of Contents
Let’s start with a brief introduction first. Introduce yourself to our readers.
Dr. James Nitit Mah: My name is Dr. James Nitit Mah. I am an entrepreneur and also a global investor. I have acquired several US and international patents for wellness technology. Also, my organization supports, invests, and contributes to start-ups, corporate, and modern entrepreneurs to achieve their goals.
The support is to provide them with significant strategic resources to manifest their extraordinary business growth that ultimately enhances industrialization and innovation.
Our audience is interested to know about how you got started in the first place. Did you always want to become a CEO or was it something you were led to? Our readers would love to know your story!
Dr. James Nitit Mah: The word “CEO” means nothing if it has produced no outputs nor value for a job. People, in general, take the literal meaning of “CEO” as an abbreviation of “Chief Executive Officer,” but not I. This word alone means nothing, and it can be a simple word when it only addresses an owner of the company.
As such, I personally define myself as a CEO but believe that any job position that doesn’t create excellent value is useless and meaningless despite the person being the leader of executives. I believe that my early career has led me to be a true CEO at Intellegend– one that provides value to the world via my job. As a younger person, and via my education, this is always what I hoped to achieve.
“Selfmade” is a myth. We all received help, no doubt you love to show appreciation to those who supported you when the going got tough, who has been your most important professional inspiration?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: Many people inspire me to keep pursuing my work, but my most inspiring person is Leonardo da Vinci. It is uncommon to have a great man like him who excels in both science and arts and modestly puts much of his effort into creating masterpieces that have stunned the world.
This kind of person is sporadic nowadays. His excellence in science and arts is the vital ingredient to craft a work that is efficient but alluring, presentable, and approachable. It is undeniable that science and arts are the necessary characteristics of executives in modern times.
How did your journey lead you to become a CEO? What difficulties did you face along the way and what did you learn from them?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: 3 Things that I find somewhat difficult in growing are:
1. Finding innovation to support the strategy of competition in this ever-changing world and unpredictable era. I also counted this one in as an essential skill to thrive and sustain in the business world.
2. Recruiting proficient teams and people. It has become clear that the changing trend in the global society and particular attitudes among people from different generations has stressed the challenge of managing diversity in working together. It starts early on from attracting the right man on the job at the right time, keeping these talents, and successfully developing them to support the driving force for your business. Human resource management has been a never-ending classic problem for many companies through the ages.
3. The value creation, the profitability, and the stakeholder value-added. We all know so well that stakeholders’ benefits should be taken into consideration. Stakeholders are not only limited to customers or suppliers but the whole business ecosystem. In our fast-changing world, all stakeholders are seeking fair benefits even in a critical time. A company will rely on an experienced and talented CEO who can manage and navigate through a crisis. Otherwise, the business ecosystem will never last long enough to reach the goal.
Tell us about your company. What does your business do and what are your responsibilities as a CEO?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: Our organization is a company that contributes, supports, and invests in the high potential business, start-up, and entrepreneur who wants to have the experienced and resourceful business partner and mentor. We grant them the support to grow faster and leap to success in a competitive environment and work together to business victory. In just under a year, we have achieved patents for products in diabetes control, eyesight enhancement, and overall body transformation.
What does CEO stand for? Beyond the dictionary definition, how would you define it?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: From my standpoint, CEO as the Chief Executive Officer is an overused word that anyone can use, regardless of their actual capabilities or performance. In my opinion, it does not matter what you call any job title in your company, but top management skills matter the most if you want to make your business thrive, expand, and reach a top place in the business world.
The word “Executive” is not that important, and I prefer to go with the title “Chief Excellence Office” instead of “Chief Executive Officer” to remind myself and my team that we are here to achieve marvelous things even without holding the ultimate executive position.
When you first became a CEO, how was it different from what you expected? What surprised you?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: Yes, it was different from what I had read about and heard. Today’s CEO is not only “an executive leader.” He or she must lead as the chief of all the excellent value that the company provides to everyone in the organization and its stakeholders.
There are many schools of thought as to what a CEO’s core roles and responsibilities are. Based on your experience, what are the main things a CEO should focus on? Explain and please share examples or stories to illustrate your vision.
Dr. James Nitit Mah: There are 3 things to put focus on:
- Surviving and Sustainability.
Sustainability is the ability to make your business survive through the fierce competition and the fast-changing world, and it must be prioritized. Without good sustainable business practices, stop thinking about any further steps because sooner or later, a business will not survive. So the first thing to do is to consider a sustainability strategy for your business.
- Growth of the Company.
After surviving and sustaining your business in the competitive market, business growth planning is needed. Although your business has secured its place, lacking business growth implementation could land you vulnerabilities and possibly permanently shut you down. If fully equipped with well-planned growth strategies, your company will be thriving and expanding steadily.
- Positive Value of Exit Plan for Organization.
All businesses indeed have their life cycle. A particular CEO tenure can be a significant factor that influences the growth and development of a company. Good CEOs will invent their exit plan by cultivating and appointing potential successors. And also, do not overlook an exit plan strategy for the organization designed to benefit all stakeholders as well.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: One of the difficult decisions I had to make was finding the ideal balance between customer benefits and work advantages for my employees. Many organizations strongly believe that the customer is God. However, running a company with this attitude is risky because when you alienate employees there is no one left to satisfy that God.
On the other hand, your company will never be successful if you please, employees, but overlook your customers. This company may become full of loyal employees who are unable to nurture customers and corporate growth. It is a must to manage and maintain a healthy balance between customer benefits and employee advantages in order to get mutual benefits for everyone in your business ecosystem.
How would you define success? Does it mean generating a certain amount of wealth, gaining a certain level of popularity, or helping a certain number of people?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: I choose to define the meaning of “Success” as “Prosperity” because being “Rich” means only that one has a great deal of money but may not have the ability or vision to secure the funds for a successful enterprise.
“Wealth” also often means being in a healthy financial situation, but without further business development, you can easily fall behind other wealthy individuals.
But “Prosperity” means to elevate capabilities and value continuously as well as always to yield substantial benefits for many people and be able to share advanced, long-term perks for society and the public sector. That is why I equate success with the word “prosperity.”
Some leadership skills are innate while others can be learned. What leadership skills do you possess innately and what skills have you cultivated over the years as a CEO?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: In my opinion, there are 5 key leadership skills:
- Communication Skills –
Communication skills involve listening, reading, writing, and speaking. A leader who lacks communication skills cannot convey his brilliant business ideas to the world. I possessed this skill early on in my life.
- Creativity Skills –
It is the ability to think over something in a new way. As the world has changed drastically and become even more unpredictable, a company surely needs creativity skills to adapt to recent changes, continue its success, and create something new or unusual. I had to cultivate this skill as I grew my business.
- Resilience Skills –
Leaders should nurture resilience skills in their employees to toughen them to handle unforeseen challenges. I have learned to become more resilient.
- Endurance Skills –
The endurance skill increases the strength of leaders to survive in the long run. I always say: “Success is not a victory, but success is prosperity that we can retain and sustain.” So, leaders with endurance deficits will not be able to meet their goals. I have grown my endurance skills.
- Integrity Skills –
The last skill that I have always trained my people not to lose is integrity. No matter how smart you are, having zero integrity will hamper your life. The more adept and distinguished you become, the more honesty and integrity you must have.
How did your role as a CEO help your business overcome challenges caused by the pandemic? Explain with practical examples.
Dr. James Nitit Mah: My business has not been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic since I had already cultivated leaders and successors. Further, authority and responsibility have been delegated to them. I always place importance on distributing decent and mutual benefits among every team member and the stakeholders. And our company’s ability to aid businesses must be strong at all times, whether or not a pandemic is raging. So you could say my preparation as a CEO has helped us endure.
All these factors account for my seamless business operation during the pandemic. It turns out that my business maintained its growth and has continued to find opportunities. And especially, this year, we obtained several significant patents for wellness technology as well.
Do you have any advice for aspiring CEOs and future leaders? What advice would you give a CEO that is just starting out on their journey?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: My advice is:
- Don’t have too much pride in yourself.
- Have integrity, be kind and respect people.
- Gain crucial knowledge and don’t become addicted to social engagements.
- Give back to society and share with unfortunate people.
- Pass on valuable knowledge and cultivate successors
Thank you for sharing some of your knowledge with our readers! They would also like to know, what is one skill that you’ve always wanted to acquire but never really could?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: If I ask myself about what areas I would like to improve? Possibly, resilience and visionary skills, because these two skills help to increase strategic foresight and ensure corporate survival.
Before we finish things off, we have one final question for you. If you wrote a book about your life today, what would the title be?
Dr. James Nitit Mah: The book should be called: “Knowledge Is Useless if You Can’t Initiate by Thought.”
I believe that today we are overwhelmed with knowledge and information thanks to rapidly advancing technology. Without crucial thinking and using the proper thought structure, any wisdom you earn will be useless, since data itself won’t provide growth.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Dr. James Nitit Mah for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Dr. James Nitit Mah or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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