Shikha Sharma

I attribute my success to consistency and bringing my A-game every day. The sum of that quality of work over the months and years becomes A-plus quality. You've got to show up every day and put in your best every day, and then automatically the entire year or month will become very good quality, high quality at work. Having that consistency of quality of work every day will eventually lead to becoming an A-class excellent professional. There are no shortcuts. Beyond consistency, I believe success comes from the quality of work that you do, which eventually leads to the next project. Once you get in the industry, it's the quality of work that you do that leads to the next opportunity. It's also about connections with people and the companies you're working with or associated with that leads you to the next project in your life.

The best career advice I've received is about consistency. If you bring in your A-game every day, the sum of that quality of work over the months and the years becomes A-plus quality. You've got to show up every day and put in your best every day, and then automatically the entire year or the month will become very good quality, high quality at work. Having that consistency of quality of work every day will eventually lead to becoming an A-class excellent professional. No shortcuts, basically.

My advice to young professionals entering the industry is that we can be each other's voice, each other's support, and create a collaborative environment. We have to always remember that in today's global world, if one thing goes wrong, it impacts all of us across different companies and professions at the same time. We can share the knowledge and experience that each one of us has to come up with better industry solutions, not just company solutions or work solutions, but by building a community that helps everyone. At the end of the day, the world is going through the same issues and each company gets impacted. If we have professionals across the industry, whether it's our clients or suppliers, we all share the same goal. If we can just collaborate about a problem, I'm sure we can come up with better solutions together.

The biggest challenge in my role is maintaining agility in a very dynamic environment. I work with cosmetics, and no two days are the same, which is why I bring consistency to work while the challenges keep changing. The biggest challenge is maintaining prices while all the variables impacting costs are fluctuating. You cannot be rigid in this environment. You have to think outside the box and be innovative in how you drive solutions. If the problem is not the same every day, solutions cannot be the same either. You have to have an open mindset and listen to your peers, colleagues, competitors, and suppliers. The solution will come through collaboration. We all work in a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous), so it's changing every day, whether it's the geopolitics situation, the cost situation, or the logistics situation. Being in supply chain, these are the specific challenges I face daily.

I personally believe that personal and professional values cannot be different. If I am a person of high integrity, I have to bring that to my professional life as well, and they have to blend in. If I am a humanitarian personally, I have to bring that aspect to work as well with my colleagues and peers. As a leader who has led large teams for the past 15 years, integrity and ethics are at the core of everything I do. I always keep people in mind because at the end of the day, people make companies. As long as we take care of our people and lead them with empathy and compassion while keeping business objectives and KPIs in place, I believe goals can be achieved. When you take the team on board and share the goals with them, you create a common shared objective and connect everyone to that goal. The same goes at home as well. If you have a budget at home and you have to meet it, you have to have your child on board, your husband on board, and everybody needs to know that we have a target to achieve. I believe it has to be exactly the same in both areas of life. For me, integrity and ethics, and having people at the center of all decision making, are the most important values.