One woman’s journey to workplace success

It may take a village to run a business, but a lone woman from a village to rebuild one while raising a family and running a household.

When 52-year old Mamoona Siraj had the ill-fortune of losing her husband to an incurable disease, she had not the slightest inkling of what laid ahead. Her only guiding compass was her instinct to fend for herself and her family, much of which she was going to do recalling all the organisational roles she’d already been performing as a housewife.

Mamoona’s husband had been terminally ill for a while. The doctor had given him a six-month deadline, but his time came much sooner than anyone expected. “It was 2006 when he left us a month-and-a-half after the doctor’s final word. We were shocked, devastated and unprepared. But I had no time to think or second guess anything. It was do or die,” she told.

Mamoona, who hails from a small village in Abbottabad area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said that although she’d always been fairly home-bound much of her married life, her husband would always keep her in the loop about his work life and finances. “Though in retrospect, I had never realised that all those conversations would one day become the guidebook for the rest of my life.”

However, regardless of what the widow could recall, this was an uncharted terrain for her to navigate. It took her some three-years to find her bearings and finally come to the decision of buying the failing retail gas station her husband had partnered for before his death. “It was a tough decision to buy the site without any experience in retail, but it was also the only option I had. So I took a deep breath and made a leap of faith, over the years my self-confidence and the support of my children became the wings I needed to fly,” the housewife-turned-businesswoman, expressed.

With the papers to the site under her name, Mamoona instantly knew that it needed an overhaul in terms of workplace dynamics, if any progress was to be made at all. The first of her many hurdles as the new boss, was to make the staff and employees see her as one.

"I still remember that when I went to the site for the first time, I saw the staff not following fulfilling standards. So I went to the office and started checking operations. Soon, the manager came and asked me to stay at home as this is not the job for a woman," she recalled. “To them, I was a woman. A rida wearing bohra woman, at that— someone they could never fathom as their boss. But I knew I could change a few things around here for the better. Took me 10 years of labour to turn losses into profits, but now we are an award-winning site and all my employees know and respect me as their boss,” she told.

Explaining her decade-long journey, Mamoonda said that the secret to her success was treating her workplace like a home. “I considered the site my home and the staff my family. It was the only way I’d ever known, but it worked to my advantage. I increased the incentives of the staff, and started rewarding them on their performances, sending them to Umrah, taking care of the meals and medical. It helped me a lot in gaining their confidence."

Summarising her success, she said that women have a soft corner for every decision they make. “However, if they are given the opportunity to the work outside their home, they can use their experience to turn an unsuccessful business into a profitable one,” Mamoona told The Express Tribune.