The Art of Business Leadership: Indian Experiences

S. BALASUBRAMANIAN Copyright © S. Balasubramanian, 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced o...

Author: S Balasubramanian

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S. BALASUBRAMANIAN

Copyright © S. Balasubramanian, 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2007 by Response Books Business books from SAGE B1/I1, Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044 www.sagepub.in Sage Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 Sage Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP Sage Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763 Published by Vivek Mehra for Response Books, typeset in Charter BT 11/13 pt by Star Compugraphics Pvt Ltd and printed at Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Balasubramanian, S., 1945– The art of business leadership: Indian experiences/S. Balasubramanian. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Leadership. 2. Executive ability. 3. Businessmen. 4. Businessmen—India—Case studies. I. Title. HD57.7.B3486 658.4'092—dc22 2007 2007017448

ISBN: 978-0-7619-3587-2 (PB)

978-81-7829-748-4 (India-PB)

The Sage Team: Leela Kirloskar, Uma Purushothaman and Sanjeev Sharma

I dedicate this book To all those business leaders, who I have had the privilege to work and interact with, who taught me the many lessons in leadership that I cherish and To my grandson, Ajay, who brought out the ‘N’ and the ‘F’ in me at this rather late stage in my life.

CONTENTS

Foreword

8

Preface

10

Introduction

17

1. Leadership Thoughts and Theories

21

2. Understanding Personality Differences at Work

63

3. Overview of Indian History and Culture

89

4. My Personal Experiences with Business Leadership

101

5. Select Indian Business Leaders 118 • Kishore Biyani • G.V. Prasad • Bhaskar Bhat • Niru Mehta • Santrupt Misra • R. Gopalakrishnan • Ravi Kant • Harsh C. Mariwala • Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw • Subroto Bagchi • R. Seshasayee • Captain G.R. Gopinath 6. Interpretations and Lessons for the Future

247

Appendices

278

Bibliography

284

Index

292

About the Author

297

FOREWORD

Defining Leadership is as nebulous, amorphous and elusive as defining Quality or Governance. Defining morally responsible or value-based Leadership is even more so. Leaders must necessarily be sensitive to human and social concerns, for the canvas of a true leader stretches beyond the limited dimension of technical knowledge and touches all facets of life—personal, professional and societal. The world has been witness to visionaries through the centuries, in the likes of Aristotle, Kautilya, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, JRD Tata, to name but a few. All of them inspired and unified. As for Business Leaders, they also must have a deep understanding of the fundamental values that define their organisations. Ineffective leaders seldom fall short due to lack of knowledge or know-how. Would-be leaders fail most often because they lose sight of the values that form their organisations and the societies in which they live. Understanding basic motivations, what people hold dear and why and under-pinning organisational values is critical to strategic thinking and sustainable development. Bala must be complimented for his choice of topic and his sense of impeccable timing in launching his book. Our economy is booming, there is an air about India, and she is suddenly looking attractive to the foreign investor. Simultaneously, globalisation has got Indian Companies demonstrating their entrepreneurial and technological prowess in the global arena as emerging MNCs. Whichever way one views it—inside India or outside India—the current period presents immense opportunities and mammoth challenges.

Foreword

9

The complexities of a rewarding, sustainable and inclusive growth combined with a warped work-life balance in search of fulfillment and family harmony; of transparency, humility and value-based governance; of inspirational, visionary, accountable and just leadership; of an overarching social responsibility; of continually delivering value to all stakeholders; of raising standards of living and putting pride back in India; of making a difference and leaving behind a better entity are challenges that business leaders face today. Bala has done brilliantly in showcasing today’s leaders as benchmarks for budding leaders and aspiring students alike. This treatise will be a valuable guide on how successful leaders meet these challenges and how they strive for excellence and constantly raise the bar. The classical debate on whether leaders are born or made is not as relevant as the practice of outstanding leadership here and now. For in the ultimate, leadership is a potent mix of strategy and character. I am confident that when our aspiring young leaders are called upon some day to choose one ingredient, they too will exhibit true leadership and pick character. April 2007

Pradeep Mallick Founder Chairman of ‘The Listening Post’

PREFACE

I cannot help being autobiographical in my preface to the book. It was December 1999. My two sons—Nitin and Navin—had come on a holiday from USA. As was usual, we also went to the famous book store, Landmark, in Chennai. When we returned home, Navin gave me a packet and asked me to open it. It was a book titled Harvard Business Review on Leadership. On the front page, Navin had scribbled, ‘Dear Pa, one day I hope to see an article of yours in such an anthology! Meantime, hope you find this useful. Love, Navin’. This was the trigger that set my mind onto this book. I knew that I might neither be able to write anything revolutionary nor contribute significantly to the already abundant literature on leadership. At the same time, I knew that I had to, sooner or later, commit myself to putting my thoughts on the subject in writing. This book is an attempt to do that. My keen interest in the study of business leadership started when I joined BHEL in 1975 and was rekindled soon after I joined Wärtsilä in 1997. The then Managing Director of Wärtsilä—Pradeep Mallick— was a person unlike many of the others I had the privilege to work with in a span of nearly 40 years of my professional life. He was a soft-spoken, people-oriented, consensus-builder who was tough in his mind and in his decisions, unafraid to speak his mind when it mattered. He was highly regarded by his colleagues. He always asked questions that helped others make their own decisions and feel that they were in complete control of their own selves. There were other leaders I encountered in my career—the Chairman of a large engineering enterprise in the private sector who was often referred to as ‘the bull dozer’ by me and my colleagues; the Chairman

Preface

11

of a public sector organisation who could remember the first names of over 1,500 managers and would not miss an opportunity to meet their families; the Chairman of another public sector organisation who, though belonging to the Indian Administrative Service, could envision like a technocrat and an entrepreneur; the Chairman of a familyowned enterprise who could seize business opportunities to expand his business into many areas that were totally unrelated to each other; and the Director of an academic institution who was a zealous missionary in his approach to the institution-building process. They were all leaders in their own merit. They had built organisations and institutions from almost nothing and were great change-agents, with a commitment, vigour and enthusiasm that is uncommon. I consider the opportunities I had to work with these men as special moments in my life. These moments taught me lessons in leadership that are often not found in textbooks or other books on business leadership. I am used to reading a lot—books, articles, papers, presentations—on business leadership. But I have always found them relating more to the Western context than the Indian. Most of the current and past theories and concepts in leadership were postulated and developed in the West. They are based on situations and contexts that are typically Western. While many of these concepts may have universal relevance and application, I have not come across many studies for understanding and analysing business leadership in the Indian context. I have come to believe over the years that Indian business leadership is in many ways different from elsewhere, reflecting leadership dimensions that fascinate and intrigue simultaneously. It is this gap that I attempt to bridge through this book. The intention is to bring yet another perspective to the vast repository of knowledge that already exists on the subject of leadership. To say that the world we operate our business in has changed in recent times is to state the obvious. The changes have been nothing short of astonishing, amazing, frightening and totally unlike anything that we have witnessed before. Globalisation of business is now more a rule than an exception for the privileged few. Borders and barriers— political, geographical, social, cultural and technological—have begun crashing all around. The speed and pace at which these changes are happening is, to say the least, challenging. The world of information technology has unleashed an array of opportunities in different forms and formats. On 31 July 2006, when Infosys celebrated its 25th anniversary, Narayana Murthy had the honour of ringing the bell of NASDAQ.

12

The Art of Business Leadership

It was historic in that it was the first time anyone outside the United States was being given the honour. Narayana Murthy has also been talking of how Infosys has launched a recent drive to recruit and train graduates from USA, Europe, Australia, China and other countries. No longer is recruitment by Indian business organisations limited to their geographic boundaries. Kishore Biyani of the Future Group says that his company will ‘provide everything, every time, everywhere, to every customer’. He too does not believe in taking a local view of his customer base. He says, ‘Growth is here to stay, and no one can stop it.’ He accepts that change has become a way of life in India, perhaps irrevocably. Bhaskar Bhat of Titan mentions how he is fighting a global market for watches. In other words, everything in business seems to have become global. There is nothing local any longer. The vision statements of almost all Indian companies these days mention ‘global’ somewhere or the other. I have often heard my students say that the organisations they work for ‘want to become global this … global that …’ I believe that nothing in Indian history has impacted business as severely as globalisation. In this scenario, can business leadership be based on theories and concepts of the old? The aspiration of the youth in India is to follow in the footsteps of Narayana Murthy and become an entrepreneur. The number of people employed in the ‘new economy’ sector has been increasing exponentially each day. And, because they come from various parts of India, their aspirations, their culture and their perception of work ethics are all different. So, how can a business leader lead effectively in such chaos? I propose that many of the established concepts and theories, like the rules of the game, be changed. We cannot go by our present understanding in creating a vision. We cannot go by the principles of strategic planning that were taught to us. We cannot go by organisation theory based on structures and design as in the past. We cannot explain the behaviour of today’s generation with the theories of motivation that we studied. We would need a totally different perspective on leadership. What I have attempted in this book is to present a summary of my interactions with Indian business leaders who have been highly successful and effective in transforming their organisations and the people they lead into vibrant and growing entities. They may not have been written about as much and their successes not documented as well as that of some others. They may not be held in the same awe as J.R.D. Tata of the Tata Group, Ghanshyam Das Birla of the Birla Group,

Preface

13

Dhirubhai Ambani of the Reliance Group, Narayana Murthy of Infosys, or Azim Premji of Wipro. But, they are, nevertheless, leaders who have been highly effective in their own way and have contributed significantly to the growth of their organisations, and development of their people. They seem to have achieved self-fulfilment from their contributions. This book is about their ideas, thoughts, actions, and leadership experiences. This book has been, at least partially, a result of over 400 e-mails I exchanged and over 150 phone calls that I made to establish the logistics for my personal interviews with a select group of business leaders. I drew up my short-list of leaders from a study of many successful organisations and leaders in India. I was keen to study only those who were not already widely written about. This book, therefore, is different in some ways from other books on business leadership. My interaction with those included in this book was personal and over a period of about a year. I interviewed each one of them on a variety of subjects relating to leadership in order to gain an insight into their approaches and styles, and administered some structured and unstructured questionnaires. I have tried to summarise their words as accurately as possible in my own way and I take full responsibility for any errors that may have crept in unintentionally. This book is not intended to pass value judgments on what is right or wrong but is meant only to bring out the essence of business leadership in the Indian context. The book has six chapters, of which the first two chapters explore some of the theories and concepts of leadership and understanding personality differences using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The third chapter provides an overview of Indian history and its culture and examines some of the unique characteristics of Indian business. Chapter four is reflective, summarising my personal experiences with leadership in industry. The fifth chapter discusses some of the business organisations and their leaders and provides a transcript of my interviews with them. The last chapter is a summary of my interpretations and lessons for further research. I hope that readers will find my conclusions and interpretations challenging some of their assumptions and provoke them to think of business leadership in a new light with renewed interest. I have attempted to write this book in an ‘easy-to-read’ style so that readers will find it easy to understand and grasp the complex subject of leadership. For example, in Chapter 1, I have tried to present the theories and concepts on leadership in a very abridged manner,

14


just bringing out the essence of each of these. I have also tried to be careful in avoiding discussions relating to leadership in political and other fields and to focus on leadership as it relates only to business. Here again the term ‘business’ is limited only to for-profit business since I have not extended my study to the not-for-profit business organisations. Further, my study has been confined to business leaders in the private sector. I believe that the business leaders of public sector organisations possess characteristics and motivations that may be entirely different from that of private sector business leaders. This book is not based on rigorous research and hence does not include any serious statistical analysis of the empirical evidence collected by me. Conclusions and interpretations are my own and may not reflect any ‘true’ characteristics of Indian business leadership. I hope that it will be useful to teachers, students, working executives and business leaders who are in some way or the other concerned with issues of leadership in business and its impact on their lives. Researchers may also find this book useful in their work. There are many people who I have to acknowledge and thank for making me undertake and complete this work. Let me start with Professor Nagabrahmam, the Director of TAPMI, who was instrumental (though unaware of it himself ) in driving me to attempt this work. I cannot express adequately in words my sincere appreciation to the business leaders who spent valuable time with me sharing their experiences, views and insights. I must acknowledge with gratitude the insights provided by my students through searching questions that they raised in my classes on business leadership. Senior Commissioning Editor, Leela Kirloskar and Editor, Uma Purushothaman of Sage Publications have been very helpful in guiding me through the review and editing processes and taking personal interest in the publication of this book. Without their active involvement this book would not have been possible. Thank you, Leela and Uma. I am grateful to Pradeep Mallick for writing a foreword to this book. I have mentioned elsewhere in the book about how much I respect him and how invaluable the leadership lessons I learnt from him have been. Thank you, Chief. My wife Meera, who has always intrigued and inspired me in so many different ways, deserves special mention for the patience with which she bore solitude when I was fully focused on this work. I thank my sons Nitin and Navin and their wives Kirtana and Anjali, for having constantly urged me to record my experiences in the study

Preface

15

of business leadership and share them with others. Navin, in particular, deserves special mention for his insightful critique of parts of the manuscript. Last, but certainly not the least, I am grateful to my grandson, Ajay for inspiring my renewal with his emergence into this world. November 2006

S. Balasubramanian

INTRODUCTION

There have been numerous leaders of business in the past centuries. Some were entrepreneurs who created their own organisations while others were ‘professionals’ employed to lead the organisations. Both the entrepreneur-leaders and the professional-leaders have demonstrated many unique Indian leadership characteristics and qualities. Some well-known Indian business leaders would include Jamnalal Bajaj who established the Bajaj Group, Shiv Narayan Birla, Ghanshyam Das Birla, Aditya Vikram Birla and Kumar Mangalam Birla of the Birla Group, Ardeshir and Phirojsha Godrej of the Godrej Group, Laxmanrao Kashinath and Shantanurao Laxmanrao of the Kirloskar Group, A.M.M. Murugappa Chettiar, M.V. Arunachalam and M.V. Subbiah of the Murugappa Group and Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata, Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy (J.R.D.) and Ratan Tata of the Tata Group, Dhirubhai, Mukesh and Anil Ambani of the Reliance Group, Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Enterprises, N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys Technologies, Azim Premji of Wipro, Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computers, R. Seshasayee of Ashok Leyland, Anu Aga of Thermax, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon, Anji Reddy of Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Pratap C. Reddy of Apollo Hospitals, A.M. Naik of Larsen & Toubro, Suresh Krishna of Sundram Fasteners, K.V. Kamath of ICICI Bank, Verghese Kurien of Amul, Captain G.R. Gopinath of Air Deccan, Aditya Puri of HDFC Bank, Brijmohan Lall Munjal of Hero Honda, Deepak Parekh of HDFC, Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways, Keshub Mahindra and Anand Mahindra of Mahindra & Mahindra, Ashok Soota and Subroto Bagchi of MindTree Consulting, Kishore Biyani of Future Group (Pantaloon Retail),

18


Mallika Srinivasan of Tractors and Farm Equipments, Sulajja F. Motwani of Kinetic Engineering, Naina Lal Kidwai of HSBC, Priya Paul of Apeejay, Niru Mehta of Avaya GlobalConnect and Malvinder Mohan Singh of Ranbaxy. We may also add the names of the CEOs of some of the companies within the Tata Group here, since they too have emerged as business leaders in their own right—R. Gopalakrishnan of Tata Sons, S. Ramadorai of Tata Consultancy Services, Prasad Menon of Tata Chemicals, Ravi Kant of Tata Motors and Bhaskar Bhat of Titan Industries. They, in my opinion, are the ‘co-leaders’ that Heenan and Bennis (1999) wrote about. The list of Indian business leaders from the latter part of the 20th century and early 21st century, in particular, is very impressive. There are so many well-known organisations and so many well-respected leaders. We could not have imagined in 1990 that India, in the next 15 years, would boast of such an array of global business leaders. They are the ones burdened with the responsibility of taking India into the 21st century and beyond by their vision and strategies. By competing with the best in the world and marking indelible footprints on the global business scenario, the Indian business leadership has demonstrated its spike. In a recent address to the captains of industry and business on the occasion of presentation of NDTV Business Leadership 2006 Awards, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh said that out of the total 82 nominees for the 14 categories of awards, not more than 30 had even existed prior to 1991. He further said that out of the 100 top Indian business organisations today, not more than 25 had even existed in 1970. He recalled how the Indian business leaders have seized the opportunities presented to them by the economic liberalisation of India in 1991 and the resultant globalisation of Indian business to emerge as recognised business leaders in the world. Many people might argue that the economic boom that India is currently experiencing is mainly on account of the emergence of the ‘knowledge sector’ comprising IT, telecom and biotechnology. They often quote Infosys as an example. However, in reality it is not so. There are many organisations in the manufacturing and other sectors that have not only survived globalisation, but also emerged highly successful. An example is Sundram Fasteners, a company that has become a preferred supplier to General Motors of the USA, and has also expanded its operations into China. Tata Motors has successfully acquired Daewoo Motors and established a heavy-duty vehicle manufacturing facility in Korea. The Aditya Birla Group has forayed into the

Introduction

19

services sector in a big way and established its operations in many countries. Today’s great Indian business organisations have emerged free from the shackles of the previous ‘control and command’ economy. Jet Airways (the first successful private airline) and Air Deccan (the first low-cost carrier) are shining examples of free enterprise in civil aviation. The Future Group (earlier known as Pantaloon Retail) is the baby of the retail boom and represents the changing aspirations of the youth in the country. Infosys is a classic demonstration of the spirit of adventure and enterprise of the emerging Indian business leadership. Biocon represents the beginning of the increasing assertion of Indian women business leaders. Avaya GlobalConnect is an example of how global players are viewing India and Indian business leaders. The recent appointment of Indra Nooyi as the global CEO of PepsiCo cannot be treated as a case in isolation, divorced from the emergence of Indian business leaders on the world business map.

1 LEADERSHIP THOUGHTS

AND

THEORIES

There is an abundance of literature relating to leadership in general and business leadership in particular. What I have attempted in this chapter is to pull out the essence from some of it and examine different theories and thoughts on the subject. Some say a leader is someone who leads a team to achieve certain objectives. Others say that a leader should take responsibility for what the team does. Yet others say that a leader is one who shares his vision with others. I agree with all these and more. We usually say, in a lighter vein, that if we ask 300 people for a definition of leadership, we may get 400 different answers. For the purpose of my book, I will define leadership as the process of influencing others to achieve a common objective. The key words are ‘influencing others’. Therefore, leadership presupposes followers. In other words, without followers, there will be no leaders. Some people have earlier asked me if an innovator or discoverer can be called a leader. Since leadership implies the existence of followers, that probably is the reason why many scientists or innovators may not be classified as leaders, though their output may impact the lives of many. When I ask my students what they understand by the term ‘management’, they say it is getting a task done by others; utilising resources efficiently; maximising the output. All these may be true. But, to me, management is much more than these. Let me give you a comprehensive definition of the term ‘management’. Management is

22 The Art of Business Leadership

the process of working with and through others to achieve organisational objectives, in a changing environment, by the efficient and effective utilisation of resources. I find this definition of management very comprehensive and conveying the essence of management. Each term in the above definition of management is important and significant. First, management is a process. By process, we mean a continuous sequence of relations between a given set of activities and plans—continuous, not discrete. So, management is a continuous process. One single decision does not make management, since that decision may set off a chain reaction. Second, management is working ‘with’ and ‘through’ people. This would imply that a manager is an integral part of the process. He is not different from other members of his team. Third, management always seeks to achieve the objectives of the organisation. Fourth, management operates in a changing environment. We would not need any management if the environment was constant, stagnant or stationery. We need management because our environment is in a constant state of flux, always undergoing changes. Lastly, management is about utilising the resources efficiently and effectively. While efficiency is a ratio of the output to the input, effectiveness focuses primarily on the output. Managers need to combine the ability to be efficient and effective. A question that is often asked of me is if a leader can be successful without any managerial qualities and if a manager can be successful without any leadership qualities. I would believe that we need both in order to be successful. Perhaps, we can safely say that to be successful as a manager, you need a greater proportion of leadership qualities than the managerial qualities that a leader would need to be successful. Let us take the example of Jack Welch of GE. How many of you would rate him as a business leader? How many would rate him as a competent manager? Jack Welch is considered a very competent manager, but many people would believe that he was not a great leader. Even what Welch said about wanting to be number one or two in every business that GE was in, is not considered a vision for the organisation. In my view, a vision needs to be much broader, much larger in perspective. Do you know what the core purpose of Walt Disney is ? To make people happy. Do you know what the core purpose of 3M is? To solve unresolved problems innovatively. These purposes are not determined by the kinds of businesses that they are in, but by what they would like to be in, say, 20 to 30 years.

Leadership Thoughts and Theories 23

Max De Pree1 identifies four major characteristics of a successful leader. First, leaders leave behind assets and a legacy. This means that organisations should outlive their leaders, and people should be able to refer to a leader’s legacy even after he or she is gone. Second, leaders provide and maintain a momentum. This means that it is the leaders’ job to create momentum in an organisation and maintain it. The momentum should drive the organisation long after the leader is gone. Third, leaders should take responsibility for effectiveness. This means that leaders should be personally responsible for their actions and influence on others. Those of you who have watched the film Gandhi by Richard Attenborough will easily recall many scenes in that film which bring out this dimension of Mahatma Gandhi. Fourth, leaders should develop, express and defend civility and values. I believe that leadership which is not based on values will not last long and cannot be effective. Can leadership come from positions? I don’t think so. I think leadership is what leadership does. If you possess the characteristics of leadership, you can be a leader. It does not have to be only if you are the CEO of a company. I think it is a matter of what you believe in, what your values are, and how you influence others. When I said leaders model the way, what I meant was that leaders should be perceived as being credible by their followers. Credibility is a key factor in determining leadership success. John Kotter says ‘leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Each has its own function and characteristic activities. Both are necessary for success in today’s business environment.’2 Scholars, researchers and practitioners have been debating whether management, indeed, is different from leadership, and if so, in what ways. We need to first examine the development of management thoughts in order to understand and appreciate leadership theories and concepts.

Understanding Management ORGANISATIONS

AND

MANAGEMENT

Chester Barnard (1886–1961) laid the foundation for our understanding of formal organisations. In a seminal work on the functions of the executive (managers), Barnard postulated three primary executive functions—to provide a system of communication, to promote


the securing of essential personal efforts and to formulate and define purpose.3 In a very provoking sense, Barnard also provides an unusual theory of authority. According to him, authority has two aspects—the personal (subjective acceptance of a communication as being authoritative), and the objective (formal character of the communication). In Barnard’s view, the source of authority does not reside in the persons of authority, but in the acceptance or non-acceptance by followers. This is a key leadership lesson. According to Henri Fayol (1841–1925), every organisation requires management. Managers, according to him, need certain qualities, knowledge and experience.4 These include physical qualities (health, vigour and behaviour), mental qualities (ability to understand and learn, judgment and adaptability), moral qualities (willingness to accept responsibility, loyalty and dignity), general education (general acquaintance with matters not belonging exclusively to the function performed), special knowledge (functional expertise) and experience (knowledge arising from work). Fayol enunciated 14 classic principles of management that include division of work, authority, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, subordination of individual interests to the general interest, remuneration, centralisation, scalar chain (line of authority), order, equity, stability of tenure, initiative and esprit de corps. Based on this, he also postulated the ‘elements’ of management that include planning, organising, staffing, coordinating, commanding and controlling. Max Weber (1864–1920) introduced the concept of ‘bureaucracy’ in management.5 This meant management by the office or position rather than by a person. In a sense, Weber can be considered the ‘father of organisation theory’. He postulated three types of legitimate authority—rational-legal authority (based on the legality of position), traditional authority (based on the sanctity of immemorial traditions) and charismatic authority (based on devotion of followers to an individual). For Weber, management meant the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge. Management, according to him, required leaders to lead by virtue of fact rather than whim, by ability rather than by favouritism. Fritz Jules Roethlisberger (1898–1974) propounded the notion of the workplace as a social system in his work with W.J. Dickson.6 According to them, ‘the technical aspect of the needs for efficiency and economic return should be viewed as interrelated with the concern for human aspect of every organisation.’ They concluded that since people are not motivated by facts and logic, sentiments about


things of social value become very powerful considerations in dealing with personnel. Modern day understanding of management is, perhaps, due to the work of William Newman (1909–2002). Closely similar to Fayol’s principles of management, Newman’s definition of administration (management) was ‘the guidance, leadership and control of the efforts of a group of individuals toward some common goal’.7 The elements included in Newman’s process were planning, organising, assembling resources, directing and controlling. The difference between Fayol and Newman lies in the distinction between types of plans, the ‘assembling resources’ element and the treatment of coordination under directing rather than as a separate activity. Harold Koontz and Cyril O’Donnell considered management as a process of planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. While some of the earlier theorists had maintained that these functions were carried out sequentially, Koontz and O’Donnell argued that managers performed these functions simultaneously.8 Further, though there were divergent views and perspectives of management, it was Koontz who managed to delineate the differences and proposed what he called ‘management theory jungle’. According to him, the management process school ‘perceives management as a process of getting things done through and with people operating in organised groups’. The empirical school identified management as ‘the study of experiences’ and used case analyses for drawing generalisations. The human behaviour school studied management as ‘interpersonal relations’ and used psychology and sociology. The social system school saw management as ‘a system of cultural interrelationships of interaction and cooperation’. The decision theory school focused on ‘analysis of who made decisions and how’. The mathematical school viewed management as a ‘system of mathematical models and processes’. In his book on the evolution of management thought, David Wren says that scholars and theorists discussed it at length and concluded that ‘managers were action oriented, not reflective and pragmatic, not theoretical and the numerous and different managerial situations defied theorizing’.9 In a study into the nature of managerial work, Henry Mintzberg (b. 1939) observed that managers performed 10 roles which could be described broadly under three groups. The interpersonal role arises from the manager’s formal authority (when a manager deals with others as a figurehead, leader or liaison), the informational role involves receiving, storing and sending information (as monitor, disseminator,


or spokesperson) and the decisional role involves decision-making (making decisions about activities as an entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator or negotiator).10 In a very interesting study on general managers, John Kotter found that (a) successful managers could be very different in terms of personal characteristics; (b) general managers often thought of themselves as generalists, yet each having a very strong specialty that fitted the job demands; and (c) general managers had a detailed knowledge of the business and a network of relationships with other people in that business. He concluded that at the level of the general manager, management looked more like an art than a science.11

HUMAN RELATIONS

AND

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

The foundations of any study in leadership would also have to be based on an understanding of the subject of human relations and organisational behaviour. The first and foremost in this area has been the work of Keith Davis (1918–2002), who defines human relations as ‘the integration of people into a work situation in a way that motivates them to work together productively, cooperatively, and with economic, psychological and social satisfaction’.12 He argued that modern human relations really have two facets—organisational behaviour concerned with understanding, describing, and identifying causes and effects of human behaviour through empirical evidence and human relations concerned with the application of that knowledge to operational situations. The other major work has been that of Chris Argyris who thought that some basic trends existed in the personality development of people. He suggested that there was a tendency for a healthy personality to develop along a continuum from immaturity to maturity by moving from being passive to being active, from dependence to independence, from a lack of awareness of self to awareness and control over self and so on. According to Argyris, four basic properties of a formal organisation hampered this process—the specialisation of labour, the chain or command, the unity of direction principle and the span of control principle. Therefore, he argued, there was a need to integrate the individual with the organisation.13

HUMAN MOTIVATION No study of organisational behaviour could be considered complete without a broad understanding of some of the theories relating to


human motivation. There are two aspects of these theories. One is the what and the other is the how. What describes the various needs that result in an individual wanting to perform, and why describes the reasons behind his wanting to perform. Among the many theories of ‘what’ would be Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’, Herzberg’s ‘hygienemotivator factors’ and McGregor’s ‘theory X and theory Y’. Among the ‘how’ theories would be Vroom’s ‘expectancy theory’. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) developed his theory of ‘hierarchy of needs’ based on Henry Murray’s postulation that people attempt to satisfy 20 different needs. Maslow proposed a theoretical hierarchy of a set of five such needs. He called them physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualisation needs.14 Physiological needs would include the most basic of human needs such as food and shelter. In organisational context, they would symbolise such things as basic salary and ventilation. Safety needs would mean freedom from threats and a secure physical and emotional environment. In organisational context, they could include job security and non-threatening colleagues. Love needs (also referred to as ‘belongingness’ or ‘affiliation’ needs) would mean a desire to be accepted and included by others socially. Esteem needs would mean the desire for a positive self-image, recognition and appreciation by others. Self-actualisation needs indicate the need for self-fulfilment and the desire to develop into one’s full potential. According to Maslow, each of these is related to one another and placed in a hierarchy of ‘prepotency’ (urgency of the drive). He argued that once a need is gratified or satisfied, it no longer motivates a person’s behaviour. According to him, people move up the ladder of needs as each level is satisfied, and could also move in a reverse direction if fulfilment of a lower order need is threatened or removed. Herzberg’s Hygiene and Motivator Factors

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) conducted an extensive research into what factors contributed to people being happy and satisfied or unhappy and dissatisfied at work. From people’s responses to his study, he isolated two different kinds of needs that appeared to be independent of each other. People attributed their feelings of unhappiness or dissatisfaction to their job environment or the job context, and attributed their feelings of happiness or satisfaction to their job itself or the job content. He called the factors associated with the job context


as ‘hygiene’ factors, and the factors associated with the job content as ‘motivator’ factors.15 According to him, when hygiene factors that included supervision, interpersonal relations, physical working conditions and salaries deteriorated below what the subordinates considered acceptable, job dissatisfaction resulted. However, when these factors were optimal as considered by the subordinates, there was no significant improvement in performance. When motivator factors that included achievement, recognition, challenging work and increased responsibility were present, they helped increase the subordinates’ motivation and resulted in better performance. In other words, while the hygiene factors were necessary for normal performance and absence of dissatisfaction, they would not lead to better performance or satisfaction. Only the motivator factors would lead to better performance and job satisfaction. Now, if we superimpose Herzberg’s two-factor theory over Maslow’s hierarchy theory, what would we see? We would observe that the physiological needs, the security needs and perhaps the lower half of the social needs would be equivalent of the hygiene factors. The top half of the social need, the ego/esteem need and the self-actualisation need would be the equivalent of the motivator factors. Let us examine a job or task. I believe in what Herzberg called the content and the context of a job. Contextual factors are those that are peripheral to the job. These are factors such as salary and perquisites, comforts, physical security and so on. The content factors are intrinsic to the job. These are factors such as whether a job is challenging, demanding a person’s ability, competence and such like. So, we may conclude from an examination of Maslow’s theory and Herzberg’s theory that the ultimate motivator is perhaps the content factors of a job. The contextual factors may not help a person motivate himself to continuously perform better and enhance his performance consistently, unless the content factors are present. For example, when you look for a job in today’s business world, what do you expect from it? Salaries are already high, perquisites are all set, all offices are air-conditioned and transport is provided. So, what else? You would expect the job to be challenging. Why is the attrition rate in our IT or ITES sector so high today? Have you considered the possible reasons? Perhaps one reason is that the job itself is not exciting or challenging to the employee. The other day, I was doing a programme for a company called iGate Global Solutions. The HR executive in that company was telling me that they had conducted a ‘fun day’ for their executives the previous day. I was astonished.


I asked the HR executive whether it was necessary for the company to organise a special ‘fun day’ for employees to have fun. Did the employees not have fun everyday of their work? This is perhaps an example of the absence of the content factors. And, perhaps this explains, to some extent, the high degree of attrition. McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) was concerned that the scientific management school based its approach on the assumption that people are ‘inherently lazy, untrustworthy and antagonistic toward management.’ He called this Theory X assumptions. He believed that this approach would make it very difficult for managers and his employees to achieve organisational objectives. Though there was a marginal shift in this approach by the human relations school of thought, it was still not a very significant shift. McGregor proposed that people could be motivated in a different way if managers’ earlier assumptions were changed. He, therefore, propounded his Theory Y set of assumptions.16 According to McGregor, managers who accepted the Theory Y image of human nature would not structure, control, or closely supervise the work environment. Instead, they would attempt to aid the maturation of subordinates by giving them wider latitude in their work, encouraging creativity, using less external control, encouraging self-control and motivating through the satisfaction that came out of work itself. Vroom’s Expectancy Theory

The basis of the ‘expectancy theory’ of Victor Vroom (b. 1932) was that motivation was a process of making choices between behaviours and that people pursued the behaviours that they hoped would lead to pleasurable outcomes. It is a choice process in which an individual has to decide between the minimal and maximal effort to be put in at any point of time on a given task. This choice would depend on the individual’s perception of whether such an effort would result in a meaningful output and whether such an output would result in a reward that would be of value to him. The perceived probability of an outcome may be called ‘expectancy’ and the desirability of the reward as ‘valence’. According to Vroom, motivation is a product of valence and expectancy.17 The expectancy theory helped to explain that motivation to perform is an interaction between the goals sought, the value placed on these goals and the subordinates’ expectation that a certain path would lead to those goals. Vroom’s theory is also, sometimes, called the ‘valency’ theory.


Understanding Leadership WHAT

IS

LEADERSHIP?

In one of my classes on business leadership to MBA students, many asked me how I would define leadership. I asked them how they would define it. Some said, ‘a leader is someone who leads a team to achieve certain objectives.’ Some others said that a leader should take responsibility for what the team does. Yet others said that a leader is one who shares his vision with others. I agree with all these and more. We usually say, in a lighter vein, that if we ask 300 people for a definition of leadership, we may get 400 different answers. As I said earlier, for the purpose of our understanding, we will define leadership as ‘the process of influencing others to achieve a common objective.’ The key words are ‘influencing others’. Therefore, leadership presupposes followers. In other words, without followers, there will not be leaders. Can an innovator or discoverer be called a leader? Since leadership implies followers that probably is the reason why many scientists or innovators may not be classified as leaders, though their output may impact the lives of many. If you say leadership is about influencing others, would you also categorise Hitler or Saddam Hussein as leaders? Why not? To me it would seem that they are indeed leaders. It is an entirely different question if I am in agreement with their actions or values. So long as they were able to influence a large section of the society, I would treat them as leaders in their own right. I think it is necessary for us to differentiate between one’s ability to influence others and the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ of their actions. While defining leadership, I would not like to pass any value judgements. The immense and popular fascination with the study of leadership is often intriguing to many. Is it because the subject is controversial and mysterious? Is it because leadership impacts our everyday life in one way or the other? We are not able to precisely respond to many questions in this regard. Why did certain leaders (Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Mao Zedong) evoke the dedication and commitment of their followers? How did certain leaders (Jack Welch, Bill Gates and Narayana Murthy) build great business empires? Why did some ‘controversial’ leaders (Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein) rise to positions of such great power and influence? Why were certain leaders (Winston Churchill and Indira Gandhi) suddenly deposed, despite their apparent power and successful accomplishments?


Let us start with Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933). While postulating on the integration theory of organisation, Follett went on to say that ‘the leader then is one … who can organise the experience of the group and thus get the full power of the group. The leader makes the team. This is pre-eminently the leadership quality—the ability to organise all the forces there are in an enterprise and make them serve a common purpose. Men with this ability create a group power rather than a personal power…’18 According to Follett’s theory, the task of leadership embraces three facets—reduction of conflict through integration of interests, obeying the law of the situation and building the psychological processes necessary to achieve goals through coordinating and controlling effort. Ever since Abraham Zaleznik wrote his classic proposition in Harvard Business Review in 1977, there has been intense debate on whether managers and leaders are really different. Zaleznik argues that they indeed are, and goes on to describe these differences.19 According to him, managers’ goals arise out of necessities rather than desires; they excel at defusing conflicts between individuals or departments, placating all sides while ensuring that an organisation’s day-to-day business gets done. Leaders, on the other hand, adopt personal, active attitudes toward goals. They look for the opportunities and rewards that lie around the corner, inspiring subordinates and firing up the creative process with their own energy. It is said that an army of sheep led by a lion can often defeat an army of lions led by a sheep. This emphasises the importance of leadership. Leadership means different things to different people, not only based on their own personal experiences but also based on the vast amount of writings on the subject. Questions such as whether a leader is born or made, whether leadership is a trait or a behavioural characteristic and whether leadership is all-situational or context-specific abound. Let us examine a few of the theories of leadership.

TRAIT APPROACH Early studies on leadership focused on the leader’s individually distinguishable characteristics, often referred to as ‘traits’. Some of these traits were self-confidence, intelligence, honesty and appearance of the leaders as perceived by their followers. Fundamental to this theory was the idea that leaders were born with certain characteristics and hence, leadership was genetic. Scholars have found many personality traits that they believed impacted leadership effectiveness. Among


the many theories is the ‘big five’ model of personality. The five traits, broadly defined, include surgency (extroversion, energy, need for power), conscientiousness (dependability, personal integrity, need for achievement), agreeableness (cheerfulness, optimism, helpfulness, need for affiliation), adjustment (emotional stability, self-esteem, self-control) and intellectance (curiosity, open-mindedness, learning orientation).20 However, research has found little evidence of a strong relationship between leadership success and personality traits. For example, Mahatma Gandhi was a successful leader. So are Nelson Mandela, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Bill Clinton, Fred Truman, Margaret Thatcher, Sam Walton, Henry Ford, J.R.D. Tata, G.D. Birla, Bill Gates and N.R. Narayana Murthy. But, each of these leaders was different from the other in their personality traits and characteristics. More often than not, the differences in personality characteristics and the diversity of traits that these successful leaders possessed could well mean that leadership qualities are not necessarily genetic nor are leaders born. The emergence of psychological tools like aptitude and psychological tests as a major field during the 1940s and 1950s helped researchers study the personal attributes of leaders in greater depth. It was an attempt to examine the characteristics or traits that leaders possessed and non-leaders did not. Physical characteristics such as energy and stamina, personality characteristics such as intelligence, self-confidence, honesty and integrity, desire to lead and knowledge, social characteristics such as sociability and interpersonal skills, ability to enlist cooperation of others, educational background and mobility and work-related characteristics such as achievement-orientation and perseverance were all studied in perceived leaders. In spite of such detailed research work, it was still not possible to lay down a set of universally applicable traits or characteristics of leadership, without taking into account the situation in which these leaders were effective. In a way, you could say that the trait theory was based on the belief that leaders are born, not made. In a literature review on leadership carried out in 1948, Stogdill examined over 100 studies based on the trait approach.21 He found that while most traits such as intelligence, initiative, interpersonal skills and honesty appeared consistent with leadership success and effectiveness, these traits were not a guarantee for leadership success. There were other factors in the situation in which the leaders functioned that determined their effectiveness. For example, you may ask if a leader with certain traits can be successful in all situations, time zones, or contexts. Would you say that if


Mahatma Gandhi were alive today, he would succeed in leading India? Will a leader who is successful in one organisation be successful in every other? You may also ask if a leader who has led an organisation successfully for 20 long years will also be successful in leading the same organisation in a different environment. We would not know for certain. Have you read the book In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman? When it was published in 1982, it revolutionised corporate thinking. The authors had researched successful companies of that time and listed about nine characteristics that were common to all successful companies. Unfortunately, 20 years later, we find that many of those companies are no longer in existence or are not as successful. We may derive a conclusion and say that the characteristics that were considered effective at that time are perhaps not effective in today’s rapidly changing world.

BEHAVIOUR APPROACH The behaviour approach is based essentially on the idea that anyone adopting an appropriate behaviour can be a good leader. Since ‘appropriate behaviour’ can be learnt over a period of time and adopted by all, this would further strengthen the school of thought that leaders are not born but made. Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) and others at the University of Iowa conducted the first studies in this approach.22 It was based on the autocratic-democratic scale where ‘autocratic’ denoted leadership based on centralised power, position and coercion and ‘democratic’ denoted leadership based on delegated authority and participation of followers in decision-making. Robert Tannenbaum and Warren Schmidt who conducted further research on this found that leadership need not necessarily be either autocratic or democratic but could be a mix of the two.23 They developed a framework for Leadership Continuum in which they said that the extent to which leaders who are boss-centred (autocratic) or employee-centred (democratic) would depend upon organisational circumstances. Following the study at the University of Iowa, researchers at the Ohio State University conducted further research and developed a Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire (LBDQ), 24 a questionnaire containing 150 examples of definitive leader behaviours. Hundreds of employees responded to the questionnaire according to the degree to which their leaders engaged in the various behaviours listed.


The analysis of this survey resulted in narrowing leader behaviour into two broad categories, one concerned with interpersonal relations (consideration) and the other concerned with task objectives (initiating structure). Consideration described the leader’s sensitivity to subordinates, respect for their feelings and emotions and ability to establish mutual trust. Initiating structure described the leader’s degree of task-orientation and ability to direct the subordinates’ work towards achievement of goals. Consideration and initiating structure were found to be relatively independent behaviours. While some leaders were rated high on consideration, others were rated high on initiating structure. Additional research on the subject conducted later demonstrated that ‘considerate’ leaders had a greater positive impact on employee satisfaction than ‘structuring’ leaders. Even though the eventual LBDQ questionnaire developed by the Ohio University researchers has since been widely used, the results have not been very consistent for most of the criteria for leadership effectiveness.25 Subsequent studies at the University of Michigan took a different approach by making a comparison between effective and ineffective leaders. Rensis Likert (1903–1981) summarised the differences in managerial behaviour between effective and ineffective leaders.26 Essentially, there seemed to be three types of different leadership behaviour. These were task-oriented behaviour, relations-oriented behaviour and participative behaviour. While the study was based on similar behaviour characteristics like the Ohio study, the Michigan study concluded that employee-centred leadership (similar to ‘consideration’) and job-centred leadership (similar to ‘structuring’) were two distinct styles in opposition to one another. Employee-centred leadership focused on leader support and interaction facilities while job-centred leadership focused on goal emphasis and work facilitation. Likert was a proponent of the behaviour approach and participative management. Carrying out his further research in leadership behaviour, he argued that of all the tasks of management, the central and most important was leading the human component of an organisation. He identified four types of leader behaviour and called them ‘Systems’. • System 1: Exploitative Authoritative Decisions are ‘handed-down’ from the top; authority is centralised and followers or lower level employees do not have any say. • System 2: Benevolent Authoritative Similar to System 1, except that leaders adopt a ‘master-servant’ approach, where motivation is mainly by rewards.


• System 3: Consultative Trust between the leader and the follower is more and the motivation arises out of rewards and some degree of involvement of followers in decision-making. • System 4: Participative Total involvement of followers in decision-making and trust between leaders and followers is high. This system involved three basic ideas—supportive relationships, group decision-making and setting high performance goals. Building on the Ohio and Michigan studies, Robert Blake and Jane Mouton of the University of Texas proposed the Leadership Grid theory.27 Leadership styles were plotted on a grid with one axis of the grid representing ‘concern for people’ (employee-centredness) and the other axis representing ‘concern for production’ (task-centredness). This model identifies five different leadership styles based on the concern for people and the concern for production. These are (a) the impoverished style (managers have low concern for both people and production and use this style to avoid getting into trouble); (b) the country club style (managers have a high concern for people and a low concern for production and pay more attention to the security and comfort of the employees in the hope that this would increase performance); (c) the task master style (managers have a high concern for production and a low concern for people and use this style to pressure employees through rules and punishments); (d) the team leader style (managers have maximum concern for production and maximum concern for people and use this style to balance the needs of the organisation with the needs of the employees); and (e) the middle-of-the-road style (managers have a reasonable concern for production and a reasonable concern for people). According to Blake and Mouton, team management style is the most effective leadership style, since it enables organisation members to work towards achieving a common objective. Subsequently, these two researchers have expanded their grid by adding two more dimensions—opportunistic and paternalistic—to show seven styles of leadership.

DYADIC APPROACH The Dyadic approach examines why leaders have more influence over and greater impact on some followers and not others. This approach suggests that leaders will form different relationships with different followers. This approach may be said to have four stages of


development—Vertical Dyad Linkage (leaders’ behaviours and traits have different impacts across individuals), Leader-Member Exchange (leadership is individualised for each follower), Partnership Building (leaders can reach out to create a positive exchange with every follower) and Systems and Networks (leader dyads can be created at all levels in all directions).28 Among these four stages, the leader-member exchange proposes that this higher-quality relationship will lead to higher performance and greater job satisfaction for in-group members. It describes how leaders in groups maintain their position through a series of tacit exchange agreements with their members.29 In particular, leaders often have a special relationship with an inner circle of trusted lieutenants, assistants and advisors, to whom they give high levels of responsibility, decision influence and access to resources. These in-group members pay for their position. They work harder, are more committed to task objectives and share more administrative duties. They are also expected to be fully committed and loyal to their leader. The out-group members, on the other hand, are given low levels of choice or influence. This also puts constraints upon the leader. They have to nurture the relationship with their inner circle whilst balancing giving them power with ensuring they do not have enough to strike out on their own.

CONTINGENCY APPROACH Situation became the central focus point in subsequent research, after the failure of the trait and behaviour approaches to respond adequately to criticism and doubts of their applicability and validity. The basic principle of the situation approach is that leadership that is effective in certain situations may be totally ineffective in some others and thus is contingent upon organisational circumstances or situations. While the trait and behaviour approaches focused on the leaders themselves, the contingent approach recognises the role of the leader in relation to his followers and the situation (task, systems and environment). This approach seeks to delineate the characteristics of the situations and followers and examines leadership styles that can be effective. Many situational leadership models have been developed among which some have gained significant interest among researchers—Contingency Model of Fred Fiedler, Situational Leadership Model of Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, the Normative Decision Model of Vroom and Yetton and the Path-Goal Theory of Robert House. Let us examine some of these now.


THE CONTINGENCY MODEL The basic principle on which Fred Fiedler (b. 1922) based his finding is the extent to which a leader’s style is relationship or task oriented. While many scholars assumed that there was one best style of leadership, Fiedler’s contingency model postulates that the leader’s effectiveness is based on ‘situational contingency’, that is a result of interaction of two factors, known as leadership style and situational favourableness (later called situational control).30 More than 400 studies have since investigated this relationship. While evolving the Contingency Model, Fiedler developed a questionnaire called the Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC) having a set of 16 bipolar—positive and negative—adjectives (such as pleasant–unpleasant, relaxed–tense, distant–close and gloomy–cheerful) along an eight-point scale. According to this model, if a leader describes the LPC using positive adjectives, he or she is considered relationship-oriented. If a leader uses negative adjectives to describe the LPC, he or she is considered to be task-oriented. Fiedler’s model analyses three major factors in leadership situation. These are leader-member relations (the degree to which a group trusted, liked or was willing to follow the leader), task structure (the degree to which the task is ill- or well-defined) and position power (formal authority as opposed to the personal power of the leader). Each of these can be situational and change from organisation to organisation and from time to time. Situations can be considered very favourable to the leader if the relationship with the followers is good, leader has a strong position power and the task is highly structured. Situations will be considered very unfavourable to the leader if the relationship with the followers is poor, leader has a weak position power and the task is highly unstructured. According to Fiedler, the leadership style appropriate to the situation would depend upon such favourability.

THE SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP MODEL The situational model of leadership developed by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard may be considered an extension of the ‘managerial grid’ and draws significantly from the leader–member relations theory. This model demonstrates the importance of recognising followercharacteristics for effective leadership.31 According to Hersey and Blanchard, followers vary in the degree of their ‘readiness’ (ability


and willingness). Here, ability refers to the knowledge and skill possessed by the followers and willingness refers to the degree of security and self-confidence that the followers possess. Hersey and Blanchard contend that the leadership styles should be based on the willingness and ability of the followers. They believe that styles that do not reckon with the follower readiness will be inappropriate and ineffective. Follower readiness can be of four types—able and willing, able but not willing, not able but willing and not able and not willing. According to the situational leadership model, the appropriate leadership styles are termed respectively as delegating, participating, selling and telling. Delegating style would involve taking followers into confidence, building trust and enabling them to act. Participating style would require the leader to motivate the followers and increase their self-confidence. Selling style would demand from the leader a developmental approach toward the follower. Telling style is typical of autocratic or authoritarian decision-making. The Hersey-Blanchard model is useful in understanding why and how leaders would need to examine followers’ readiness before deciding upon any particular style. When combined with Fiedler’s contingency model, it provides a powerful framework for leadership style development.

THE NORMATIVE DECISION MODEL Influenced by the earlier approaches and models, Victor Vroom and Peter Yetton proposed the normative decision model to explain leadership behaviour.32 Their model specified the decision procedures that would be effective in a variety of situations. They identified five decision procedures including two types of autocratic decisions, two types of consultative decisions and one type of group decision. These were A1: Leader takes known information and then decides alone; A2: Leader gets information from followers and then decides alone; C1: Leader shares problem with followers individually, listens to ideas and then decides alone; C2: Leader shares problems with followers as a group, listens to ideas and then decides alone; and G2: Leader shares problems with followers as a group and then seeks and accepts consensus agreement. Situational factors that influence the method are relatively logical: 1. When decision quality is important and followers possess useful information, then A1 and A2 are not the best methods.


2. When the leader sees decision quality as important but followers do not, then G2 is inappropriate. 3. When decision quality is important, when the problem is unstructured and the leader lacks information /skill to make the decision alone, then G2 is best. 4. When decision acceptance is important and followers are unlikely to accept an autocratic decision, then A1 and A2 are inappropriate. 5. When decision acceptance is important but followers are likely to disagree with one another, then A1, A2 and C1 are not appropriate, because they do not give opportunity for differences to be resolved. 6. When decision quality is not important but decision acceptance is critical, then G2 is the best method. 7. When decision quality is important, all agree with this, and the decision is not likely to result from an autocratic decision then G2 is the best. Empirical studies conducted in subsequent years have supported the Vroom-Yetton model the most among all other models. This model has since been revised and amended by Vroom and Jago.33

THE PATH-GOAL THEORY The Path-Goal Theory of Leadership was developed by Robert House to describe the way that leaders encourage and support their followers in achieving the goals they have been set by making the path that they should take clear and easy. 34 It is based on and draws significantly from Vroom’s expectancy theory of motivation. It was developed to explain how the behaviour of a leader could influence the performance and resultant satisfaction of the followers. According to House, leaders clarify the path so subordinates know which way to go; remove roadblocks that are stopping them going there; and increase the rewards along the route. Leaders can take a strong or limited approach in these. In clarifying the path, they may be directive or give vague hints. In removing roadblocks, they may scour the path or help the follower move the bigger blocks. In increasing rewards, they may give occasional encouragement or pave the way with gold. This variation in approach will depend on the situation, including the follower’s capability and motivation, as well as the difficulty of the job and other contextual factors.


Path-Goal Theory assumes that leaders are flexible and that they can change their style, according to the situation. The theory proposes two contingency variables, such as environment and follower characteristics, that moderate the leader behaviour-outcome relationship. Environment is outside the control of the follower-task structure, authority system and work group. Environmental factors determine the type of leader behaviour required if the follower outcomes are to be maximised. Follower characteristics are the locus of control, experience and perceived ability. Personal characteristics of subordinates determine how the environment and leader are interpreted. Effective leaders clarify the path to help their followers achieve the goals and make the journey easier by reducing roadblocks and pitfalls. Research demonstrates that employee performance and satisfaction are positively influenced when the leader compensates for the shortcomings in either the employee or the work setting. In contrast to the Fiedler contingency model, the path-goal model states that the four leadership styles are fluid and that leaders can adopt any of the four according to the demands of the situation.

COGNITIVE RESOURCES THEORY This theory, developed by Fiedler and his colleagues examines the relationship of group performance with the leader’s cognitive resources such as intelligence and experience.35 According to the cognitive resources theory, the performance of a leader’s group is determined by a complex interaction between two leader traits (intelligence and experience), one type of leader behaviour (directive) and two aspects of leadership situation (interpersonal stress and nature of group task). Subsequent research has shown that intelligence of a leader is related to performance more in the case of directive leadership behaviour than non-directive leadership behaviour.

PERSONALITY THEORY APPROACH In recent times, there has been greater emphasis on understanding personality differences to understand effective leadership styles. ‘Personality is the set of unseen characteristics and processes that underlie a relatively stable pattern of behaviour in response to ideas, objects or people in the environment.’36 Researchers have analysed a number of traits among leaders and have evolved five general dimensions that characterise personality—Extroversion (the degree to


which a person is comfortable meeting and talking to new people), Agreeableness (the degree to which a person is able to get along with others), Conscientiousness (the degree to which a person pursues a goal with responsibility, persistence and focus), Emotional Stability (the degree to which a person is well-adjusted, handles stress well and feels secure) and Openness to Experience (the degree to which a person is intellectually curious and seeks out new experiences). Each one of these five can be drawn on a continuum from low to high—Extroversion (from low—quiet, withdrawn, unassertive to high—outgoing, energetic, gregarious), Agreeableness (from low— aloof, easily irritated to high—warm, considerate, good-natured), Conscientiousness (from low—impulsive, carefree to high—responsible, dependable, goal-oriented), Emotional Stability (from low—moody, tense, lower self-confidence to high—stable, confident) and Openness to Experience (from low—narrow field of interests, liking the triedand-tested to highly imaginative, curious, open to new ideas).37 One would be tempted to believe, based on even a cursory study of these five dimensions that an effective leader would score high on each of the dimensions. In fact, a recent research by Hogan and others has shown that people who scored high on Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability were more successful leaders.38 The results for a correlation between a high score on Openness to Experience and Leadership Effectiveness were not as conclusive. However, it has also been established by other studies that not all effective leaders are rated high on all of the five dimensions. The other major work relating to understanding personality differences is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI is the most widely researched, written about and used personality type instrument and the questionnaire is taken every year by millions of people around the world. In recent years, the application of the MBTI in leadership studies has increased significantly.39 A study by Stogdill of about 180 successful business leaders in the USA showed that over 80 per cent of the respondents were strong T and J (ISTJ or INTJ or ESTJ or ENTJ), raising questions as to whether effective leadership would demand a natural preference for T (Thinking—objective, analytical, logical) and J (Judging—structured, planned, methodical). Other studies have also shown similar correlations between the MBTI Type and Leadership Effectiveness. However, it should be noted that a historical study of successful leaders, particularly in politics and society, would throw up many whose natural preferences on the MBTI dichotomies were completely different.


Some Recent Studies in Leadership The last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century have witnessed changes as never before. The world we live in today is undergoing a change more profound and far-reaching than any other that humanity has witnessed any time in the past. Changes are affecting the way we interact with others and the way we conduct our businesses. Our personal and professional lives are being altered irrevocably. There is a paradigm shift in how organisations are viewed and managed. Stability has given place to change, control to empowerment, competition to collaboration and homogeneity to heterogeneity. Many organisations that were considered invincible earlier have been exposed to be inadequate in facing the challenges of change. Scandals in corporate America and elsewhere have raised questions of lack of credibility and accountability of the men at the helm of affairs of organisations. Globalisation of markets, crumbling of geographical and political boundaries, explosion of information and communication and advancement in technology, have all resulted in a culture of 24×7 business commitments. Not quite unexpectedly, business leadership as a subject of debate has assumed greater significance than ever before. Business leaders, management scholars and educational researchers are delving deep to try and understand this subject of leadership better. More emphasis is being placed on emotional needs, team work, networking and interpersonal skills. Many newer theories and models of effective or successful leadership have emerged in the last 25 years. Let us now review some of these.

LEADERSHIP

AND

VALUES

Values seem to have become very important in recent times. We may define ‘values’ as our fundamental beliefs and faiths which we consider important, which are relatively stable over a period of time and impact our lives in a number of different ways. We can consider two kinds of values—end values and instrumental values. End values are those relating to the outcomes or goals that we desire our actions and decisions to result in. Instrumental values, on the other hand, are those beliefs that guide our behaviour for reaching those goals. Values may not be inherited, but imbibed and formed early in one’s life. Values are not the same as ethics or morals. While values are fundamental


beliefs and faiths, ethics or morality has to do with external manifestations of one’s behaviour, arising out of one’s values. Values impact leadership behaviour very significantly. A leader’s perception of situations or problems will depend upon his values. Values also impact the way in which leaders relate to their followers. Lastly, values impact the way leaders make choices and implement actions.40

LEADERSHIP POWER There has often been debate on whether authority is different from power. In a very interesting study, French and Raven developed a classification of different types of power that a leader could exercise.41 While they did not differentiate between ‘positional power’ and ‘personal power’ of a leader, they classified power into five types. These were reward power (followers comply in expectation of a reward), coercive power (followers comply in order to avoid punishment), legitimate power (followers comply because they believe that the leader has a right to request and the followers have an obligation to comply), expert power (followers comply because they believe that the leader possesses specialised knowledge on the subject or has necessary competence) and referent power (followers comply because they admire the leader and seek to gain approval from him).

LEADER

AS A

CULTURE MANAGER

Edgar Schein, while postulating his model of leader as a culture manager, says that leaders create, embed, develop and sometimes deliberately attempt to change cultural assumptions in an organisation.42 Leadership is the attitude and motivation to examine and manage culture. Different stages of organisational development require different kinds of culture management and different strategic issues require a focus on different kinds of cultural dimensions. Leaders externalise their assumptions and embed them into the organisation’s vision, mission, strategies, structures and everything else. This leads to the organisational culture. According to Schein, leaders can influence the culture of an organisation in a number of different ways. These include: • Attention: Communication by leaders of their priorities, values and concerns through appropriate choice of things to ask about, measure, comment on, praise and criticise.


• Reaction to Crises: Sending a strong message about values and assumptions through appropriate choice of responses to emotionally charged crisis situations. • Role Modelling: Leaders communicating values and expectations through their own actions that demonstrate loyalty, sacrifice and service beyond the call of duty. • Allocation of Rewards: Leaders’ choice of criteria used as the basis for allocating rewards. • Selection and Dismissal: Leaders’ choice of criteria used in recruitment, selection and promotion.

LEADERSHIP

AND

VISION

Among the many beliefs about what makes effective leadership, one that has most often been common is that all great leaders have a compelling vision. A number of leading thinkers on the subject have written about the essential characteristics of a successful vision. These include Bennis and Nanus (1985), Kotter (1996) and Tichy and Devanna (1986). According to some of these people, a vision should be simple and idealistic, not complex and quantitative. The vision should reflect the core values, hopes and ideals of organisational members and stakeholders. It should be meaningful and capable of ‘charging up’ the desires for achievement in followers.43 Very often, I have found people quoting the US President, John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech in 1961 when he said, ‘we shall land a man on the moon and return him safe to earth, before the turn of the decade’ as a very effective exercise in creating a vision. In their widely quoted work on leadership and organisations, James Collins and Jerry Porras propounded the theory that individual leaders with great ideas are often not as critical or important as the organisation they build.44 Their theory is based on the belief that organisations that survive, thrive and grow beyond individual leaders are so because of the vision that unites people in them. Their advice to leaders desiring to build lasting organisations is to be highly persistent—not with one great idea, but with the company itself. They say ‘be prepared to kill, revise, or evolve an idea, but never give up on the company’. They provide numerous examples of companies including Motorola, HP, 3M, Sony, GE, Wal-Mart, Johnson & Johnson and Walt Disney to establish the value of their theory. They claim that ‘a high profile, charismatic style is absolutely not required to successfully shape a visionary company. ’


If I asked you what the purpose of business is, what would your answer be? You may say, ‘to make profit and survive’ or ‘to achieve the objectives and goals and make profits’ or ‘to realise a dream and vision’. To me, the core purpose of any business is not just to make money. That is too mundane and ordinary. A business exists for a larger purpose. How can we identify that purpose? I would normally recommend what I call a ‘five why’ technique. Ask yourself ‘why’ five times. If you say the purpose is to make money, ask yourself ‘why make money?’ If your answer is ‘to become wealthy and acquire all material things in life’, ask yourself ‘why acquire all those?’ And so on. You will soon come to a stage when you find the answer too difficult to find. That difficult answer is probably the real or core purpose of your business. I believe that a core purpose is something beyond the mundane or the ordinary. You will observe many successful organisations that have made enough profits and money, but still continue to strive hard to achieve excellence. You must have read Alice in Wonderland. It is a bedtime story book written by Lewis Carroll. In that book, I believe, there is a passage where Alice comes across a fork on the road in the jungle. She does not know which side of the fork to take. She asks the Cheshire cat what to do and which road to follow. The cat asks her where she wants to go. When Alice replies that she is not sure, the cat said ‘if you do not know where you want to go, does it really matter which path you take?’ This example shows us the importance of developing a vision.

MORAL PRINCIPLES

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LEADERSHIP

James O’Toole, while arguing for moral leadership—leadership based on moral principles, has said, ‘the moral and logical error inherent in contingency theory is relativism, the belief that there are no universal truths or objective knowledge save scientific proofs. In the relativist’s belief system, there are no rights and wrongs—or if there are, these are purely personal concerns and as such are irrelevant to the practical arenas of statecraft and corporate leadership.’45 O’Toole believes that trustworthiness, respect, keeping promises, service and faithfulness are moral principles that every leader ought to follow. In support of his argument, he cites and compares the cases of General Patton, Nelson Mandela, Jack Welch and De Pree. The collapse of


some corporate organisations in the United States of America and elsewhere in the beginning of the 21st century seems to prove O’Toole’s argument.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP Among the more significant pieces of research in leadership has been the one relating to an understanding of transformational leadership. James MacGregor Burns coined the terms transactional and transformational leadership to describe the types of political leaders he studied.46 However, there has been considerable empirical research on this theory by Bass.47 This theory distinguishes transactional leadership from transformational leadership. A transactional leader seeks to satisfy the needs and desires of his or her followers in exchange for fulfilment of their commitments with regard to meeting certain pre-defined objectives and tasks. Transformational leaders have the ability to enlist the support of their followers by focusing on larger things such as the creation of shared values and visions. They build relationships with followers based on personal values, beliefs and are able to make the followers see fulfilment of organisational objectives to be greater than the realisation of their personal goals.48 Gary Yukl provides some guidelines for leaders who seek transformational leadership.49 These include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Articulate a clear and appealing vision. Explain how the vision can be attained. Act confidently and optimistically. Express confidence in followers. Use dramatic, symbolic actions to emphasise key values. Lead by example. Empower people to achieve the vision.

John Kotter suggests the following eight steps to transform an organisation:50 1. Establish a Sense of Urgency: Examine market and competitive realities; identify and discuss crises, potential crises, or major opportunities. 2. Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition: Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort; encourage the group to work as a team.


3. Create a Vision: Create a vision to help direct the change effort; develop strategies for achieving that vision. 4. Communicate the Vision: Use every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and strategies; teach new behaviours by the example of the guiding coalition. 5. Empower Others to Act on the Vision: Get rid of obstacles to change; change systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision; encourage risk taking and non-traditional ideas, activities and actions. 6. Plan for and Create Short Term Wins: Plan for visible performance improvements; create those improvements; recognise and reward employees involved in the improvements. 7. Consolidate Improvements and Produce Still More Change: Use increased credibility to change systems, structures and policies that do not fit the vision; hire, promote and develop employees who can implement the vision; reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes and change agents. 8. Institutionalise New Approaches: Articulate the connections between the new behaviours and organisational success; develop the means to ensure leadership development and succession. Mahatma Gandhi galvanised an entire nation to rise above personal obstacles, constraints and goals and to sacrifice their lives, if necessary, to gain independence for India. He is probably a good example of a transformational leader. Dhirubhai Ambani who created a revolution in business with an entirely new perspective on ‘value-creation to shareholders’ and ‘investor relations’ is another example of a transformmational leader. Can we also cite Ratan Tata as an example of a transformational leader for the impact he has created in the Tata Group? What about Ashok Soota and Subroto Bagchi of MindTree Consulting who relentlessly pursue a change agenda in their organisation?

CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP Yet another way of looking at leadership and personality is the study of Charismatic Leadership. These leaders are able to motivate their followers into doing things they would normally not do, things they would rather not do and do such things despite enormous difficulties and obstacles on the way. They seem to possess ‘a fire that ignites followers’, energy and commitment, producing results above and beyond the call of duty’.51 According to Bass, charisma is one part of becoming


a transformational leader, by inspiring followers through setting high expectations, focusing efforts and expressing goals in influential ways.52 Gary Yukl says that with a charismatic leader, ‘followers perceive that the leader’s beliefs are correct, they willingly obey the leader, they feel affection toward the leader, they are emotionally involved in the mission of the group or organisation, they have high performance goals and they believe that they can contribute to the success of the mission.’53 Indian business leaders like N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys and Kiran Mazumdar of Biocon come to mind instantly when we think of charismatic leaders. Where else in the world (with the exception of Bill Gates’ Microsoft and Page’s Google, perhaps) have we come across an individual, either alone or in collaboration with a closely-knit group of friends, create business empires of gigantic proportions out of practically nothing in less than two decades?

LEADERSHIP RISKS In a very interesting analysis and study, Robert Quinn tells us about the need for leaders to change their own behaviour and be willing to take risks in order to be effective.54 According to him, ‘when we are continually growing, we have an internal sense of meaning and impact. We are full of energy and radiate a successful demeanour. To have such feelings in a continually changing environment, we must continually realign ourselves with our environment.’ He further goes on to urge leaders in organisations to take risks and care enough to die for the organisation. In his view, risk is a constant companion that accompanies every decision that a leader takes and every action that the leader initiates. The leader recognises that if he does not cope with the pressure of risk, he and his organisation will gradually but surely move towards their end.

LEADERSHIP

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CHANGE

Change is a word that is most often closely associated with leadership discussions. Whenever we speak of leadership challenges, we also speak of change. There are many types of change. Change in the mindset and attitudes, change in technology, change in social environment and culture and change in organisational strategy are some types of change. Noel Tichy and Eli Cohen have argued that leaders set an organisation’s culture in motion and are the drivers of change


and momentum within organisations.55 According to them, in a broad sense, leaders stage revolutions constantly challenging status quo and look around to see if they are doing the right things and if those right things can be done better or smarter. They cite examples of numerous companies including IBM, Dell, Intel and Southwest Airlines to support their theory. An eight-stage model of planned organisational change has been developed by John Kotter.56 According to this model, leaders should establish a sense of urgency, form a powerful guiding coalition, develop a compelling vision, communicate that vision, empower employees to act on the vision, celebrate short-term accomplishments, create greater change and institutionalise the change culture. It is not uncommon for leaders who initiate change in their organisations to find themselves constrained by resistance in implementation. Gary Yukl has suggested some ways in which change can be implemented without too much pain.57 Among his suggestions are to build a broad coalition of changesupporters, making dramatic and symbolic changes, creating a sense of urgency, helping people to get ready for change and demonstrating continued commitment to the change.

LEADERSHIP DERAILMENT Morgan McCall studied and analysed the various possible reasons why business leaders derail after being successful and effective earlier in their career.58 Derailment could mean reaching a plateau, being fired from job, or being forced to retire early. Many of the reasons could be attributed to perceptions of the leader by others—superiors, peers, colleagues and subordinates. Among the reasons most often quoted are insensitivity, arrogance, betrayal of trust, over ambition, self-centredness and inability to build teams. Some of these could very well have been construed as success factors earlier—intelligence, technical knowledge and superiority, impressive results and performance, action and achievement-orientation and strong track record. Therefore, it is necessary for effective and successful leaders to recognise that their perceived strengths at one point of time could turn against them in another.

WHAT DO LEADERS DO? As said at the beginning of this chapter, John Kotter has argued that leadership and management are two distinct and complementary


systems of action. Taking the traditional understanding of the functions of management, he postulates that leadership is about setting a direction as opposed to the management function of planning and budgeting, about aligning people as opposed to organising and staffing and about motivating and inspiring people as opposed to controlling and problem solving.59 Some of us still believe that leaders, in order to be effective, need many of the managerial qualities and managers, in order to be successful, need at least some of the characteristics of leaders. According to Kotter, leadership is not so much about personality traits or situations as about what leadership does in action. Like Schein, he too believed that leaders can and will create a ‘culture of leadership’ in organisations that they serve. In fact, if we look at many of the organisations in the ‘new economy’ sector in India, it does seem that their leaders have ushered in new work cultures.

CO-LEADERSHIP David Heenan and Warren Bennis have made a strong case for what they call ‘Co-Leaders’.60 The basic tenet of their theory is that every organisation has, at its heart, a cadre of co-leaders—key players who do the work, even if they receive little of the glory that their leaders receive. Heenan and Bennis believe that co-leadership is a toughminded strategy that will unleash the hidden talent in any enterprise; it is inclusive and not exclusive; and it celebrates those who do the real work, not just a few charismatic leaders at the top of an organisation. They cite many examples—the former US Vice President Al Gore, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, Craig Barrett of Intel and Douglas Ivester of Coca-Cola among them—to prove their point. In the Indian context, some names that come to mind immediately are Nandan Nilekani of Infosys, Gopalakrishnan and Bhaskar Bhat of Tata Sons and Titan Industries, Subroto Bagchi of MindTree and G.V. Prasad of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories. These are co-leaders who have stood by their leaders in good times and bad. They understood their leaders and were unafraid to speak their mind when it mattered. Their contributions to their organisations were no less significant than their leaders’.

LEADERSHIP PASSAGES Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel have developed a model of leadership that is based on transitional changes occurring


in organisations and call the changes ‘passages’ that are major events in the life of a leader. 61 The six passages proposed by them are: 1. Managing Self to Managing Others (typical of first-line managers). 2. Managing Others to Managing Managers (typical of managers who need to think beyond their function and concern themselves with strategic issues of overall business). 3. Managing Managers to Functional Manager (typical requirement is an increase in managerial maturity). 4. Functional Manager to Business Manager (typically the most satisfying and most challenging). 5. Business Manager to Group Manager (typical of a leader who values others’ successes as much as his own). 6. Group Manager to Enterprise Manager (typical of long-term and visionary thinkers).

LEVEL 5 LEADERSHIP Jim Collins, while enunciating his theory of Level 5 Leadership, says that ‘Level 5 Leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves into the larger goal of building a great company. It is not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not for themselves.’62 A Level 5 leader blends extreme personal humility with fiery resolve and intense personal will. According to Collins, a great many leaders of our times are truly Level 4 leaders—people concerned more with their own personal greatness who often failed to set up the company for success in the next generation. In the Indian context, again, a name that comes to our minds, almost unaided, is that of Mahatma Gandhi, who personified personal humility (remember his Sabarmati Ashram?) with a fierce resolve (to gain independence for India). Considering the emergence of India in recent years as a global economic power, we can say with some degree of certainty that at least some of the present business leaders may fall under Level 5 leadership. Many admirers cite Azim Premji and Narayana Murthy as examples in Indian business today. The other day, I was flying from Bangalore to Mangalore and met Narayana Murthy at the airport. I was amazed to see him all by himself, without any of the paraphernalia that we would expect such an important person to be associated with. He stood in the queue for his turn like


any of us. He was very polite to the airport staff. I then realised that I was meeting a man who embodied Jim Collin’s Level 5 leadership.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Emotional intelligence is defined as the extent to which a person is attuned to his or her own feelings and to the feelings of others. It is interrelated with cognitive intelligence. Emotional intelligence includes several interrelated components such as self-awareness, empathy and self-regulation. Emotional intelligence can help leaders solve complex problems, make better decisions, plan how to use their time effectively and adapt their behaviour to the situation. Daniel Goleman, in a classic work, recognised the importance and significance of emotional intelligence (the emotional impact of what a leader says and does) in effective leadership.63 Understanding the powerful role of emotions at the workplace can differentiate a great leader from a good one. This understanding results not only in tangible benefits such as improvements in the finances of the organisation, but also the intangibles such as motivation, morale and commitment of the employees. According to Goleman, ‘official’ leaders are not necessarily the ones followers will turn to for motivation and inspiration. The leader that followers will turn to for emotional guidance is the one they trust and respect—the emotional leader.

FIVE PRACTICES

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LEADERSHIP

Taking a cue from what John Kotter said in ‘what the leaders really do’, James Kouzes and Barry Posner have evolved some characteristics of exemplary leadership.64 They call these the five practices of leadership. According to them, exemplary leaders engage themselves in modelling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act and encouraging the heart. Kouzes and Posner have further enunciated what they refer to as the ‘ten commitments of leadership’ embedded in these five practices, as a guide to understanding how leaders get extraordinary things done in organisations. I believe that these five practices are available to any leader to practice in any organisation or situation. My interpretation of these five practices would include developing self-awareness and self-discipline (in order to model the way), creating a compelling vision (in order to share it with others), being a proactive change-seeker (in order to challenge the process), having empathy and a genuine concern for


others (in order to enable others to act) and demonstrating emotional maturity (in order to encourage the heart).

SERVANT LEADERSHIP Servant leaders transcend self-interest to serve the needs of others. The concept of servant leadership was first described by Robert Greenleaf in his seminal book.65 Greenleaf’s basic precepts include putting service before self-interest, listening first to affirm others, inspiring trust in others by being trustworthy and nourishing others and helping them become whole. Some of the characteristics of servant leadership are listening and understanding (only a true natural servant automatically responds to any problem by listening first), acceptance and empathy (the servant as leader always empathises, always accepts the other person but sometimes refuses to accept some of the person’s effort or performance to be good enough), foresight (foresight is a better than average guess about what is going to happen when in the future) and awareness and perception (value building and value clarifying which strengthen one to meet the stress of life in the face of uncertainty). The servant leader must stand up to what he thinks is right, even if it is not in the financial interests of the organisation he leads. Greenleaf believed that the followers of servant leaders would get inspired to become servant leaders themselves.

Leadership in Different Countries and Cultures Given the continuing onslaught of globalisation, the explosion of information and the advancements in technology, cross-cultural differences have been observed to impact leadership behaviour and styles in different countries. Some questions that arise include whether it is possible to generalise the results of leadership studies from one country to another, whether leaders’ education and experience are transferable from one country to another, whether decision-making practices and leadership styles vary between countries and finally whether some dimensions of leadership are universally relevant while others are not. A few studies conducted in the second half of the 20th century have researched these questions. Among the notable ones are those conducted by Boddewyn and Nath,66 and Barrett and Bass.67 An example of the ‘universality’ of leadership dimensions has been drawn


by Bass, Burger, Doktor and Barrett who found that ‘managers everywhere wanted to be more proactive and to get work done by using less authority. In the same way, managers with higher rates of career advancement everywhere saw themselves as having a higher effective intelligence.’68 At the same time, they also concluded that ‘more often than not, national boundaries did make a considerable difference in managers’ goals, preferences for taking risks, pragmatism, interpersonal competence, effective intelligence, emotional stability and leadership style.’ A few other studies of managers in multinational companies have also supported this conclusion. A classic example of the contrast in leadership behaviour based on cultural differences and background was found by Miskin and Gmelch who argued that the ‘Japanese organisational culture of entire careers spent in the same organisation, security of employment, gradual upward mobility, strong familial relationships and collective decisionmaking provides more ready-made support for quality control efforts than does the US organisational culture with its short-term company loyalty, tough-minded management, rugged individualism and ambitious upward mobility.’ 69

GEERT HOFSTEDE: CULTURE’S CONSEQUENCES Professor Geert Hofstede of Maastricht University conducted perhaps the most comprehensive study of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture.70 Hofstede analysed a large data base of employee values scores collected by IBM between 1967 and 1973 covering more than 70 countries, from which he first used the 40 largest only and afterwards extended the analysis to 50 countries and three regions. In the editions of his work since 2001, scores are listed for 74 countries and regions, partly based on replications and extensions of the IBM study on different international populations. Subsequent studies validating the earlier results have included commercial airline pilots and students in 23 countries, civil service managers in 14 countries, ‘up-market’ consumers in 15 countries and ‘elites’ in 19 countries. From the initial results and later additions, Hofstede developed a model that identifies four primary dimensions to assist in differentiating cultures—Power Distance (PDI), Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS) and Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI). He added a fifth Dimension after conducting an additional international study with a


survey instrument developed with Chinese employees and managers. This dimension, based on Confucian dynamism, is Long-Term Orientation (LTO) and was applied to 23 countries. These five Hofstede cultural dimensions can also be found to correlate with most country, cultural and religious paradigms. • Power Distance Index (PDI) focuses on the degree of equality, or inequality, between people in the country’s society. A high PDI indicates that inequalities of power and wealth have been allowed to grow within the society. These societies are more likely to follow a caste system that does not allow significant upward mobility to its citizens. A low PDI indicates that the society places less emphasis on the differences between citizen’s power and wealth, stressing on equality and opportunity for everyone in the society. • Individualism (IDV) focuses on the degree the society reinforces individual or collective achievement and interpersonal relationships. A high IDV indicates that individuality and individual rights are paramount within the society. Individuals in these societies may tend to form a larger number of loose relationships. A low IDV typifies societies of a more collectivist nature with close ties between individuals. These cultures reinforce extended families and collectives where everyone takes responsibility for the fellow members of their group. • Masculinity (MAS) focuses on the degree the society reinforces, or does not reinforce, the traditional masculine work role model of male achievement, control and power. A high MAS indicates that the country experiences a high degree of gender differentiation. In these cultures, males dominate a significant portion of the society and power structure, with females being controlled by the male domination. A low MAS indicates that the country has a low level of differentiation and discrimination between genders. In these cultures, females are treated equally to males in all aspects. • Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) focuses on the level of tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity within the society. A high UAI indicates that the country has low tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. This creates a rule-oriented society that institutes laws, rules, regulations and controls in order to reduce the amount of uncertainty. A low UAI indicates that the


country has less concern about ambiguity and uncertainty and has more tolerance for a variety of opinions. This is reflected in a society that is less rule-oriented, more readily accepts change and takes more and greater risks. • Long-Term Orientation (LTO) focuses on the degree the society embraces, or does not embrace, long-term devotion to either traditional or forward thinking values. A high LTO indicates that the country subscribes to the values of long-term commitments and respect for tradition. This is thought to support a strong work ethic where long-term rewards are expected as a result of today’s hard work. However, business may take longer to develop in this society, particularly for an ‘outsider’. A low LTO indicates that the country does not reinforce the concept of long-term, traditional orientation. In this culture, change can occur more rapidly as long-term traditions and commitments do not become impediments to change. Ronen and Shenkar synthesised previous efforts of Hofstede and others to cluster countries according to their similarities and differences in the importance of work, satisfaction with work, autocratic versus democratic attitudes toward work, personal values (such as pragmatism, achievement, decisiveness and orderliness) and interpersonal values (such as conformity, recognition and benevolence).71 According to this study, the clusters are Latin European (France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Portugal), Anglo (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland), Germanic (Switzerland, Germany and Austria), Nordic (Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden), Near Eastern (Turkey, Iran and Greece), Arab (UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia), Far Eastern (China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan and Thailand) and Latin American (Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Colombia). According to Ronen and Shenkar, the ‘Independent’ cluster would include Brazil, Japan, India and Israel. A glimpse at the clusters will reveal some interesting characteristics of their culture with regard to organisations and leadership issues. Latin (European and American) Clusters share a lower capacity for openness, trust and rational expression of feelings. Tolerance of ambiguity is low. Competence is overruled by formal status. There exits institutionalised centralisation of decision-making, bureaucratic protection and state intervention. Far Eastern Cluster builds on the


countries’ shared Confucian and Buddhist heritage. Some of the characteristics are work and duty being more important than leisure and enjoyment, compliance with legitimate authority and recognition by peers being more important than one’s personal aggrandisement and advancement. Anglo Cluster of countries is distinct by the importance of the individual over the group, lesser premium on formal authority and more value placed on organisational stakeholders and personal traits. Despite the classification of countries into ‘cultural clusters’, it is quite possible that significant differences in cultures will exist between countries within a cluster. It is also not impossible that even within a country there can be differences in culture among its different communities, classes of people and geographical boundaries. For example, a country like India, with 28 States, seven Union Territories and multitude of languages, is likely to have multiplicity of cultural heritages, habits and behavioural patterns. Singh, Arya and Reddy have reported that patterns of leadership behaviour in Indian villages systematically differed with the leaders’ socioeconomic status, caste and occupation.72 Similarly, others like Gopala and Hafeez have reported that ‘high educational attainment was associated with favourable attitudes toward employees, while the lack of education was associated with a production-orientation.’73 Understanding the ‘Independent’ Cluster of countries is important for this book. Some common and shared cultural issues of these countries include the tendency to avoid potential conflicts, obedience to elders and formal authority, ‘compromise’ and ‘wait-and-see’ attitude, desire for harmony in relationships and at work, acceptance of ‘top-down’ leadership, leadership positions in organisations being ‘reserved’ for members of the ‘family’, high premium on loyalty and ‘group-think’. These characteristics have a significant impact on leadership practices and principles in these countries. A greater understanding of this will help us draw leadership lessons from experiences in India.

Summary So, what do all these theories and concepts and models of leadership mean to us? Are they not, in their simplest form, confusing and challenging? Someone said of global managers that they should possess ‘the stamina of an Olympic swimmer, mental agility of Einstein,


conversational skills of an English professor, detachment of a judge, tact of a diplomat and perseverance of an Egyptian pyramid builder’. Business leadership is much more complex and leaders need a vast array of traits, qualities, characteristics and behavioural skills in order to be effective and successful. From what we have seen so far in the past and current leadership theories and thoughts, it would seem necessary that a business leader should: 1. Possess personality traits such as intelligence, honesty, integrity, energy, self-confidence, desire to lead and interpersonal skills. 2. Understand the differences in personality types of followers. 3. Have an optimal mix of people-orientation and task-orientation. 4. Model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act and encourage the heart. 5. Be able to set a direction and vision for the organisation, align and motivate people and create a culture of leadership. 6. Have a strong sense of values and moral principles. 7. Have emotional stability and maturity. 8. Be open to ideas and suggestions. 9. Be ‘extroverted’ with a strong preference for ‘thinking’ and ‘judging’ attributes of personality types. 10. Be a pro-active change agent, constantly seeking opportunities for change. 11. Be focused, tough and result-oriented, not be afraid to take risks. 12. Combine personal humility with professional will. All the above would mean that leadership success or effectiveness is too complex and is something that is not achievable easily by ordinary people and that it is the prerogative of a select few. From the time Tom Peters and Robert Waterman published their run-away bestseller on excellent companies in 1982,74 researchers and corporate captains have been struggling to find the formula for ever-lasting leadership success. However, despite the overload of readings and literature on leadership, there does not seem to be a coherent or consensual agreement on what makes a great leader. Almost all the concepts, theories and models appear inconclusive. Stogdill reviewed around 3,000 studies in 1974 and concluded that ‘four decades of research on leadership have produced a bewildering mass of findings…the endless accumulation of empirical data has not produced an integrated understanding of leadership.’75


Very often, today’s business leaders are not even certain how long they will remain respected and regarded as leaders and whether the organisations they create will outlive them or not. The comforting thought, however, is that business history has thrown up many successful and effective leaders in their respective periods and we can draw lessons from them. The question before us is if India and Indian business have certain distinctive dimensions requiring different leadership styles and practices. To understand leadership characteristics and styles, let us now examine differences in personality types using the MBTI.

NOTES 1. Max De Pree, Leadership is an Art, New York: Doubleday, 1989. 2. J.P. Kotter, ‘What Leaders Really Do’, Harvard Business Review on Leadership, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1998, p. 37. 3. C.I. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938. 4. H. Fayol, General and Industrial Management, tr. C. Storrs, London: Pitman, 1949. Originally published in 1916 as Administration Industrielle et Generale in Paris. 5. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organisations. tr. T. Parsons, New York: Free Press, 1947. 6. F.J. Roethlisberger and W.J. Dickson, Management and the Worker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947. 7. W.H. Newman, Administrative Action: The Technique of Organisation and Management. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1951. 8. H. Koontz and C. O’Donnell, Principles of Management: An Analysis of Managerial Functions, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955. 9. D.A. Wren, The History of Management Thought, New York: John Wiley, 2005, p. 403. 10. H. Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work, New York: Harper & Row, 1973. 11. J.P. Kotter, The General Managers, New York: Free Press, 1982. 12. K. Davis, Human Relations in Business, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957, p. 4. 13. Chris Argyris, Integrating the Individual and the Organisation, New York: John Wiley, 1964. 14. A.H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality, New York: Harper & Row, 1954. 15. F.I. Herzberg, B. Mausner and B.B. Snyderman, The Motivation to Work, New York: John Wiley, 1959. 16. D. McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960. 17. V.H. Vroom, Work and Motivation, New York: John Wiley, 1964. 18. M.P. Follett, Freedom and Coordination: Lectures in Business Organisation,(ed.) L. Urwick, London: Management Publications Trust, 1949. 19. A. Zaleznik, ‘Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?’, HBR Classic, January 2004, (originally published in 1977). 20. R.J. Hogan, G.J. Curphy and J. Hogan, ‘What We Know About Personality: Leadership and Effectiveness’, American Psychologist, 49, 1994, pp. 493–504.

60 The Art of Business Leadership 21. R.M. Stogdill, ‘Personal Factors Associated with Leadership: A Survey of the Literature’, Journal of Psychology, 25, 1948, pp. 35–71. 22. Kurt Lewin, ‘Field Theory and Experiment in Social Psychology: Concepts and Methods’, American Journal of Sociology, 44, 1939, pp. 868–96; K. Lewin and R. Lippett,’ An Experimental Approach to the Study of Autocracy and Democracy: A Preliminary Note’, Sociometry, 1, 1938, pp. 292–300; K. Lewin, R. Lippett and R.K. White,’ Patterns of Aggressive Behaviour in Experimentally Created Social Climates’, Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 1939, pp. 271–301. 23. R. Tannenbaum and W.H. Schmidt, ‘How to Choose a Leadership Pattern’, Harvard Business Review, 36, 1958, pp. 95–101. 24. J.K. Hemphill and A.E. Coons, ‘Development of the Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire’, in R.M. Stogdill and A.E. Coons (eds), Leader Behaviour: Its Description and Measurement, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, Bureau of Business Research, 1957, pp. 6–38. 25. B.M. Bass, Leadership, Psychology, and Organisational Behaviour, New York: Harper & Row, 1960. 26. R. Likert, New Patterns of Management, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. 27. R.R. Blake and J.S. Mouton, The Managerial Grid, Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing, 1964. 28. Based on Fred Dansereau, ‘A Dyadic Approach to Leadership: Creating and Nurturing this Approach Under Fire’, Leadership Quarterly, 6 (4), 1975. 29. F. Dansereau, Jr., G. Graen and W.J. Haga, ‘A Vertical Dyad Linkage Approach to Leadership within Formal Organisations: A Longitudinal Investigation of the Role Making Process’, Organisational Behaviour and Human Performance, 13, 1975, pp. 46–78. 30. F.E. Fiedler, A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. 31. P. Hersey and K. Blanchard, Management of Organisational Behaviour: Utilising Human Resources, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984. 32. V.H. Vroom and P.W. Yetton, Leadership and Decision Making, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973. 33. V.H. Vroom and A.G. Jago, The New Leadership: Managing Participation in Organisations, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1988. 34. R.J. House, ‘A Path-Goal Theory of Leader Effectiveness’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 16, 1971, pp. 556–71. 35. F.E. Fiedler and J.E. Garcia, New Approaches to Leadership: Cognitive Resources and Organisational Performance, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1987. 36. R.L. Daft, The Leadership Experience, Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2002, p. 119. 37. J.M. Digman, ‘Personality Structure: Emergence of the Five-Factor Model’, Annual Review of Psychology, 41, 1990. 38. R.T. Hogan, G.J. Curphy and J. Hogan, ‘What We Know About Leadership: Effectiveness and Personality’, American Psychologist, 49(6), 1994, pp. 493–504. 39. Based on Mary H. McCauley, ‘Research on the MBTI and Leadership: Taking the Critical First Step’, Keynote address, The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Leadership: An International Research Conference, Wisconsin, 12–14 January 1994. 40. Based on G.W. England and R. Lee, ‘The Relationship Between Managerial Values and Managerial Success in the United States, Japan, India, and Australia’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 59, 1974, pp. 411–19.

Leadership Thoughts and Theories 61 41. J. French and B.H. Raven, ‘The Bases of Social Power’ in D. Cartwright (ed.) Studies of Social Power, Ann Arbor, MI: Institute of Social Research, 1959. 42. E.H. Schein, Organisational Culture and Leadership, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985. 43. B. Nanus, Visionary Leadership: Creating a Compelling Sense of Direction for Your Organisation, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992. 44. J.C. Collins and J.I. Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, New York: HarperCollins, 1994. 45. J. O’Toole, Leading Change: Overcoming the Ideology of Comfort and the Tyranny of Custom, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995. 46. J.M. Burns, Leadership, New York: Harper & Row, 1978. 47. B.M. Bass, Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations, New York: Free Press, 1985. 48. B.M. Bass, ‘From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision’, Organisational Dynamics, vol. 18, no. 3, 1990, pp. 19–31. 49. G. Yukl, Leadership in Organisations, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002. 50. John P. Kotter, ‘Winning at Change’, Leader to Leader, 10, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: 1998, pp. 27–33. 51. K.J. Klein and R.J. House, ‘On Fire: Charismatic Leadership and Levels of Analysis’, Leadership Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 2, 1995, pp. 183–98. 52. B.M. Bass, Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations, New York: Free Press, 1985. 53. G. Yukl, Leadership in Organisations, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002, p. 264. 54. R.E. Quinn, Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within, San Francisco: JosseyBass, 1996. 55. N.M. Tichy and E. Cohen, The Leadership Engine: How Winning Companies Build Leaders at Every Level, New York: HarperCollins, 1997. 56. J.P. Kotter, Leading Change, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996. 57. G. Yukl, Leadership in Organisations, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006, p. 309. 58. M.W. McCall Jr., High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1998. 59. J.P. Kotter John P. Kotter on What Leaders Really Do, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999. 60. D.A. Heenan and W.G. Bennis, Co-Leaders: The Power of Great Partnerships, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 1999. 61. R. Charan, S. Drotter, and J. Noel, The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001. 62. J.C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Some Don’t, New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 63. D. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, New York: Bantam Books, 1995. 64. J.M. Kouzes and B.Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge, San Francisco: JosseyBass, 2002. 65. Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, New York: Paulist Press, 2002.

62 The Art of Business Leadership 66. J. Boddewyn and R. Nath, ‘Comparative Management Studies: An Assessment’, Management International Review, 10, 1970. 67. G.V. Barrett and B.M. Bass, ‘Cross-cultural Issues in Industrial and Organisational Psychology’ in M.D. Dunnette (ed.), Handbook of Industrial and Organisational Psychology, Chicago: Rand McNally, 1976. 68. B.M. Bass, P.C. Burger, R. Doktor and G.V. Barrett, Assessment of Managers: An International Comparison, New York: Free Press, 1979. 69. V.D. Miskin and W.H. Gmelch, ‘Quality Leadership for Quality Teams’, Training and Development Journal, vol. 39, no. 5, 1985, pp. 122–29. 70. G. Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1980. 71. S. Ronen and O. Shenkar, ‘Clustering Countries on Attitudinal Dimensions: A Review and Synthesis’, Academy of Management Journal, 10, 1985, pp. 435–54. 72. S.N. Singh, H.P. Arya and S.K. Reddy, ‘Different Types of Local Leadership in Two North Indian Villages’, Manas, 12, 1965, pp. 97–107. 73. K.K.M. Gopala and A. Hafeez, ‘A Study of Supervisors’ Attitude Towards Employees and Production in Relation to Some Personal Factors’, Indian Journal of Applied Psychology, 1, 1964, pp. 78–83. 74. T.J. Peters and R.H. Waterman, In Search of Excellence, New York: Harper & Row, 1982. 75. R.M. Stogdill, Handbook of Leadership: A Survey of Theory and Research, New York: Free Press, 1974.

2 UNDERSTANDING PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES AT WORK

The theory is that much seemingly chance variation in human behaviour is not due to chance; it is in fact the logical result of a few basic, observable differences in mental functioning. —Isabel Briggs Myers in Gifts Differing The purpose of this chapter is to understand personality differences and their likely impact on leadership behaviour in organisations. This chapter is written based on adaptations from a number of books on the subject. Please see the ‘References’ for a complete list of books referred to for this chapter.

Introduction to the MBTI® The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is perhaps the most widely used, researched, and written about Personality Assessment Instrument in the world for over 50 years. It is the result of a life long study and research conducted by a mother and daughter team—Katherine Cook Briggs (1875–1968) and Isabel Briggs Myers (1897–1980), based on the Swiss psychologist/psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung’s (1875–1961) theory of Psychological Types. It is a self-report questionnaire designed


to make Jung’s theory understandable and useful in everyday life. First published in 1943 (Form A), the MBTI has evolved over the years into one of the most reliable instruments to understand personality types. According to Jung, people’s behaviour is typically a reflection of their natural preference for the use of their two mental functions or processes—how one gathers information (Sensing or Intuition) and how one makes a decision from the information (Thinking or Feeling). The attitude or orientation of the person is either Extroverted (energy focused on the external world) or Introverted (energy focused on the inner world). Briggs and Myers added a fourth dimension of life style preference (Judging or Perceiving) to Jung’s theory, in order to explain and understand the use of these two mental functions. The MBTI provides an accurate picture of a person’s Personality Type by determining an individual’s natural preferences on four dichotomies: • ATTITUDE: Extroversion–Introversion (E/I) Attitude describes where people prefer to focus their attention and get their energy from—the outer world of people, things, and activity (E) or their inner world of ideas, impressions and experiences (I). The typical statement associated with Extroversion (E) is, ‘Let’s talk this over’ and with Introversion (I) is, ‘I need to think about this’. • PERCEPTION: Sensing–Intuition (S/N) Perception describes how people prefer to gather and take in information—focused on what is real, present and actual (S) or on patterns, meanings and possibilities (N). The typical statement associated with Sensing (S) is, ‘Just the facts, please’ and with Intuition (N) is, ‘I can see it all now’. • JUDGEMENT: Thinking–Feeling (T/F) Judgement describes how people prefer to make decisions on the information gathered—based on logical, detached and impersonal analysis (T) or guided by values and concern for the impact on other people (F). The typical statement associated with Thinking (T) is, ‘Is this logical?’ and with Feeling (F) is, ‘Will anyone be hurt?’ • ORIENTATION: Judging–Perceiving (J/P) Orientation describes how people present themselves and prefer to deal with the outer world—in a planned, systematic and orderly way (J) or in a flexible, adaptable and spontaneous way (P). The typical statement associated with Judging (J) is, ‘Just do something’ and with Perceiving (P) is, ‘Let’s wait and see’.

Understanding Personality Differences at Work 65

An individual’s natural preference on each of the above dichotomies gives rise to his Personality Type expressed as four-letter codes (example—ESTJ, INFP, ENTP). Thus, combinations of the four preference letters result in 16 distinct Personality Types. What makes each Type unique and different is the dynamic interaction of each of these preferences with others. Type differences are more complex than the characteristics associated with each preference separately. For each Type, one of the preferences is developed earliest in life and may be used more than others. This first preference is often called the Dominant function—the core or guiding focus of one’s Personality. It, typically, is the mental tool people rely on the most. People use their dominant function primarily in their preferred world—the outer world for Extroverts and the inner world for Introverts. The second preference, called the Auxiliary function, provides the balance for the Personality in two ways. First, if the dominant function is a perceiving one (S or N), then the auxiliary one will be a judging one (T or F) and vice versa. Second, if the dominant function is Extroverted, then the auxiliary function will be Introverted and vice versa. The third preference (opposite of the Auxiliary) is called the Tertiary function and the fourth preference (opposite of the Dominant) is called the Inferior (least preferred) function. The preferred world (Extroverted or Introverted) of the Inferior function is the opposite of the Dominant function. The MBTI is not a test since it helps to identify only preferences— not skills, abilities or competencies. It describes rather than prescribes. It is therefore, used to open possibilities, not to limit options. The MBTI assumes that all preferences are equally important, valuable and necessary; and can be used at different times by each person. The MBTI has been applied as a tool for many decades by a variety of organisations around the world, including those in small and large industries, manufacturing and service sectors, government, public and private ownership firms and established and new entrepreneurial ventures.

The MBTI Personality Type Table The 16 Personality Types as per MBTI Type Table are ISTJ, ISFJ, INFJ, INTJ, ISTP, ISFP, INFP, INTP, ESTP, ESFP, ENFP, ENTP, ESTJ, ESFJ, ENFJ and ENTJ. I was recently teaching the fundamentals of MBTI to MBA students. I will now describe the lessons and issues. The questions raised by students are indicated in italics.


How many of you believe that people are differentially endowed? You know what I mean? All of us—some are tall, some are short, some are fat, some are thin, some are fair, some are dark, some are rich, some are not so rich—are different. There are differences in terms of the physical characteristics of people. But, similarly, I am not sure how many of you believe that people are also differentially endowed in terms of their mind and mental abilities. Do you believe that? Why do some people succeed in whatever they do and some don’t? Why are some people popular and some not? I believe that people are different. For example, if you have a sibling—brother or sister—have you experienced your mother or father tending to compare the two of you? Why can’t you be like your brother? Why can’t you be like your sister? There is a natural tendency for all of us to compare people. For example, if you are a person who likes to sit indoors—reading or watching TV—and your sibling is an outdoor person, there is a tendency for the parents to ask either of you to be like the other. They always ask ‘why don’t you go out and play?’, or ‘why don’t you sit inside and read?’ This happens all the time in our lives. Many parents do not appreciate and accept that siblings are different with different mental functions. Understanding personality differences helps us break from this mould. We need to recognise the existence of differences in people. I am not saying that you must accept the difference, but to start with recognising the existence of these differences. Next, accept and appreciate the differences. You must say to yourself that you will learn to recognise and accept the personality differences without passing judgments. Once you do this, you will be able to handle conflicts better. Once you recognise and accept the differences, half the conflict is automatically resolved. Carl Gustav Jung (pronounced ‘Yung’), a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist (1875–1961) carried out extensive research on personality types. He published his work sometime in early 1920s. What he said essentially was that each of us, throughout our lives, uses two mental functions. One relates to gathering or collecting data or information. The other mental function relates to deciding on the data or information collected. He called gathering or collecting data or information as the ‘Perception’ function, and deciding on the data or information as the ‘Judgment’ function. Let me now ask you. What is a rose? You say it is a flower. Some say it is a colour. Some say it is a name. Some others say is a symbol of love. Some may even go to the extent of describing in detail the


physical characteristics of the rose plant. Thus, there is a difference in how we perceive the word, ‘rose’. Some answers are in terms of the physical, while some others are in terms of personal experiences and relationships. Some people see the larger picture. In other words, some people use all their five senses to describe a thing; while others see the data or information with their ‘intuition’. Thus, there are two distinct ways of gathering or perceiving data or information. One is what we call the ‘Sensing’ type—physical characteristics, using the senses, here-and-now, practical. The other is what we call ‘Intuition’ type—establishing relationships, seeing the big picture, relating to one’s past experiences and so on. You could say some people see ‘the trees’ more than the ‘forest’ while some others see ‘the forest’ more than the ‘trees’. Similarly, there can be two distinct ways of deciding things. Some people decide in a logical, analytical and objective manner. Their way of deciding is based on hard data. That is one way of deciding. We call this the ‘Thinking’ type. But there are other people, who, given the same data or information, first ask themselves what will be the impact of their decision on people, values and relationships. We call this the ‘Feeling’ type. It is not that the latter will not use analysis or objectivity; it is just that their first consideration is about the impact of their decision on people—the emotional side. Let us represent Sensing by S, Intuition by N, Thinking by T and Feeling by F. How many possible combinations can we have from these two mental functions? Four, right? It can be ‘Sensing’ with ‘Thinking’ or ‘Feeling’ and ‘Intuition’ with ‘Thinking’ or ‘Feeling’. We use all of these sometime or the other in our lives, but the question is which one represents our ‘natural preference’. Which is the one we use more often than not and which is the one that is predominant in our lives? Carl Gustav Jung then added a third dimension to the personality type. He called it the ‘Attitude’ towards the world. Do you go to parties? What do you do when you enter a party room? Do you look around and see if you know someone already and then quietly go that person, or do you enter and announce yourself? You will see that some people do the former, while others do the latter. It relates to where a person draws his energy from, what gives a person excitement—people, things and events or ideas, reflection and one’s inner world? For example, if you are given a paid holiday for a week, what would you like to do? Some will say, catch up on reading, watching TV and sleeping. These represent individual activities without involving the external world. But some of us may say, go to different places, travel and meet new


people. These people draw their energy from people, events and things around them. Have you observed what happens when your father or mother returns home from work and finds some people waiting? Some will go straight to their room, shut it for a while, recoup their energy and then come out to meet the waiting people. Others will straightaway mingle with the waiting people and be ‘extroverted’ in their behaviour. These are two distinct parts of the ‘Attitude’ of a person. we call one ‘Extroversion’, and the other ‘Introversion’. ‘Extroversion’ implies drawing energy from people, events and things around. ‘Introversion’ implies drawing energy from the inner world of ideas, thoughts and reflection. Now, when you superimpose the ‘Attitude’ dimension onto the two mental functions of ‘Perception’ and ‘Judgement’, how many combinations of preferences do you get? Eight, right? According to Carl Gustav Jung, these eight are the personality types. Jung’s theory of personality type was discussed and debated within the fraternity of psychologists and psychiatrists for long. However, the benefit of this theory for everyday use was still not evident. Katherine Cook Briggs (1875–1968) was fascinated by Jung’s theory of personality types and wished to use it for improving the lives of common people. She was not a qualified or certified psychologist or psychiatrist. She and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers (1897–1980) decided to study the theory further and explore the possibility of its application to the everyday lives of people. Starting with their family members and close relatives, gradually they extended their experimentation to their friends. They also realised that Carl Gustav Jung’s theory based on eight types could not fully explain the behaviour or characteristics of people. So, they decided to add one more dimension to the theory. They observed that the way people presented themselves to the external world differed from one person to another. They called this dimension of personality as ‘Orientation’ to the external world. They found that while some people appeared planned, methodical and structured, others were more spontaneous, open-ended and flexible. They called these two distinct ways of Orientation ‘Judging’ and ‘Perceiving’. Judging implied a planned, methodical, structured way and Perceiving implied an open-ended, flexible and spontaneous way. Have you observed the differences in Orientation in your life? If you enter the rooms of some people, you will find things are neatly arranged, tidy and clean. These people also plan their activities well in advance and believe in adhering strictly to rules and regulations.


They enjoy deadlines. Some others wish to lead an open life, flexible and spontaneous. Have you also heard people saying ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’? These may be the judging types. Others may believe that life is for living, not for cleaning! They are the perceiving types. We call each of the different ways—Extroversion or Introversion, Sensing or Intuition, Thinking or Feeling, Judging or Perceiving—as ‘natural preferences’ of living life. Do people use only one of their preferences? Your question is if people use only one of the natural preferences in each dichotomy in their life. No, we all use both the preferences in our lives. The point is that we do not use both equally all the time. We have some preferences that we use more often which is predominant to us. It is something like a compression spring. Some of you from the science background will understand what I am saying. We can elongate the spring by force and hold it for some time. When we release the force, the spring comes back to its natural state. Of course, while elongated, there is stress and strain on the spring. Similarly, when we use a preference that is not our natural preference over a long period of time, it causes stress in us. When the stress exists over a prolonged period, it results in a ‘break’—just like what happens to the spring. Can people change their preference over time? Yes, we can. There are people who develop a preference that is not their natural preference in order to adapt themselves to others and to the world. Over a long period, this preference itself may turn out to be their natural preference. Can the change in natural preference happen by itself? I don’t believe so. I think in life nothing happens by itself. It is all a matter of choice. So, we have to work on our preferences over a long period of time if we want to change them. Whenever you think of doing something for others, there is a ‘self’ involved in that act. Imagine the words self-actualisation, self-motivation, or self-satisfaction. Each of these words has ‘self’ in it. If you superimpose the two preferences of Orientation dichotomy onto the other three dichotomies—Attitude, Perception and Judgement—how many do you get?—16, right? These are the personality types developed by Katherine Cooks Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. The instrument that identifies these 16 types has come to be known as the ‘Myers-Briggs Type Indicator’. Each of the natural


preferences is symbolised by an alphabet—Extroversion by E, Introversion by I, Sensing by S, Intuition by N, Thinking by T, Feeling by F, Judging by J, and Perceiving by P. These 16 types are formed by drawing one alphabet from each of the four dichotomies—Attitude (extroversion–introversion), Perception (sensing–intuition), Judgement (thinking–feeling), and Orientation (judging–perceiving). The MBTI was first published in 1943 as Form A and has been the most widely published, researched and written about personality type instrument in the world. It is reported that over 2.5 million people take the MBTI questionnaire each year. Do the natural preferences come from birth? It is genetic? Carl Gustav Jung believed that natural preferences develop from birth. However, one mental function—usually the dominant function— develops first. Generally speaking, we can say that by the age of 13–14 years, a person would be able to indicate his or her natural preferences well. Does the Judgement dichotomy get affected by circumstances? Not really. The decision itself may be impacted by circumstances, but the way you decide is not. The Judgement dichotomy is about the way the decision is made, not the decision itself. Can we say that if people act outside their natural preferences, they may not be successful? I am not saying that people cannot act outside of their natural preferences and still be successful. They can. Rather, what I am saying is that such behaviour will cause stress to the person. There is something called conditional reflex action. Can you tell me something about it in the context of the MBTI? It is possible that your conditions may impact your choice of natural preference. It may be a little difficult to understand this at this stage. It is not as if some person will be extroverted only with no introversion, sensing only with no intuition. We all use all these mental functions at some time or the other. The question in MBTI is what comes to you as a natural preference if there were no constraints, conditions and boundaries. What is the natural preference? What is it that you use in your life predominantly? What is it that you use more often than another? So, the answer to your question is that while it is true that conditions may change our natural preference over a long period of time, it does not happen often.


Is the MBTI used to analyse oneself or others? Good question. MBTI is a practical instrument that can be used in our day-to-day life. MBTI can be used effectively for communication, leadership, team building, conflict resolution, marriage counselling and career planning. It has numerous uses. To answer your question, I believe that it can be used to understand oneself and then to understand others. It is believed that unless you are aware of yourself first, there is no way you can understand others. So, start using MBTI to understand yourself first. This will help you understand others. You will then understand why people behave in a particular way. This will help reduce the conflicts that arise in interpersonal relationships. Don’t you think that people can use their unnatural preference? Yes, they can, in certain circumstances. But, it tends to cause stress in the person. It is possible that the person may cope with such stress effectively, but the fact remains that it causes stress. Stress can be of two types—eustress (positive) and distress (negative). Eustress helps keep us alert, motivates us to face challenges and drives us to solve problems. These low levels of stress are manageable and can be thought of as necessary and normal stimulation. Distress, on the other hand, results when our bodies overreact to events. It leads to what has been called a ‘fight or flight’ reaction. In MBTI when we speak of stress, we are not referring to the ability of a person to cope with the stress, but what causes the stress to the person. Different people react differently to the stress. How does the natural preference impact relationships? Good question! We believe that each type is different and has distinct characteristics. For example, an ESTJ and an INFP have entirely different ways of looking at things and different ways of deciding on things. When these two kinds of people interact, there can often be conflict. So, it is important for us to understand our own type and the type of other people. Can a person be perceived as a different type by different people? No. If a person’s reported type is ISTP, he has the characteristics of that type and will be perceived by everyone as having those characteristics. But I have met some people who seem to have elements of both extroversion and introversion. How do you explain that? True. It is possible that some people are equally comfortable with both preferences. In some situations, they demonstrate their extroversion, and in some other situations, their introversion.


Is MBTI a science? I don’t know if you can call it a science. But if you look at the MBTI research, it has been proved to be statistically reliable and valid. It has a high correlation with some other personality instruments and psychometric test scores. So, if you want to call it a science in that sense, it is. Is it an exhaustive list of characteristics? No. I don’t think the MBTI is exhaustive, because I believe that nothing in this world is ever exhaustive. There is always room for improvement, addition and modification. The MBTI differs from other personality trait tests to the extent that it does not measure your competence and accomplishments. It does not say good or bad, inferior or superior, poor or excellent. That is why we refer to the score as your reported Type. We will not put you in a box and classify you. It is for you to decide what your type is. How do we know a person is stressed? If you read the material I have provided you, you will see that I have furnished after the description of each type, the things that are likely to cause stress to that particular type. I have also mentioned how a person may behave when he is under prolonged stress. One major fact is that when a person is under prolonged stress, his inferior function takes over and he is ‘in the grip’, as we call it. For example, an ESTJ who is naturally very confident and assertive may behave as if he is helpless, victimised and that the whole world is against him, when he is under stress. In the MBTI type theory, there is something called the dominant function, the auxiliary function, the tertiary function and the fourth or inferior function. These relate to the two mental dichotomies—the Perception and the Judgement. The dominant function is the one that we use predominantly in our lives, the one that is developed first and the most developed. The auxiliary function provides the balance to the dominant function. If Perception (sensing or intuition) is the dominant function, the Judgement (thinking or feeling) is the auxiliary function. The dominant and the auxiliary functions take opposite Attitudes—if the dominant is extroverted, the auxiliary is introverted: and if the dominant is introverted, the auxiliary is extroverted. For example, in INTP, the dominant function is T, that is, introverted, and the auxiliary is N, that is, extroverted. The tertiary or the third function is the opposite of the auxiliary and the inferior or the fourth function is


the opposite of the dominant function. Again, in the example of INTP, the tertiary is the S and the inferior is the F. As seen earlier, when a person is under tremendous or prolonged stress, the inferior function takes over. This is why you will find that in the case of INTP, the person may become extremely emotional or ‘relationship’ minded when he is under prolonged stress. It will be totally unlike his normal or natural behaviour. We can easily notice people when they are under stress, since they behave unnaturally— not using their natural preferences. An ESTJ for example, is supremely confident and talkative normally, but under stress the person tends to keep shut, feel ‘vulnerable’ and helpless. He becomes very emotional. You can always spot a person who is under stress if you observe his natural and unnatural behaviour. Are the dominant and auxiliary functions always fixed? No, it depends on the particular type. For example, in ISTP, the dominant is T and the auxiliary is S. In ESTJ also the dominant is T and the auxiliary is S. But in ESFP, the dominant is S and the auxiliary is F. There is a method to determine the dominant and the auxiliary functions. I would say do not bother about it, it may be a little too complicated for you to understand at this stage. Is the type a simple addition of the four alphabets? That is a very good question. It is much more than the simple addition of the four alphabets. It is a dynamic combination of the four alphabets. This is why you will find that one type is unlike another and the same types may not have exactly the same characteristics. We call this ‘type dynamics’. We also need to recognise the need for us to learn from the benefits of preferences other than our own. For example, if my F is very clear, it would do me good to learn the benefits of the T preference. If my preference is S and is very clear, I would do well to learn from the benefits of the N and so on. This can help in improving our team working skills and our interpersonal relationships. Let us assume that I am working in a group and my type is ESTJ. I know that I usually plan ahead, am methodical in my work, good in execution and am conscious of time deadlines. If my group members are INFP, I must recognise that they might not enjoy these characteristics. They might like to be more open-ended, more flexible and more spontaneous. My recognition of this difference will help me become an effective team member.


Let us now see the impact of the personality type on communication. I am sure that all of you send e-mails and receive e-mails. Have you often wondered why the recipient of your mail does not always interpret your message the way it was intended? In fact, in almost all such cases, the sender invariably says that the receiver misunderstood the message. He does not say that he made a mistake. This is quite natural. The sender of a message always communicates using his extroverted mental function. This could be either his dominant function or his auxiliary function. The receiver always takes in the message using his introverted mental function. So, what we need to remember in communication is our extroverted mental process. This will determine our communication style. For example, extroverted thinking types such as the ESTJ, ENTJ, ISTJ and INTJ generally communicate with a style that is action oriented, decisive, expressive, fluent, critical and analytical. But such a style may be misconstrued as being arrogant, condescending, aggressive and opportunistic by some receivers who use their introverted mental function. Imagine how a person using his introverted intuition or feeling function would consider messages coming from an extroverted thinking type! So, it is important for us to keep in mind not only our types and natural preferences, but the types and natural preferences of others while communicating. Even when a person belonging to a particular type sends a message to another person of the same type, he or she needs to be careful. Why? This is because we send out the message using our extroverted mental function while the other person receives it using his introverted mental function. Although we have probably become used to using one of our mental processes effectively, our communication can become more effective if we learn to use our other mental process when required, particularly while communicating with another type. Does our perception depend on our own type? Yes, very much so. Our perception of things, people and events around us depends on our own types. This is why we say that every person may not perceive a particular data or information the same way as another one would. Suppose I ask you who your youth icon is. Many of you might say ‘Sania Mirza’. This is based on your perception about her since you do not know her well personally. If I am an ESTJ, I would tend to go by her playing record objectively, analytically and logically. I might conclude that she does not deserve to be an icon after all. Thus, it all depends upon our type.


Can you tell me which type makes an ideal leader? I can’t answer that question categorically. What you can do is to read the characteristics of each type, think of what characteristics are appropriate for leadership and then link these two. For example, if you believe that envisioning and seeing the larger picture is a characteristic of leadership, then perhaps a preference for N might be appropriate. On the other hand, if you believe that leadership involves an analytical mind and decision-making, then perhaps a preference for T might be more suitable. It all depends on how you define leadership and what characteristics are associated with it. You may have read Ram Charan’s book Execution. It says that in today’s world, execution is even more important than ‘conceptualisation’. In such cases, perhaps, a combination of T and J may be more appropriate. I am just thinking aloud. If you study the types of many leaders, you will observe that there have been leaders of almost all personality types. The way I see it, leadership is all about the willingness and ability to influence people. To this extent, type characteristics associated with the ability to influence people would be more appropriate for leadership roles. Some believe that ESTJ, ISTJ, ENTJ or INTJ may make ‘natural leaders’. This belief may be based on the type’s characteristics. These types tend to assume leadership roles in many situations and contexts. Are you saying that you don’t need to have a preference for extroversion to be an effective leader? Yes, in a way. There have been successful leaders with a natural preference for introversion. Introversion does not mean you don’t interact with others or that you don’t communicate. Supposing a group has many members with the same type such as ESTJ or ENTJ. Will this not lead to conflicts in leadership? No. I believe that in organisations we need many leaders. The idea that organisations are led by one individual is no longer valid in today’s world. We need many leaders. Each leader brings in a degree of excellence in a specific arena or field of work. Now, let us see some biases and hot buttons of the personality types. Hot buttons are like ‘touching a raw nerve’ of a person. When we touch the raw nerve, the person tends to get stressed and reacts in a very different manner. When we do that, we are somehow prompting the other person’s inferior function to take over. So, we need to be extremely careful to avoid such situations. For example, for an ISTJ or ESTJ, the hot button may be challenging his competence or analysis


of hard data. When another person challenges their competence or analysis, they tend to react from their unnatural preference. This may lead to conflicts, miscommunication and misunderstanding. For instance, for an INFJ, too much detail may be the hot button. For them, loss of private space may be the hot button. They need some private space to help them reflect and think. Since they also naturally prefer harmony around them, they may not like any unresolved issues. Such unresolved issues may become their hot buttons. Another example is ESFP. For them, people who appear detached in a group may cause some stress. Are you saying that we should not or do not communicate when we are under stress? No, I am not saying that. All that I am saying is that when you communicate while you are under stress, it is not your dominant natural preference that is operating but your inferior function. Therefore, what you communicate may be impacted by your inferior function. Are you implying that exact opposite types cannot communicate with each other? Not at all. I am saying that we should understand each other’s natural preferences and type characteristics so that we can appreciate the differences and adapt ourselves suitably. Let us conclude by saying that each type is unique, valuable and gifted. People may be different from one another, but not inferior or superior to one another. Let us examine each of the 16 Types and try to understand their characteristics relevant for business leadership. I believe that the MBTI can explain many leadership behavioural characteristics. It may also be able to explain why some leaders succeed only in certain situations. However, personality type difference is just one dimension of leadership. There are other dimensions that also contribute to leadership success and effectiveness. For example, the values and beliefs of business leaders can impact their leadership behaviour and styles. It is believed that values, interests and motives together with personality traits and characteristics and intelligence form the foundation of leadership skills. The super structure over the foundation may include knowledge, experience and competence. According to Massey, each person’s values reflect the contributions of diverse inputs including family, peers, the educational system, religion, the media, geography and circumstances.1 These values are relatively more permanent and last lifelong in a person. They have a profound impact on leadership.


Let us now examine the characteristics of some of the Personality Types as related to leadership and communication.

PERSONALITY TYPE: ISTJ They are analytical, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on principles and systems, overall impacts and rational assessment of outcomes. They can be tough-minded in implementing those decisions. They use experiences and knowledge of the facts to make decisions; build on reliable, stable and consistent performance; respect traditional, hierarchical approaches; reward those who follow the rules while getting the job done; and pay attention to immediate and practical organisational needs. In teams, they lead by being open to facts; running efficient, focused meetings; and clarifying tasks, methods and expectations. They influence team members by using logical arguments backed by specifics and realism; expressing ideas that blend and integrate varied viewpoints; and quietly organising and maintaining structure. Their communication highlight is, ‘why reinvent the wheel?’ They are straightforward, practical, logical and efficient; independent, selfsufficient and self-reliant; focused on facts, details and results; trust and remember information gained from experience; and have depth of knowledge and a wealth of specialised information. They are generally careful and calm, consistent and realistic and brief and concise. They believe that precision means clarity and verifiable information is real. They do not tolerate or consider impressionistic data, challenges to facts, or emotional responses. They tend to use objective terms and impersonal pronouns while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: ISFJ They are warm, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on their personal values and empathy with others; strive for harmony, consensus and a supportive environment; expressive and often inspiring. They may be reluctant to accept leadership at first, but will step in when needed; expect themselves and others to comply with organisational needs and structures; use own personal influence behind the scenes; follow traditional procedures and rules conscientiously; use eye for detail to reach practical results. In teams, they lead by being quietly helpful with a non-threatening, encouraging, and open


style; accepting others and their responses; being thorough, organised, and task-oriented; and paying close attention to pace and closure. They influence team members by resolving issues one-on-one or outside the team meeting; respecting others’ accumulated experience or personal talent; presenting accurate information and checking the accuracy of information given by others. Their communication highlight is, ‘don’t rock the boat.’ They are unassuming, helpful, sensitive, considerate and thoughtful; collaborative; work behind the scenes to accomplish group goals; focused on facts and details; assimilate a wealth of specialised information; contribute their share and expect others to be responsible and reliable; and trust information gained from direct and personal experience. They are generally careful, steady, sympathetic, warm and cooperative. They believe that reliable information is trustworthy, ‘seeing is believing’, and tangibles are real. They do not tolerate or consider theories and models, sources of disagreement and unconventional ideas. They tend to ask specific questions and like time to process while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: INFJ They are warm, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on their personal values and empathy with others; strive for harmony, consensus and a supportive environment; expressive and often inspiring. They lead through their vision of what is best for others and the organisation; win cooperation rather than demand it; utilise a quiet, intense and persistent course of action toward strategic objectives; work to make their inspirations real; and motivate others toward their ideals in a determined manner. In teams, they lead by reading and working with the interpersonal drama in a group; developing the overview or ‘big picture’; bringing closure to meetings and expecting each member to accomplish assigned tasks. They influence team members by compromising easily unless there is a conflict with personal values; presenting creative and intuitive insights and visions; assessing group dynamics and providing overviews and in-depth summaries. Their communication highlight is, ‘there’s more to it than meets the eye.’ They are quietly supportive, encouraging and affirming; seek harmony and connections; seek purpose and meaning; align their actions to a humanistic goal; link values, ideas, people and action to


make a collaborative plan of action; see human potential and opportunities for growth for self and others; and, provide long-term vision and future-focused, innovative ideas. They are generally appreciative, introspective, determined and idealistic. They believe that understanding others’ motives promotes cooperation; values and ideals are everything; and fitting experience with a conceptual map increases understanding. They do not tolerate or consider creativity as a way of adapting; details, observations by others; ‘little picture’ issues. They tend to use relational trains of thought (‘that’s like…’) while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: INTJ They are analytical, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on principles and systems, overall impacts and rational assessment of outcomes; and can be tough-minded in implementing those decisions. They drive themselves and others to attain the organisation’s goals; act strongly and forcefully in the field of ideas; can be tough-minded with self and others; conceptualise, create and build new models; are willing to relentlessly reorganise whole systems when necessary. In teams, they lead by utilising strong ideas and convictions; helping the team define, decide on and accomplish its purpose; and keeping the team on course. They influence team members by persuading through clear thinking, arguments, logic, observations and suggestions; being persistent and determined in getting ideas across; attracting others through a compelling vision. Their communication highlight is, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ They are calm, decisive, firm minded, task oriented and effective as well as efficient; are future and idea focused; broad systemsthinking approach; use and trust logical analysis for mental mapping and planning; provide vision; consider innovative possibilities and wide-reaching solutions; are independent and self-reliant; and initially keep ideas and insights to themselves. They are generally analytical, theoretical; systematic, logical; fluent, versatile; and expressive while critiquing. They believe that everything is interconnected; information and ideas should be stored for future use; question everything to see if it seems reasonable. They do not tolerate or consider others’ feelings as valid data; incomplete models; non-linear or non-systematic observations. They tend to ask ‘why, what if?’ and like word play and banter while communicating.


PERSONALITY TYPE: ISTP They lead by example. They value and display technical expertise and create consistent and orderly frameworks for working; objective, sceptical and curious; will change course as new information comes in. They lead through action and by setting an example; prefer everyone to be treated as equals and pull his or her own weight; respond quickly when trouble arises, using the most expedient techniques; manage others loosely and prefer minimal supervision themselves; and operate from clear, logical principles. In teams, they lead by taking a pragmatic and unobtrusive role; evaluating all views before acting; and using a quiet, indirect authority. They influence team members by knowing where to get needed information; sharing opinions and experience when asked; and persevering. Their communication highlight is, ‘get to the point.’ They are somewhat reserved, easygoing, tolerant and informal; are observant of details and realities; examine and evaluate data using logical analysis; are flexible, resourceful and focused on taking the most efficient course of action; are practical problem solvers desiring high level of freedom and independence; value achieving results with the least effort possible. They are generally amiably questioning; detachedly curious; and practical-minded. They believe that logic makes sense; the first thing to do is to find out who, what, when, where and how. They do not tolerate or consider theoretical frameworks, ambiguous circumstances or ambiguous situations. They tend to use objective terms and impersonal pronouns while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: ISFP They are warm, flexible and encouraging leaders. They support individual work styles and like to involve others in decisions; prefer collegial relationships, shared rewards and consensus in decisions. They lead reluctantly, preferring a team approach, often acting as a coordinator; use personal loyalty as a means of motivating others; offer more praise and support than criticism; rise to the occasion and adapt to what is needed; and gently persuade by tapping into others’ good intentions. In teams, they lead by listening to all ideas, persuading dissidents to comply and gaining overall support for the solution; allowing others to lead whenever possible; and expressing ideas different from the group’s, but then going with the majority. They influence team members by working hard and always being


prepared; subtly generating ideas and allowing others to pursue them; showing sincere interest in others’ points of view. Their communication highlight is, ‘always glad to help.’ They are quiet, calm, observant listeners who strive to see what people need; are kind, considerate and appreciative of the people and things around them; take thoughtful, immediate action to help others solve problems; are non-judgmental; attuned to and appreciative of individual differences; use common sense and are realistic and practical. They are generally quiet, serene; thoughtful, caring; brief and concise. They believe that actions prove intentions; fewer words mean more precise communication; practical is useful. They do not tolerate or consider the general observations of others; negative feedback; or competitive situations. They tend to ask specific questions and like time to process while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: INFP They are warm, flexible and encouraging leaders. They support individual work styles and like to involve others in decisions; prefer collegial relationships, shared rewards and consensus in decisions. They take a facilitative approach; prefer unique leadership roles rather than conventional ones; work independently toward their vision; are more likely to praise than to critique others; encourage people to act according to their ideals. In teams, they lead by promoting group effort through the creation of a positive atmosphere and affirmation of individual members; eliciting group consensus to facilitate goals and closure; and providing vision by speaking about ideals and values. They influence team members by challenging, stimulating, provoking and convincing; encouraging others to look at new possibilities; focusing on common ideals and underlying issues. Their communication highlight is, ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this.’ They are kind, considerate, encouraging and helpful; focused on people, ideas and possibilities; flexible, casual, adaptable, creative problem solvers; future-focused and envision ways to meet people’s needs and enhance their potential; compassionate and function as peacekeepers; maintain harmony; true to themselves and choose actions on the basis of personal values and priorities. In general, they are reflective, intimate; metaphorical, spark creativity; gentle and cautious. They believe that activities must be meaningful to be valuable; ideas should be connected to one’s ideals; acceptance is important. They do not tolerate or consider comments that violate


values; link between details and big picture; tough, hard statements. They tend to use relational trains of thought (‘that’s like…’) while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: INTP They lead by example. They value and display technical expertise and create consistent and orderly frameworks for working; objective, sceptical and curious; will change course as new information comes in. They lead through conceptual analysis of problems and goals; apply logical systems thinking; want to lead other independent types while seeking autonomy for themselves; relate to people based on expertise rather than position; seek to interact at an intellectual rather than an emotional level. In teams, they lead by enabling all team members to use their skills; setting an agenda, then clarifying and staying focused on that agenda; and providing options so that decisions can be made by majority or consensus. They influence team members by using logic and reason; summarising and generalising; knowing the subject matter well and acting as a resource to others. Their communication highlight is, ‘get the picture.’ They are openended, logical, analytical; focused on exploring possibilities; are systems thinkers; see and create complex models and frameworks; are flexible, resourceful and independent; seek freedom of action; summarise, integrate and identify key issues and zero in on root causes of problems; conceptualise and initiate long-term strategic solutions and opportunities. In general, they are analytical, questioning; quiet, detached, speculative; theoretical. They believe that precise logic is valuable; paradoxes are more interesting than facts; if it is not critical, then it is not useful. They do not tolerate or consider emotion-based objections; traditional answers, responses; incomplete analysis or models. They tend to ask, ‘why, what if?’ and like word play and banter while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: ESTP They lead by example. They value and display technical expertise and create consistent and orderly frameworks for working; objective, sceptical and curious; will change course as new information comes in. They take charge readily in crises; persuade others to their point of view; have a direct and assertive style; move along the most expedient route; and seek action and immediate results. In teams, they lead by


determining the most effective way to work together; articulating the problem, gathering opinions, offering alternatives, summarising and making a decision that works; and motivating the group to action. They influence team members by establishing goals, direction, measurement and purposes; reacting quickly to reinforce or modify proposals; being enthusiastic, logical and non-judgmental towards others’ suggestions. Their communication highlight is, ‘it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.’ They are convincing, objective, direct, straightforward and matter-of-fact; are adaptable, resourceful, practical trouble-shooters who like to take action; negotiate, persuade and manoeuvre around barriers; take the most efficient course of action; examine and evaluate data by relating it to past experiences; and are active, engaging, challenging, risk-taking and competitive. In general, they are realistic, action-oriented; good-natured, social; focused on the present. They believe that clear analysis is everything; a sceptical and critical stance is best; and that logic, specificity and focus are valuable. They do not tolerate or consider seemingly unrealistic observations; past reasons for action; and future musings by others. They tend to use objective terms and impersonal pronouns while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: ESFP They are warm, flexible and encouraging leaders. They support individual work styles and like to involve others in decisions; prefer collegial relationships, shared rewards and consensus in decisions. They lead through the promotion of goodwill and teamwork; prefer managing initial steps of a project; defuse tense situations by putting people at ease; make things happen by focusing on immediate problems; and facilitate effective interactions among people. In teams, they lead by starting the process and summarising the decisions made; encouraging team members to work together and value each other’s strengths; and not exerting influence until all opinions and suggestions have been voiced. They influence team members by getting others excited, motivated and energised; inviting others to participate in an effort or task; and carrying out tasks with enjoyment and style. Their communication highlight is, ‘consider it done.’ They are friendly, outgoing, tactful, positive, energetic, collaborative and dynamic; kind, considerate and quick to offer assistance to others; are observant, in tune with people’s needs and feelings; able to develop rapport; are


thoughtful and realistic troubleshooters who take action to help people; are able to live in and experience the moment with a lighthearted, optimistic attitude. In general, they are practical; supportive; friendly, tolerant; helpful, cooperative. They believe that values and ideals are best linked to helping others; sensitivity is important; conflict is to be avoided. They do not tolerate or consider others’ lack of reaction, unconventional responses, or detached questioning. They tend to ask specific questions and like time to process while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: ENFP They are warm, flexible and encouraging leaders. They support individual work styles and like to involve others in decisions; prefer collegial relationships, shared rewards and consensus in decisions. They lead with energy and enthusiasm; prefer to take charge of the start-up phase; communicate and often become spokespersons for worthy causes; work to include and support people while allowing for their own and others’ autonomy; pay attention to what motivates others and encourage them to act. In teams, they lead by democratically soliciting everyone’s opinions, listening carefully and negotiating differences; focusing on areas of agreement; and developing personal relationships with team members. They influence team members by giving them the opportunity to share by recognising and validating their contributions; including them in ideas and visions; presenting positive alternatives for considerations; and exuding a contagious enthusiasm. Their communication highlight is, ‘follow your dream’. They are outgoing, optimistic, caring, genuine and compassionate; energetically and enthusiastically encourage and persuade others; identify opportunities to develop human potential and improve people’s situations; champion changes that provide possibilities and improve processes for people; help people find niches, develop strengths and compensate for weaknesses. In general, they are enthusiastic; friendly, adaptable; innovative; action-oriented and flexible. They believe that values and ideals affect future outcomes; relative usefulness must be considered; everything connects to the big picture in some way. They do not tolerate or consider conventional answers; challenge to values; or good-natured questioning. They tend to use relational trains of thought (‘that’s like…’) while communicating.


PERSONALITY TYPE: ENTP They lead by example. They value and display technical expertise and create consistent and orderly frameworks for working; objective, sceptical and curious; will change course as new information comes in. They plan theoretical systems to meet organisational needs; encourage independence in others; apply logic and find models for change; use compelling reasons for what they want to do; and act as catalysts between people and systems. In teams, they lead by involving the best people and moulding the interests of the team members into an action plan; allowing a dynamic interplay between process and content; and generating ideas. They influence team members by offering different perspectives as well as the information or research data needed; questioning and critiquing various possibilities; challenging self and others to go beyond the required tasks. Their communication highlight is, ‘the possibilities are endless.’ They are persuasive and convincing when championing ideas; are future-focused, change oriented systems thinkers; create new models and ideas; are quick to see problems as opportunities, explore links and integrate ideas; use logical analysis to zero in on root causes of complex problems; champion change and initiate actions with great energy and excitement. In general, they are verbally questioning; resourceful, innovative; active, uninhibited; visionary and objective. They believe that it is important to determine how new information fits into the established paradigm; ideas must be logical, critical. They do not tolerate or consider conventional and traditional ideas; details of project plan; concrete rather than theoretical issues. They tend to ask, ‘why, what if?’ and like word play and banter while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: ESTJ They are analytical, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on principles and systems, overall impacts, and rational assessment of outcomes; can be tough-minded in implementing those decisions. They seek leadership directly and take charge quickly; apply and adapt past experiences to solve problems; get to the core of the situation crisply and directly; decide and implement quickly; and act as traditional leaders who respect hierarchy and achieving within the system. In teams, they lead by providing direction, seeking inputs and ideas and developing a result-oriented plan; by defining and clarifying


issues, goals, problems and purposes; and by being clear about each member’s responsibility. They influence team members by challenging others to think and do their best; defining the task and identifying issues to match personal goals; modelling behaviour for getting tasks done and displaying high energy and commitment. Their communication highlight is, ‘let’s go to work’. They are matter-of-fact, results-oriented and focused on completing the task at hand; take control of projects; procure, manage, organise and coordinate resources; keep things on track and according to plan; get the work done efficiently; seek or create structure; clear rules, procedures, standards and expectations; are observant and pay attention to accuracy and details. In general, they are concise, brief; logical orderly; systematic; and action-oriented. They believe that information is worthwhile if consistent and reliable; listen to ideas if they have been verified; and loyalty and realistic outlook are good qualities. They do not tolerate or consider observations based on incomplete or unproven data; ideas of future not directly linked to the present or empathetic responses. They tend to use objective terms and impersonal pronouns while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: ESFJ They are warm, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on their personal values and empathy with others; strive for harmony, consensus and a supportive environment; expressive and often inspiring. They lead through personal attention to others; gain cooperation through good relationships; keep people well informed; set an example of hard work and follow-through; and uphold organisational traditions. In teams, they lead by setting up an atmosphere where everyone understands their importance to the team; cooperatively defining tasks and structures by determining who on the team will address these tasks; and working to achieve consensus and closure by following the agenda and honouring time commitments. They influence team members by finding practical ways to bring team to a clear conclusion; encouraging others to contribute to team functioning; using persuasive arguments that take others’ feelings into account. Their communication highlight is, ‘many hands make light work.’ They are personal, outgoing, warm, friendly, helpful, caring and sensitive; are steady, persistent, responsible, dependable and conscientious; are productive; manage time and tasks to accomplish goals in a positive and organised way; easily relate to and connect with people; seek


harmony and make accommodations; and provide for the immediate needs of others in a practical and direct way. In general, they are friendly, inclusive; tactful, thorough; warm, sympathetic; fastidious and traditional. They believe that people-focused comments are valuable; present orientation is interesting; and that loyalty, consistency and reliability are good qualities. They do not tolerate or consider non-traditional responses and ideas; questioning comments; or inferential observations by others. They tend to ask specific questions and like time to process while communicating.

PERSONALITY TYPE: ENFJ They are warm, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on their personal values and empathy with others; strive for harmony, consensus and a supportive environment; expressive and often inspiring. They seek leadership directly and take charge quickly; apply and adapt past experiences to solve problems; get to the core of the situation crisply and directly; decide and implement quickly; and act as traditional leaders who respect hierarchy and achieving within the system. In teams, they lead by facilitating goal accomplishment through cooperation and consideration of all opinions; providing insightful, focused planning to reach the goal; and utilising the resources of all team members and assuring diversity. They influence team members by encouraging others so that all opinions may be heard; calling attention to the process as well as the content; creating a clear organisation with agendas, time lines and task accomplishments. Their communication highlight is, ‘two heads are better than one.’ They are warm, compassionate, enthusiastic, insightful and encouraging; imagine new options and possibilities for helping people realise and reach their potential; combine vision, strategic planning, task orientation and a focus on others’ needs; responsibly organise and coordinate resources toward a goal; and ensure that the means justify the end in terms of employee motivation and morale. In general, they are warm, responsive; affiliative, gregarious; diplomatic, cooperative and idealistic. They believe that ideas need to be considered in terms of the big picture; hunches can trigger new ideas and being supportive is important. They do not tolerate or consider facts, observations; analysis without consideration of people issues; how models were tested, verified; or critical and analytical expressions. They tend to use relational trains of thought (‘that’s like…’) while communicating.


PERSONALITY TYPE: ENTJ They are analytical, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on principles and systems, overall impacts and rational assessment of outcomes; can be tough-minded in implementing those decisions. They initiate an action-oriented, energetic approach; provide longrange plans to the organisation; manage directly—tough when necessary; enjoy complex problems and are resourceful in managing them; run as much of the organisation as possible. In teams, they lead by providing models to enhance understanding and completion; clarifying and redirecting; and presenting a vision and energising others to active participation. They influence team members by using straightforward logic; finding the flaws in a possibility and being totally dedicated to the task. Their communication highlight is, ‘let’s make it happen.’ They are challenging, independent, decisive problem solvers who prefer to be in control of their situation; logically and efficiently organise, redesign or streamline systems and processes; take an objective, visionary, long-term and strategic approach; energetically take the initiative to realise their goals; lead and expect others to follow; integrate and synthesise information; and simultaneously manage complex projects. In general, they are critically questioning; energetic, fluent; logical, systematic and theoretical. They believe that knowledge should be assessed in terms of its value; all the variables need to be considered; getting to the heart of the issue is vital. They do not tolerate or consider conflict avoidance; diplomatic waiting; focus on practical, behind-the-scenes action or conventional responses to situations. They tend to ask, ‘why, what if?’ and like word play and banter while communicating. Having understood some of the theories and concepts of leadership and having gained an insight into the personality type theory that defines personality differences, let us now examine the Indian business context in more detail.

NOTES ® The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the MBTI are registered trademarks of the CPP Inc., Palo Alto, CA. 1. M. Massey, The People Puzzle: Understanding Yourself and Others, Reston, VA: Reston, 1979.

3 OVERVIEW OF INDIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

A Historical Overview of India A study of its history and culture is important for us to understand India and its business leadership practices. India is, arguably, the most diverse nation in the world. It is the seventh largest in area (3.3 million sq. km in land area and 7,000 km of coastline), and second largest in population (over 1.10 billion people). The country is divided into 28 States and 7 Union Territories. The urban population is about 287 millions. India is reported to have the largest number of people in the age group of 15–64 years (over 60 per cent). More than 70 per cent of the population lives in the 550,000 villages and the other 30 per cent in about 200 cities and towns. There are 22 officially recognised languages. Though Hindi is widely spoken, India is home to the second largest English-speaking population in the world (about 150 million). The literacy rate is 60 per cent. The major religious groups are Hindus (80 per cent), Muslims (13 per cent) and Christians (3 per cent). Within its geographical confines is a variety of languages, cultures, ethnic groups, beliefs, values and lifestyles. A cursory look at the history of India indicates that its history goes back over 5,000 years to the Indus Valley civilization, followed by


the arrival of the Aryans around 1500 BC. Starting with the founding of the first empire in about 300 BC by Chandragupta Maurya, through many other dynasties (such as the Harsha, the Chalukya and the Pallava), India was increasingly becoming dependent on invaders. The Islamic influence in the Indian subcontinent started in the early part of the 2nd century through the first invader, Mohammed of Ghazni. The Moghuls came in early part of the 16th century, when Babur marched into India and established the Moghul Empire. After the death of the last Moghul emperor, Aurangzeb, in 1707, the empire declined. European traders (British, French and Portuguese) who had started arriving in the country during the later part of 16th century soon fought many wars to win supremacy. Eventually, it was the British who ruled India for over 300 years. Mahatma Gandhi, through his strategy of non-violent resistance (ahimsa and satyagraha), led the mass movement against the British rule. India attained independence from the British in 1947. India, today, is considered the world’s largest democracy. The foundations of democracy have stood firm in the country through a multitude of elections.

An Economic Overview India’s diverse economy encompasses traditional village farming, modern agriculture, handicrafts, a wide range of modern industries and a multitude of services. Services are the major source of economic growth, though two-thirds of the workforce is in agriculture. The present government is committed to furthering economic reforms and developing basic infrastructure to improve the lives of the rural poor and boost economic performance. Government controls on foreign trade and investment have been reduced in some areas, but high tariffs (averaging 20 per cent in 2004) and limits on foreign direct investment are still in place. The government has indicated it will do more to liberalise investment in civil aviation, telecom and insurance sectors in the near future. Privatisation of government-owned industries has proceeded slowly and continues to generate political debate; continued social, political and economic rigidities hold back the much needed initiatives. The economy has posted an excellent average growth rate of 6.8 per cent since 1994, reducing poverty by about 10 percentage points. India is capitalising on its large numbers of welleducated people skilled in the English language to become a major

Overview of Indian History and Culture 91

exporter of software services and software workers. The huge and growing population is the fundamental social, economic and environmental problem. Let us consider the post-independence period. For over 30 years after independence, it was the Congress party which ruled India. The party’s ideology was largely influenced by events of the freedom struggle in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The Congress party had not evolved any coherent or clear policy for the country’s economic growth due to its preoccupation with the freedom struggle. The economic policy resolution adopted by the party in the Karachi session in 1931 and the subsequent appointment of a National Planning Committee in 1938, however, laid the broad guidelines. While Jawaharlal Nehru was in favour of socialism as an instrument of state policy, others like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel were more in favour of private sector and free enterprise. After independence in 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime Minister of the country. Often regarded as the architect of India’s industrial policy, he had envisaged that public sector undertakings in India would reach commanding heights of the economy and would be the key drivers of economic growth. The economic policies of the period were based on principles of socialism. There were four major approaches to the economic policy. The first was the Industrial Policy Statement in 1948 which stressed the role of the state in economic activities while allowing for private sector participation under very rigorous and stringent governmental intervention and control. The second was the system of industrial licensing which required all private sector enterprises to seek governmental approval for establishment and expansion. The third was the international trade policy with its tariff plans that aimed at the protection of the infant industry in India. The fourth was the emphasis placed on import substitution which encouraged the private sector. Overall, private sector participation in the economic growth of the country was limited. The industrial policy was modified in 1956 soon after return of Jawaharlal Nehru from his visit to China. He had declared, duly supported and endorsed by the Parliament, that he visualised India to be a ‘socialistic pattern of society’. While the government emphasised the role of the private sector in nation building, the focus clearly was on the role of the public sector with its direction toward serving social causes. It is reported that Nehru once told J.R.D. Tata, ‘do not mention the word “profit” to me; it is a dirty word.’ Such was the thinking in those days.


However, it must be said to Nehru’s credit that he also followed his focus on the pubic sector with a pragmatic approach towards the private sector. Despite measures such as the nationalisation of the Imperial Bank of India (now, State Bank of India) and the life insurance business in 1955, Nehru provided a new range of opportunities for the private sector to grow. Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi who became the Prime Minister two years after his death in 1964, pursued most of this ideology. In fact, it was more of socialism. Indira Gandhi initiated a number of radical measures in the face of opposition to her power from within the Congress party. She introduced the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act in 1969 and nationalised all the private sector banks in 1970. She did not encourage any opposition and actively sought to thwart any attempts in this direction. After the imposition of the infamous emergency in 1975, Indira Gandhi lost power in the general elections in 1977. For the first time in the political history of independent India, a nonCongress government assumed power. However, this first attempt at running a coalition government failed, as the government soon lost the goodwill of the people. Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980 and pursued her socialist policies even more vigorously. After her assassination in 1984, Indira Gandhi’s son, Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister. He was young and seemed to bring in a refreshing change and a different vision for India. He placed emphasis on technological progress in most of his plans and programmes. He realised that the liberalisation of the Indian economy was the key to its global competitiveness. But he could not implement many of his radical ideas and soon found himself confined and constrained by the Congress culture. His assassination in 1991 put an end to a great potential. Narasimha Rao of the Congress party assumed office as the Prime Minister after Rajiv Gandhi. Dr Manmohan Singh was his Finance Minister. It was during his time that India seriously initiated the muchneeded economic reforms. This was the beginning of what we see in India today. After a brief period of other coalition experiments at governance between 1995 and 2004, the Congress party returned to power in May 2004. Dr Manmohan Singh, who is often considered to be the architect of India’s economic reform agenda heads this government. In effect, India had suffered inward-looking and socialistic economic policies and political ideologies during the first 45 years after


independence. Having said that, it is also true that many of the business organisations established prior to independence did flourish and expand significantly during this period. The policy’s failure lay in not having provided an environment conducive to the establishment and growth of new entrants. Today, India’s GDP stands at about US$ 3.7 trillion (purchase power parity) with an annual growth rate of about 7.6 per cent, a labour force of over 460 million people, exports totalling over US$ 76 billion and foreign exchange reserve in excess of US$ 150 billion. Literacy rate has increased from about 18 per cent in 1951 to over 62 per cent. A large ‘middle class’ with disposable income has emerged. This could not have been even dreamt of 20 years ago. There is a surplus of food. Industry base has expanded to include manufacturing and service sectors. In fact, according to recent data, the contribution of the service sector to the country’s economy is over 50 per cent. More women are seen in business and industry in positions of influence. Goods produced in India range from toys to aircrafts and nuclear missiles. The market is flooded with consumer goods from all over the world. There is a resurgent sense of ‘consumerism’ in the country. Retail is soon becoming a key sector. India has already established itself as a ‘global hub’ in the field of Information Technology. The number of internet users is over 50 million people (the fourth largest in the world). There is an ever-increasing interest evinced by multinational corporations in India and its economic growth. According to some recent studies, India and China are emerging as two of the fastest growing economies in the world. The population of India is expected to exceed that of China by 2020. In terms of ‘purchasing power parity’ estimates, India is already the fourth largest economy in the world. However, poverty and unemployment still remain major concerns.

Indian Culture and Business India’s culture is among the oldest in the world. The country’s culture has evolved largely inspired by the multitude of its religious themes. The Vedic literature, written between 1000–600 BC, included the Upanishads and advocated a philosophy of seeking truth through enquiry. A society based on the caste system had developed during this time. The two epics, Mahabharata and the Ramayana (known orally since at least 500 BC), have influenced a vast majority of people,


while more recent influences have been on account of the Mughal, Portuguese and the British colonisation from early 17th century. Though attitudes towards religion tend to be more relaxed, social hierarchies (including the caste system) are more rigid. Patriarchal joint-family structure (crumbling in recent times) with its deep-rooted belief in arranged marriages, obedience to elders, and emphasis on duty over self, remains normative even today. While the overall average literacy is a little over 60 per cent, most of the rural population remains illiterate. Poverty and caste-based division exists, particularly in the rural areas. India has managed to preserve its established traditions throughout history whilst absorbing customs, traditions and ideas from both invaders and immigrants. Many cultural practices, languages, customs and monuments are examples of this co-mingling over centuries. In modern India, there is remarkable cultural diversity throughout the country. Any study of Indian business leadership will be incomplete without a study and understanding of the country’s cultural environment in which these business leaders function. Let us see how India figures in the Hofstede study of culture. TABLE 1 India on Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Country

PDI

IDV

MAS

UAI

LTO

World Avg. (approx.) INDIA USA UK JAPAN GERMANY ARAB WORLD

56 77 40 35 54 35 80

40 48 91 89 46 67 38

51 56 62 66 95 66 52

65 40 46 35 92 65 68

48 61 29 25 80 31 –

Source: G. Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage).

India has a Power Distance (PDI) score of 77 (the highest Hofstede Dimension for the culture), compared to the world average of 56.5. This Power Distance score for India indicates a high level of inequality of power and wealth within the society. This condition is not necessarily subverted upon the population, but rather accepted by the population as a cultural norm. India’s Individualism (IDV) rank is 48, compared with the world average of 40, indicating a high degree. This may sound contrary to


the commonly held perception that Indian society is more towards ‘collectivism’ and an individual’s identity is derived more often from the caste, or community that he or she belongs to. India has Masculinity (MAS) score of 56 (the third highest-ranking Hofstede dimension), with the world average just slightly lower at 51. The higher a country ranks in this Dimension, the greater the gap between values of men and women. It may also generate a more competitive and assertive female population, although still less than the male population. India’s Long Term Orientation (LTO) score is 61, with the world average at 48. A higher LTO score can be indicative of a culture that is perseverant, prudent and economical. India’s lowest ranking dimension is Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) at 40, compared to the world average of 65. On the lower end of this ranking, the culture may be more open to unstructured ideas and situations. The population may have fewer rules and regulations with which to attempt control of every unknown and unexpected event or situation, as is the case in high Uncertainty Avoidance countries. As said earlier, India is predominantly Hindu, with 80 per cent of the population practising the religion. Next are the Muslims at 13 per cent, Christians at 3 per cent and all others within the last 4 per cent of the society. It has been found that in most cultures, there is a correlation between a country’s religion and the Hofstede dimension rankings it has. There is only one country with over 50 per cent of its population practising the Hindu religion—India. The Hofstede dimension that correlates most with the Hindu religion is Power Distance (PDI), the same as Atheists in China and Muslims. All three have a high level of Power Distance as the highest correlating cultural dimension with their religions. When we look at the history of Indian business, we observe that ‘the development of large-scale private and public enterprises in the country has been based on the strong managing-agency system that was prevalent. The managing-agency was a system that was rigidly structured, highly characterised, personal and likely to be a family unit dominated by one person—the karta or the head of the extended family, responsible for its other members and with authority over them.’1 Though traditionally the Indian family system always demanded obedience to elders from children, consultations in decisionmaking limited to a few senior family members and promoted a sense of ‘hierarchy’, this tradition is gradually and slowly changing in the globalised business scenario of today. In terms of values and value systems,


India is reported to be ranked highest on ‘moralism’ (idealism) and the lowest on ‘pragmatism’ among the five countries—USA, Australia, Japan, Korea and India—studied and compared in a research in 1974.2 It may be that, in India, idealism is more favoured for leadership than is pragmatism. This could explain why Indian business leaders were often found feeling ‘guilty’ of not explicitly stating their companies’ values. The same study also showed that leaders from developing countries such as Colombia and India assigned less importance to meeting competition than did leaders from developed countries such as the US and UK. It was said that ‘unlike for leaders from developed countries, Indian leaders seemed to think that organisational stability was an end in itself rather than a means to achieve an end.’3 According to a study on Personal Goals (through the Exercise Life Goals questionnaire) of over 3,000 managers from 12 nationalities surveyed by Bass et al., it was found that Indian managers did not rank ‘self-realisation’ as first, second or third of the 11 life goals; they ranked ‘pleasure’ very low in their order of preference; considered ‘amassing a personal fortune’ as very important; did not consider ‘independence’ as important.4 In a study by Sinha, ‘implicit in India is the preference of many subordinates for a dependent personal relationship, rather than a contractual one, with their leader. Such subordinates seek a nurturant leader and accept authority and status differences.’5 Other studies relating to Indian managers (leaders) have shown various dimensions of leadership. Sinha agreed that authoritarian leadership is optimum in India and said ‘such leadership features task orientation and strong personal involvement and effort by the leaders. More democratic processes are possible only after the structure has become firm for the employees and moderate productivity has been achieved.’6 Paternalism (a factor that affects the acceptance of authoritarian leadership) has been found to be high in India, according to a study by Farmer and Richman in 1965.

Implications for Leadership Studies We had seen earlier the work of Edgar Schein (1985) in which he had postulated that leaders manage culture in an organisation. Further and subsequent researchers have often debated whether leaders create an organisation’s culture or an organisation’s culture drives its leadership. To interpret and understand Indian business leadership


in its proper perspective, we would assume, albeit temporarily, that the cultural environment in India has created its business leaders and their leadership qualities. An analysis of Hofstede’s study on Indian culture shows the following general characteristics of Indian society: 1. Indian society recognises and accepts that power and wealth are not equally distributed among its citizens; that such inequalities result in a ‘caste’ system of the society in which people from ‘lower’ castes are not easily permitted into the ‘upper’ caste; hierarchy is to be maintained and respected at all times. 2. Indian society recognises and accepts that while there can be individuals who may possess extraordinary skills and competence, and therefore may create their own identities, in general, individuals will draw their identities from the groups, community, or ‘caste’ that they belong to; that ‘group think’ and ‘group affiliation’ is important. 3. Indian society recognises and accepts that while there exists a gender differentiation in work roles (the male is the centre of achievement, power and dominance and the female is passive), the differentiation is not very strong; and that the female can also play a greater work role and be achievement-oriented and power-oriented. 4. Indian society recognises and accepts that while rules and regulations are important and necessary, people will seize opportunities to achieve and excel in situations that may be uncertain, unstructured and complex. 5. Indian society recognises and accepts that while short-term goals and objectives are important and necessary, people will be more committed to long-term goals and objectives. In the ‘Leading Across Cultures’ series of cases developed by the faculty of the Garvin School of International Management at Thunderbird, there is one case entitled ‘Leading Across Cultures— India’ by Kokil Singh under the guidance of Dr Caren Stehl. In this case, the author has concluded that: Six characteristics seem to be most strongly associated with effective leadership in India. Communication and direction are the most important, followed by vision, action-orientation, charisma, and change.


The most common descriptions included having a vision and a clear and broad direction and goal or objective. Leaders were expected to carry people with them, inspire people and get them to do near-impossible things. Effective communications and risktaking were considered important, as was having an intuitive understanding of people, caring—almost like a parent or a king—and being ‘natural’, courageous and innovative. Leaders were also expected to develop the trust and loyalty of the followers and command their respect; to practice what they preach; demonstrate the capability to solve problems; have high integrity; have the ability to get an active consensus; and maintain a network of contact. Outstanding leaders were expected to do things which were groundbreaking and considered noble and innovative. And having done such things, leaders were expected to stand by them and carry them through, inspiring people and being (a) a change agent and challenging the status quo and (b) a visionary. Relationship orientation seems to be a more important characteristic of effective leaders than performance or task orientation. At the aggregate level, the most effective leadership styles in India seem to be charismatic and action-oriented, autocratic and bureaucratic. The most effective leadership style in India would thus combine integrity, personal organisation, emphasis on action orientation, being a self starter, charisma and having an emphasis on collective orientation, with problem solving, being a visionary, and entrepreneurial and inspirational abilities, in that order. The findings of both qualitative and quantitative analyses are in general agreement on the importance of action-orientation and charisma, and these can therefore be considered to be the most important characteristics for effective leadership in India. Four characteristics—communication, direction, vision and changeorientation—which the qualitative analysis found to be important, did not attain the same level of importance in the quantitative analysis. Similarly, being bureaucratic, autocratic and collectivistic, which emerged as important in the quantitative analysis, were not as prominent in the qualitative analysis. In part, this could be a function of the two methodologies—qualitative and quantitative. It may also be a reflection of the complexity of India, which has been described as ‘a land famous for extremes’. Collectivism and humane orientation continue to be the most important characteristics. The society appears to be in a period of major transition towards


power equalisation. At the same time, there is an increasing preference for individualism. Taking an overall view, two distinct characteristics of Indian society seem to stand out. One is that Indian culture is ancient yet continuously living and evolving. The second is the great complexity and diversity of Indian society and culture. These two characteristics, in combination with the other features of Indian society, do demand unique attributes, abilities and behaviours of leaders in India. This may require a high tolerance for ambiguity and the ability to balance a diverse set of factors. From the above we may conclude that Indian business leadership, that has deep roots in the country’s culture, will possess the following characteristics: 1. Hierarchical, conscious of positions, demanding respect. 2. Cannot ignore the need to involve others in decision-making process, consensus building, participative. 3. Male domination of positions of authority and power. 4. Entrepreneurship, risk-taking and enjoying uncertain challenges. 5. Visionary, long-term orientation. 6. Be founded upon a set of values and value system. It may be tempting to say that the economic boom that India is currently enjoying is on account of the success of its business leaders, at least partly. It may be very well true. Has the economic boom resulted in throwing up so many successful leaders, or have the business leaders created the economic boom? This is important particularly in view of the fact that many of these businesses did not exist 25 years earlier. Are there any distinctly different leadership practices in India that have developed over the last one decade in particular? Some characteristics have undergone some changes in recent times (example—more number of women occupying positions of responsibility, authority and power). There are also instances when individual leaders have created and shaped an organisation’s culture (example— Ratan Tata of Tata Group, N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys and Dhirubhai Ambani of Reliance). Let us now understand and answer this question by looking closely at some of the Indian business organisations and their leaders in greater detail. I will first describe my personal experiences with business leadership in India.


NOTES 1. B.M. Bass, Bass & Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership, New York: Free Press, 1990, p. 770. 2. G.W. England, O.P. Dhingra and N.C. Agrawal, The Manager and the Man: A CrossCultural Study of Personal Values, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1974. 3. J.B.P. Sinha, ‘A Model of Effective Leadership Styles in India’, International Studies of Management and Organisation, 14(3), 1984, pp. 86–98. 4. B.M. Bass, P.C. Burger, R. Doktor and G.V. Barrett, Assessment of Managers: An International Comparison, New York: Free Press, 1979. 5. n. 3. 6. Sinha, J.B.P. ‘The Authoritarian Leadership: A Style of Effective Management’. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, no. 2, 1976, pp. 381–89.

4 MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES BUSINESS LEADERSHIP

WITH

I have spent nearly 30 years in industry in India and abroad. During this period, I gained knowledge and experience in areas such as production, planning, project management, personnel management, marketing, international trade and general management. I had the privilege of working closely with the chief executives or members of the top management team in organisations. These experiences have deeply impacted and enhanced my knowledge of and interest in leadership studies. What follows here is an attempt at narrating some of these experiences. This narration is not intended at ‘passing judgement’ on any individual’s character or style, and certainly not intended to decry or demean anyone for his or her perceived weaknesses or failures.

Larsen & Toubro Limited, Mumbai The evolution of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) into the country’s largest engineering and construction organisations is among the more remarkable success stories in Indian industry. The company was founded in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1938 by two Danish engineers—Henning Holck-Larsen and Soren Kristian Toubro—both of whom were strongly


committed to developing India’s engineering talent and enabling it to meet the demands of industry. Beginning with the import of machinery from Europe, L&T rapidly took on engineering and construction assignments of increasing sophistication. The company is a technology-driven engineering and construction organisation, having additional interests in manufacturing, services and Information Technology. A strong, customer-focused approach and the constant quest for top-class quality have enabled the company to attain and sustain leadership in its major lines of business across seven decades. L&T has an international presence with a global spread of offices. A thrust on international business over the last few years has seen overseas earnings growing to 18 per cent of the total revenue. With factories and offices located around the country, supplemented by a wide marketing and distribution network, L&T’s image and equity extends to virtually every district in India. Among the achievements of the company are India’s first indigenous hydro-cracker reactor; Oil and gas platform projects executed to global benchmarks; the world’s largest continuous catalyst regeneration reactor; the simultaneous execution of clean fuel projects at eight refineries around India; the world’s biggest fluid catalytic cracking regenerator; the world’s longest product splitter; Asia’s highest viaduct (built for the Konkan Railway); the world’s longest LPG pipeline; the world’s longest cross country conveyor; and building a football stadium of international standards in 260 days. The values, vision and purpose of the company state that ‘L&T shall be a professionally-managed Indian multinational, committed to total customer satisfaction and enhancing shareholder value. L&T-ites shall be an innovative, entrepreneurial and empowered team, constantly creating value and attaining global benchmarks. L&T shall foster a culture of caring, trust and continuous learning while meeting expectations of employees, stakeholders and society.’ L&T believes that progress must necessarily be achieved in harmony with the environment. A commitment to community welfare and environmental protection constitute an integral part of the corporate vision. Anil M. Naik is the current Chairman and Managing Director of the company. Anil Naik, 65, hails from a family of teachers. His father, a stringent Gandhian, founded and taught at a school near Navsari in Gujarat where Naik had his early education. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Gujarat. He joined L&T in 1965 as a junior engineer and was rapidly given positions of increasing responsibility. Naik became General Manager in 1985, Vice President

My Personal Experiences with Business Leadership 103

(Operations) and Member of the Board in 1989, President (Operations) in 1995, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director in 1999 and Chairman and Managing Director in 2003. Having spent more than three decades with L&T, Naik has seen the company change, adapt and grow with every twist in national priorities. Post-independence, the company had capitalised on the government’s emphasis on indigenous manufacture and L&T switched from trading to actually manufacturing the equipment. Naik heads an organisation that is among the most admired companies in the country, reputed for the technological sophistication that characterises its projects and products, for its contribution to the evolution of indigenous engineering capability and most of all, for its inherent professionalism and the value systems that lie at its core. Few heads of companies mirror the values of the organisations as faithfully as Naik does. Dynamism, professionalism and high ethical quotient are synonymous with Naik. He has successfully led the company through some of its most challenging times and enabled it to emerge stronger. His broad global perspective has seen the company expanding its horizons beyond domestic frontiers and positioning itself to become a true international player. Transforming L&T into a world-class conglomerate has always been his dream. He has restructured the company into sharply-focused operating divisions and led a transformation process aimed at enhancing shareholder value. His emphasis on HR and IT as the twin engines of growth has yielded significant results. Naik provided a global perspective to L&T’s business orientation. This involved much more than increasing the international component of the Company’s turnover. It meant changing mindsets and institutionalising systems to benchmark virtually every critical activity in the Company against international standards. These efforts have shown dramatic results. Until 1999, exports were largely concentrated in the Middle East. The international thrust under Naik has seen spectacular breakthroughs into the markets of developed nations like the US, Canada, UK, Norway, South Africa and Australia. A concern for social and welfare issues complement Naik’s keen business interests. Modest in means but rich in values and cultural heritage, he is deeply committed to social uplift. He has provided both monetary assistance and management expertise in setting up educational institutions and a hospital in Gujarat. He is now the Chairman and President of Kharel Education Society which runs a high school with the latest education facilities. He is also associated with several


educational and charitable trusts to uplift the rural populace of India. He is a member of Board of Trustees of the Indian Business Trust for HIV/AIDS (IBT). He is a senior and active member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Council. He has contributed several innovative ideas to promote the Capital Goods Industry in India and abroad. Naik led the Indian industry’s delegation to the 17th Congress of the World Energy Council held at Houston in 1998. He is Member of the Board of Trade, Ministry of Commerce, Government of India, Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE) and Member of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. During his distinguished career, Naik has received many notable awards, among which are the Sankara Ratna Award from Sankara Nethralaya, India’s foremost Medical Research Foundation in eye-care services based in Chennai, ‘Lifetime Achievement Excellence Award for Best Corporate Man of the Decade’ for his dynamic leadership from the Foundation of Indian Industry & Economists (FIIE) and the ‘JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award’ from the All India Management Association (AIMA). He was recently conferred a ‘Life Time Achievement Award’ by Business India. I joined Larsen and Toubro (L&T) in Mumbai as a junior engineer, after obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Madras in 1968. In those days—and, I suspect, even today—L&T was considered an engineer’s paradise and anyone good in engineering was expected to join L&T. I was delighted to have this opportunity. I was posted to the Engineering Workshops at Powai. My immediate boss was Mr Naik, then the Works Manager. We called him A.M.N. He was a dynamic, around 30 at that time and possessed a commanding personality. He was the ‘boss’ of all that he surveyed in Powai. Many of my colleagues, myself included, used to refer to him as ‘the bull dozer’. He was a workaholic, tyrannical, highly task-oriented and very knowledgeable. He possessed a high-decibel voice and often thundered commands across the hall in his inimitable style. In those days, we used to work in shifts (the workshops worked three shifts a day, each lasting for approximately eight hours). Naik had this habit of walking onto the shop floor at unexpected times, be it at 2.00 a.m. in the night shift or 9.00 p.m. in the evening shift and expected everyone to be alert, on the job and serious. But behind all this façade of toughness and task-orientation, lay a heart that was people-oriented, soft and caring. He would not hesitate to help those in need with kind


words of concern and counsel, and even financially. He had a vision for the company and was persistent with his concern for the future. Mr Naik has gone on to become the Chairman and Managing Director of L&T. He is currently ranked among the most successful business leaders in India. I understand that he has mellowed down a lot. I have met him only once in the past 30 years—at an airport in transit. I asked him if he remembered ‘Bala’ of PGW and was astonished by his memory. He not only remembered me but actually asked me if I was still as strong on numbers as I was in 1970! My first lessons in leadership were learned under him. I started to understand the need for hard work, task-orientation, toughmindedness, ability to work long hours and a vision. I obtained a study leave from L&T to pursue my MBA at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta in 1973 to learn more on management formally.

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, New Delhi During my two years of MBA at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, I had ‘taken’ 17 elective courses in the area of human resources management (in those days we called it Personnel and Industrial Relations), though I was an engineer. The subject fascinated me a lot and I was a very keen student. As a result of my specialisation, I was selected by Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) during the campus placement at IIMC as Special Assistant to the Personnel Director (now you would perhaps call this Executive Assistant to the HR Director) at the corporate head office in New Delhi. I joined BHEL at New Delhi in 1975. BHEL is the largest engineering and manufacturing enterprise in India in the energy-related/infrastructure sector today. BHEL was established more than 40 years ago, ushering in the indigenous Heavy Electrical Equipment industry in India—a dream that has been more than realised with a well-recognised track record of performance. The company has been earning profits continuously since 1971–72 and paying dividends since 1976–77. BHEL manufactures over 180 products under 30 major product groups and caters to core sectors of the Indian Economy, viz., Power Generation and Transmission, Industry, Transportation, Telecommunication, Renewable Energy, etc. The wide network of BHEL’s 14 manufacturing divisions, four Power Sector regional centres, over 100 project sites, eight service centres and 18 regional offices enables the Company


to serve its customers promptly and provide them with suitable products, systems and services—efficiently and at competitive prices. The high level of quality and reliability of its products is due to the emphasis on design, engineering and manufacturing to international standards by acquiring and adapting some of the best technologies from leading companies in the world, together with technologies developed in its own R&D centres. BHEL has acquired certifications to Quality Management Systems (ISO 9001), Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001) and Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSAS 18001) and is also well on its journey towards Total Quality Management. BHEL’s operations are organised around three business sectors, namely Power, Industry—including Transmission, Transportation, Telecommunication and Renewable Energy—and Overseas Business. This enables BHEL to have a strong customer orientation, to be sensitive to their customers’ needs and to respond quickly to the changes in the market. BHEL’s vision is to become a world-class engineering enterprise, committed to enhancing stakeholder value. The company is striving to give shape to its aspirations and fulfil the expectations of the country to become a global player. The greatest strength of BHEL is its highly skilled and committed 42,600 employees. Every employee is given an equal opportunity to develop himself and grow in his career. Continuous training and retraining, career planning, a positive work culture and participative style of management—all these have engendered the development of a committed and motivated workforce setting new benchmarks in terms of productivity, quality and responsiveness. When I joined BHEL in 1975, the Chairman was V. Krishnamurthy, a technocrat. The top management comprised, besides him, S.V.S. Raghavan as Director of Finance, R.N. Srivastava as Director of Personnel, R.C. Bhargava as Director of Commercial, and K.R. Parameswar as Chief of Planning and Development. It was an interesting and intriguing team of entirely different personalities. Krishnamurthy was known as a visionary leader with a high degree of concern for people (he could, it was reported, remember the first names of almost all the 1,500 managers in the company). He was also strong in networking skills and could play political games if only to achieve his goals and objectives. Raghavan, belonging to the Indian Accounts and Audit Services (IA&AS), was considered to be a man-in-a-hurry, always energetic, enthusiastic, creative and restless with the status quo. Srivastava


also belonged to the Indian Accounts and Audit Service (IA&AS). He was slow and steady, conservative, with a fair degree of concern for both people and tasks. Parameswar was considered a thinker, a man with a mission and a pragmatist. Bhargava, belonging to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), was somewhat atypical for a career bureaucrat, and took to the commercial function with considerable ease. It was, in a manner of speaking, a motley crowd of disparate people, all working towards the common goal of creating a world-class engineering organisation in India. Mr Krishnamurthy’s ability to forge his team together was truly remarkable. Krishnamurthy went on to become a Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of Heavy Industries (overseeing BHEL, among others), Chairman of Maruti Udyog (he was reportedly hand-picked by Sumant Moolgaonkar of the Tata Group who had been asked personally by Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, to revive the company) and Chairman of the Steel Authority of India. He is, today, the Chairman of the Manufacturing Competitiveness Council set up by the Government. Raghavan became the Chairman of the Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation and then went on to join the private sector. Bhargava, like Krishnamurthy, became the Chairman of Maruti. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to work closely with all these people and learn different dimensions of leadership from them. The experience has taught me that leadership is not only about the traits and qualities an individual has, but also the willingness and ability to influence others to work together with a commonly-shared vision towards the objectives of the organisation.

Hyderabad Allwyn Limited, Hyderabad While working in BHEL, I used to visit the Administrative Staff College of India in Hyderabad and take part in management programmes conducted there. During this period, I established a good rapport with a professor—Professor Sushil Chandra—who used to teach Personnel and Industrial Relations there. It was this association with Sushil Chandra that led me to my next job at Hyderabad Allwyn. This was a state-owned public sector undertaking of the Government of Andhra Pradesh and was headed by Mr Ajit Singh, an officer belonging to the Indian Administrative Service. Ajit Singh had apparently asked Sushil if he knew anyone who might be interested in


joining Hyderabad Allwyn and work closely with him to realise his vision and dreams for the company’s diversification and expansion plans. As it so happened, I met Ajit Singh and we agreed that I would join him. Prior to becoming the Chairman of Hyderabad Allwyn, Ajit Singh was the Collector of Vijayawada District in Andhra Pradesh and Chairman of the state-owned Road Transport Corporation. He had built up a reputation for being tough, straightforward, highly task-oriented, and possessed a couldn’t-care-less attitude to views and actions that he considered obstacles in his way of achieving what he had set his mind to. This personality of his earned him as many admirers as enemies. Many of his colleagues and compatriots in the IAS did not like his style of leadership and did everything they could to blunt his achievements. On the other hand, common people admired him for his achievements and respected him for his vision and perseverance to get things done. Apparently, there is a colony named after him in the Vijayawada District. My experience at Allwyn with Ajit Singh helped me learn some more on leadership. I learnt that effective leadership would need high degrees of tenacity, perseverance, hard work and the courage of conviction. My mother passed away in 1983, and to fulfil her wish that one of her sons should be based in our home town of Madras (now Chennai), I resigned from a highly satisfying job at Hyderabad Allwyn to join EID Parry (India) Limited in Chennai.

EID Parry (India) Limited, Chennai EID Parry (India) Limited is a part of the Murugappa Group. The company was started by Thomas Parry and John Dare, two British gentlemen in 1788 (yes, more than 200 years old) as a trading house (managing-agent). In fact, the building housing the head office is still called ‘Dare House’ and the entire area surrounding the building is called ‘Parry’s Corner’. The company traded in engineering goods, medical equipment and ceramic items. Headquartered in Chennai, the Murugappa Group is a conglomerate of 29 companies with interests in engineering, abrasives, sanitary ware, fertiliser, finance, bio-products and plantations. Together, the group employs over 28,000 people. The business has its origins in 1900, when Dewan Bahadur A.M. Murugappa Chettiar established


a money-lending and banking business in Burma (now Myanmar), which then spread to Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Vietnam. A century down the line, it has withstood enormous vicissitudes (including strategically moving its assets back to India and restarting from scratch in the 1930s, before the Japanese invasion in World War II) to become one of the country’s biggest industrial houses. The group is a market leader in India across a spectrum of products like sanitary ware, fertilisers, abrasives, automotive chains, car door frames and steel tubes. Neemazal, a neem-based organic pesticide, is the market leader in bio-pesticides. Some of the country’s best-known brands like BSA and Hercules in bicycles, Parryware in sanitary ware, Parry’s Spirulina and Parry’s Beta Carotene in nutraceuticals, Ballmaster and Ajax in abrasives, Gromor and Paramfos in fertiliser and many more come from the Murugappa Group. The Group has tie-ups with BorgWarner of the US, Wendt of Germany, Morgan Crucibles of the UK and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance of Japan. It has registered 43 international patents for its research and development innovations. The group has grown consistently through its decisive and visionary response to changing times. Its pioneering efforts, steadfast commitment to ethical business practices and its dogged pursuit of new areas to extend its business acumen have brought in its wake several prestigious national and international awards. Social commitment has always been the cornerstone of the group’s ethos and it has been at the forefront of eco-conservation, public health and education in the communities where its companies operate since 1957. It runs four schools, a polytechnic college and four hospitals. Besides, the group runs a research and development centre for rural development, the Sri A.M.M. Murugappa Chettiar Research Centre (MCRC), which has been designing simple, cost-effective technologies for local artisans since 1977. The values, vision and purpose of the group is that ‘we shall adhere to ethical norms in all dealings with shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, financial institutions and the government; provide value for money to customers through quality products and services; treat people with respect and concern; provide opportunities to learn, contribute and advance; recognise and reward initiative, innovativeness and creativity; maintain an organisational climate conducive to trust, open communication and team spirit; adopt a style of operation befitting our size but reflecting moderation and humility; manage the environment effectively for harnessing opportunities; discharge


responsibilities to various sections of society and preserve the environment; and, grow in an accelerated manner, consistent with values and beliefs, by continuous organisational renewal.’ M.V. Subbiah, 67, was the Chairman of the Murugappa Group from 1996 to 2004. He studied at the University of Aston, UK and has attended a programme for management development at the Harvard Business School. In keeping with the group’s commitment to corporate governance, Subbiah relinquished office from the Murugappa Group Corporate Board on attaining the age of 65 in 2004 and handed over the reins to a professional manager. During his tenure at the helm of affairs of the group, Subbiah turned around many of the group companies’ fortunes, by reorganising products and technology and adopting appropriate HR practices. He is considered a trendsetter in professionalising family-owned businesses in the country. Subbiah has served on the Boards of many companies. He has also been actively associated with various industry associations in the country and has won several awards. He won the National HRD Award in 1988 for his contributions to the field of human resources development. The All India Management Association conferred on him the ‘J.R.D. Tata Corporate Leadership Award’ in February 2002. The Indore Management Association conferred the ‘Life Time Achievement Award’ on him in February 2004. Subbiah has currently taken up academic work on the subject of family business at North Western University’s Kellog School of Business, USA. When I joined the company in 1983, it was still very deeply imbibed with many of the ‘British’ traditions, culture and styles. K.V. Raghavan (no relation to Raghavan of BHEL) was at the helm and the man who was second-in-command was R. Ratnam. I vividly remember being interviewed by more than six managers (heads of business units and divisions of the company) before I was offered a position in the company. One example of the British culture in the company was the dining room reserved for the managers, served by fully liveried staff. We felt almost like the burrah sahibs of the British Raj. Even the positions of the managers in the hierarchy were British—such as the managers being designated as ‘Assistant in Grade C’. We were expected to dress in formals most of the time. Cordial interpersonal relationship and a clear people-orientation were considered paramount, even subservient to achievement of organisational goals and objectives. For example, for many years at a stretch, the company had not made any profits, and was in fact, suffering huge losses year after year. But


no one seemed to care much since they were more concerned with keeping employees in harmony. All these were soon to change in Parry with the change in management. The Murugappa Group had taken over the management of Parry sometime in 1981. M.V. Arunachalam became the Chairman and his brother M.V. Subbiah, the Vice Chairman and Managing Director. The dynamic changes that Subbiah unleashed in the company were not only dramatic, but also sweeping. Not quite unexpectedly, most members of the earlier senior management team left the company. Subbiah brought in a sharp focus into the functioning of the company. He went into details—often seemingly trivial—of every aspect of business. He even made sure that all the doors and windows were cleaned and tidied every day by supervising the workers personally. A standing joke in those days was whether cleaning of windows and doors would bring in profits. He was often considered abrasive (in a slight pun on his earlier stint as the head of the company manufacturing abrasives within the group) in his approach to others. He did not mince words and did not mind pulling people up for failures or lack of focus. Within a year of assuming office, Subbiah proved his detractors wrong. The company made profits for the first time in many years, the reputation among the customers and dealers improved, and the relationship with suppliers and vendors became more professional. I learnt from Subbiah some more lessons in leadership—high taskorientation, for example. I also learnt that leaders would, in situations that demanded, need to get into details, not be afraid of ‘opponents of change’ and demonstrate their conviction in action. My next experience was with a family-owned enterprise outside India. Lured by the attractiveness of a foreign job and financial benefits, I left Parry and joined a family-owned group in Tanzania, East Africa. This group, based in Dar es Salaam and London, was owned and managed by two brothers of Indian origin, Jeetu and Bharat Patel. It had diverse business interests including agriculture, automotive, aviation, electronics and pharmaceuticals. Both Jeetu and Bharat were typical of many Indian businessmen in East Africa and seized each and every business opportunity that came their way. Jeetu, though not educated formally, was more concerned about people and relationships and was very sociable in nature. He developed a network of contacts easily. He was also charitable and would often help the poor on the streets with money. Bharat, with a college degree, was considered educated and used to drive business policies of the group. I learnt


an important lesson in leadership from Jeetu—having a genuine concern for the welfare of the society and those in need. I also learnt an important lesson in leadership from Bharat, that a taskmaster approach was effective when situation so warranted. After our two sons went to the US to pursue their higher studies, my wife and I returned to India. I joined Wärtsilä Corporation of Finland as a Vice President to look after the company’s interests in South India, based in Chennai. I think it was here that my true fascination for exploring business leadership started taking a concrete shape.

Wärtsilä India Limited, Mumbai Wärtsilä India Limited is promoted by Wärtsilä Corporation, the world’s leading supplier of power on land and at sea. Engine-based power plants provide total energy solutions for Captive users, Utilities and IPPs. These engines also power marine vessels around the world. The product range comprises natural gas and heavy liquid fuel oilfired power plants with outputs from 1 MW to 300 MW. Deliveries of nearly 2,900 MW of dependable, economical and reliable power plants have been effected to around 250 process industries, representing a market share of over 70 per cent. Some of the engines in these power plants have crossed 100,000 running hours. The ISO 14001 certified manufacturing facility at Khopoli, Maharashtra includes engines assembly, auxiliaries and component production, gear manufacturing, reconditioning shops and a technology school for training. Over 100 items for various models of engines and tools in Europe are sourced by Wärtsilä Corporation from the Khopoli plant regularly. Wärtsilä India, an ISO 9001 certified company, provides complete energy solutions from feasibility studies, customised design to construction and start-ups. A committed after-sales service team spread over six major cities in India, with spares stocked in Chennai, Delhi and Khopoli, helps the customers in running their power plants. Wärtsilä also operates and maintains 60 power plant sites covering 120 engines generating over 600 MW in the country. Over 300 Wärtsilä and Sulzer engines delivering 1.6 million BHP are installed on Indian flag vessels belonging to the Navy, Coast Guard, Port Trusts and Merchant shipping apart from those on floating cranes and offshore oil rigs. Wärtsilä India has 888 employees


and head-quarters in Mumbai with offices in Navi Mumbai, Noida, Kolkata, Secunderabad, Chennai and Mangalore. When I joined Wärtsilä in India in 1997, the company was headed by Pradeep Mallick, an engineer by profession with over 30 years of experience in engineering industry in India and abroad. He was an extraordinary leader. Though he had travelled widely in the world, he was very Indian in his mind with great pride in being one. He believed that India had the necessary capabilities to lead the rest of the world in business and industry. He always fought for Indians receiving their due from the company’s headquarters in Finland, though he realised that leading the Indian team against some of the biases and ethnocentrism of the headquarters was fraught with dangers and might render his own position vulnerable. Pradeep had strong courage of conviction and did not hesitate to stand up to them. He was a people-oriented and process-oriented leader. I vividly remember one of my annual appraisal sessions with Pradeep. He spent nearly four hours going through with me each and every dimension of my appraisal. He had written down, in his own handwriting, copious notes about me, my interactions, my performance, my abilities, my strengths and my weaknesses. He sought clarifications from me on many of his observations. He was candid and frank, but never made me feel threatened or embarrassed. I have observed Pradeep in his interaction with others, in meetings of the executive committee, meetings with clients and on social occasions. On every occasion I have found him to be polite and courteous, genuinely concerned about the welfare of people, remembering even small details of their personal lives, listening actively and gently reminding them of their duties and responsibilities. Even on occasions that might make others wince and be upset, Pradeep was always calm, serene and demonstrated a high degree of emotional maturity. He made people feel that it was they who were in control and it was they who were making the decisions. After his retirement from Wärtsilä, Pradeep is now on his own and has set up a management consultancy called ‘The Listening Post’ (how very appropriate!) to provide mentorship and counselling to numerous senior executives across India. I learnt many lessons in leadership during my work at Wärtsilä and from the close interaction I had with Pradeep Mallick. Some of these were the need to listen actively to others, the need to have a genuine concern for people, the need to build professional and personal network of relationships, the need for development of a high self-esteem and the need to get into details in order to be effective.


By this time in my life, I had started seriously thinking of sharing my knowledge and experiences with the younger generation in an appropriate manner. Since I thought that I was acceptably good in communication and in teaching, I decided to explore opportunities in the academia, preferably a business school. I was fortunate in receiving a favourable response from the T.A. Pai Management Institute in Manipal—popularly known as TAPMI—to fulfil my wish.

T.A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal TAPMI is an autonomous institute promoted by the famous Pai family of Manipal and is ranked among the top-20 business schools in India. Established in 1981, TAPMI has grown in size and reputation under the leadership of its Director, Professor D. Nagabrahmam. The mission statement of TAPMI states, ‘We are committed to excellence in management education, research and practice by nurturing and developing global wealth creators and leaders. We shall continually benchmark ourselves against the best-in-class institutions. We shall foster continuous learning and reflection, achievement-orientation, creative interdependence, and respect for diversity with a holistic concern for ethics, environment and the society.’ My stay here was memorable, highly rewarding and motivating. Professor Nagabrahmam, a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has been at the helm of affairs at TAPMI since 1992. A voracious reader, he often speaks of his humble and simple life, his great vision for TAPMI, his unassailable faith in the process and the people and his values. He is passionate about the organisation he is leading, committed to its development, convinced of his vision, confident in his approach and style toward others and sometimes perceived as being autocratic. He nurtures an unshakeable faith in the appropriateness of his experiences at the Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) to TAPMI and to today’s changing environment of business education. He could force his views and ideas ahead strongly even if others did not concur with them. He had some blind spots too, as many leaders do, like his faith in some people even if they did not live up to it, and his perception of some other B-schools in India. But among all these, what stood out as a leadership quality was his conviction that ‘a process-orientation was more important than a product or result-orientation’.


I have admired Professor Nagabrahmam in many ways and have learnt several important lessons in leadership from him. Some important lessons are for leaders to be able to take charge, have a high degree of people-orientation and be willing to focus on the process part of a decision as much as result-orientation.

Summary I have tried to practise many of these lessons in my career. There have been occasions when I felt that I was not quite successful. I have wondered if my failure on those occasions to practise these lessons had anything to do with my personality type. Increasingly, I am getting convinced that my personality type—ESTJ—is inhibiting my leadership style. For example, I am unable to tolerate people who are, in my opinion, less competent and efficient than me. I am unable to readily accept the emotional needs of others where logic and rationale appear to be wanting. Is it because I am not able to look at situations and events and people more from the ‘N’ and ‘P’ perspectives? Are these natural preferences essential to be an effective leader? When I analyse the responses from the business leaders that I interviewed for this book (transcripts of interviews available later in the book), I gain a better understanding of possible explanations to these questions. The many lessons in leadership that I learnt in my career over the years from different business leaders are as diverse. Yet they are cohesive and make a meaning as the leaders themselves. Let me summarise my lessons in leadership as the following: 1. A leader must be highly focused on the task at hand. 2. A leader should not hesitate to be tough with people if the situation so demands. 3. A leader should develop and maintain a long-term vision for the organisation. 4. A leader should never be afraid of opposition to change, if the change is considered necessary and desirable. 5. A leader must always be energetic and enthusiastic, with a strong desire to lead and succeed. 6. A leader should try to be a mentor to his followers and spend conscious time with them. 7. A leader should never shun his moral and ethical standards.


8. A leader should set goals and objectives that are closely linked to his core values. 9. A leader must not ignore the focus on internal processes of the organisation. 10. A leader must possess and demonstrate a high degree of emotional maturity and stability. 11. A leader must aim to serve the society at large through his leadership. The following pages describe a list of select Indian business organisations and their leaders. The purpose of this is to explore the link between the success of these organisations and the characteristics, qualities and styles of their leaders. For the purpose of my analysis and interpretation, I have limited my study to a select few companies and leaders. The selection is not necessarily in terms of their importance or significance, but the distinctive approaches and styles they have adopted for success and effectiveness. I have selected these leaders based on the general perception of their companies and of them by the shareholders, employees and customers. The list is certainly not exhaustive (many other successful organisations are missing in it) but only indicative. For example, I have not included the legendary Dhirubhai Ambani who is credited with having created a smallinvestor revolution in India and for having established Reliance Industries, a world-class enterprise. Nor have I included his sons, Mukesh and Anil Ambani who are currently leading the various companies of the Reliance Group. Some of these companies and their leaders have been well-documented and written about in great detail by others while others have not. I would have liked it if I was able to meet and interview many more business leaders. However, it was not possible due to the difficulty in securing confirmations and logistical arrangements. I succeeded in interviewing only the following business leaders for this book: 1. Kishore Biyani, Chairman (Group CEO), Future Group (Pantaloon Retail), Mumbai. 2. G.V. Prasad, Vice Chairman and CEO, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Hyderabad. 3. Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director, Titan Industries, Bangalore. 4. Niru Mehta, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Avaya GlobalConnect, Gurgaon. 5. Santrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Group, Mumbai.


6. R. Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, Tata Sons, Mumbai. 7. Ravi Kant, Managing Director, Tata Motors, Mumbai. 8. Harsh C. Mariwala, Chairman and Managing Director, Marico Industries, Mumbai. 9. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon, Bangalore. 10. Subroto Bagchi, Vice Chairman and COO, MindTree Consulting, Bangalore. 11. R. Seshasayee, Managing Director, Ashok Leyland, Chennai. 12. Captain G.R. Gopinath, Chairman and Managing Director, Air Deccan, Bangalore. I selected these from a large pool of business leaders who are widely recognised as having contributed to the growth of the Indian economy, growth of their organisations and the innovation and changes they had ushered in their organisations. These leaders have not been as widely written about as some others. They are, probably, not even as well-known as some others. Nevertheless, they have contributed significantly in their chosen fields. I am satisfied that these leaders represent the vast multitude of other Indian organisations and business leaders. From an analysis of the interviews I had with these leaders, we can draw reasonable conclusions. I met these business leaders in their offices across the country over a period of six months. I asked questions relating to them as individuals, their understanding of and views on leadership and their perceptions about Indian business and economy. I know that all these leaders were open, frank, candid and unreserved in expressing their views and were uninhibited in sharing details of their personal lives with me. They were passionate about their work, knowledgeable about business in general and the Indian economy in particular, analytical in their response and courteous. A study of these would help us later in the book. For purposes of authenticity and accuracy, much of the data has been adapted from published reports (annual reports, official company websites and business publications) of the companies. I have also provided the values, vision and purpose statements of the companies, as stated by them in their published documents. I have also added some of my observations about these leaders based on my interaction with them.


5 SELECT INDIAN BUSINESS LEADERS

Kishore Biyani, Chairman (Group CEO), Future Group (Pantaloon Retail), Mumbai THE COMPANY The Future Group is positioned to cater to the entire Indian consumption space. It operates through six verticals: Future Retail (encompassing all lines of retail business), Future Capital (financial products and services), Future Brands (all brands owned or managed by group companies), Future Space (management of retail real estate), Future Logistics (management of supply chain and distribution) and Future Media (development and management of retail media spaces). The group’s flagship enterprise, Pantaloon Retail, is India’s leading retail company with presence in food, fashion and footwear, home solutions and consumer electronics, books and music, health, wellness and beauty, general merchandise, communication products, E-tailing and leisure and entertainment. The company owns and manages multiple retail formats catering to a wide cross-section of the Indian society and its width and depth of merchandise helps it capture almost the entire consumption basket of the Indian consumer. Headquartered in Mumbai (Bombay), the company operates through 3.5 million square feet of retail space, has over 100 stores across 25 cities in India and employs over 12,000 people.

Select Indian Business Leaders 119

Founded in 1987, as a garment manufacturing company, Pantaloon forayed into modern retail in 1997 with the opening up of a chain of department stores, Pantaloons. In 2001, Kishore Biyani, created and evolved a pan-Indian, class-less model—Big Bazaar, a hypermarket chain, leading to the democratisation of shopping in India. With ‘Food Bazaar’, a supermarket chain, he blended the look, touch and feel of Indian bazaars with Western hygiene which has now evolved into a favoured destination for Indian homemakers. The company has also launched ‘Central’, the first of its kind, seamless mall located in the heart of major Indian cities. Some of its other formats include, Collection I (home improvement products), E-Zone (consumer electronics), Depot (books, music, gifts and stationeries), aLL (fashion apparel for plus-size individuals) and Blue Sky (fashion accessories). Some of the group’s subsidiaries include Home Solutions Retail India Ltd, Future Bazaar India Ltd and ConvergeM Retail India Ltd, which lead the group’s foray into home improvement, E-tailing and communication products, respectively. Other group companies include, Pantaloon Industries Ltd, Galaxy Entertainment and Indus League Clothing. It has also entered into joint venture agreements with a number of companies including ETAM Group, Gini & Jony, Liberty Shoes and Planet Sports, a company that owns the franchisee of international brands like Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, Guess and The Body Shop in India. Future Capital Holdings, the group’s financial arm, recently raised US$ 1 billion in private equity funds for investment in retail real estate and consumer-related industries. Apart from asset management, it also plans to get into insurance, consumer credit and offer other financial products and services. Values, Vision and Purpose

As a part of its vision, Future Group ‘will provide every thing, everywhere, every time to every Indian consumer in the most profitable manner’. The company’s corporate manifesto states that ‘knowledge is the only weapon at our disposal. Everything else is temporary, transient and misleading. Our quest for knowledge will be focused, systematic and unwavering. But, it will never be at expense of our values or our beliefs.’ Elaborating further, the company says, ‘we are committed to apply knowledge we gather to ensure that our customers will not just get what they want, but they will also get what they need; we will not


just live up to the expectations of our subscribers, but we will exceed them; we will not just post satisfactory results, but we will write success stories; we will not just operate efficiently in the market place, but we will evolve the market; we will not just spot trends, but we will set trends; we will not just be successful or competitive in the domestic market, but we will be an international player. And, in the process, we will unite the dreams and aspirations of our employees, shareholders, associates and partners to do just one thing—Rewrite Rules. Retain Values.’ The core values of the group are Indianness (confidence in ourselves), Dedication (to customer satisfaction), Leadership (to be a leader both in thought and business), Self Development (by continuous hard work), Respect (for every individual) and Introspection (leading to purposeful thinking).

KISHORE BIYANI Kishore Biyani, 45, is the Group CEO of Future Group. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce and a Post-Graduate qualification in Marketing. He had initially joined his father’s family business. Biyani recalls that his father belonged to the old school, was a conventional businessman, and being a cloth trader, could never associate fabrics with fashion. Soon, Biyani began to tire of the business and chose to start a yarn manufacturing unit, which in those days offered high margins. He revolutionised the art of selling in India when he stormed the market with his hypermarket chain, the ‘Big Bazaar’. Biyani hopes that one day he will be able to emulate his hero, Sam Walton. His motto, ‘rewrite the rules but retain the values’, seems to have worked well for him. His being chosen as the ‘Retail Face of the Year’ by Images Retail, shows that Biyani’s efforts at re-branding Indian retail has been recognised. Kishore Biyani believes in simplicity. Even when he visits his stores, he stands in a corner observing the way people shop. What he may lack in sartorial style, he more than makes up through his observation powers. He is seldom seen wearing a tie and jacket. According to him, golf is a waste of time. Instead, he is addicted to a daily half-hour walk and does yoga twice a week. Biyani loves films and has even produced some, but was never part of that industry. Biyani believes in taking quick decisions. He spends time with property developers, merchant bankers and investment bankers and is quick to seize any advantage. He keeps a close watch over his empire


with the assistance of his two brothers, who are directors in the company. It is not unusual for Biyani to be fixing any lacunae either over the phone or personally in the store. He jets between his stores across the country to ‘spend at least six or seven hours every week in the stores’, he says. Even when he is in inspection mode, he takes time off to negotiate more business deals. He personally goes to people’s homes, talks to local community leaders and spends weeks walking the streets of bazaars to get a feel of what products should be stacked in a new store. Kishore Biyani comes across as a person who is simple and uncomplicated, future-oriented and visionary, and highly energetic and determined. He appears to be motivated by achievement-orientation and seems genuinely passionate about creating change. Mr Biyani, thank you very much for agreeing to meet me for my book on leadership. Let us start. Can you list some of your core values and beliefs? I think my core value is Indianness. I have always believed that India is different from most other countries and we behave quite differently. Today, we are living in a different era, in a different time. Some of my other values include honesty, transparency and confidence in oneself. What would you consider as your major personal and professional strengths? I don’t see any difference between personal and professional strengths. I think my greatest strengths are my ability to envision the future, my ability to understand human dynamics, my ability to act fast without stopping and my holistic approach to issues and problems. Do you consider anything as your personal or professional weakness? Yes, there are quite a few. Only now, I am beginning to learn the art of saying ‘no’. I am impulsive. It may be my strength also. I also tend to take everyone at face value. What are your major hobbies and interests? My hobbies include reading, music and movies. Interacting with fellow human beings is becoming a big interest to me these days. How do you spend your time away from work? Do you have any spare time? I believe that everyone has time. I spend most of my time meeting and interacting with people—professional as well as personal. What are your major concerns about our environment and society? I have many concerns. Indian society is getting polarised everyday, in every way—religion, caste, the gap between the rich and the poor.


We are concerned about that. We are concerned about India not having a great vision as a country and not having a great leadership. One of my biggest concerns is the absence of the belief in India even among the political leadership. Can you describe some instances from personal life that influenced you the most and have had the greatest impact on the way you are? I think it is a process of evolution. I have not got through many jatkas (ups and downs) in life unlike many others, except two major ones that I remember. I started a company when I was young. It did well initially, but had some labour troubles later. I had to close down the business. It shook me for a while. It was a great experience. The second was when I produced two films, and both did not do well. It taught me to be cautious about whatever you create. These two are major instances. Those two are perhaps professional—business related. What about your personal life? In one of the articles I read about you, you had said that your father had a family business and you thought it was too traditional. One of the things that I believe changed me was something I read early on about rationality. Everyone around me was very religious, but I was never religious. I question everything. I question every decision. In some ways, I am a contrarian. I believe that there is always another way of doing things. In your understanding, what are the leadership qualities that helped you become whatever you are now? I think it is all about decision making and being fair to everyone. People should trust and have confidence in you. It is what leadership is all about. I believe that you may go through ups and downs, but ultimately it will take you where you want to be. I don’t think I would have achieved what I have even if I had attended a B-school. Did you have any personal or professional role model in your life? I think we have grown up reading about a lot of people. I used to read about many business leaders and I have learnt a lot. It is the inspiration we derive from them. I am inspired by Sam Walton of Wal-Mart. When I was young, I did not meet many business leaders. But now I have met many around the world. I was inspired by Dhirubhai Ambani. I have been impressed by Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Effective People. You will find that most successful people have many common characteristics.


Have you ever felt that you have not achieved your potential? I believe that we all use only 5 to 8 per cent of our true potential. I am no different. I think there is so much in us that we don’t use in our lives. I also don’t believe that we can measure our success in numbers or in purely economic terms. I believe that a leader should make other people happy, and that happiness cannot be measured. I would say that it is about what people around you—your employees, your business partners, your customers—feel. Where do you visualise yourself in the long term? Say, 15–20 years from now? I don’t look at anything beyond five years. I think that it is futile to look over very long periods of time. I believe I can make a difference to the world. I believe that I represent a new economy of the world and I am creating a new economy. India is just the beginning of my dreams. Do you get to spend much time with your family? What do you do in your spare time? I spend a lot of time with my family and friends. I don’t think my children have any regrets about that. I read a lot. Music is also a part of our way of looking at the trend in the market place. My interests are all built into our business. I believe that if you enjoy doing whatever you do, you don’t have to work. You must be irritated by some people. Can you tell me more? I have strong likes and dislikes. If I don’t like somebody, then everything about that person irritates me. I don’t like people who are not honest or tell lies. I will not tolerate lies and dishonesty. People should present their true selves. I can easily spot people who are not their true selves. If you were to take off from your professional life in the near future, what is it that you would like to do? Actually, everyone wants to retire, write a book or get into academics. I am already into writing a book even while I am working. I have a vision and dream of bringing about a change in the education system in this country. The present education system was designed when the world was totally different. I want to bring about change in the lives of people. What do you believe are some of the major changes in recent times? Technology and demographics are the two major changes. The third is the political system. Our democracy is slowly evolving differently—the


emergence of regional parties, the two-party system, and coalition— all these have a great impact on our lives. If you were to give some counsel to someone who comes to you and asks for advice. What would you say? It depends on the person who is taking that initiative. People do come to me for advice, but most of them go back disappointed, because I think they are already doing very well. It has a lot to do with the individual himself or herself. I used to believe that leaders were born and not made, but I have changed my opinion now. I believe leaders can be made, if they have some basic qualities—something in them. I believe that people do transform themselves after a certain age and they manage something entrusted to them—manage something bigger, make something better. Leadership can be bestowed upon on a person. Leadership can be developed over a period of time. Can you list five major leadership qualities for success? I think the major leadership characteristics would be vision, strategy, relationship building, decision-making and honesty, including fairness. Some people believe that ethics and business do not go together. What is your view? Everything goes together. You cannot isolate anything. Everything impacts on you. I have no reason to believe that whatever personally or morally goes wrong will not impact your business. Do you think that it is different in India? I don’t believe it is different in India, though I believe that in India people are more emotional. Most of the successful leaders in the world have the traits and characteristics that I mentioned earlier. Leaders are, after all, human beings and human beings have not changed their emotions—hunger, greed and passion. I believe that values of leadership will not change. Leaders who are successful can also fail. What is your perspective on ‘success’? I am not sure if we can define success generically and universally. It would depend upon an individual. I don’t believe that success comes from achieving numbers. I would like my success to be measured by how well I am doing things that are different, doing something that is different, in helping people achieve whatever they think they can. Our thinking on success should change. We have to make a difference to the society and community in which we live.


Will you list for me 10 business leaders in the past 50 years, say from 1950 till 2006? Sam Walton, Howard Schultz, Jack Welch, Narayana Murthy, Rahul Bajaj, Azim Premji, Ratan Tata, David Kelly, Dhirubhai Ambani and Mohandas Pai. Not easy to recollect 10 names straightaway. Most of them share common characteristics such as vision and fairness. They have all the major qualities I mentioned earlier. In this regard, I don’t think there is any difference between the Indians and others. Would you consider Jack Welch in the same breath? Many people think that Jack was a highly competent manager—not a leader. Jack was not an entrepreneur. That is the difference. Ratan Tata is also not an entrepreneur in that sense. But Jack Welch delivered on his convictions. He may have had his own style of delivery. I believe that you can be aggressive and yet be successful. What about values of the individual? I have constructed values and ethics in such a way that if you don’t have them you may not be here. You must feel morally good about what you do. Do you really believe that all successful business leaders should have long-term goals? I think every business should have a long-term goal. For me, longterm is 5 to 10 years. If you don’t have long-term goals, the business will fail. It is often said that an organisation’s success is not only due to its leader, but also because of every member in the organisation. What do you think? I think it depends primarily on the leadership. The leader has to lead the way. There has to be someone who shows the direction, who manages all the strategic relationships. Others have to enjoy his confidence. What do you think of co-leaders? A co-leader has to reflect many things of the leader. He has to be honest and transparent. He has to believe in the mission and vision of the company. He has to have belief in the leader. He has to comprehend the leader’s thought the way it was intended. He should willingly accept the leader. In what circumstances, would you recommend task-orientation and people-orientation for a leader? Unfortunately, my style is not task-oriented, but people-oriented. I am not the best example of a task-oriented leader. I am a thought leader,


a business leader, a people’s leader and then a task leader. In my list, task comes last. Now I think the time has come for me to be a taskoriented leader, because things are emerging. We have seen the world, seen the way things work, how to do things. Task-orientation now will make us scale it up to a higher level of performance. I will say that initially you need to be people-oriented, build things up and then move towards task-orientation. What are your views on whether leaders are born or made? I am not changing my mind at all. Leaders can be made also. ‘Also’ is the key word. Originally I did not think like it because I had not given it much thought. Let us now discuss some issues relating to Indian business. The Indian economy is growing at about 8 per cent. Do you think the Indian economic boom is something that is sustainable? I think India’s time has come now. India has great potential. I believe that the world has to survive on growth—the economy has to survive on growth, human beings have to survive on growth, countries have to survive on growth, people have to survive on growth. India has been lacking on this. Growth is going to be the most important factor for India. The recent Sensex crash has nothing to do with growth. There will be ups and downs, but nothing will stop growth. The stock market reflects the growth only to some extent. It will eventually find its own level. I think India is growing. It all depends on leadership, the policies of the government and the confidence of the people in the country. I think India can easily grow at 10 per cent. Many people have started comparisons of India with China. What do you think? I don’t think India and China should be compared. China has evolved differently with a different political system. India is very different. We can draw some lessons from each other. I think things like infrastructure, population control, the policies of the government, etc., are different in China. Some interesting things are common. I think China has had some great political leadership. Some people have said that Indira Gandhi was dictatorial, but was perhaps the finest Prime Minister India ever had. Do you have any comments? I don’t know. I was not a thought leader at that time. I think she was a very different kind of leader. I don’t know if she was effective. If a country cannot provide basic education, health or rural penetration after 60 years of independence, what can we say? I don’t know. I think


India has lacked a vision. I believe that any change should include the masses. The vision of leaders should lead to a focused strategy. Leadership is all about transformational change in people. They should believe that what we are doing is right. Do you think that the emerging sectors such as the IT, ITES or the BT are sustainable for India? Whatever India can capture (opportunities), we can build. Everything will have some positive and negative impact. It depends on the leadership. We have many designers and merchandisers in our company. They come from different backgrounds with different mindsets. We change their mindset and make them unified. But don’t some people say that this emerging sector has negatively impacted Bangalore? There are some reports to that effect. But I don’t think there is any major social change. All over the world, the more you want to achieve something, the more you have to change. We are getting into a competitive environment—benchmarking competition. It is a highly complex world. It all depends on your own yardstick. I think the thinking should be how good people are as human beings, how they change the lives of people around them. If I told you that the emerging sector has not contributed much to Indian economy? I don’t agree. I think India is different. I think we should understand how different sectors work. We must understand competition and work things around it. There are a lot of influences around us. It depends on the overall leadership. If you read the popular literature in any country, you will know how things are changing. The creativity that goes into an enterprise matters a lot. What about culture? Do you see any tremendous change in culture? I don’t think so. India is very inclusive in its culture. If there is any influence from outside, we will include it in ours, rather than ours getting included elsewhere. Indian culture is so deep-rooted and rich that everything will merge with it. It is very different from the Western culture. That is why our society won’t get disintegrated. If I make a statement that Pantaloon or other companies would not have come up if there was no change in culture. What would you say? I don’t agree. I think growth is a way of life. Change is going to happen. No one can stop it. Everything is going to change. The way of offering products and services to customers is changing, but it is not a part of


culture. The nuclear family has also emerged because of some factors other than cultural changes. Culture is the way our society has evolved up to now; how deep we have been in our thinking. I believe that Mahabharata and Ramayana are the biggest lessons in management. Diversity, tolerance and respect for elders are a part of our culture. They will stand the test of time. They won’t change. There are many successful women in business today. What is your view? I think there are some tasks in which women are better than men. Eye for detail, understanding of social implication of business, etc., are better in women. Unfortunately, we do not have many women business leaders in our country. Many of the women who are written about are great managers. But they do not figure in my top 10 leaders. Do you think that there are some leadership characteristics missing in women? I think that is a very interesting question. I would say that the women themselves do not promote one another. The belief that women as a community can do something themselves does not exist in them. Secondly, in terms of thought leadership, I have not seen it in many women yet. I think thought leadership is the biggest characteristic of leadership. I think management and leadership are absolutely different. We are yet to see some good women business leaders, though I think woman as a leader can be effective in many ways. I think they have some special skills. I agree with the Harvard Dean’s statement that men are built differently, and women differently. Women have some skills which are not presently used much in business. Our education system and our political system make men dominate. But there are some places in society where women can be effectively used. I think women can play very important roles in our own organisation—we are not driven by numbers. I think we have missed somewhere. We have to do something about it. Perhaps in higher positions of management in our organisation we may not be able to have women immediately. We have to look at this issue more deeply. What about some of the family-run businesses in India? Do you think there is a lot of chaos, confusion and conflict? Family values play a critical role in business success. I think internal conflict is not undesirable per se. What is the problem in a break-up? I believe that all things will break up. It is a law of nature that the bigger it becomes, it will break. Everything has to break at some point


of time. There is no exception unless it is protected. Wal-Mart is protected and hence does not break. I don’t understand why people say something is right and something is wrong. We cannot start from a premise that conflict is wrong. Till now, the Indian family system has been good. The change is a reflection of what is happening around us. Some changes will always happen. It is normal. We should not worry about it. Everybody and everything that is created will get destroyed. Your thoughts also will get destroyed, your products will get destroyed—whether you destroy it or somebody else does it. I am amazed at your thinking. You are saying that change is not only necessary, but it will happen. Nothing can stop it. Can you elaborate? I believe that leadership is not about delegation. Leadership is about abdication, not delegation. This word has never been used in our dictionary. We use this word very strongly in our organisation. It is never a delegation, but abdication. We have to leave (abdicate) whatever we are doing to somebody else and move onto another higher level. We also strongly believe in the concept of a thought leader. We believe that we should never do anything against the principles of nature. The principles of nature are growth, destruction of whatever is created and preservation of whatever is good. One should follow this principle of nature. Can you explain the tag line found in your company logo? It says ‘rewrite the rules; retain the values’. Values are Indianness, honesty and transparency. Keep them. Change anything else you want to. Values should be held intact. This opens up our minds to do whatever we want. How do you manage conflicts arising in your organisation? This is another very interesting question. We should ask some consultant to work on this, in a context of working on 100 per cent growth, 200 per cent growth. In our organisation, if I resolve a conflict, everybody accepts. But I want conflicts to be resolved at every level. My style of resolving conflicts is different. It cannot be institutionalised. It is a big challenge for me in the company. So, are you saying it is a ‘one-man show’? We have grown so much that it cannot be a one-man show. But I think there also cannot be too many leaders. In our organisation, I am what you may call ‘the source of thought’. As you know, in India, people worship everything that is the source—whether it is a water source (Gangotri) or the cow, which is a source of milk.


I believe that governmental intervention in business cannot be totally avoided or eliminated. Do you believe it is good or bad for business? I personally have not so far taken any help or favour from the government. We will have to work around whatever the government decides on a policy. If you are a thought leader, you can influence the policy. We have to show them the reasoning, the logic, the benefit of our suggestions. I will never do anything as a thought leader that would benefit me only. It must be for the benefit of the country. Leadership is always looking beyond oneself and one’s organisation. I believe that if the universe survives, our country will survive; if our country survives, our state will survive; and if our state survives, our organisation will survive. You cannot have it the other way around. Not much has been written about your social responsibility and what you are doing towards it. Can you tell me some aspects of this side of your business? I somehow strongly believe that we should never show what we are doing towards charity, towards society. We want to build a softer image of ourselves in this. If nothing is known about us, people have to discover us. Every individual has so much in him. We believe in social responsibility but don’t wish to be written about. We believe in helping every community we live in, every state we operate in, every country we are in. We keep on doing whatever we can to make people happy. We do it in our way. We are working on education. We believe that we have to do it sincerely. I am presently working on some ideas to develop some leadership vision for this city, Mumbai. The solution is for us to bring about a change in our thinking, our vision. What does your wife think of you? I don’t know. I think she has to cope with me. I think I am a dreamer. I have not reached a stage of insanity yet. I am not a perfectionist. I believe there is no perfect world. The whole problem is that we look for perfection everywhere. I don’t think it is possible. The imperfection is something we should enjoy. We should enjoy ourselves as we are and do what makes us happy. Your reported Type on MBTI is INFP. The N has come out to be ‘clear’. It may indicate that you have a natural tendency to see the ‘big picture’ more than the ‘data’. Do you want to make any observations? Managers and leaders are different. I always think of how detailed a plan should be. I can tell you exactly what is happening in each of my stores—plus or minus 5 per cent. I think it is not intuition, but a science.


Yes, we need data, but I mix data with social science. Social science is subjective. I think management theory does not record anything that is subjective. We try to record anything that is subjective. Management only works on hard data. I think hard data means nothing and does not deliver unless it is coupled with environment. Management theory based purely on data analysis is an incomplete way of learning. I always challenge it. You seem to be challenging many things. Are you, by any reckoning, ‘anti-management’? No. I think the B-schools (management theory) were created in 1900s and progressed from there. Any theory of any subject is based on some incidence that happened then. It is a case study model. India cannot be a case study model. It is a scenario-building model. You have to plan the future. There is no past data. So, it has to be based on a vision—not on any case study model. Secondly, management was created in an era when technological advancement was taking place every 15–20 years. Now the technology advancement is every 3–5 years. So it is not applicable now. Management theory is based on production and efficiency. That is irrelevant in anything that is not constant. We are living in a different world where everything is changing every 3–5 years. It is not constant. How can those management theories apply now? I think learning is all about life. Everyone has to enjoy his work. That is life. What you are saying is that in a changing environment, like the one we are going through now, we may need leaders with INFP instead of ESTJ or ENTJ. We need to learn a new lesson in understanding Types! ESTJ or ENTJ may be for leaders who were responsible for maintaining something, preserving something that has already been created. Not for creating something new. They are all preservers. But we are creators. For preserving, you may be a taskmaster, goal-setting, planning and prioritising. Not for creative work. The biggest creations in nature are not systemic, but different. We also should not make our creations predictable or comprehensible. Will other emerging leaders share your views? Others may not share my views. There are some good leaders who are very interested in your views and thoughts. But there are others who may not be. I don’t know. I think everybody is interested in knowing everything they can learn from others. We can learn from one another’s experience.


Do you get stressed by multiple tasks or time deadlines? What happens when you get stressed? I only thrive upon multiple tasks. I get stressed by time deadlines sometimes. When I am stressed—which is rare—I become irritable. When I am irritable or angry, I don’t take decisions. I am very sure about that. I wait until I am normal again before taking decisions. I want to be in the right frame of mind when I make decisions. I must be very alert when deciding. But I am never in a stressed mood for more than a day at the most. I return to normal soon. I have met a number of people in recent years. I always feel that I am able to open up people’s minds into accepting more knowledge and information. I think I am quite unique in many ways. I am able to make people open up and be willing to receive more.

G.V. Prasad, Vice Chairman and CEO, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Hyderabad THE COMPANY Dr Reddy’s Laboratories was founded by Dr Anji Reddy, an entrepreneurscientist, in 1984. The DNA of the company is drawn from its founder and his vision to establish India’s first discovery-led global pharmaceutical company. In fact, it is this spirit of entrepreneurship that has shaped the company into becoming what it is today. It is India’s second largest pharmaceutical company and the youngest in its peer group. The company has several distinctions to its credit. Being the first pharmaceutical company from Asia Pacific (outside Japan) to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2001 is only one among them. And as always, Dr Reddy’s chose to do it in the most difficult of circumstances against widespread scepticism. Over the years, the company’s economic focus has been strengthened by a number of factors. Among these are its purpose (to help people lead healthier lives), its integration strategy (it is vertically integrated with a presence across the entire pharmaceutical value chain) and research and development. Headquartered in Hyderabad, the company has manufacturing facilities in India, China and the UK, R&D facilities in India and the US and marketing offices in 70 countries. Today, Dr Reddy’s continues its journey, leveraging on its ‘Low Cost, High Intellect’ advantage, and foraying into new markets and new businesses. The company has


evolved over the years, taking on new challenges, growing stronger and more capable, with each failure and each success renewing the sense of purpose. With over 1,100 scientists working across the globe, the company continues its relentless march forward to discover and deliver a breakthrough medicine to address unmet medical needs and make a difference to peoples’ lives worldwide. Among the many awards received by the company in recognition of its contributions to the society are the ‘Best Management’ award from the Government of Andhra Pradesh, ‘Energy and Water Management Award’ from the Confederation of Indian Industry, ‘Top 25 Best Employers in India’ from Businessworld, and ‘Best Company to Work for in India’ from Business Today. Values, Vision and Purpose

According to the company, its Core Purpose is ‘to help people lead healthier lives’. Its Vision is ‘to become a discovery-led global pharmaceutical company. We strive for excellence in everything we think, say, and do.’ Core Values are ‘Quality (we are dedicated to achieving the highest levels of quality in everything we do to delight our internal and external customers, every time), Respect for the Individual (we uphold the self-esteem and dignity of each other by creating an open culture conducive for expression of views and ideas irrespective of hierarchy), Innovation and Continuous Learning (we create an environment of innovation and learning that fosters, in each one of us, a desire to excel and willingness to experiment), Collaboration and Teamwork (we seek opportunities to build relationships and leverage knowledge, expertise and resources to create greater value across functions, businesses and locations) and Harmony and Social Responsibility (we take utmost care to protect our natural environment and serve the communities in which we live and work).’ Its business practices are ‘guided by the highest ethical standards of truth, integrity and transparency.’

THE LEADER: DR K. ANJI REDDY Anji Reddy, 58, is the Chairman of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceuticals and Fine Chemicals from Bombay University and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. He founded the company in 1984. Prior to establishing Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Anji Reddy had served in the state-owned Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited (1969–75),


was founder Managing Director of Uniloids Ltd (1976–80) and Standard Organics Limited (1980–84). A man of vision with a strong commitment to innovation, he has spearheaded the revolution to make Hyderabad the bulk drug capital of India. He is also a crusader for intellectual property rights in India. He is among the very few entrepreneurs who has placed the Indian Pharmaceutical industry on the world map. Anji Reddy is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade & Industry and the Board of National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER). He is also a member of the Board of Governors of the Institute of Chemical Technology, University of Mumbai. He chairs the Governing Body of Hyderabad Eye Research Foundation and also serves on the Board of Vision Research Foundation, Chennai. He is the founder of Naandi Foundation, a not-for-profit development institution that strives for eradication of poverty. He is also founder Chairman of Dr Reddy’s Foundation for Human and Social Development, a social arm of Dr Reddy’s, which acts as a catalyst of change to achieve sustainable development. Anji Reddy has been the recipient of several awards and honours. Notable among them are the Sir P.C. Ray Award, twice conferred on him—in 1984 and 1992—by the Indian Chemical Manufacturers Association and the FAPA-Ishidate Award for Pharmaceutical Research by the Federation of Asian Pharmaceutical Associations (FAPA) in 1998. He was voted ‘Businessman of the Year 2001’ by Business India. He has been presented the ‘Achiever of the Year Award, 2000’ and ‘Hall of Fame Award, 2005’ by the CHEMTECH Foundation for his entrepreneurship, leadership and innovation. He was conferred the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2001.

G.V. PRASAD Prasad, 46, is the Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, and a Masters degree in Industrial Administration from Purdue University. He leads the core team that is driving the Dr Reddy’s growth and transformation from a company predominantly selling API, Branded Formulations and Generics to achieving its vision of becoming a discovery-led global pharmaceutical company. As CEO, Prasad has championed the globalisation of the company and has played a vital role in the company’s evolution. He has been


the architect of the company’s global generics strategy. He has helped create new platforms of growth for Dr Reddy’s, in the Custom Pharmaceutical Services, Discovery Services and Specialty Pharmaceutical segments. He has built a diverse, talented and experienced senior management team in India, Europe and the US. Prasad’s hobbies and interests include Nature and the Principles of Sustainability in Business and Society. He enjoys working with social organisations, reading up on inspirational leadership, mathematics and spending time with his family in Hyderabad. Prasad, like Kishore Biyani, appears to be a simple and uncomplicated individual. He is aware of his background and his limitations. He is passionate about making a difference to the people around him. He believes in team leadership and does not hesitate to seek expertise from others. He is keen that the organisation he leads becomes globally recognised for excellence and quality of service. Mr Prasad, thank you very much for agreeing to meet me for my book on leadership. We will start with a few questions relating to you. Will you list for me some of your core values and beliefs? I think this will sound like a cliché for any leader, but integrity is something I would place very high on my list. To me, integrity is an umbrella term, encompassing many values and virtues. Next would be transparency in actions. Finally, I strongly believe that for any business to be sustainable, it has to be perceived as being good to society. While every company has to be ethical in all its actions, being good or a force for good must go beyond being ethical and actually add positive value to society through its business and other actions. At a personal level, I like being forthright about my intentions and do not like to be secretive. What do you consider as some of your major strengths—personal and professional? There are times when we don’t realise many of our strengths ourselves—others tell us. I believe that I grasp situations very fast and am able to ‘connect the dots’ rapidly. I am also good at strategic thinking—in understanding the long-term implications of decisions and actions. Many of my friends also perceive me as being very tenacious. I also believe that I am very persevering in my goals. I am not certain if personal and professional strengths can be clearly distinguished. But on the professional front, I believe that I am a clear thinker. I work very hard and I am a lifelong learner.


What are some of your weaknesses, if any? I have many limitations too. I am impatient and very often do not listen to the other person fully. I am blunt in expressing myself to others. This bluntness on my part results in my being perceived as not being sensitive to others’ emotional needs and feelings. I believe that some of our strengths can also become weaknesses in a different context. For example, my speed in comprehension may result in giving the listeners the perception that I jump to conclusions too rapidly and that I do not listen very well. Is your wife a homemaker? What about your children? My wife is a homemaker but also engages herself in many other activities. She is the managing trustee of Dr Reddy’s Foundation which is involved in many social causes. She also works in multiple areas such as livelihoods, education and healthcare for the disadvantaged in society. She is involved in founding and running a cultural and art centre for children. She is also a founding trustee of the Jiddu Krishnamurthy centre at Hyderabad. I have one son and two daughters. What are your major hobbies or interests? I am very interested in nature, wildlife and the ecology. Recently I started bird watching and am very fascinated by this activity. I also read a lot—mainly non-fiction. I listen to various kinds of music. I prefer to spend most of my time—away from work—with my family. Do you have any major concerns about the environment or society? Yes, I have many. One of my major concerns relates to the sustainability of our development. The economy is doing well and there is growth all around. As our vast populations become wealthier and are able to afford the better things in life, the whole consumption patterns and demand for energy will rise dramatically. This will place enormous strain on resources and will lead to severe environmental degradation as well as habitat destruction. All this will lead to declining quality of lives for everyone as also irreversible damage to the environment. This is one big concern that I have. Another issue I see is that rapid growth of the economy will result in asymmetric development and the gulf between the middle class and the poor will become higher. We cannot have islands of prosperity amid all the poverty. This will also lead to social tensions and we must find ways to bridge the gap rapidly and not rely solely on market mechanisms. Finally, another big concern I have is that we are losing the connection with our heritage.


India has one of the richest heritages in terms of arts, languages, traditions and so on. We have this heritage from thousands of years— very rare and precious. The current development and the move towards Westernisation is resulting in us losing our links with this heritage. Globalisation and changing lifestyles is leading to us losing the connection with our languages, traditions, literature and arts. Can you tell me some instances from your early adulthood that have impacted you most? I have not thought much on this aspect till now. But, now that you ask, I can think of one instance that has impacted me significantly. When I was in school—7th or 8th class—I thought I was just an average student. There was nothing exceptional about me. But my mother and some of my teachers encouraged me a lot. They said that if I desired, I could be something more than what I was. They challenged me to study well and secure the 1st rank in the state in the S.S.C. exam. This challenge motivated me and I thought I must achieve what I could. The challenge gave me the self-confidence. I succeeded in my efforts and secured the 1st position in the district, though not in the state. This gave me further impetus and hunger for achievement. What leadership qualities do you think have helped you become the Vice Chairman and CEO? I am not sure if I deserve to be ranked as a business leader yet. My ability to see the detail as well as the larger vision would be something that I think helped me. I can be both a ‘trees’ and a ‘forest’ person simultaneously. Of course in my current role, I am more of a ‘forest’ person. My father is a ‘tree’ person and is very thorough with the details of whatever he does, and that influenced me to look at details. The founder of this company—my father-in-law—is a visionary, a ‘forest’ person. I have learnt some qualities from both. This, I think, has helped me a lot in creating a vision for this organisation and also focus on execution. And, of course, my being a member of the family has helped me get this job. Do you wish you could have achieved more in life? Yes, I feel that if I had better influencing skills, I could perhaps have been a better leader. While I am able to rapidly connect the dots and see the future, I am not always able to make others do the same or share my vision in a timely way. I wish I had the ability to convince others more rapidly to speed up the execution process, because I often find that I have the right perspective but take a lot more time in aligning people to my point of view.


Do you or did you have any role models in your life? I have had many role models. I have some role models in my own management team here. I have also learnt a lot from the books that I read. I have been greatly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. I believe he is one of the greatest leaders of all time. His message of changing ourselves first in order to bring about change is really powerful. His quote, ‘My Life is my message’, really resonates with me. I have also been influenced by Nelson Mandela with his ability to ‘give up’ everything after struggling for decades to bring freedom to South Africa. Among the Indian business leaders, I have greatly admired J.R.D. Tata. I think his nephew and the current Chairman of the Tata Group, Ratan Tata, is admirably continuing the work of J.R.D. There are also others who are role models—Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and Azim Premji. Even at my workplace, I am always inspired by the passion and the largeness of vision that Dr Reddy exhibits. His commitment to social causes is very inspirational. Jim Collins in his work on Level 5 Leadership talks about personal humility coupled with professional will. Do you see any relevance of this for the leaders you mentioned? I agree absolutely. Most of these leaders have demonstrated that quality. Can you list 10 business leaders who come to your mind? Some names that come to my mind straightaway are J.R.D Tata, Steve Jobs, Lou Gerstner, Ramalinga Raju, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Sunil Mittal, Nandan Nilekani and Anita Roddick. I admire the great passion and creativity that Steve Jobs exhibits. I am influenced by what Lou Gerstner has been able to achieve in IBM by transforming the organisation—not only making the ‘elephant’ dance, but also run like a cheetah. Ramalinga Raju is not written about a lot, but is simple and humble in his personal behaviour but is very grand in his vision for his organisation. I am impressed with the passion of Azim Premji toward his customers. I admire Sunil Mittal of Bharti for his insight into technology and outsourcing. I respect Anita Roddick of Body Shop for her vision and for building an exciting business based on social causes. Do you find anything in common among these leaders? Some of the common threads are their humility and indomitable will, their integrity, passion and determination. Do you find that in terms of leadership, Indians have something different? Yes, there are some differences. I have not had much direct experience with the business leaders of the West. I think there are many positive


qualities in them, especially when it comes to technology, management processes and innovation. However, of late, Western business leaders are being shown in a negative light because of the very high levels of compensation and personal wealth generation at the cost of the organisation. I think, in the East, you see less preoccupation of very high executive compensation and that is a good thing. Have you regretted not having spent enough time with your family? I spend a lot of time with my family. One thing that I have not done is socialising with friends. I think it is because of my personality—I am basically an introvert—and of course the time pressure. There are some things in others that irritate us. What irritates you the most? Hypocrisy and dishonesty are things which are difficult for me to accept. I do not appreciate people with a ‘hidden agenda’. I can tolerate inefficiency and incompetence, but not hypocrisy, not dishonesty. The other thing that irritates me is when some people exercise their ‘power’ and position for the wrong ends. I want them to use their position and power to create a positive impact and organisational good, not to satisfy their ego. If you were to retire six months to one year from now, what would you like to do? I would like to help others with my knowledge of managing a complex business and building a global company. I would like to mentor entrepreneurs and take up social causes. As I said earlier, my passion is sustainable development. I would like to help organisations in that area. If you were to give advice or counsel to someone else who wants to be a business leader, what would you say? I think such people must first discover their calling—what drives them, what their passion is. I believe that the motivation, drive and passion must go beyond the obvious—profit, size of organisation or the position and authority. For example, in our company, if a person is not passionate about our purpose of helping people lead healthier lives and is not excited about providing affordable medicines globally, it will be very hard for him to lead others. How would you describe the relationship that exists between Dr Anji Reddy, Dr Satish Reddy and yourself in this company? It is a shared relationship. Dr Anji Reddy does not interfere in operational matters, but focuses on basic research and setting the overall


vision. He is passionate with his work as a mentor to research scientists. Operations management is shared by Satish and me. We share responsibilities in a formal and informal way. We always keep each other informed of major decisions and issues. We supplement and complement. It helps that we are of the same age group. There is no inter-generational conflict. What, according to you, are the most important characteristics of leadership? I believe that integrity, humility, ‘big thinking’, passion for work and the ability to empathise with others are important leadership characteristics. Leaders should also be able to change themselves and adapt to the changing environment. Is it true of Indian business leaders also? Or are there any different characteristics? I think they apply universally to all leaders. However, I tend to think that the personal humility attribute is perhaps more Indian due to our cultural heritage. I would even say, it is an ‘Eastern’ value. Do you think that family orientation and values are changing in India? Yes, I think it is changing quite a bit. I think there has been a shift away from the joint family to a nuclear family. Also, individualism is on the rise and consumerism is a big trend. Do you think ethics and values are important for business? I absolutely believe in that. It depends upon how you define success and what your horizon is. If you believe in an organisation being sustainable, with the ability to succeed over the long-term, with the capability to adapt to its environment, reinvent itself and flourish, you need a company of leaders. There can be no leadership without ethics and values. Business leaders must ‘walk the talk’ and possess absolute integrity in order to build an organisation that will last long, do good for the society and be able to balance stakeholder interests. However, ethics and values are necessary but not sufficient to build a great company. Some people say that business success is not on account of one leader, but is due to all the members of the team. What is your view? I agree that it is never one person. No organisation can run on one leader. A leader who thinks he is running it by himself is wrong. One individual can make a difference, though. There is always one courageous person there who makes a difference. But you need others to make things happen.


It is generally believed that leadership has two dimensions—taskorientation and people-orientation. In what circumstances would you recommend each of these? I think it is not either or. You need to be both and many times it is contextual. Sometimes you need to be less consensus-driven, but it does not mean less people-driven. For example, when you want to shake up people from complacency or when your organisation is bleeding, you would need to stand up and be less consensus-oriented. It is very difficult to classify leadership as either people-oriented or task-orientated. A leader must select his style depending on the situation. What do you think are the attributes of successful co-leaders? I think that first and foremost, there must a strong sense of mutual trust. Trust must be so high that the co-leader can tell the leader when the leader is wrong. There should also be a high sense of security between the leader and the co-leader. I believe that only secure leaders can have effective co-leaders. A secure leader can hire the best talent, but an insecure leader will always resist hiring talented people. Lastly, when the leader takes a final decision, the co-leader should be able to accept it willingly even if it goes against his judgment. What do you think about whether a leader is born or made? I think there are some qualities you need to be born with, and some that you can acquire. Things such as IQ and creativity are qualities that you are born with and no amount of training can improve. However, one can learn skills. For example, I am an introvert and I believe that I can never become an extrovert. But, can I learn to speak in public? Yes, I can. You can develop some skills, but not your basic attitude. For example, Steve Jobs, I think, was creative from birth, but developed business skills as he grew up. Indian business has been growing well in the past five years or so. Do you think it is sustainable? There is a lot of public exuberance about this growth. But have we considered why this growth is there now? I think it is because our starting point was very low. We were at the bottom on every parameter of economic measurement. Hence the present growth rate looks very high. I believe that India has no way other than to grow, because we were way behind earlier. However, we have never been at this level of growth in the entire history of independent India. Globalisation, liberalisation and technology have made this possible.


Is the growth only in emerging sectors? I think it is everywhere. Every sector is going through competitive best practices and use of technology—whether it is engineering, vegetable farming or IT. There is increased competitiveness in all sectors and going after global markets has made this growth possible. We are also competitive today only because our present human resource costs are low. But can we continue to grow when our wages increase? I think this growth is sustainable if we build on the head start we have through execution excellence. This growth however needs to be managed carefully without undue exuberance. There are many lessons we can draw from the West which has already gone through this growth phase—building cities, infrastructure, public-private partnership, etc. We also have to move from the wage arbitrage and manufacturing orientation to innovation and intellectual capital-led growth. We have to fund ideas and innovation to move to the next level of growth and catch up with the rest of the world. Are you saying that in its present form, the IT or ITES sector may not drive growth? They have to innovate? We refer to TCS as a $3 billion company, Infosys as a $2 billion company and Satyam as $1 billion company, etc. How does this compare with the global scale? IBM alone is a $100 billion company—more than all the IT companies in India put together. I think we have to go much farther than where we are. There is thus a lot of headroom for growth. However, to reach to global scale, our businesses have to look at innovation, global brands, products and many other avenues. What are your views on the patent regime? We support the patent regime. Unless there is premium on knowledge, nobody will create knowledge. You need incentives for creating knowledge. In our industry, for example, bringing a drug to the market requires billions of dollars. Only the returns possible during the patent life of a drug can cover such costs. We must, however, find ways to mitigate the high cost of patented drugs to the people who cannot afford them, through a combination of insurance and government sponsored healthcare systems. With the emergence of IT, ITES and BT, cities like Chennai, Bangalore and Gurgaon are creating islands of prosperity. What do you have to say about this? Don’t you think there is social chaos? Yes, we are creating social chaos with unbalanced development and deteriorating urban infrastructure. Each state is competing to attract


investment but this investment is largely coming to the metros. We are putting tremendous pressure on the infrastructure. I think we should move the investments to where they are really needed, not to the metros which are already burdened. It is incorrect to say that market forces will eventually solve the problem. Government has to make sure that the development is sustainable. How do you handle the stress among your employees? Stress is caused by the oppressive atmosphere and environment in an organisation. We have to create an empowering atmosphere, freedom for creativity, freedom to create an impact. We have to create an enabling organisational culture. In our company, we have created an informal atmosphere. We give significant responsibilities for employees early in their career here. We do engage their families also. We support the educational needs for the employees’ families located far from urban areas and also conduct training programmes for them. Do your employees’ families identify themselves with your company? Yes, they do. They are proud of being members of the Dr Reddy’s community. We try to create a sense of ownership and pride. More and more women are emerging as business leaders now. What are your general views on this? I think it is very good. We do not have enough women business leaders today. I admire ICICI in this regard. They have many women in the higher echelons of management. Of course, these women have become leaders because they are exceptionally good in what they do. More women should come forward to assume leadership roles. Women generally are more emotionally aware, less self-centred and more concerned with society. Unlike the traditional command and control management systems, today it is the qualities more often associated with women that make leaders effective. A leader who is softer, gentler, more consensus-driven, more able to share his weaknesses is far more effective than a macho type. Do you think that is easy in India, with our cultural background? It is not easy. There are prejudices built into our men. These prejudices have to go. I am happy to see that more women are found at the work place today. In my personal life also, I do not discriminate between my children. My children have been brought up in a very independent way and they can decide what they want to do. I will encourage them to reach their potential in life, without worrying whether it is my daughter or son.


What are your views on the increasing comparisons being made between India and China? China has had centrally driven planned growth and development. They plan well and execute very well. The quality of bureaucrats is also very high. We can learn many things from China. Of course, we have our own advantages. In India, we have a high degree of entrepreneurship in our people. China does not have the kind of great entrepreneurs that we have had. We have several brands which are globally recognised. Of course, the Chinese have also started doing that recently. In terms of public infrastructure, perhaps we are 20 years behind and this is our biggest problem. We don’t seem to have the great political leadership that is required for a faster pace of growth. Do you think government intervention in business is good? I think government intervention per se is not bad. It is true that many sectors and industry which the government managed or ran have not performed well. Thus government should not get into running business enterprises and I think the current and the previous governments recognise that. At the same time, we cannot leave everything to the private sector either. Things such as pollution, safety, public health, etc., have to be issues in which the government should intervene and enforce standards. Government intervention should be exercised carefully and only in select areas. What are your views on social responsibility of business? We subscribe to the principles of sustainable development. We believe that doing well is important, but doing good to the society is even more important. We believe that we should cause least damage to the environment in which we operate and, if possible, create a positive impact on the environment. Adding value to society through our business and social work, while remaining financially successful and taking care of the environmental impact of our operations, will lead to our being sustainable in our business. Your reported Type on the MBTI is INTP. Do you have anything to say about this? Obviously, the ‘I’ hinders me. A leader’s job is to engage a whole lot of people and mobilise them to align into a vision. So, my ‘I’ inhibits me. It makes me less effective. Sometimes I can be an ‘E’, but I am not a natural ‘E’. To a large extent, execution requires a ‘J’. Mine is a ‘P’. That could be one of my weaknesses. It could sometimes lead to lack of focused execution of an initiative over time. In such cases, I rely on someone else to help me with the execution part. I create mechanisms


where he or she can take the lead and own the initiative. I can not do this with my ‘I’ since that part of my work—engaging people—cannot be delegated to anyone else. It is an integral part of the work that I have to do personally.

Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director, Titan Industries, Bangalore THE COMPANY Titan Industries, a part of the Tata Group, is India’s leading manufacturer of watches and jewellery and the world’s sixth largest manufacturer of branded watches. Established in 1984 as a joint venture between the Tata Group and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation, the company transformed the Indian watch market, offering quartz technology with international styling, manufactured at its state-of-the-art factory at Hosur, Tamil Nadu. In 1995, the company diversified into jewellery under the brand ‘Tanishq’. Leveraging its understanding of different segments in the watch market, the company launched a second independent watch brand— ‘Sonata’—as a value brand to those seeking to buy functionally-styled watches at affordable prices. It also entered the segment of premium fashion watches by acquiring a license for global brands such as Tommy Hilfiger. Titan has also diversified into fashion eyewear with its Fastrack Eye Gear sunglasses. Further, Titan leveraged its manufacturing competencies and branched into precision engineering products and machine building in 2003. Titan manufactures over 7 million watches per annum and has a customer base of over 65 million. Titan manufactures two main brands, viz., Titan for the premium segment and Sonata for the below $25 category. The Titan brand architecture comprises several brands, each of which is a leader in its segment. Notable among them are: Titan Edge—the world’s slimmest watch; Nebula—in solid gold and precious stones; the Gold and Steel collection; Raga 9 to 5—for woman achiever; Flip—India’s first and only reversible watch with two movements and dial faces; and Fastrack in the sporty casual category. Today, Titan has over 60 per cent of the domestic market share in the organised watch market. Its exclusive retail showroom chain—World of Titan—is amongst the largest in its category. Titan watches are sold through over 9,000 outlets in over 2,300 cities and internationally in over 30 countries


including the UK, Spain, Greece and countries in the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Its after sales service is itself a benchmarked operation with a network of over 616 service centres and has one of the world’s fastest turnaround times. The company has a world-class design centre both for watches and jewellery. Tanishq is India’s largest and fastest growing jewellery brand. It has 75 boutiques in 55 cities across the country with a premium range of gold jewellery studded with diamonds or coloured gems and a wide range in 22kt pure gold. Platinum jewellery and designer silverware are also a part of the product range. Tanishq is one of India’s largest specialty retailers and is transforming the jewellery market in India. The company’s precision engineering division manufactures dashboard clocks as OEM to car manufacturers in Europe and America. It also supplies precision components to the avionics and the automotive industry. Among its awards and recognition are the President of India’s Award for employing the disabled; Friends of BIL Award for employing the handicapped; the NID-Businessworld Awards, including the ‘Young Design Entrepreneur of the Year’; the ‘Most Admired Brands’ as well as ‘Retailer of the Year’ by Images Fashion Forum; and being ranked as the ‘No 1 Brand’ in the Brand Equity Survey, in the Consumer Durables category. Titan has a clearly defined policy on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Its CSR initiatives include children’s education, employing the disabled, women’s empowerment, environment management programmes and other community initiatives. The company is a signatory to the Global Compact and has been awarded the Helen Keller and Mother Teresa awards. Its Watch and Jewellery Divisions are certified under ISO 9001:2000 quality management system standards as well as the ISO 14001 environment system standard.

BHASKAR BHAT Bhaskar Bhat, 52, is the Managing Director of Titan. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a Masters degree in Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Most of his working experience has been in Sales and Marketing. He started work as a Management Trainee at Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co. Private Limited in 1978. After spending five years at Godrej, he


joined the Tata Watch Project which was initiated at Tata Press Limited. Since 1983, he has been associated with the Tata Watch Project which later became Titan Watches Limited and is now Titan Industries Limited. At Titan, Bhaskar Bhat has handled Sales and Marketing, H.R., International Business and general managerial assignments before taking charge of the Company as Managing Director from 1 April 2002. Bhaskar is among the most unassuming business leaders that I have come across. He is simple without any of the paraphernalia that accompanies his position. He is very passionate about his job, committed to the organisation he leads and is highly people-oriented. He comes across as an individual who is acutely aware of himself and others. What do you believe are some of your core values and beliefs—personal and professional? Let me start with personal values. I don’t want to sound too intense, but there are some things one would not like to compromise ever on—basic things like honesty, integrity and respect for individuals— whether he is working in the company or not. Or even in real life, in family or extended family. I mean human respect. Now, that is on one side. The other value, I think is embedded in me. I certainly feel it is important that I take things lightly. I do not get stressed. While I do not compromise on basic things, whether it is in my day-to-day life or running my company, I would like to feel relaxed. I don’t want to get stressed. I therefore should create that kind of atmosphere in the company. How do you translate this? I think we are all competing with ourselves. The moment you think you are competing with somebody else external, then you are stressing yourself. You must feel relaxed. You must achieve equilibrium. So you don’t look at external competition, only internal? It is a matter of competition with oneself. You may call it excelling. Trying to achieve excellence in whatever you do. I think we are primarily serving the customer. Competition is just one metric of measuring how well we are serving the customer. It is not the end all. Coming back to this business of not getting stressed or taking it easy, I think people come together to work for an institution. They spend a lot of time doing that. I think they must enjoy what they do. I think they must feel it is a sharing, caring company. It must be a pleasure to work with.


What are some of your major strengths? I think personal and professional strengths are different. First, I am able to deal with every one equally, without any reservation or discomfort. It is a question of how comfortable you are while dealing with the CEO or the messenger boy. I treat every one as an individual and give them respect. For example, I landed from Pune last night at about 8 pm. Usually, I make it a point that if I land late, I don’t ask for my driver to come to the airport to pick me up. I think he also has a family and should not be made to suffer. These small things matter a lot to me. It comes naturally to me. Second is my ability to look at the larger perspective of anything, a holistic view and the implications of any decision on many stakeholders. It is common to running my company as well as my family. I consider the multifarious implications of any action that I take. Therefore, my managers also respect me for that. I naturally think beyond the long-term of an action. I want to ensure the effectiveness of my action. The third is, I think, that I don’t use my situation or position in a manner that will prevent people from acting in their natural way. I don’t think my people look at me as a person who will wield his power to take decisions, but rather help others take decisions. I can easily connect with people. In an open house we had two days ago, there was a question directed at me. A person asked me about some issue relating to his pay increase. I felt happy that he did not feel inhibited in asking me this question in an open forum. Most of what you said relates to your professional life. What about your personal strengths? I think I am multifaceted, and I know it. Not just versatile. I don’t use my versatility much. I know many languages, I love to sing and I can sing well. I love games. I play everyday in the morning. I am a family man. I entertain. People like to be in my company. I use all these in my personal way, not in the corporate sense. Sometimes, people feel that I should raise myself to my position. But that is their problem. Do you think you have any weaknesses? I think my major weakness—which I have tried to overcome in recent times—is procrastination. The other is my inability to tell people on their face their weaknesses or wrongdoings. With certain people I am quite assertive, but with some, I am not. It is a differential application of assertiveness. I have learnt from my mistakes, in a difficult way. When I come across people who are very assertive, I try to convince them in an intellectual way. If I believe intuitively that I am


right, I must try to stick to my stand. I have been trying in recent times. I consult with others a lot, but I take the final decision. In a way it relates to my inability to say no, or confront somebody in a conflicting situation, but in some extreme situation like value issues, we cannot give in. If it affects the core values of the company or my own personal values, I don’t compromise. Can you narrate one or two instances from your life that impacted you the most in whatever you are today? Let me see. My parents never pressurised me or pushed me to study or do well, etc. We were a typical middle-class ‘Matunga’ family in Mumbai. It came as a complete surprise to my parents when I stood first in my school. My father was never the type to sit and chat with me about my career, etc. He assumed that I would do medicine. Instead, I wrote the JEE and got into IIT. When I chose IIT Madras, he was completely surprised. My mother never thought I would leave Mumbai. I think those decisions made me a completely independent person. My father studied in a village, came to Mumbai and made his career. My grandfather was a farmer. That movement to IIT Madras, breaking away from the mould, gave me the confidence and independence. After my engineering, my father’s close friend, who was very influential, told my father that he could get me into another college. That kind of statement made me feel that I should become even more independent. I have made all my decisions independently after that. There is, today, nobody who can be called my godfather. Would you then say you never had a mentor? In a way, yes. I don’t have a mentor. I don’t know if it is a negative quality. But I have people in my own organisation from whom I have observed and learnt some styles and quality of decision-making, etc., and corrected some aspects of my personality. But I don’t know about having a mentor to bounce my thoughts and ideas. I think I have never tried that, but there must be something to it that adds value. I have been influenced by books many times. What leadership characteristics of yours do you think have taken you to wherever you are today? Apart from the basic human traits like honesty and integrity for which you are respected, I think the courage to stand up in front and take on the difficult parts of the job in my own way. Let me say that I came to this leadership role of Managing Director when the company was in a crisis. I told myself that I would deal with the difficult


parts first and then deal with other things. To deliver against those required some courage. Would you call it courage of conviction? More than that, it was to do with the situations and problems existing then. At that time somewhere in my heart, I felt that my entire management team was watching me—how I was going to perform, take things upfront or make things wishy-washy. I think my prime driver was telling myself that if I was to establish myself in the eyes of my colleagues, I would have to grab these opportunities head on and prove myself. Are you relating it to meeting challenges in a way? I have one principle which I tell the young people. When you come to work, first thing in the morning, do the most difficult thing that you have been avoiding doing. This will give you energy for doing other things later in the day. When I took over as the Managing Director, I dealt with many of the difficult things first—the cost-cutting efforts, the VRS (Voluntary Retirement Scheme), etc. Even in my first Board Meeting, I had to confront them with the fact that there was a big hole in our European operations. It was quite awkward for me to say it. I don’t know if it is correct, but it is in my trait, to clean up things first and that I will do myself. What about your ability to carry people with you? Yes, but that carrying is not through sheer sense of purpose or great oratorical skills. Mine is to carry them through empathy, and ability to convince them about my sincerity of purpose. My people always say that I do not do big things, but talk things that they understand. Intention should be bona fide. I also feel that delivering more than the promise—beyond the promise—is important. Would you say means count more than the ends? Yes, to me yes. One should keep the end in mind, but a step-by-step approach to achieving the ends, the right way to achieve the things, is very important. For example, the consensus way of decision-making. I am certainly a process man. I also follow on it, and I make sure that if something has been issued—rule or guideline—it should be followed, even if I don’t agree with it personally. Our credibility with the Tata group was very poor earlier. But it has now improved a lot. I said whether we like it or not, we are a part of the group and hence we should do what the group expects us to do.


If you had possessed some other characteristics, would you have achieved something more? Certainly. I think you are either born with it or you are not born with it, like for example, the ability to develop an extraordinary vision. I am good at looking at the larger picture, yes, but I am not a dreamer or a visionary. Second, I think, my risk-taking ability is low. Again, it has to do with my background. It is also connected with the first in a way. Consulting with your superiors and your colleagues is all about reducing the risk. Do you think you have reached your potential? No, I don’t think so. I think I have much more potential, in terms of influencing a large number of Indians to behave in a manner I would like them to behave. Today, I know that I can address the entire 3,000 people at our plant and if I ask them to sign a paper, they will. They trust me, my own people. So, I know that there are things that I can do. It comes from being completely trustworthy. But I think that I lack the ambition to achieve more. I think it is related to my earlier statement that I like to be relaxed and not get stressed. Even my family, in one of those frivolous chats, says why can’t I become a crorepati like some others. I know that it is also because of my riskaversion. I know I can have huge impact if I use my personality and talent, but somehow I am not doing it. I don’t like holding official positions in order to influence people. Perhaps it is the fear of failure. But I would say that it is something like I know my worth, but I don’t want the title. Because in getting the title, there are lots of pains I don’t like. What are your hobbies and interests? I enjoy trekking, games, music and reading fiction. But now, in recent times, I have also started reading a lot of HBR (Harvard Business Review), The Economist, etc., just to broaden my mind. Any regrets about not having time to follow your hobbies and interests? Yes. I would love to sing, and would have liked to learn to play some musical instrument. My son tells me that I could have become a good cricketer. I would have been reasonably good in sports. If I had not been as successful as I am, I would have regretted even more, perhaps. Does your family regret not spending much time with you? Now it is better. During my early years in sales, they used to feel it even more.


All of us get irritated some time or the other with something or the other. What irritates you the most? Yes, there certainly are things that irritate me. I think the most irritating thing is when people put themselves and their interests ahead of the company. It translates into wanting some pay increase or promotion or comparing themselves with somebody else. It may be unfair on my part to get irritated. But to bring it up as a piece of conversation at my level irritates me. And when it happens repeatedly with the same person, it irritates me even more. When people ask something as a demand, it irritates me. I think it is people having some personal agenda. It also has to do with lack of transparency. I am willing to go that extra mile if the person is transparent and forthright. Assuming you were to retire from Titan soon, what would you like to do post-retirement and what would you like to do within the organisation during these six months? I have already said this. I don’t know if I can execute this. I would like to take up teaching, in a general sense. In a very specific level, I would like to build a bank balance to a level that I can maintain my present life style. We would like to travel around the country, have a car with a driver. I would like to choose my own lifestyle. Within the next six months in the organisation, the most important thing will be to choose a successor. I will have to start working on it even one or two years earlier. Find a successor and ensure that the relationships within the organisation are all robust. Problems will be there, but the relationship of the company with the Tata group is healthy and robust. I don’t want to influence strategy. Do you have some concerns about society or environment? My major concern is really at a larger macro level. Indians are very talented and very capable. But we are suffering on account of poor education at the primary school level. The lack of access to education to every Indian—quality of education—pains me a lot. Our democracy has been well established. Perhaps we are not able to do it due to our democracy. Because of our democracy, we have multiple priorities— food, water, etc., and education has suffered. Awareness of the need for knowledge is lacking. Opportunities are a million here. We must create the awareness for knowledge. If someone came to you and asked you for advice, what would you say? First, I would tell him to understand himself fully—in terms of what motivates him and what his strengths are. I will tell him to play to


his strengths. Try to overcome weakness, but play to your strengths. Don’t worry about your weakness. You should be aware of your weakness, but don’t prioritise on overcoming your weakness, but play to your strengths. And don’t worry about being an ordinary person. A good example is our cricket captain, Rahul Dravid. He is a good example to show that you don’t have to be a lean, mean machine in order to succeed. What, in your view, are some of the major characteristics or traits of successful leaders? I have found one common pattern in leadership that many others may not accept. I think all leaders I have known are very articulate. If you look at Narayana Murthy or Ratan Tata, their personalities may be different—stature, personality—but both are articulate and communicate well. It may sound very frivolous, but it is important, particularly these days. I am not saying that it is the highest priority, but it is common. The other most important thing, I think, is the power of conviction—internal conviction. That is you are passionate about something. It could be a passion even about excelling and it may not be for a goal or objective. If you take Narayana Murthy, it may be his passion to excel and create wealth for a large number of people. This passion, then, comes through in all your activities. I don’t know whether passion and ambition are linked, I don’t think they are. I am not saying you should not be ambitious. I think the third aspect really is tenacity of purpose. Tenacity makes you execute. Yes, something like perseverance. Rahul Bajaj is an example. Ratan Tata said we would restructure the group and constantly pursued to make it happen. Rahul Dravid’s constant efforts to improve himself results in his leadership. He wants to excel. That then comes naturally to a person. If I have to state one more, I think it will be the ability to work hard. What about people-orientation? Didn’t it strike you as important? It didn’t strike me as the most important. I may be wrong, but I think this people orientation should not be a put on, should not be artificial. It should come naturally. There is a difference between personorientation and people-orientation. People-orientation means doing good for the entire group. Do you believe that the characteristics you mentioned would be different for Western leaders? Yes, I think so. I really don’t know well of many leaders who have emerged in the West. There is a difference between CEOs and leaders.


Some may be effective CEOs, but whether they are leaders, I don’t know. There appears to be a set pattern in the West of managing a company. Many CEOs don’t have a great following. Leaders must have many followers. When you leave the company, there must be people who will come and seek advice from you, will want to associate with you, etc. Did you have any role models? I never thought of it much. I don’t think I had any mentor per se. If I were to reflect increasingly on that question, I find that I have always taken my role models from sports. Some sportsmen have been my role models. At various steps, it has always been people from sports. Let me think. There are people like Andre Agassi. He says it does not matter if he doesn’t win the championship, but he wants to give his best to the game. That is something I admire. I am able to relate better to sportspersons. What about Indian business leaders? I think Indian leaders have a greater degree of EQ—emotional intelligence. Indians are more emotional and that perhaps makes them more people-oriented. I come from the Indian background and I assume Indian leaders are more people-oriented. I can think of J.J. Irani, for example. He was very forthright, very transparent and very peoplefocused. Can you list for me 10 business leaders of the past 50 years that come to your mind? On top of my list would be J.R.D. Tata. Then, Ratan Tata, Xerxes Desai, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Dhirubhai Ambani, Dr Anji Reddy, Kishore Biyani, Sunil Mittal, Prakash Tandon and Verghese Kurien. You are the only person so far who has mentioned only Indian names. You did not mention any Western names. You had earlier mentioned Bill Gates as a leader, but did not mention his name now. Is it because you don’t consider them as business leaders or because the names you gave score over them? I don’t think my names score over them. I think it is because the names I mentioned are managing in a highly complex environment. Take for example, Indira Gandhi. She might not have been liked by many, but imagine managing a country like India! It is so diverse—terrain, geography and culture. It is tough, and to succeed in this scenario is amazing. Imagine Prakash Tandon or Verghese Kurien transforming their companies. They have changed the landscape.


So, are you saying that in business leadership, what matters most is the degree of transformation they have made? Yes, very much. It is transformation, innovation and of a scale that is wide, broad and deep. J.R.D.’s impact on the Tata group after he took charge, and the extraordinary expansion and the vision he created that India should be industrialised is amazing. Do you believe that it has anything to do with our culture or ethos or anything like that? I think so. I have thought about it a lot. You know, J.R.D. or Ratan or Azim are all Westernised, but their Indianness is evident. They may be physically disconnected from the Indian lifestyle, but they are very Indian in their core. They understood India very well. They realised that there has to be Indianness in whatever we do. They believed in that and hired the best Indians to reflect that. Imagine Ratan Tata’s vision of the Rs 1 lakh car. He believes that the common man should be able to afford a car. That reflects an understanding of the country. I am not saying it has to do with Indian culture. Some say that India is highly family oriented. Some values have been imbibed because of this. Do you think these leaders have become leaders because they have been rooted in Indian culture and ethos? Do you think business leadership in India is related to Indian culture? You see, if you are educated and spend your early schooling in India and if you lived in a joint family system, then you imbibe a lot of Indian culture. It is deep. Therefore the credibility of Indian leaders is enhanced if they follow the Indian culture, even if not necessarily in terms of following the tradition. For example, all these people I think know that Indians like to follow. Indians are still not individualistic. They still want to follow. They want to be told this is the right thing to do. In Western culture it is not that way. Leaders have to do things in the Indian way, if they expect followers. What about the belief that values and ethics are important in business? I think I totally agree with that, and ensure that my company follows it. I think the Tata group has remained for 100 years and beyond because it has stood for values and ethics. It is not that organisations should look askance, say like bribing. In India, for example, this whole thing about baksheesh (giving gifts) is there as a part of our culture. In our company, for example, when some one gives us a gift in our official capacity, we accept it gracefully, but ‘encash’ the gift for a good and noble cause—like a school for children. So, there is nothing


wrong in accepting a gift, but not for personal gains. We have established a tradition of ethics in our company. It is never cut and dried, and that we will do it only this way and no other way. But there is a third type of ethics. For example, in our company, we had to face a dilemma recently. It was matter of a police case against somebody in the company, about harassment. We were asked to make a payment (bribe), otherwise there would be harassment. We agonised over it. The entire team was stressed. In that situation what we actually did was, we told that guy that the company would not make a payment. We contributed individually ourselves and paid—we compromised on our personal values for the sake of maintaining the company’s values. I don’t know whether what we did was right, but we did not let the institution down. There is a view that business leaders should necessarily have a longterm view and vision. What do you think, particularly in today’s context of business? I think your actions may be oriented towards the next 1–3 year time horizon. But what you are pursuing should be a long-term horizon. For example, significantly increasing multi-brand trade sales in the Titan brand is a short-term goal. But instead, opening more showrooms will align us with our long-term goal. Increasing multi-brand sales may not help us achieve our long-term goal. So, we must value each of our actions like that. It is important. It is not just a vision. The CEO certainly should have a long-term perspective on everything, including a pay raise I give every April, looking at the impact on multiple stakeholders and also whether I am endangering the future. Do you believe that a leader can succeed alone unless he has an effective co-leader? An organisation’s success is not due only to the leader but also due to all the members of the organisation. What is your view? I agree 100 per cent. I believe in that and I work towards that. Let me translate that into real life action. On the first day of my taking over, I said only three things to my team. First was that I am not Xerxes Desai and if you want to compare me with him that is your choice. But I am not him. Second, all of you know your job much better than what I do. So you must excel in whatever you do. I will be available to clean up things if required. So, you can use me for that. If you want my help, I am available. Otherwise, please go ahead with your work. I have certain marketing knowledge and some distribution knowledge. So if you want, I will participate in your meetings. But if you do not invite me for your meeting, I will not take it amiss.


Are you saying that a leader alone can make a difference? Yes, he can. A leader can make a difference. One, of course, there is the corporate need to have a CEO. But more than that, I think organisations are full of conflicts. These conflicts always get thrown up at the CEO level and it is extremely important for the leader to resolve conflicts. The other thing is for leaders to put processes in place to drive the organisations forward. What I mean is that an organisation will have a certain momentum and will move at a certain pace. Like a person walking on a conveyor belt. It is the leader’s job to put people on the conveyor belt and make sure that they move in one direction, and to make sure that they move faster than the competition. The example is the ‘Future Shock’ programme we conducted. I took the lead in that because only the leader can demonstrate ‘how’ things can be achieved. Some people say that a leader’s job is to react appropriately to change. But others feel that leaders should proactively seek change and make change happen. What do you think? I think I will not at all support change for the sake of change. I think change is forced upon us, whether you want it or not. I come from this point of view. Even in a stagnant economy, consumers are always ahead of you. Therefore, today’s reality is tomorrow’s direction. The need for change is driven by the market. You can become irrelevant very rapidly—your brand or your processes—if you don’t react to change. Anybody who says he is ahead of change is fooling himself. However, changing within the organisation is desirable. But these changes also happen only based on observation of today’s market. My understanding of vision is having 1 per cent data and leap into 99 per cent vision versus 80 per cent data and 20 per cent vision. Leaders have to create the transformation. Should leaders be task-oriented or people-oriented? I think leaders should be more people-oriented. The task will get done naturally, if there is people-orientation. I truly believe that given the right motivation, people will naturally choose their level of responsibility and do their tasks to the fullest satisfaction of the organisation, without supervision. You don’t need to tell a guy to travel by second class for cutting costs if you tell him at the same time that he can fly if there is a personal emergency like his mother being sick. He will do it willingly. Then you don’t need a board or top management team to supervise.


Are leaders born or made? I think there is a talent component in leadership. Let me ask you a question. I am a Managing Director, but I don’t know if I am a leader. Shades of leadership exist. I can’t say if I am a good leader. I have a style of managing. I don’t know if it is management or leadership. If I were to look at others who I consider as leaders, they have certain talents. They are born with talent. You can add on many things to that. But fundamentally, you must have the desire to lead. I can see many people like that. You want to influence. I can see a difference even between my daughter and my son. The basic traits need to be there. I think everybody is born with certain things. I think making these blossom has to be done by parents, teachers and friends. Do you believe blossoming is due to luck? Yes, very much. I will start with luck. I think it is because of luck. You can call it providence or destiny if you like. I don’t know. India has been growing in the past five years in particular. Is this sustainable? I do believe that it is sustainable. I can’t say whether it is 6 per cent or 8 per cent. But the progress and prosperity is something that is sustainable, at least for the next five years. The kinds of things Indians are excelling at now, like IT, knowledge sector, there is a fundamental comparative advantage to India. Despite the criticism against our education system, it has thrown up thousands and thousands of brains into the market and that is adding value to India. Second, the Indian market itself. A billion people is a great opportunity. It is a land of opportunities. There is a new generation out there. This itself can sustain a large number of businesses. A section of people believe that the emerging sector—IT, ITES or BT—is not contributing to the Indian economy significantly. The service sector contributes over 50 per cent, but within this, the knowledge sector’s contribution is only 7 per cent. It is not sustainable in its present format. What do you think? I do believe it is sustainable. BPO, I agree, other countries may take over, because ours is based on the present low cost. But IT itself, based on knowledge, I think, will grow. If you were to look at biotechnology, which is also basically education-driven, in spite of the poor infrastructure, we can do well. This can only improve. The facilities in our IITs are improving significantly. So, the knowledge sector will grow. Even in the BPO sector, we will move more and more into


value-addition, like for example, design. We will grow in areas like legal service—application of the mind. Wherever knowledge is required to be applied, India can have a competitive advantage. I don’t know if I can explain this fully rationally. What about the ‘old economy’? Don’t you think over a period of time, it is sectors like manufacturing that will grow in the future? I don’t think there is one or the other. I think everything will drive the economy. Even in manufacturing, it is the high-end manufacturing that we will excel at. The precision engineering business that we are moving towards is an example. That also is driven by knowledge. We are not and we will never be able to compete with China in standard products. We cannot compete in making one million standard components, but we can succeed in making a thousand specialised parts for Pratt and Whitney. It is the capability that we have. I think we are more likely to deliver against our promise than China. If you ask Baba Kalyani of Bharat Forge, he will say that he buys manufacturing plants overseas, but sends Indian engineers to manage them. In our case, we source Xylys from China and assemble in Switzerland. But the brainwork—design and marketing—is done in India by Indians. It is our brainpower versus their muscle power. People say that the new sector or the emerging sector is only creating islands of prosperity and creating social chaos. What do you think? I completely agree. I have my own views on this. I keep telling my people that in some ways at least that we are greater than Infosys. If you go to some remote areas of the country, Titan is known but not Infosys. Moreover we influence the prosperity of over 150,000 people on a day-to-day basis. Only if we do a good job will they get their daily bread. I believe that the IT sector is limited in its reach. They don’t pay VAT or Excise Duty. They don’t contribute to the national exchequer in the many ways that manufacturing and marketing companies like ours do. There is a lot written about the emergence of women business leaders recently. What is your overall view in terms of women as business leaders? Do they share some of the characteristics that you mentioned? Can they succeed as business leaders? They share some characteristics. Their EQ is certainly high. Due to this, they can be tough. They can be tougher. I think women are surer of themselves. And because of this they can confront conflicting situations more confidently than men. Men are a little unsure. Women do it in a manner that is intuitively right. Perhaps all the time, they are


much more conscious of economies—they run the household, for example. Indian women can spot superficiality of attributes easily. They always consider value for money. Some training in business metrics can help them further. The number of women in business has increased compared to the past, but not significantly enough. I think it is because the Indian society is still not permitting them to come up and we are still family oriented. It is not male domination per se. I think women are getting equal treatment. I think it is the feeling of guilt from early days, when it was thought that women should tend first to the family. The women should be convinced that they can do well in business. Even the world over it is no different. Women in business have not emerged in large numbers. There must be something else. It is not only the Indian ethos. What do you think? I think in terms of transaction, they perhaps can make sound economic judgement and they can be very good managers. I don’t think they believe that corporations can add any great value to society. I think their purpose in life is to see that people have good relationships. They have not yet got the ‘power’ in their minds. Is it because women as a class do not believe in themselves—self-belief? And they do not promote one another? I can only say from my observations. I think men are more into camaraderie. Women don’t trust one another. Maybe they are suspicious. They can be forgiving more than men. I think men are more openminded. What are the three unique characteristics of doing business in India? I think the West is more systems driven and process driven. The first essential difference in India is to understand that in India you can achieve the same results by using people. In the sense that if you were to come to India and say that you will start a fully automated watch manufacturing plant, it won’t succeed. You have to understand that you have to use the Indian people and the Indian brain to make a combination of manual and automation. The second is to understand that India is diverse. India is not Bangalore or Mumbai. Therefore, the quest to understand India is important if you want to succeed over a long period of time. Recognising the diversity, accepting the diversity and having a high tolerance for diversity are all important. In the last two or three years, another factor has emerged. A sense of being ‘Indian’—an Indian pride—is emerging strongly. Respect for the


Indianness of Indians is important. That should reflect in every aspect of your business, every decision. Do you think that the comparisons of India with China is justified? Should the comparisons continue? I think the answers to both questions are yes, but for different reasons. Should or should not is not in our control. It is a fact and you better accept it. I think the more we know about how China is doing things, the greater will be our benefit—either on how not to do things or how to do them. You remember Gary Kasparov of Russia? There was an article in H.B.R. (Harvard Business Review) I always liked his statement that he would not be what he was but for Karpov. You need another person to look up to in order to excel. So, India needs China and China needs India in order for each to excel. Do you think government intervention in business is good or bad? In terms of economic intervention, policymaking, etc.? You cannot but have it. Otherwise there could be problems of governance. Not only in the way companies are run, but also in issues like environmental pollution control, etc. Indian businessmen are known for taking short-cuts. So, we need some form of government intervention. When you have over a billion people and your business impacts their lives, there has to be some control and monitoring. We are not ready yet for a non-interventionist form. What are your views on the social responsibility of business? What would you say if I told you that in India this is done more to satisfy legal requirements than the organisation’s own conviction to be socially responsible? This is certainly not true of the Tata group. We have conviction and there is actually action on various fronts. But, if you look at the large landscape of Indian business, what you say may be true. I think there are companies that do it for the brownie points, but others do it genuinely. I don’t have data to prove this. I know many trading persons who are genuinely concerned with their social responsibility. I know many who have done social service out of their inner convictions. I think it is there somewhere in the Indian culture and ethos— particularly in the business community. I am speaking anecdotally. In conclusion, I would like to just throw up an idea. I think, increasingly, the CEO’s job is to serve multiple stakeholders’ interests. I don’t know if by the year 2025 we will have one CEO of any company. I think we may like to have a committee of CEOs running a company. If you are a public limited company—in public domain—you have


more and more constraints put on you. One person cannot handle all these successfully. In our company, we have just constituted the Titan Management Council. It is all about integration related issues and greater participation of a large number of people. Your Reported Type on the MBTI is INFP, with N and F being ‘clear’. Do you have any comments? What you said is quite right. I agree that it is how I am. It has not impeded my effectiveness. We are a company like that. If it were some other company, perhaps I might not have succeeded. I think ESTJ or ENTJ may be very efficient in managing a company, but I am talking about transforming a company and a business. Businesses and companies should become institutions and should outlast the persons who created them. Are you saying ESTJ or ENTJ are good at maintaining something but not good at creating something? I am saying that for the emotional connect with a brand or a company, it is important for the company to be beyond its leader. The point is that the greatest of organisations are those that don’t pay their employees to work for them but where employees come to work because they want to work for the company and they have a passion for the purpose of the organisation. That is the ultimate test of greatness. You believe in a larger purpose and work for it. Then you can be larger than life. You must have an emotional connect with the organisation.

Niru Mehta, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Avaya GlobalConnect, Gurgaon THE COMPANY Avaya GlobalConnect Limited is a leading enterprise converged communication solutions provider in India. It provides a comprehensive suite of converged solutions, contact centre solutions and customer services. A market leader in contact centre solutions with over 60 per cent market share, Avaya GlobalConnect is also India’s leading telephony and video communication solutions provider. Offering technologically advanced, end-to-end converged business solutions for enterprises, Avaya GlobalConnect is globalising India through


e-Communications. It is enabling Indian Corporates leapfrog into a new era of communications. Seventy-five per cent of India’s top business houses utilise Avaya GlobalConnect’s converged communications solutions—Accenture, American Express, Aviva, Citibank, IBM Daksh, Dell, IBM, Indian School of Business, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Oracle, Stand-ard Chartered Bank, Tata-AIG and Wipro Spectramind among others. In order to provide best-in-class converged communications products and solutions, Avaya GlobalConnect has partnered global technology leaders—Polycom, the world’s leading videoconferencing solutions provider; NICE Systems, the Israel-based customer experience management specialist, and LG, the global leader in EPABX and KTS products. Avaya GlobalConnect has strategic alliances with systems integrators such as IBM, HP, Netsol, HCL Infosystems and Servion. It has a distribution network of 58 business partners comprising systems integrators, value-added resellers and channel partners. Avaya GlobalConnect has received recognitions for its remarkable success in the Indian marketplace. To name a few, • Continuing to dominate the Contact Centre solutions space, the company was awarded the ‘Frost & Sullivan Market Engineering Award for Market Leadership in Interaction C.R.M. Market’ in India. • Frost & Sullivan also honoured the company with the ‘Market Strategy Award in Enterprise Voice Equipment Market’ for emerging as the strongest competitor with the best marketing strategies for gaining stronger foothold in this business. • Deloitte & Touche ranked it as among the top 20 fastest growing technology companies in India and as Asia Pacific’s 213th fastest growing technology company. • Communications Today identified Avaya GlobalConnect as the number one market leader for Enterprise Voice Over IP solutions by revenue in the Indian market. With a strength of 500 professionals, Avaya GlobalConnect has over 30 offices spread across the country. The company has an extensive distribution network comprising over 50 systems integrators, channel partners and dealers. With over 6,000 customers, it provides worldclass service support through a remote maintenance integration (RMI) system.


NIRU MEHTA Niru Mehta, 49, is Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Avaya GlobalConnect (formerly Tata Telecom Limited) and Managing Director and Vice President of Avaya India. He has a Master of Science degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Rensselar Polytechnic Institute, USA and a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Maharaja Sayajirao University in Gujarat. He is also an Alumnus of Wharton School of Management, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Niru Mehta joined AT&T Bell Labs, a world-renowned research and development institution in the telecommunications industry in USA, in 1982. During his tenure of 15 years in Bell Labs, he led the development of various state-of-the-art communications platforms as a foundation for several leading edge communication solutions including Avaya’s Definity Enterprise Communication Server, a range of digital terminals and Intuity Audix messaging solutions. Avaya is a global leader in many of these solutions. He continued with Bell Labs as it was spun-off from AT&T and became the R&D arm of Lucent Technologies in 1996. During 1995–97, he joined Lucent’s management team responsible for defining the joint venture with the Tatas in India and contributed to establishing the equity ownership of Lucent in Tata Telecom. Subsequently, he moved to India in 1997 as Managing Director of Lucent’s Enterprise Networks (EN) business unit and also held the responsibility of Chief Technical Officer for Tata Telecom. He continues as Managing Director and Vice President for Lucent-EN India, which became Avaya Inc. in October 2000. In Tata Telecom, Niru Mehta expanded his role as Vice President—Marketing and Sales in 1998, as a member of the Board of Directors in March 2000, as Vice Chairman in August 2000 and as Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Avaya GlobalConnect in November 2004. As Managing Director and Vice President of Avaya India, Niru Mehta brings the global technological leadership of Avaya to Avaya GlobalConnect’s extensive domestic presence to bring best-in-class communication solutions to Indian businesses. He has been credited with leading the erstwhile Tata Telecom through a significant financial turnaround and repositioning from an EPABX company to an end-to-end converged communications solution provider. Niru Mehta has authored a book on Hardware Inspections, a revolutionary book on hardware development practices, which has been followed by all hardware development organisations in AT&T Bell Labs since 1991.


Niru Mehta comes across as a man in a hurry, charged up and energetic in order to achieve his goals and objectives. He appears totally involved in technology and keenly aware that his field of play is the global arena. Mr Niru Mehta, thank you for this interview. What are some of your basic values and beliefs? My father was a medical doctor and so was my grandfather. Everyone in our family was highly educated, which is why we attached a strong value to learning. Some associated values were hard work and integrity. We also had a strong religious background. Ours was not a joint family in the traditional sense. At the same time, we were very close to all our relatives. The focus was on doing our best, keeping in mind the larger benefit to the community. These are some of the values that were ingrained in us since childhood. We were constantly told to work hard, stay focused and have integrity. Would you differentiate personal values from professional values? I do not believe that they are different. Your personal values will definitely influence the way you conduct your business, including how you interact with your customers. They may also decide the kind of businesses you engage in. There will be some business practices you will not indulge in because they conflict with your values. You say that one of your values is education, a formal education. In what way does education become a value to you? Why do you emphasise on education? The way I see it, competence is about doing everything with a sense of confidence. This competence and confidence requires a background of formal education. Formal education gives you the ability to ask proper questions and have the answers to them. If I said to you that over 60 per cent of the so-called successful business leaders in India did not have formal education, what would you say? My family has always focused on formal education, which is a value I have imbibed. We did not have any family business, and were not entrepreneurs in that sense. We did not inherit anything. We had to study hard, work hard and make our own life. All of us go through different experiences in life. Can you narrate any experiences or instances in your early adulthood that have had a significant impact on your life? There have been a number of landmarks in my life. I did my matriculation in a small town called Junagarh. After that, as I wanted


to study further, I went to Baroda for my college education. I spent six years away from the family. After completing my college degree, I had three options to choose from. One was to find a job and go to work, the second was to study further in India, perhaps at one of the IITs, and the third was to go abroad, to the US. I decided to try all the three, and fortunately all the options were available to me. My final choice was the US. I went to Mumbai, got a US visa and left for New Jersey in 1976–77. This was the turning point of my life. Of course, I made good use of that opportunity and leveraged it to reach a new level of personal development. What made you opt for the US? Was it a challenge? I think it was a challenge. It was difficult for most people to get a visa to the US in those days. In fact, many people did not get it. I guess I was fortunate. Some of the best colleges in the US gave me admission. Would you say that this spirit of accepting challenges has remained with you even today? Do you enjoy challenges? I would say so. I might not have realised it at that time, but now, when I look back, I can say that is true of me. After being in the US for so many years, I took up the challenge of returning to India and starting something completely new. It would be correct to say that I have taken the opportunities that came my way. What does the family think of your work and how have your wife and children supported you? I have two daughters. One is at the Wharton Business School and the other is planning to go to the UK to pursue her college education. My wife and children have given me tremendous support. I would not have been able to come back to India had it not been for this backing. My wife and I are both ambitious. As long as I succeed, she is happy. My wife used to be a software professional and is now a homemaker. At the end of the day, I believe that family support is very important to a leader’s success. Have you had any mentors in your life? When I was working in the US with Bell Labs, I went through a leadership development programme where I was assigned a mentor. This person guided me for almost 20 years, supporting my ambitions and offering me sound counsel.


Would you say that a business leader in India would become even more successful if he has a mentor? My understanding is that more than mentoring, you need to have a mindset for role models. Different people, with strengths in different areas can serve as role models and help put things in perspective. I admire different people for different aspects of their personality. I remember my colleague, Frank Wyatt, who I greatly admired for his ability to see things calmly, even in the middle of a crisis. All of us have strengths and weaknesses. Can you name some of yours? My strengths, I believe, are my ability to focus and put things in the proper perspective, clarity of thinking, my ambition and tremendous amount of personal energy. I am always optimistic about the future and see opportunities everywhere. My weakness, I would say, is my trusting nature. In a business environment, which is highly task-oriented, people can take advantage of you if you trust them too much. Are you saying task-orientation is a must for business? Why can’t you have a balance between people and task orientation? I agree. You must have a reasonable amount of each. You should not lean towards one or the other. For example, I trust you when you say you are interviewing me for your book. I didn’t ask you for any proof. Now, if you use this for any other purpose, how will I know? That is trusting. The other weakness may be that when my people don’t perform as expected, I believe that my managers are also responsible—that it is a failure of leadership as much as a failure of the people. Unfortunately, I don’t treat these failures sternly. I am not tough where it is required. I fill the gap myself, without helping my manager do it. I often start wondering if I have put a square peg in a round hole. I don’t look into why my manager did not perform. This is a weakness. Does it cause any stress in you? Not much. I look at this as a part of the leadership challenge. It does not lead to any stress. If I asked you to list down three leadership characteristics that you have, what would they be? For one, I am very ambitious and enjoy challenges. I am optimistic about the future and believe there is a lot that we can achieve. The possibilities are endless. The second is my ability to keep in perspective issues and things around me. There are numerous forces acting in different directions. I am able to integrate all of these into a whole


and maintain my calm amidst all the chaos—whether it has to do with employees, customers, channel partners or anyone else. My job is to maintain focus and articulate the situation in a very simple manner so that it can be understood. It has to do with my ability to inspire, and handle matters with a high degree of integrity. It is my job to put things in perspective and I do believe I can do it. What are your interests beyond the workplace? I play a number of musical instruments. That is a good stress-buster for me. I also read a lot, mostly books on management and human behaviour. There is a lot to learn from these books. They offer a great amount of learning. Do you regret not having enough time to pursue your hobbies and interests? I don’t have any regrets. At different points of time in our lives, we have to do different things. It is all a matter of priorities. I can work 16 hours a day without feeling stressed. If I am enjoying what I am doing, it is fine. The good part of my life has been that I have been able to call the shots. Sometimes we feel that had we developed some other strengths, we would have achieved something greater. Do you feel like that? No, I don’t think so. However, if you ask me if there was one thing I wish I could change, it would be my lack of discipline when it comes to exercise. I wish I could exercise regularly. It is not to do with not having the time, but a matter of self-discipline. That’s the one thing I wish I had. Exercise has been low on my list of priorities. There are situations when we get irritated by others. What irritates you most? What makes you really upset? I get very upset when people operate or act without integrity, or when people don’t meet their commitments. I may not express it openly, but my body language will show it. When people play safe, or choose to lie low even when they can make a difference in a large way, it irritates me. I am talking about people who choose to play victim, giving excuses all the time. I don’t like that. I believe you have to be able to say it straight that you don’t know how to take charge. Otherwise, you simply have to take charge and perform. You are too young to consider retirement. But if you were to retire from work soon, say six months from today, what would you like to do? I would like to work for the larger good of the community and society. It can be in any form. I would like to make a difference to the lives of


others. It can even involve mentoring a large number of people and helping society, the larger family. I have been thinking about it in recent years. But, remember, I am not ready for retirement yet. During those six months, what would you like to do within the organisation? You know, I have always told my people that I am here as an expatriate and I will be gone some time or the other. So, for me, this deadline has always existed. Therefore, you will not find me doing anything different from what I have done all these years. I will operate as I always have. What are your major concerns about things not directly related to your work, like society, environment, etc.? I have not given too much thought to it. I personally feel that India can play a larger role in the global economy. The Indian education system and the country’s youth can contribute a lot. I will find a place somewhere there to contribute, to make it happen. There is a fine line dividing the ‘personal’ from the ‘professional’ space. I am not sure if this can be treated purely from the business perspective. Helping youth, for example, is more personal than professional. I can contribute towards helping youth communicate well globally. If someone were to ask you how to become a business leader, what would your advice be? I will say, ‘look at you and understand yourself.’ That is important. Each person needs to be clear about his/her ambition and motivation. You can do some self-assessment, take some mentoring, etc. There cannot be one answer for this. You will have to find your own solution. But there are some basic things you will need to have. You must have a high level of energy. You must be able to communicate well and articulate your thoughts. You must be optimistic about the future. Finally, you must be willing to take action and implement what you plan. When you say future, do you mean something like a vision? No, they are different. Vision can be time-bound and a little more specific. But the future is much broader. It need not be defined in very objective manner. I was reading on the flight about your ‘customer studio’ initiative. What is it about? It is all to do with customer responses and responsiveness. It is about our ability to anticipate customer requirements and not just react to them.


We are now coming to the second part of the questions. It is about leadership. What will you list as some, say five, of the major characteristics of effective leadership? I think I have covered it already. I think a leader should be optimistic about the future. A leader should have clarity about what has to be achieved. Leadership is about the ability to articulate a vision and inspire confidence. You may have a great vision, but if you can’t articulate it, it is of no use. Leaders should have integrity and dependability. One thing I have found to be very important is a mindset that is focused on creating a win-win situation. Whatever leaders do should be beneficial to all the stakeholders. This has to be clearly demonstrated by leaders. It cannot be left in a grey area. What would be the differences between business leadership in India and the rest of the world? I think there are differences. I think Indian business is, to a great extent, oriented towards the long-term. It is perhaps a combination of the short and long-terms. Western business leadership is probably focused on the short-term. When you have a long-term orientation, you tend to do things that are sustainable. You are not doing something because it will get some profits in the immediate term. You are doing it because it benefits all the stakeholders. Do you see it as related to our own culture and heritage, our family system and our civilisation? I think it is because of a number of reasons, including our culture, which teaches us to keep things in perspective and maintain our balance. Do you think business leadership all over the world is becoming more ‘materialistic’? Yes, I think to some degree, this is happening. For example, in India, leadership does not want to be seen as purely making money. In the West, it is still about making money. Indian business leadership views success differently from its Western counterpart. Can you list for me about 10 business leaders who you admire the most? I admire a number of leaders. Let me start with some of the people I have personally seen and worked with. I admire Jerry Stead of AT&T, for his emotional energy and ability to work for a larger objective; Frank Wyatt of Bell Labs for his ability to articulate; and Henry Schacht of Lucent for his leadership in creating wealth for shareholders. They are all from the US. Among Indian business leaders, I would consider Sanjiv Agarwal of IBM Daksh for his ability to put things together,


the late Arun Kumar for his ability to redefine business and Kishore Choukar of the Tata Group. Among some of the leaders who are already well-known, I admire Ratan Tata, Mukesh and Anil Ambani of Reliance, Narayana Murthy of Infosys and Azim Premji of Wipro. You did not mention any woman leader. Is there any particular reason for this? I see many women leaders, but I don’t think I know any of them personally or have heard of them much to form an opinion. What are your views on ethics in business? I don’t agree that business and ethics are opposites. You must be ethical in business. There is no reason to believe that ethics should be compromised in order for business to succeed. Ethics is not one of those things that is required because it is a law. It is something that you must have. You either have it or you don’t. You can’t have it partially. There is a school of thought that says that leadership in business cannot be attributed to one person. You will always find ‘co-leaders’ who are responsible for the leader’s success. What do you think? I am not sure if I agree with it totally. I will add a little more to it. I think, while this is partly true, it hasn’t happened by accident. Co-leaders are there because the leader chooses them. They don’t happen by accident. It is the leader’s job to create them. Leaders coach them, nurture them and make them part of an effective team. Let me tell you a little joke. Bill Clinton and Hillary were once dining out. Hillary met a friend and started chatting. After the friend left, when Bill asked her if she was happy she hadn’t married him, because she would have missed being the President’s wife, Hillary turned around and said that had she married the friend, he would have been the President! I am saying this in relation to your question. You need leaders who can choose their teams; leaders who can nurture co-leaders and adapt themselves. It is about whether leaders can develop some comfort with their co-leaders. Do you believe leaders are born? No, leadership is learnt behaviour. Each person is a leader in some way or the other. Some may be leaders within their families, some within their communities and some in business. However, somewhere along the line, people need to pick up capabilities and competencies to become leaders. We pick up a lot of leadership traits as we grow. It is learnt behaviour.


I am sure you must have found differences in your two daughters. They have grown up in the same family. What do you think makes them different? I agree that there is something from birth. But a large part is developed as we grow. Most people are talented from birth. The question is how each one chooses to apply his talents in life. The reality is that all of us are exposed to different situations in life. It is largely our own creation. Let us move on to the third part. It is about Indian business and the economic environment. What do think about the growth of the Indian economy? Do you, as a business leader, believe that it is sustainable? I very much believe it is sustainable and can go on for a very long time. I don’t know how to put a number on the growth rate but I believe there is a lot of untapped potential waiting to be exploited. Exposure to the Internet, television, international collaborations, use of technology, etc., makes it possible for capable people from India to participate in the global economy. It has never been so good for India, in terms of value creation. Do you think the comparisons of India with China is justified? I think it is human nature. All of us tend to feel good or bad depending on how others are doing rather than how we are doing ourselves. Comparison in the right spirit is not really bad. It brings the better out of you. But, China and India have two different systems. We should recognise this difference. I see no reason why India or China should succeed at the cost of the other. Both can succeed in their own ways. It has to be a win-win situation. Is there any difference between business leadership in India and China? I don’t know enough to comment on it. Many people say that the IT-BPO phenomenon will not sustain in its current format. They also say that it is adversely affecting the Indian social fabric. What do you think? I don’t agree with this view. It is just a question of the digital economy versus the non-digital economy. Manufacturing as a core part of the economy and agriculture as a core part of the economy are important. However, soon, the knowledge sector will create the same amount of value for the economy. We have been seeing a lot of activity happening in the knowledge-based economy. In due course, one will find that this is good for the country. These are the people who will have disposable income, create ancillary employment and help the economy grow. I do believe that the format will change. Even in the manufacturing sector, the format has changed.


You know about Herzberg’s theory of motivation. From that we know that there is something called ‘job context’ and ‘job content’. Do you think business leadership in India is able to deal with job content adequately? The emphasis seems to be on the job context factors. Again, my view is that this is not just confined to the IT or the BPO sectors. It has happened in manufacturing as well. It is no different. We are experiencing change. In fact, the kind of services that we are offering in the knowledge-based sector can open up a whole new world of the ‘content’ factors in terms of opportunities. When I was working in the US for instance, I used to do certain things and certain jobs in the office. But I realised that over 90 per cent of those things could be done comfortably elsewhere. Therefore, in terms of job content, it can be equally challenging. Maybe today, the content does not seem challenging because the work has been kept in small silos. This will change. What do you think is the major challenge for business leadership in the new economy? I think there are quite a few challenges. Are you able to manage in this chaos? Can you create value for all the stakeholders? Can you provide a large vision to the people? Physical location has no meaning in today’s world. The challenge of leadership is to identify what is to be delivered, how to deliver it and how to motivate people. That will change the entire paradigm. It will result in a ‘trickle-down’ effect on the economy. What do you think of the social responsibility of organisations? I think we can do better. I think we should partner more with the NGOs and with society. We should take on larger responsibility. I know some companies such as the Tatas and Godrej that are doing a lot. We should encourage this. We can contribute in many different ways. It is not only about money. We can work, for example, to build greater participation of the industry in academic institutions. What would you like to say about the ability of Indian business leadership to handle diversity? I am talking about diversity in terms of gender, changing demographics, changing aspirations, etc. I am from the school of thought according to which men and women are not in any way different at the work place. Therefore, I don’t see it as diversity. True, Indian society is masculine, but things are changing. I think it is very good that more women are entering the world of work and even occupying top management positions. I think leaders need to nurture everyone. I think dealing with the younger generation


is a greater challenge for Indian business leadership today. Youth are redefining the terms between employers and employees. It is a different kind of leadership challenge. Leaders have to think about how they can keep them motivated and energised. How would you like to summarise your thoughts on business leadership? It is about having hopes, making those hopes come alive, making those hopes serve a larger number of people and realising the hopes. It is beyond management science. That can happen only through the leader’s ability to involve people and encourage them to take on higher challenges. To me it appears that you are saying that leadership is individualistic and you cannot lay your hand specifically on what makes a leader. Is this true? I think it is all about making choices. What we choose to learn, what we choose not to learn, what we choose to do, what we choose not to do, what we choose to nurture and what we choose not to nurture. I think it is a choice to be a business leader or not to be one. But this choice happens at every stage of our life and career. We may not realise it when we make the choice, but we realise the impact soon enough. That is why I had said earlier that we need to be very clear about what we want to do. Every leader will leave it to you to decide when you want to make a choice and if you want to make the choice at all. The fact is you cannot succeed unless you make tough choices. Your reported Type in MBTI is ENTJ. I will tell you the general characteristics of an ENTJ (The author then read out the characteristics of an ENTJ to Niru Mehta). What do you have to say? I think it is right on. That is what I am. I used to be an INTJ. But over the years, I have changed into an E. I think I have adapted myself to suit the requirements. However, it has not caused me any stress. I have learnt some advantages of being an extrovert, though I think I will revert to being an introvert after my retirement.

Santrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Group, Mumbai THE COMPANY The roots of the Aditya Birla Group dates back to the 19th century when Seth Shiv Narayan Birla started trading in cotton thus laying the foundation for the House of Birlas. Through India’s arduous times of


the 1850s, the Birla business expanded rapidly. In the early part of the 20th century, Ghanshyam Das Birla—who is often called the group’s founding father—set up industries in critical sectors such as textiles and fibre, aluminium, cement and chemicals. As a close confidante of Mahatma Gandhi, he too played an active role in the Indian freedom struggle. Along with Gandhi, he represented India at the first and second round table conference in London. It was at ‘Birla House’ in Delhi that the luminaries of the Indian freedom struggle often met to discuss and draw strategies for the downfall of the British Raj. Ghanshyam Das Birla found no contradiction in pursuing business goals with the dedication of a saint, emerging as one of the foremost industrialists of pre-independence India. The principles by which he lived were soaked up by his grandson, Aditya Vikram Birla, the group’s legendary leader. A formidable force in Indian industry, Aditya Birla dared to dream of setting up a global business empire at the age of 24. He was the first to put Indian business on the world map, as far back as 1969, long before globalisation became a buzzword in India. In the then vibrant and free market South East Asian countries, he ventured to set up world-class production bases. He had foreseen the winds of change and staked the future of his business on a competitive, free market driven economy order. He set up 19 companies outside India, in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Egypt. Interestingly, for Aditya Birla, globalisation meant more than just geographic reach. He believed that a business could be global even whilst being based in India. Therefore, back in his home territory, he drove singlemindedly to put together the building blocks to make Indian business a global force. Under his stewardship, his companies rose to be the world’s largest producer of viscose staple fibre, the largest refiner of palm oil, the third largest producer of insulators and the sixth largest producer of carbon black. In India, they attained the status of the single largest producer of viscose filament yarn, apart from being a producer of cement, grey cement and rayon grade pulp. The group is also the largest producer of aluminium in the private sector, the lowest first cost producers in the world and the only producer of linen in the textile industry in India. Values, Vision and Purpose

The group’s Vision is ‘to be a premium global conglomerate with a clear focus on each business’. The Mission is ‘to deliver superior value to our customers, shareholders, employees, and society at large’. The Group’s Values are Integrity, Commitment, Passion, Seamlessness and Speed.


A value-based, caring corporate citizen, the Aditya Birla Group believes in the trusteeship concept of management. Part of the group’s profits is ploughed back into meaningful welfare-driven initiatives that make a qualitative difference to the lives of margin-alised people. These activities are carried out under the aegis of the Aditya Birla Centre for Community Initiatives and Rural Development.

THE LEADER: KUMAR MANGALAM BIRLA Kumar Mangalam Birla, 39, son of Aditya Vikram Birla, is the Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group. He is a Chartered Accountant by profession and has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the London School of Business. He took over the reins of the group in 1995, after the untimely death of his father. In the 10 years that he has been at the helm of the Aditya Birla Group, he has won recognition for his contributions to industry and to the professionalisation of management. Kumar Mangalam Birla is a member of the Board of Directors of the Tata Iron & Steel Company and Maruti Udyog. He is a member of the Board of Governors at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and of the London Business School’s Asia Pacific Advisory Board. In addition, he continues to hold several key and responsible positions on various regulatory and professional organisations. He is the Chairman of the Advisory Committee constituted by the Ministry of Company Affairs, a member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council on Trade and Industry, Chairman of the Board of Trade reconstituted by the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Chairman of the National Safety Council, member of the Government of Uttar Pradesh’s High Powered Investment Task Force, member of the National Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), member of the Apex Advisory Council of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, and member of the Advisory Council for the Centre for Corporate Governance. Kumar Mangalam Birla is also the recipient of numerous awards and recognition. He was chosen the Ernst & Young ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ for 2006; named ‘Young Super Performer in the CEO Category’ by Business Today; awarded the ‘Udyog Ratna’ by the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry; chosen by the World Economic Forum as one of the ‘Young Global Leaders’; chosen the ‘The Business Leader of the Year 2003’ by The Economic Times; selected ‘Businessman of the Year 2003’ by Business Today; The Qimpro Foundation’s


‘Qimpro Platinum Standard Award’; ranked among the first five Asian business leaders for the CNBC/INSEAD sponsored ‘Asian Business Leader Award 2002’; and ranked among the top 10 of India’s ‘Most Admired and Respected CEOs’ by Businessworld. In recognition of his exemplary contributions to Indian business, the Banaras Hindu University has conferred an honorary Doctorate degree and the All India Management Association has conferred ‘Honorary Fellowship’ on Kumar Mangalam Birla. He has also been conferred the title of ‘Honorary Fellow’ of the London Business School (LBS).

SANTRUPT MISRA Santrupt Misra heads the Corporate Human Resources and Corporate Information Technology function of the Aditya Birla Group. He has two Master’s degrees—in political science and in personnel management and industrial relations. He has also completed two Doctoral Degrees—one from India and the other from the UK—in public administration and industrial relations. He won a Commonwealth Scholarship in 1990 for three years and was awarded the Eisenhower Fellowship in the year 2000. He is also a Director on the board of many companies in the group. Prior to joining the Aditya Birla Group in 1996, Dr Misra worked with the JK Group, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Hindustan Lever Ltd. He has also been a trainer and consultant to about 40 organisations in India. Misra has published a book and several articles. His areas of interest include organisation development, change management, management training and leadership. Under the aegis of the Mid Day Big Break and DAKS awards for HR Excellence, Dr Misra was presented the Outstanding HR Professional of the Year Award (2004). He has also been conferred the Outstanding HR Chief Award by the National HRD Network (2000) and the HR Professional of the Year Award by the India HRD Congress (2002). He was identified to be among the 20 hottest young executives by Business Today (2002). Currently, Misra is the National President of the National HRD network. Santrupt Misra is aware that he is an individual with many dimensions. He believes that he is a change agent and wants to make change a part of his everyday life. He knows his strengths and is keen to utilise his knowledge for maximum advantage. He comes across as a person who believes that leadership effectiveness also means service to self.


Dr Misra, thank you for agreeing to this meeting for my book. Let us start. What are some of your basic values, beliefs and faiths? Hard work is a value. I give my 100 per cent to whatever I do. Whatever it takes to get the best results, I do. Passion is another value. I feel a passion for projects, for the future. I have a passion that people’s lives should be better. Obviously, fairness is a very important value to me. Many people in my organisation have told me that whatever they may like or not like in me, they think I am always fair. By any chance are you linking integrity with fairness? Well, fairness is one form of integrity. Integrity can be financial and intellectual as well. For example, giving credit to others and not taking it myself is being fair, in my opinion. Let us say, if I see my Chairman fixing my compensation and if I see that the amount is more than what I think is right, I would tell him so. That is integrity as well as fairness. I have this obsession with fairness. I know that sometimes it can become impractical. I am also aware that fairness is often a perceived thing and is subjective. What I consider fair may not be perceived by someone else to be fair. The other value I have is punctuality, if you call it a value. I respect my time and I respect others’ time. So, these are some of my very close and strong values. I hold them very strongly. All of us go through different experiences in life. Can you narrate some experiences from your early adulthood that have had significant impact on what you are today? There have been several instances of that nature. My father was a government servant. For the first five years of my life, I did not have any formal education. The first school I went to did not have any door or windows. I was called ‘safai minister’ (cleaning person) in my native language, Oriya. My responsibility included cleaning the classroom before the classes started. My substantive responsibility was to arrive at the school much before others arrived. I did not study in an English-medium school. My father was posted to different places where we either did not have any English-medium school or he could not afford to send me to an English-medium school because it was very expensive. I watched people from English-speaking backgrounds. I developed a sense of inadequacy in me. When I went to do my PUC in college, I took this as a challenge. I worked hard at gaining a mastery of the language. I attended many college debating competitions. I worked hard on my speeches. I won the Chancellor’s award for three


consecutive years. So, this brought a sense of resolve in me. This resolve has always been in me. Is it related to passion for challenge? Absolutely. I think it is my passion for challenges. The second instance was again related to my school days. I had taken the compulsory mathematics and also optional mathematics, though I was not good at this subject. I did not do well initially, but then, I worked hard and eventually came up with honours. On the day of my examination, at 4.30 a.m. in the morning, I found my mathematics teacher standing in front of my house. He said that he had confidence in my ability and wanted me to have confidence in myself. This incident taught me the principle of ‘going beyond one’s call of duty’. Never again in my life had I to learn this principle. That image of my teacher standing in front of my house at 4.30 a.m. in the morning has stayed with me. Who does it these days? So that experience has taught me the sense of commitment and that sense of ‘going beyond the call of duty’. There are several instances of my adulthood that have stayed with me. For example, I saw my father suffering due to unfairness on the part of his superiors in government service. This has imbibed in me the need to be fair always. Have you had any mentor in your life? Not necessarily a formal mentor but any role models? I have had several role models. My father was one. My grandfather was another, for his consideration and ability to remain calm in crisis. My mother has been a role model for her ability to confront problems without letting others know, suffering in silence. Similarly, some of my teachers for their dedication. Some colleagues, for their maturity. I have read the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in their full version and learnt a lot from the characters in those. I have learnt from the many biographies I have read. Do you feel business leaders need to have mentors? Is it essential? That depends on what you mean by mentors. You can be inspired by what you read. Those who have been blessed have probably had mentors. Others may not have had mentors. I feel that leaders get impacted informally by many people. I would say that leaders may not need any formal mentors, but it helps. What are your hobbies and interests? Watching movies. I also read a lot. I participate actively in many professional associations and bodies. I take a lot of interest in these.


Would you say that you have no regrets for not having enough time to pursue your interests? I will not say that. I will say that I regret that I do not have time to pursue many other things that I would like to do. Travel, for example. I would love to travel and watch nature. You have risen in your professional life and have achieved a lot. Can you tell me three specific characteristics that have helped you in this? Being at the right place at the right time is one. You need to have some qualities and apply them. You must have opportunities to apply those qualities. It is the package of abilities, application and opportunities. I dared to be different, whenever and wherever. I have always been different. For example, I developed an interest in Sanskrit, and I worked so hard at it, I could even speak in Sanskrit at one time. There was this occasion during my school days when I participated in a competition to speak on Lord Krishna’s principle on work ethics. My turn came at about 11.30 p.m. I won the competition only because I had worked hard and studied the Bhagwad Gita for this competition. So, whatever leadership capability I have today is because of my passion and commitment to whatever I do. Second is my hard work. And number three is possibly my ability to inspire confidence and carry others. Would you say it is learnability? Of course, yes. I have this learnability in whatever I choose to do. I was a teacher for four-and-a-half years and then came to the corporate world. I have learnt about the corporate world now because of my learnability. Do you think if you had some other characteristics you would have achieved more than what you have achieved? I don’t know. Perhaps, yes. If I had known about more options available to me in life somewhat earlier, I could have done better. My definition of success is different. Success to me is not where you are today. It is not the destination. It is how far you have travelled. The distance between where you started and where you have reached is success. The destination may be the same, but the distance travelled could be different. How does your wife look at you? She is not from Orissa, she is from UP, originally from Punjab. She has had a tremendous influence on me. Her optimism and positive attitude has always been amazing. She has tremendous capacity to handle a


lot of things at a time. I started off by being a cynic. She has changed that in me now. Of course, we also differ in many ways in our values. Punctuality is one. She has helped me temper many of my characteristics, like aggressiveness. She is also my biggest ‘beneficial critic’. If somebody, say a young person, comes to you and says he wants to be a business leader, how would you counsel him? I will first ask him whether he is clear on what he wants. He needs to be clear on what he wants. Clarity of thought is very important. I will say, ‘be clear in what you want’. Then I will ask him the source of his motivation. Then I will ask him to do what it takes to get what he wants. Very often, I find that people who are ambitious are confused on what they want to achieve and why. Many people say that success is not universal, but individualistic. What do you feel? Yes, it has to be individualistic. But it has also to be consistent with what is socially acceptable. You need to make a choice. You need to define your success and work towards it. Having a personal yardstick for success does not mean you overlook what others perceive as success. It may lead to a sense of ‘escapism’ and ‘defensive’ behaviour. Achieving excellence in whatever you do is a measure of success, to me. What behaviour or characteristics in others would irritate you the most? Being manipulative and not being honest will irritate me the most. Another thing that irritates me is when people do not put in their best and then look for excuses. It is an extension of being manipulative. Let us move on to the next part of this. Can you list for me five or six major or important characteristics for leadership? The first is vision, the future. Some people tell me that vision and future are different. Do you see it that way? I am not sure. They may be somewhat different. To me, it is having a definitive view of where you want to go. The second important leadership characteristic is passion and commitment and enlisting the support of others. The third one is communicating. It is something like articulating. To me, communicating is putting words in a manner that others can understand. This is both verbal and non-verbal. It is about using symbols. It is something like thinking in your own language


and speaking in the other person’s language. The other characteristic is resilience, perseverance. It can also mean being determined. Can you list 10 business leaders—names that come to your mind immediately? Let us start with Indian business leaders—J.R.D. Tata, G.D. Birla, Aditya Vikram Birla, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji and Brijmohan Lall Munjal. Others are Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Akio Morita, JW Marriott and Andy Grove. There is some debate on whether Jack Welch is a competent manager or a business leader. What do you think? I would consider him a leader. He had a good idea of what he wanted to do. He had a vision of the future. He deployed systems and processes in GE and other organisations. What is your view on women leaders? I think there have been some women leaders in business. But honestly, there have not been as many as could/should have been. I know that HP or Body Shop had some great women leaders. Our ICICI Bank has certainly some very successful ones. Would you say that Indian business leadership is different from Western business leadership? I would think so. The demands on Indian business leadership are much more intense and complex. The constraints under which they operate are many. Western business leadership does not face these. The diversity is vast. The task of business leadership in the West is made a lot easier because of the legal systems, structured ways and political systems. Indian business leadership has a lot at stake; it is a generational leadership. In the West, it is not. We have a greater need for perpetuation of our business. That is an onerous task. Would you say it has to do with our culture and heritage? Yes, culture and the contexts. We are a hero-worshipping society. We expect super-abilities from our leaders. We expect leaders to be able to do things that may not be realistic to expect. The perception is that leaders should be able to do everything for their followers. Followers do not take charge for doing anything themselves. In India, the expectations are huge. I don’t think it is the same in Western countries. Are you saying that we do not have internal locus of control? Yes. We don’t take charge of our own lives. So we expect our parents, bosses, organisation or leaders to do everything for us.


Many people who I speak to always say that success is not due to one leader. It is because of others. What do you think? Obviously, no human enterprise can succeed without a group of people. It is not due to one individual. May be 90 per cent is due to the leader. But 10 per cent is because of others. Would you say that Bill Gates would have become a leader without Steve Ballmer or Bill Clinton be successful without Al Gore? Maybe yes. I would think so. I am not taking the credit away from individuals who are leaders, but I am also not ascribing the success entirely to one individual. I think there is a process of co-creation. I agree with the need for complementarities in leadership, but I also think leaders take risks which the co-leaders may not. Ultimately, the accountability is that of the leader. For example, when the statue is pulled down in Baghdad, it is that of Saddam Hussein, not others. Leaders take this risk. Others cannot take it. That is the difference. I am not saying that leaders alone can achieve without co-leaders. It is to recognise the reality of human life. What is your view on business and ethics? Do you think it is an oxymoron? Business and ethics can, and should, co-exist. There is no debate on that. But, they can co-exist only in certain environmental conditions. You cannot expect one individual or organisation to be ethical when the entire environment is not ethical. If the societal processes are not ethical, you cannot expect business to be ethical. For example, if I am faced with an ethical dilemma, I would consider the interests of the larger stakeholder—like my customers. It is a competition between two equally compelling situations. Your choice will depend upon that which would serve a larger purpose. So, I don’t want to talk about idealistic ethics. You cannot expect only business to be ethical when all the situations surrounding it are not ethical. It is not practical. However, in my opinion, being ‘unethical’ should not be for personal gains and should not be for illegitimate or illegal ends. And unethical practices should not be initiated by any person. Let us move to the third part, on Indian business. I personally believe that IT, ITES and such sectors are not sustainable in the long-term in their present format. I also believe that they will adversely impact the societal fabric. What do you think? I don’t agree with you. If you don’t do it, someone else will. I don’t think it will have any adverse impact on society. We have so many TV channels, the internet, and everything else that is changing. But there is an Indianness that will keep the society together. Let me give you


an example. I buy my fish from a fisher-woman regularly. Recently, she told me that she had been to the US. I was aghast with surprise. What happened? I asked her. She said her son was in the US on a project and had bought her an air ticket. Can you imagine this situation? But she is back selling fish now. That has not changed. That is Indianness, for me. This is because of the IT and ITES sector. It is because of the globalisation that is taking place around us. I believe that this sector is sustainable. It provides employment and raises the standard of living. I also do not agree that it will result in a higher degree of stress. In today’s world, stress has gone up due to other factors. All the gadgets that we use these days also cause stress in us. So, I think stress is not only due to the BPO or the IT sector. It is a lifestyle phenomenon. If I said that Indian business leadership is not able to handle the multiplicity, complexity and changing aspirations, what do you have to say? I would say that Indian business leadership has not only handled these very well, but also taken advantage of the opportunities that the changes have opened up. Business leaders cannot be expected to do everything. I think business leaders should be expected to only manage their business efficiently and effectively. You can’t expect them to solve all the social, political and economic problems of the country. There are certain things that only the government should and can do. For example, essentially, infrastructure should be provided by the government. Undue expectations should not be imposed on business leadership. One of the business leaders I interviewed said that future organisations will not have one leader, but multiple leaders—for example, many chief executives, each specialising in some function or the other. So, according to him, specialisation is making a comeback. What do you think? I agree. Even today, multiple leadership exists in organisations. I also feel that different leaders will emerge for different situations, someone for crisis in management, someone for strategy, someone else for growth. I think this concept can extend to even functions within a specialisation. As complexity grows, it will need multiple leadership. Yes, I think specialisation is once again becoming important. That is not to say it is a competition between generalists and specialists. Your reported Type on MBTI is ENTJ. Let me tell you some of the characteristics of the type [The author then read the characteristic of ENTJ to Dr Misra]. How do you respond? Yes, it represents who I am. However, my strength is my adaptability to change to suit the needs. I may be analytical and objective, but


I can also be creative and enjoy relationships. I am able to bring in the ‘feeling’ and ‘sensitivity’ part into my style at work quite easily. One of my challenges is to be tough sometimes. I find it contradictory in me that I am tough yet compassionate. It does cause me stress when I respond to situations using preferences that are not my natural mental preferences. But overall, my type has helped me be effective in my leadership role. I can give you a number of examples from my professional life.

R. Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, Tata Sons, Mumbai THE COMPANY The Tata Group was founded by Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata in the last quarter of the 19th century when India had set out on the road to gaining independence from British rule. Consequently, Jamsetji Tata and those who partnered him had aligned business opportunities with the objective of nation building. This approach remains enshrined in the Group’s ethos to this day. On 1 January 1877, Jamsetji established the Empress Mills in Nagpur (to coincide with the proclamation of Queen Victoria as the Empress of India). He envisioned three great ideas—setting up of an iron and steel company, generating hydroelectric power and creating a world-class educational institution for Indian scientists. Today, the Tata Group comprises 93 operating companies in seven business sectors—information systems and communications, engineering, materials, services, energy, consumer products and chemicals. It is often considered that the Tata Group as it exists today represents the vision, hard work and leadership of Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy (J.R.D.) Tata. The Tata Group’s history is closely intertwined with the history of India. Let us see some of the milestones. 1868 – Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata starts a private trading firm, laying the foundations for the Tata Group. 1874 – The Central India Spinning, Weaving and Manufacturing Company set up. 1902 – Indian Hotels Company is set up and Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai opens in 1903. 1907 – Tata Iron and Steel Company is set up in Jamshedpur and production commences in 1912.


1910 1911 1917 1932 1939 1945

– – – – – –

Tata Hydroelectric Power Supply Company is set up. Indian Institute of Science is established in Bangalore. Tata Oil Mills is established. Tata Airlines (later changed to Air India) is established. Tata Chemicals is established. Tata Engineering and Locomotives Company (later changed to Tata Motors) is set up. 1968 – Tata Consultancy Services (the first software services company) is established. 1984 – Titan Industries is set up. 1996 – Tata Teleservices is established. The Tata Group is one of India’s largest and most respected business conglomerates, with revenues equivalent to about 3 per cent of the country’s GDP. Tata companies together employ some 215,000 people. The group’s 32 publicly-listed enterprises have a combined market capitalisation that is the highest among Indian business houses in the private sector and a shareholder base of over two million. The Tata Group has operations in more than 40 countries across six continents and its companies export products and services to 140 nations. Tata Sons, established in 1868 by Jamsetji Tata as a trading company, is the promoter company of the Tata Group. The Chairman of Tata Sons is traditionally regarded as the Chairman of the Tata Group.

VALUES, VISION

AND

PURPOSE

The vision and mission statement of the Tata Group says, ‘at the Tata Group, our purpose is to improve the quality of life of the communities we serve. We do this through leadership in sectors of national economic significance, to which the Group brings a unique set of capabilities. This requires us to grow aggressively in focused areas of business. Our heritage of returning to society what we earn evokes trust among consumers, employees, shareholders and the community. This heritage is being continuously enriched by the formalisation of the high standards of behaviour expected from employees and companies. The Tata name is a unique asset representing leadership with trust. Leveraging this asset to enhance Group synergy and becoming globally competitive is the route to sustained growth and long-term success.’ The Tata Group has always sought to be a value-driven organisation. These values continue to direct the group’s growth and businesses. ‘The five core Tata values underpinning the way we do business are


Integrity (we must conduct our business fairly, with honesty and transparency. Everything we do must stand the test of public scrutiny), Understanding (we must be caring, show respect, compassion and humanity for our colleagues and customers around the world, and always work for the benefit of the communities we serve), Excellence (we must constantly strive to achieve the highest possible standards in our day-to-day work and in the quality of the goods and services we provide), Unity (we must work cohesively with our colleagues across the Group and with our customers and partners around the world, building strong relationships based on tolerance, understanding and mutual cooperation), and Responsibility (we must continue to be responsible, sensitive to the countries, communities and environments in which we work, always ensuring that what comes from the people goes back to the people many times over).’

THE LEADER: RATAN NAVAL TATA Ratan Naval Tata, 68, took over as the Chairman of the Tata Group of Companies from his uncle, the legendary J.R.D. Tata in 1991. He relinquished his position as Chairman on attaining the age of 65 years in 2003. He is currently the non-executive Chairman of the group. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Structural Engineering from Cornell University, USA and has attended the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School. He joined the Group, on the advice of his uncle, J.R.D. Tata, in 1962. For decades, the Tata Group was the archetypal conservative Indian conglomerate— honest and solid, but risk-averse. Yet under the leadership of Ratan Tata, the group has shaken out of its conservatism to become the largest Indian business enterprise and a global force. Ratan Tata has managed to bring in rapid changes in the organisation’s structure and systems, people and processes. He has been chiefly responsible for many of the recent acquisitions and mergers of the group. Ratan Tata’s strategy for the group has been consistent—rationalise the business portfolio; deliver a return on investment that exceeds the cost of capital; create a symbolically and emotionally unified brand; and grab new opportunities wherever they may be. He has served in important capacities in various organisations in India. He is a member of the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India and the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry. He is a member of the International Advisory Boards of the Mitsubishi Corporation, the American International Group, JPMorgan Chase and


BoozeAllen Hamilton. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation. Besides, he also serves on the International Investment Council set up by the President of the Republic of South Africa, the Asia Pacific Advisory Committee to the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange, the Board of Governors of the EastWest Center, the Advisory Board of RAND’s Center for Asia Pacific Policy, and the Programme Board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s India AIDS initiative. In 2004, he was conferred the title of ‘Honorary Economic Advisor to Hangzhou City in the Zhejiang province of China’. He was conferred the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2000. He received the NDTV Business Leadership Award in 2006. According to author Gita Piramal, when asked what motivates him, Ratan Tata is reported to have said ‘I have asked myself this quite often. I don’t have monetary ownership in the company in which I work and I am not given to propagating the position I am in. I ask myself why I am doing this and I think it is perhaps the challenge. If I had an ideological choice, I would probably want to do something more for the uplift of the people of India. I have a strong desire not to make money but to see happiness created in a place where there isn’t.’1

R. GOPALAKRISHNAN R. Gopalakrishnan, 61, is the Executive Director of Tata Sons. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Science from Calcutta University and a Master’s degree in Engineering (Electronics) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He has attended the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School. He is also Chairman of Tata Honeywell and Rallis India, Vice Chairman of Tata Chemicals and a Director of several of the Tata companies. As a member of the Group Executive Office of the Chairman of the Tata Group, Ratan Tata, he is engaged in the restructuring and renewal of the prestigious Tata Group. He plays a vital role in providing direction and impetus to the group’s forays into potentially viable areas of the new economy. He also serves as a Director on the Board of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), and Castrol India. Gopalakrishnan joined Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) as a management trainee in 1967. In 1987, he joined HLL’s management committee as Executive Director of exports. In 1991, he was appointed Chairman of Unilever Arabia, based in Jeddah, to establish and manage Unilever’s consumer products business in Arab countries. On his


return to India in 1995, he was appointed Managing Director of Brooke Bond Lipton. After the company’s merger with HLL, he was designated Vice Chairman of HLL. After 31 years with HLL, Gopalakrishnan joined Tata Sons in August 1998. Gopalakrishnan is a former President of the All India Management Association, Member of the Managing Committee of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Member of the National Council of the CII and Public Representative, Board of Governors, Bombay Stock Exchange. He received the Bombay Management Association’s ‘Management Man of the Year’ Award in 2003. Apart from his rise in the company’s’ hierarchy, he has developed several sterling qualities and skills, which has won him a large number of friends and admirers in the business world. His knowledge and skills extend well beyond the narrow ambit of corporate activities. He is today accepted in the business world as one of the leading figures in the ranks of professional managers. He possesses diverse and rich experience in the field of marketing and corporate management. He keeps a high profile by delivering lectures at various forums and associations and has won a number of awards. Gopalakrishnan believes firmly that he has come a long way in his life considering his early years. He is aware that he is leading an organisation that has a legacy and long history. He, like Santrupt Misra, is aware of his strengths and knowledge and would like others to respect him for these. He knows that he is a co-leader and is willing and passionate about making his mark. Mr Gopalakrishnan, thank you for agreeing to meet me for my book on business leadership. Let us start. What are some of your basic values and beliefs? Thank you for considering me as a business leader for your book. When you ask about values, there is a temptation to be expansive. I am a second-generation manager from a middle-class family. Many of my friends are sons of army officers, bureaucrats, lawyers and doctors. Perhaps, only one out of five is the son of a professional manager. This fact must have influenced the way I am because ‘managing’ has been part of growing up. Every middle-class kid would have imbibed some core middle-class values. For example, you might have gone through obstacles in your life and learnt to overcome those obstacles. But in the glamour world of business, over many years, it is easy to forget that. But the obstacles that I underwent in my life and the way I overcame those has remained in my mind. Every person has to earn


the right to be successful. It is almost like, in the catholic religion, you must have the pain and the purgatory before you go to paradise. There is no easy ride. That is, therefore, a strong part of the way I think. Would you say it is something to do with hard work or determination? Yes, you can say that. Hard work and determination in the sense that you need to recognise that obstacles will always be there and you need to overcome those. So, that is one value for me—value of persistence, determination and hard work. The second thing that is strong in my mind relates to what differentiates a manger—his character. He is supposed to be competent, he is supposed to know his subject and he is supposed to get better at it all the time. But what differentiates managerial leadership from an ordinary manager is, in a philosophical or ethical sense, a lot more significant. I refer to how you treat other people, how a ‘boss’ is supposed to treat you and those sorts of things. It is very heady in managerial leadership. You seem to ‘control’ the fortune or misfortune of others. It is not easy to cross auto megalomania. Are you suggesting being fatalistic? No, not at all. While I may or may not agree that what will happen will happen, it is what you do after whatever has happened that matters. It is a choice that you have, to do whatever you choose to do after something has happened. Having said this, I believe that there is a larger game plan in life and I do not hold myself in isolation from the rest of the world around me. What are some of the instances in your early adolescence that have impacted you the most in making you whatever you are today? I am sure there are many such instances. Of course, at that time and age I might not have known that it would impact me later in my life. Let me take one instance in my life. We were living in Calcutta. We had a large house and all comforts. When I was 16 years old, my father decided to change his job and move to Bombay. There was a landlord dispute relating to our residence. My father wanted me to stay back and settle the dispute in the court while continuing my studies. This was a valuable experience for me. I did not know anything about legal issues, a writ petition and other things. We did not have easy telephone communication between Calcutta and Bombay in those days, and we did not have many other facilities that you have today. So, I had to struggle to collect all the information by myself. While many of my friends were enjoying themselves on Park Street and other places, I was spending a lot of my time in the courts. Eventually, I succeeded in closing the dispute, auctioning the furniture and moved to the hostel


for my college studies. But when I look back now, that was a terrific experience for me. It taught me that we have to fight through issues, learn things by ourselves and be able to succeed in our mission. Would you say it has something to do with ability to face a challenge? Yes, very much so. I was faced with so many obstacles that I had to overcome—the landlord, the lawyer, the property broker, everyone. Have you had any mentor or role model in your life? In my case, my mentor was never in a master-apprentice relationship. I don’t even know if I thought of them as my mentors. But in hindsight, I think I had many people who have inspired me, from whom I learnt. In my forthcoming book, I have a chapter on mentoring. Yes, the short answer to your question is that I have had many people who have influenced me. Would you say they inspired you? Yes, some people influenced me, others inspired me. There were some who, like a perfume spray, just hung in the air, surrounding me with their presence. For example, there was this chairman of Hindustan Lever who made a deep impact on me—about the need to speak less and listen more. There have been many occasions like that. So, mentoring and role models are like the dews on leaves—you see them only if choose to, sometimes you don’t. What are some of your major strengths and weaknesses? I think my most important strength is my willingness to recognise and admit that I have weaknesses. Becoming aware of our own, what academics may call ‘derailers’, I am able to be aware of my derailers. The second thing worth mentioning is that I am a very balanced person, I have a lightning conductor. We cannot avoid lightning, but we need a lightning conductor to be able to absorb the impact. For example, a lot of people are proud that they are not able to avail their annual leave because of work pressure or whatever. To me, that is not greatness. I can say that in my 40 years of career, I have never allowed my earned leave to lapse. I have gone away with my family on vacations. That, for me, is the spirit of the lightning conductor. It allows you to be free from stress. What is it on account of—your ability or capacity for balance? I don’t suffer from a self-opinionated view that I am indispensable. I recognise that I am not the smartest person around. Do you see that wall hanging there? They are the bones of animals and birds from the Mediterranean. They are 45 to 60 million years old. I got it because


the history of these interested me. I have put it up in my office. So, whenever I get the feeling that the whole world is running because of me, I turn around and look at this wall hanging. I tell myself, ‘take it easy, it has been going on for 60 million years before you’. For me, that is the voice of the mentor. Do you believe that if you had some other characteristics, you would have achieved something more or different from what you have achieved so far? Sure. I think so. But I don’t know what those could have been. Perhaps, I need to work on my short spells of arrogance, lack of humility and things like that. To pretend that such flaws do not exist is fooling oneself. Second, all of us build work relationships; some people believe that their life is meant only for building relationships. That is not the way I am. For me, building work relationships is a means towards some other end, not necessarily a selfish one, but some definite purpose. Do you have any regrets at all—a sense of incompleteness or ‘unfulfilment’? I don’t think so. You see, there are two kinds of regrets. One is episodic and the other is residual. All of us may have episodic regrets, because they are based on certain specific episodes in our lives. You may sometimes say to yourself, ‘I wish I had not done it that way’. That is episodic regret. The other is residual regret that stays with you. I don’t think I have any residual regrets. To say that there are no regrets is a bit of a hyperbole. It depends on how you interpret it. Let me take one example. I may have an episodic regret that I did not become the Chairman of Hindustan Lever. But, today, do I feel it? Is there any residual regret? The answer is no. I have terrific memories of my days with HLL. I had great fun and I still have friends there. It is like remembering your alma mater. When you look at your life, you as a business leader, would you say that you have more reasons to celebrate and feel satisfied than otherwise? I would certainly think so. Would your wife share your passion with you? She may not share my passion for what I do. For example, she may not share my passion for writing. But, I believe that all of us need a ‘device’ in our lives that will help us come back to reality, to the earth, a person who will call a spade a spade. Only a wife can do that role. A brother can’t do it, a son can’t do it. My wife is such a ‘device’ for me, among other attributes!


If someone young came to you and asked your advice to become a business leader, what will you say to him or her? First of all, I don’t see any need to advise anyone. But if you insist, I will probably say, ‘terrific, go ahead and try to become a business leader’. I will ask him to learn everything that can be taught early in his career and also to self-teach and learn those things that cannot be taught—things like intuition, character, human relationships, leadership itself. So long as you are learning only what can be taught, remember that there are people out there who are also learning the same things. But, leadership is about learning or mastering things that cannot be taught. You are not implying that leaders are born, are you? No, I am not saying that. I am saying that it is something that is selftaught. It has to suit your context, your personal experiences. You need to reflect. No one can teach you these things. What, in your opinion, would be the five most important characteristics of leadership? Let me see. Characteristics are those that you display—things like honesty, integrity, charisma, hard work, stamina—and, these are observable. For many, these may be important for effective leadership. For me, these are not as important as the effect you have on others even without displaying these characteristics. Are you referring to the impact you have on people? Yes. Characteristic is the thing that comes out of the leader, but impact is the result. For example, I have seen very soft-spoken people who have had a terrific impact on people. Are you saying persuasive behaviour? You can put it that way. But he is not trying consciously to be persuasive. Have you ever seen a flower that tries consciously to flower? Have you seen a stream or a river that tries consciously to flow? In nature, it is all about finding the path of least effort. Water just winds its way around. Leadership too is about path of least effort. It has to come naturally. It is not something that is consciously tried. If you try consciously, you will find that it does not work as well. So when you said self-development of leadership, what did you mean? What I am saying is that, everybody listens, thinks and senses all the time. You cannot stop it from being so. Every leader is doing a lot of that. When those sensory signals enter into your system, you should reflect on these observations. Many people don’t reflect often enough.


If you reflect often enough, then you will be able to internalise certain lessons automatically. Let us take a very crass Indian example. A daughter-in-law comes into her husband’s family. She wishes to be a different kind of a mother-in-law to her future daughter-in-law because she finds her mother-in-law not meeting her expectations. After many years, when her son is married and she tries hard to become a different kind of a mother-in-law, she fails. Why? Because her behaviour as a motherin-law should come to her naturally and not consciously. Let me make another point. The Indian manager is very unique. I can’t think of a manager anywhere else in the world, who thinks in English and acts in the local metaphor. Most Indian managers read only English books and magazines and newspapers. So, their thinking is in English. We are all very English-oriented. But the social milieu is very Indian, having a local culture and highly complex. You will not find this in any other nation. As far as the American or European manager is concerned, he is Anglo-Saxon and thinks and does everything in English. The Japanese manager thinks and acts in Japanese. This bipolarity makes the Indian manager very unique. I am mentioning this in the context of efficiency and effectiveness. The Anglo-Saxon model of a manager is that if he is efficient, he would be effective in managing his organisation successfully. But consider for example Dr Manmohan Singh, who is very knowledgeable and competent. He is not unaware of this. He is very efficient. But he cannot be effective unless his actions are based on the Indian milieu and complexities. The Indian manager, in my opinion, has recognised this dichotomy. This is a great advantage. You cannot commonly find this in many other countries. Indian managers do it without even thinking about it consciously. It is something like what I told you earlier—flower flowers naturally, river flows naturally. Who would you list as some of the business leaders who you have admired? I can list many business leaders. No one is perfect, but they have had a significant impact on me. T. Thomas and Ashok Ganguly of Hindustan Lever and Ratan Tata are some of the people I have worked with closely. I don’t want to mention Jack Welch or names like that since I have not worked with them or known them well. If I look at the world in which we began our career, it was vey different from the world of today. It was a ‘command and control’ world. Today, it is a networked world. Jack Welch probably was a product of that earlier


world. I also can mention Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Deepak Parekh and Akio Morita. I can also add Kiran Mazumdar. There are many other names from books that I have read. What I am doing is to avoid the middle of the bell curve. I want to mention only those whose ‘spikes’ at the end of the bell curve have impacted me. It is not a commentary on other leaders who might be hugely effective and successful. When you mention these names, do you find anything common in them in terms of leadership? No. It is the other way around. On the contrary, each one of them is different. Each one has his own ‘spike’. It is almost like they are the opposites. Do you believe that vision has no role to play in leadership? Of course, vision is the most important. Everybody has a vision. But he may not realise that he has a vision. Only later on in life, after things have happened, it may be clear that he had a great vision. It is important to distinguish vision from passion. Ratan Tata is very passionate about cars. When he talks about cars, his passion clearly comes through. Vision is the application of that passion. The vision gets clear to others later as the leader sets about doing things that come to him naturally. Do you believe that vision is the same as being future-oriented? I will say vision is about the future, but it is not the same as being future-oriented. What do you think? Yes. If you consider a gizmo-freak, he may be future-oriented, but may or may not have a great vision. I have a view that some of the greatest visionaries have been those who were not conscious that they had a vision. They just got ahead and did what they had to. Take examples of Bill Gates, Narayana Murthy or anyone like them. They did what they had to, as the flower flowers, the stream flows. Vision is something that is natural in every person. However, it is the writers and academicians who argue that it was this vision that manifested itself to those people. The world’s greatest achievements and accomplishments have happened the natural way, like the flower and the stream. Your knowledge is what you know you know. Your intuition is what you know you do not know. Your wisdom is a combination of these two. When you stop a leader and ask him how he got his vision, he may not be able to articulate it, because it came naturally to him. He did not know it was a vision. I play a lot of sports. For example, assume that I am playing tennis with another guy. Let us say on a particular day, he is


in full flow. I go and tell him that he is fantastic, his forehand is so powerful, etc. Thereafter, I will find that he becomes conscious of it and then his game starts going down that day, because he became conscious and starts to make conscious changes to his game. Vision is something like that. You will achieve great things without knowing you have a great vision, but once you become conscious of that, you may not be as successful or effective. There is an emergence of women business leaders in India. What is your view on this? Do you think they will succeed? I think it is a good thing that is happening in India. Even though India is a male-oriented society, you will see that we, in South Asia, have produced women leaders in politics—Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Sirimavo Bandaranayake and Khaleda Zia. But the US has not had even one woman President so far. So, I don’t see why women should not succeed in leadership roles. For example, they are more multitask oriented than men. They are very good on the softer aspects of leadership. I think they would add tremendous value. The emergence of women leaders is a slow development process. I believe when the demography is changing, like in India, it is bound to happen. If I said to you that the IT, ITES or any ‘new economy’ sector is slowly creating social ruination, what would you say? I would totally disagree. I don’t think so. You see, India missed the first industrial revolution. Now, we have a chance to make up. This new sector represents the emergence of India. This is a platform on which India can stand and play a larger role in the world. I have a problem when we start connecting or linking one or two specific happenings or instances to a generic conclusion. No organisation can change without some side-effects in some way. So, this new economy may result in some side-effects. But it is not correct to say, therefore, that it is undesirable. Do you think Indian business leaders are able to handle the multiplicity, complexity and diversity effectively and well? I don’t have any data to either agree or disagree with you. Intuitively, I don’t think I would agree with you. Today, young people come to work with a different set of aspirations and expectations. A business leader’s job is to provide a conducive environment for them to perform. What is your view on this comparison of India with China? What if I said that this competition is good for Indian business? You are dead right. It is good. I am of the view that all competition is good. It goes back to my first point. Struggle and obstacles are a part


of life and leaders will need to learn how to overcome this. Whenever something or someone competes with you or threatens you, it makes you redirect your resources to meet the challenge. So, China as a competitor will help India reflect and redirect its resources in the most effective manner. Do you think ethics and business are two terms in self-contradiction? Do you think they cannot coexist? The reality out there might suggest that these two are contradictory. But to say that they are strange bedmates would not be right. Management is not an exact science; it is more like performing arts. You may not get the same or consistent results every time when you do something. You may have in reality certain situations where leadership will have to address this issue. Do you think it has something to do with being caught up in two equally compelling ethical situations or ethical dilemmas? If you can live with the choice you make, it is fine. If I don’t believe it is right, I won’t do it. It is a question of what I do in practical situations; it is not about what we think or decide by sitting in a corporate office in an air-conditioned room away from the situation. To me, ethics is not Gandhian ethics or some holding high moral ground. To me, it is what you choose to do when you are faced with a dilemma, and whether you can live with it if you did the same thing again and again. If you can live with it for the rest of your life, then that is ethics for you. So, it is what I did with the situation and whether I can live with it for the rest of my life that would define ethics. Leadership is not only about making profits or increasing market share. There is something beyond the physical, something more than the ordinary, something like social responsibility. What is your view on this? Let me take a metaphor from the Hindu philosophy. We have something called the body, and something called the athma (soul). The ‘body’ in business can be an organisation. The athma is the intellectual property of the organisation. It is the soul of the organisation. The nourishment of the athma of an organisation is what makes it last long. The organisation itself may change and transform. It may change its business. But the spirit of the company lives on. That is what makes companies go on and on forever. It is because of the basic vision, values and the culture. To me, that should define the company’s essential purpose for existence. So, social responsibility is an integral part of any business. The goal of leadership is to create the purpose of an organisation and the purpose of the business is to create that athma.


Would you then say the job of leadership is to leave behind a legacy? I totally agree with that, though I may not like to use the word, ‘legacy’. The impact you have on the future generation is the primary responsibility of leadership—like the Ford Foundation, or the Tata Trusts and the service that they render to the society. Your reported type on the MBTI is ESTJ. Mine is also ESTJ. I believe that we, ESTJs, are sometimes considered ‘cold-blooded’, without being able to use the ‘feeling’ preference. Let me read the characteristics of ESTJ for you [reads the characteristics]. What do you say? I agree with that. That is what I am. I agree that over time, I have had to use the ‘feeling’ part deliberately. In a changing scenario of business environment, do you think leadership would need a lot more of the ‘feeling’ part and the ‘intuition’ part of preference? I think we cannot be an ESTJ or ENTJ all the time. And, over a period of time in life, all of us change our preferences, based on our experiences. My ability to tolerate diversity, of complexity or uncertainty will change, based on my experiences. I will not, therefore, say that ESTJ or ENTJ is out of relevance.

Ravi Kant, Managing Director, Tata Motors, Mumbai THE COMPANY Tata Motors Limited, a part of the Tata Group, is India’s largest automobile company, with revenues of Rs 20,483 crores (US$ 4.7 billion) in 2004–05. It is the leader by far in commercial vehicles in each segment and the second largest in the passenger vehicles market with winning products in the compact, mid-size car and utility vehicle segments. The company is the world’s fifth largest medium and heavy commercial vehicle manufacturer. The company’s 22,000 employees are guided by the vision to be ‘best in the manner in which we operate, best in the products we deliver, and best in our value system and ethics.’ Established in 1945, Tata Motors’ presence indeed cuts across the length and breadth of India. Over three million Tata vehicles ply on Indian roads since the first rolled out in 1954. The company’s manufacturing base is spread across Jamshedpur, Pune and Lucknow, supported by a nation-wide dealership, sales, services and spare parts network comprising about 1,200 touch-points.


Tata Motors, the first company from India’s engineering sector to be listed in the New York Stock Exchange in 2004, has also emerged as a global automotive company. In 2004, it acquired the Daewoo Commercial Vehicles Company, Korea’s second largest truck maker. The rechristened Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicles Company has already begun to launch new products. In 2005, Tata Motors acquired a 21 per cent stake in Hispano Carrocera, a reputed Spanish bus and coach manufacturer, with an option to acquire the remaining stake as well. Hispano’s presence is being expanded in other markets. These acquisitions will further extend Tata Motors’ global footprint, established through exports since 1961. The company’s commercial and passenger vehicles are already being marketed in several countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, South East Asia and South Asia. It has assembly operations in Malaysia, Kenya, Bangladesh, Spain, Ukraine, Russia and Senegal. The foundation of the company’s growth over the last 50 years is a deep understanding of economic stimuli and customer needs, and the ability to translate them into customer-desired offerings through leading edge R&D. With 1,400 engineers and scientists, the company’s Engineering Research Centre, established in 1966, has enabled pioneering technologies and products. It was Tata Motors which developed the first indigenously developed Light Commercial Vehicle, India’s first Sports Utility Vehicle and in 1998, the Tata Indica, India’s first fully indigenous passenger car. Within two years of launch, the Tata Indica became India’s largest selling car in its segment. The pace of new product development has quickened. In 2005, Tata Motors created a new segment by launching the Tata Ace, India’s first indigenously developed mini-truck. The years to come will see the introduction of several other innovative vehicles, all rooted in emerging customer needs. Besides product development, its R&D is also focusing on environment-friendly technologies in emissions and alternative fuels. Through its subsidiaries, the company is engaged in engineering and automotive solutions, construction equipment manufacturing, automotive vehicle components manufacturing and supply chain activities, machine tools and factory automation solutions, high-precision tooling and plastic and electronic components for automotive and computer applications, and automotive retailing and service operations. True to the tradition of the Tata Group, Tata Motors is committed in letter and spirit to Corporate Social Responsibility. It is a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact, and is engaged in community


and social initiatives on human rights, labour and environment standards in compliance with the principles of the Global Compact. Simultaneously, it also plays an active role in community development serving rural communities adjacent to its manufacturing locations. With the foundation of its rich heritage, Tata Motors today is etching a refulgent future.

RAVI KANT Ravi Kant is the Managing Director of Tata Motors. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and a Master’s degree in Science from Aston University, Birmingham, UK. He has wide and varied experience in the manufacturing and marketing field, particularly in the automobile industry. Prior to joining Tata Motors, he was with Philips India Limited as Director of Consumers Electronics business and prior to that with LML Limited as Senior Executive Director (Marketing) and Titan Watches Limited as Vice President (Sales and Marketing). Kant was also employed with Kinetic Engineering Limited, Hindustan Aluminum Company Limited and Hawkins Cookers Limited. Kant had been an Executive Director of Tata Motors since May 2000, responsible for manufacturing and marketing of commercial vehicles and manufacturing of utility vehicles and was appointed as Managing Director on 29 July 2005. Ravi Kant is acutely aware of his background and seems to accept the reality of his present responsibilities. He, like Gopalakrishnan, is fully aware of being a part of an organisation that is steeped in history. He is aware that he comes from a relatively humble background and is keen to contribute significantly to the company. He appears to realise his limitations while justifiably being proud of his achievements. Ravi Kant, thank you for agreeing to this interview for my book on business leadership. Let me start with you as an individual first. What are some of your core values and beliefs? I think the first is integrity—both financial integrity and intellectual integrity. In fact, I would lay far more importance on intellectual integrity. If one is intellectually dishonest, then, he cannot be trustworthy. This is something that comes from your own background, your education and your family. In my present company, Tata Motors, I feel quite at home, that I belong to this place, because for over 100 years this group has had strong values of integrity. You see, at the end of the


day, all of us are seeking happiness, but we may differ in our means of achieving that. Where do you place transparency in this? Transparency is a part of what I said. Therefore, that is one strong value. I will be very uncomfortable if a situation demanded otherwise. What do you consider as five most important characteristics of business leadership? It would depend upon the type of business, the phase of business cycle, its visions and plans for the future. Are you maintaining a position, or are you growing? Having said that, the first important characteristic would be the ability to see the big picture. You can call it vision or whatever. The leader should be able to see where we would be, say, five to ten years from now. We need to have some idea of the changes taking place or likely to take place. Then we can paint the big picture. However, some people believe that business leaders may not have an idea of the types of changes that will happen—for example, Google and Microsoft, or Infosys. What do you say? I agree. Nevertheless, I would leave out these companies from my list. I am just trying to differentiate between entrepreneurial leaders and other professional business leaders. Those names are entrepreneurial leaders. The second characteristic is the ability to translate the big picture into action and implementation. Are you talking about what is called execution? Yes, execution. It is the ability to execute the plans and the strategies. If I know which levers to press and when to press, it will have great impact. The discipline to execute what, when and how is very critical. Third is honesty of approach. If your body language is not supporting what you are saying, then you are creating a forced reaction to whatever is required to be done. Therefore, there should be honesty, transparency and sincerity in what you say and what you do. People can easily make out the difference. You may be pursuing wrong objectives, but that is different. There must be honesty in your action. Passion in whatever you do is the fourth characteristic. The fifth is how a leader connects with people. Can you list 10 people who come to your mind immediately as business leaders? I can think of many. J.R.D. Tata, Ratan Tata, Jack Welch, Sir John King, Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Toyoda, Akio Morita and E. Sridharan.


Did you find anything common among these 10 people? Any common thread? Nothing I know of, except that all these people were/are successful. I think each has had different styles. Many people mention Corporate Social Responsibility while talking about business leadership. What are your views? Do you believe leadership should be concerned with larger issues? Yes absolutely. There is no doubt on that. As far as we are concerned, this compassion for the entire community in which we operate has always been there inherent in our company. For me, Corporate Social Responsibility is just a manifestation of this compassion. It is not that we are doing ‘them’ a favour. We should not be arrogant to say that ‘we’ are helping ‘them’. It should be about an understanding of the interdependent relations between ‘them’ and ‘us’. In the Tata group, we do this all the time. We realise that the relationship between the company and the community is one of interdependence. It is all about connectivity. For example, when Jamshetji Tata thought of establishing the Indian Institute of Science, what did he have in his mind? So, this Corporate Social Responsibility comes to us automatically and is inherent in our thinking. What do you think about women business leaders? Yes, that is something that leaves a gap. We should have more women leaders. Things are changing, but not changing fast enough. Surely, one would expect more women to assume leadership positions. It can be in government, in professional work, everywhere. Somehow, in business, it has not happened significantly so far. Their number is much less. I see no reason why women cannot succeed in business leadership roles. In my own way, I encourage that in our company. If I made a proposition to you saying that the new economy sector is going to impact our social fabric adversely and it is going to be a major leadership challenge, what would you say? I look at it differently. It is like saying that in war time, women were forced to go and seek work elsewhere and therefore the home front got affected. Another way of looking at it is to say that it gave opportunities for women to become economically independent and they did not have to take things they did not want to take. I consider this phenomenon as something of a great opportunity. During our days, we lived in joint families, but today there are nuclear families. This may have many advantages and benefits but also result in some


disadvantages. We need to look at the brighter side of things while being aware of the negatives. Has our business leadership been able to address the new emerging issues adequately? I believe that in any new phenomenon, there will be initial hiccups. One major challenge before leadership, as I see it, is to harness the youth. I see it as a contradiction. Why do you want to harness the youth? Let them set their own rules. Why should we do it? One of the things I have tried to do here in the company is to connect with young persons. I have this breakfast meeting with young high potentials whenever I go to the plant in Pune, Jamshedpur and Lucknow. I encourage them to share with me their ideas, their expectations and their perspectives. Many of the key changes that have happened in this company recently have come out of these meetings. That helps us go beyond the hierarchical structure in the company. Time and time again, I tell these young people that they are going to be in the company for 20 or 30 years. So they should decide what kind of a company this should be to enable it to survive for 100 years as indeed it has managed to survive well for the past 60 years. Growth is a means of survival. In my view, growth by itself is meaningless. I think growth is for survival. What is your view on this comparison of India with China? Do you think this competition helps India raise its own bar of excellence? Yes, I agree with that view. Earlier, we used to think Europe or Japan was growing because it was Europe and Japan. Now, China has shaken India up from its stupor, its slumber. I agree with you. Therefore, I take the competition with China as very positive thing to have happened. However, we need not fear China. We need not become obsessed with China. We should play upon our strengths. I agree that the pace of India’s growth is slow. We should take steps to hasten it. Broadly speaking, let us see what changes are taking place currently in India. First, we are a country of young people. The youth is large in percentage. That is an opportunity and challenge. Second is the communication connectivity. This is bringing a big change. I will call it urbanisation of the mindset. This means people living in ‘non-urban’ areas begin to acquire traits or thinking of people living in urban areas. With young people, this process will only get better and quicker. Therefore, we have young people with money who have an urban mindset. It is a potent mixture. Not only will they expect changes, they will facilitate the change. Physical connectivity is another change.


Our roads are improving. Geographically we are coming closer. It will bring about a total paradigm shift. Therefore, I see only opportunity, opportunity and opportunity. I do not think even government will have any option but to change. See what has happened in civil aviation in India. Systems and structures will change. The difference between India and China is that here the demand is preceding investment. In China, investment is preceding demand. For business reasons, ours is a better model, where demand precedes investment. Except that, the pace of change needs to gather momentum. Some people believe that though leadership is individual, you need others as co-leaders in order to succeed and be effective. Leaders should consciously develop co-leaders. What do you say? I agree with that entirely. The leader becomes only the visible face of the change. It is others who make the change happen. The leader sets the direction but many others also contribute to it. It has something to do with creating a shared vision. It may take time, but it will be more effective. I also don’t think this way of leadership happens in the West. That is the difference between Indian business leadership and Western business leadership. I suppose we can say that we need a combination of the two. I think we have always tried to find some easy way out, and we have not tried to get this combination right. I think most leadership books have focused on one leader, without mentioning the others who have also contributed to that leader’s success. This should change.

Harsh C. Mariwala, Chairman and Managing Director, Marico Industries, Mumbai THE COMPANY The history of Marico is very interesting. It started in 1948 as a familyowned business (Bombay Oil Industries Limited) with manufacturing facilities in Mumbai for coconut oil extraction plant, vegetable oil refinery and a chemical plant. In 1990, the consumer (marketing) division was hived off into a separate company as Marico Industries Limited. Today, Marico is a leading Indian Group in Consumer Products and Services in the Beauty and Wellness space. Marico’s products and Services in Hair care, Skin Care and Healthy Foods during 2004–05 generated a turnover of about Rs 10 billion (US$ 230 million)


from 12 brands—Parachute, Saffola, Sweekar, Hair & Care, Shanti, Mediker, Oil of Malabar, Mealmaker, Sil, Revive, Kaya and Sundari. Marico’s brands and their extensions occupy leadership positions with significant market shares in all categories—Coconut Oil, Hair Oils, Anti-lice Treatment, Premium Refined Edible Oils and Fabric Care, etc. Marico is present in the Skin Care Services segment through Kaya Skin Clinics (44 clinics) in India and the U.A.E. and also through the Sundari range of Ayurvedic skin care spa products in the US and other countries. Marico’s branded products are also available in Bangladesh, other SAARC countries and the Middle East. The Overseas Sales franchise of Marico’s Consumer Products (whether as exports from India or as local operations in a foreign country) is one of the largest amongst Indian Companies and is entirely in branded products and services. Marico sells over 63 million packs to around 130 million people every month. Marico’s business model is based on focused growth across all its brands and territories driven by continuously improving value propositions to consumers, market expansion and widening of retail reach. Marico aims to be the leader in each of the businesses; by heightened sensitivity to consumer needs, setting new standards in the delivery and quality of products and services through processes of continuous learning and improvement. The model ensures that Marico is present in unique/ethnic Indian Product or Services categories where typical MNCs would not be strong. Therefore, Marico does not, unlike many other Indian FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) Companies, get caught in MNC crossfires. Marico is a professionally-managed company that has built for itself a stimulating work culture that empowers people, promotes team building and encourages new ideas. This has, over the years, enabled Marico to grow in stature as one of the few successful Indian FMCG Companies. Marico was awarded the National Award for outstanding work in HRD by the National HRD Network in 1994 as also the award for Top Performing Global Growth Company from India at the World Economic Forum in 1997. Marico aims to be the leader in each of the businesses; by heightened sensitivity to consumer needs, setting new standards in the delivery and quality of products and services through processes of continuous learning and improvement. Values, Vision and Purpose

Marico has a set of articulated values that were created at the inception of the organisation and revisited and modified in the year 1997,


through the collective wisdom of Mariconians. The values since then have been an integral part of the working of all Mariconians. Marico’s values are preferred practices that are employed in pursuit of our Business Direction, captured in the acronym ‘COME WIN’. It is both an invitation to excel as well as the philosophy that guides Marico towards success. Consumers: For they are the reason we exist (the primary focus of our efforts will be to not only understand what adds greatest value to the consumer but also change and reinvent ourselves if need be. We will translate the consumer’s needs and desires into marketable products and an ever expanding base of loyal consumers, with speed and a quality of response that surpasses the competition), Membership: For a sense of ownership empowers us (wholesome membership is when a person brings his/her entire being into the organisation. It also gives each member a role in articulating and shaping the destiny of the organisation, which in turn, builds commitment and ownership), Excellence: For it unleashes our potential (we will focus on policies and practices where people produce consistently superior performances and where people are encouraged to discover their untapped potential), Wealth: For on it hinges our growth (all our efforts must culminate in the creation of wealth. We will do so by continuously adding value in everything we do through a variety of methods. We will use sources productively, eliminate waste, reduce cycle times and costs and enhance the consumer base) and Innovation: For it gives wings to ideas (the future of our organisation rests on our willingness to experiment, push in new and untested directions, think in uncommon ways and take calculated risks. Continuous improvement should be a part of everyday work. We acknowledge that failure is inherent in any new initiative. We will commit resources for experimentation and invest in processes for reviewing and sharing of learning).

HARSH C. MARIWALA Harsh C. Mariwala, 55, is the Chairman and Managing Director of Marico Limited. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from Mumbai. He started his career with the Bombay Oil Industries Limited (BOIL) in 1971. He took charge of the company’s Consumer Products Division in 1975 and functioned as its Executive Director from 1980 to 1990. He took over as Chairman and Managing Director of Marico in 1990, after the consumer products division was hived off from the parent company and renamed Marico Limited.


Besides heading Marico, Mariwala is on the Boards of Cadbury India and MIRC Electronics, among others. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) and an executive committee member of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) (Western Region). Harsh Mariwala is a simple person. He is keen to evolve as a business leader and knows that he is moving in the right direction. His earlier experiences in family business have taught him lessons that he would like to use in his new role. He comes across as a person who is very people-oriented and believes in a high degree of delegation. Mr Mariwala, thank you very much for agreeing to meet with me for my book on business leadership. I will start by asking you some of your core values and beliefs. Can you tell me? I deeply believe in the values of openness, giving freedom to individuals to express themselves, empowerment, continuous improvement, trust in people and meritocracy. Some of these have been a part of me and have got strengthened over a period of time with the kind of experiences I have had. These are also aligned with Marico—my organisation. While I have always believed in them, for the organisation, the journey of values began in 1990 when we initiated the co-creation of the organisational values. Would you differentiate your professional values from personal values? I do not know if I can say that. I started with my personal values, but these have been integrated with the values of the organisation. However, my personal values are much deeper and have not changed over time. Organisational values that influence the work culture may change depending upon our journey. The basic values such as ethics, trust in people, openness, etc., do not change. Values or more importantly, relevant work culture practices such as developing a global mindset may be focused upon over time and evolve as you wish to expand internationally. Have you had any formal mentor in your life? Did you have any role models? I have had the opportunity to interact with many individuals in the course of doing business. Several of them have influenced me. There have been people within my company and those outside it who have motivated me. I am also a voracious reader and draw inspiration from what I read. Some critical people who have had a profound influence on me are people like Professor Ram Charan.


You started your career in marketing and sales. Today, you are at the head. Can you tell me about this transition? I believe marketing is the essential and core function in any FMCG organisation. So, my focus has been on developing marketing competencies. Over a period, the organisation comprises professional managers who drive various aspects of business and I add value to what they do based on my overall understanding of the business. My focus areas have continued to be marketing and the overall strategy of the company. Initially, when we had a few manufacturing locations, I used to visit them regularly. Over a period, I have reduced such visits. I track the identified improvement areas in the field of manufacturing and other functions. What experiences in your early life have impacted you significantly? It is an accumulation of many experiences. I have gone through failures and learnt from them. I have also built these experiences into our organisation. Some of the significant experiences that have impacted me are—going public, that brought us into limelight of shareholders and exposed us to the pressures of quarterly performance; and separation of long-serving colleagues that impacted my people in the organisation. What are some of your major strengths? I think I have a good business sense. There is this constant urge to improve. I am always thinking of what I should do to improve our organisation. You can say that I am a continuous learner. I read a lot of books too. I try to bridge the skill-gap in myself and in others. What about your weaknesses, if any? I am very impatient. I think my attention span is short. I am not technology savvy and don’t have a very good understanding of machines. Yes, I understand what you are saying. There are some people of that type. I also don’t use my right brain as much. My approach is cut-and-dry and very specific. I’m trying to change this. For example, over the recent past, I have started the practice of spending time with each individual in my team over an informal lunch to chat about non-work related topics. I have found this very helpful. Would you say that if you had some other leadership characteristics, you would have achieved something greater? Yes. I am not a big risk-taker. Perhaps with greater risk taking, we could have had many more acquisitions even in the past.


But even with that, you have succeeded in establishing ‘Parachute’ as a reputed brand. Yes. While I do not take big risks, the ability to spot opportunities and the business sense have helped in building ‘Parachute’ to what it is today. It started off with our entry into plastic packaging that was very unique. In a sense it was a risk, but then, there was not much to lose then. Over the years, we kept adding to the repertoire of building this as a brand. During the period when HLL went aggressive with Nihar, the entire organisation rallied around and decimated the threat from Nihar. Eventually, we bought the brand Nihar! Supposing you were to retire or take off from work in the next six months what would you like to do? I really don’t know. My work demands the majority of my time. However, I also play some sports and I am a fitness freak. So, I will spend time on that. Personally, I don’t think I have to do anything else that I am not doing now. Maybe, I will have to search for something. How much does society mean to you? It means a lot. My own organisation has a lot to do with societal concerns. The role of an organisation in terms of its impact on society is critical. Whatever we have to do in that direction, we have to do. I would like to work toward the development of individuals. I like giving them wider exposure. At one level, that is a must for any organisation. I believe that we are trying to be thought leaders. My idea of contribution to society is sustainable development. We have undertaken certain initiatives toward this. We talk about socially relevant issues and spread awareness of the same. I think that a culture of creating awareness is itself a major contribution to the society. In the Indian context, I believe that we have a lot of hidden potential as a nation and that needs to be aroused. Building awareness on how to get more innovative by sharing real life Indian stories that are inspiring is the route that we have chosen. There are so many FMCG companies in India. What do you think makes Marico different? In shaping my business, I think values are very important. May be that makes us different. I think my inner drive is to prove to myself and to others that we can do it. We have to make an impact and that is what drives me. It is also the uniqueness of our culture that allows people to take on responsibility and decisions early that makes us different.


What, in your opinion, are the five most important characteristics of business leaders? I think the key ones are the ability to make decisions based on personal judgement, as well as a high degree of vision. I also think trust and belief in people is very important. My trust level in my people is very high. For example, in my company, my colleagues can make their own decisions, including in financial matters. I have never regretted this culture. Of course, there have been a few instances where this trust has been misused. I don’t make any day-to-day decisions. It is all left to my team. In that sense, leadership should be based on decentralised decision-making. Leaders should be involved only if they can add value to any decision, not otherwise. So, trusting people is very important. The other thing is the focus on merit. For example, we never recruit anyone in our company just because he or she has been highly recommended by one of my relatives. In India, particularly, this is very important because there is social pressure. Leaders should free themselves from this. Business leaders should focus on growth of the organisation and look towards sustainable growth as a key driver. Can you name a few business leaders who come to your mind? I admire companies like L ‘Oréal and P&G in the FMCG sector. I get awed by people like Mukesh Ambani, for the sheer size of their operations and their ability to think so big. Then, there are many who have been widely written about, like Ratan Tata, K.V. Kamath, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. You seem to think that Indian business leadership is different? Yes, in many ways. We have been operating in a very regulated and restricted economic and legal environment. So, our business leaders have had to be different. We have operated in a sort of ‘protected’ environment for many decades. Also, given the overall infrastructure, in some ways, it forces the Indian businesses to be far more innovative and entrepreneurial. However, it may not have been forced to be very systems-driven or quality conscious. With the recent changes in the environment, the leadership has been forced to rethink and put in place other management practices. What do you feel about ethics in business? You have to have ethics as a basic value in business. You can’t do without it. It is not a success factor, it is a hygiene factor. Just by having a decent office, you are not going to succeed. Just because you are


ethical, you may not be guaranteed success. But the absence of ethics is likely to be detrimental in the long run. It comes out very clearly in all your dealings and transactions. What do you think about women business leadership in India? It is a good trend that more women are able to break the glass ceiling. I often wish we had more women in senior positions in Marico. Our society is changing and is no longer a totally male-dominated society. It will take time, but we need to support women leaders. What do you think are the leadership challenges for Indian business leaders? I think the major challenge is meeting the changing aspirations and expectations of today’s youth. I also think the new economy of IT and ITES and other services will change business leadership. With the growing opportunities for the Indian talent, attracting and retaining the best talent will be the major challenge. In addition to that, Indian business leaders will face the challenge of expanding their businesses globally. While the time is ripe, the gearing up that they will have to do to meet that challenge is huge. What about the India–China comparison in recent times? I personally feel it is over-hyped. I don’t think it is anything to worry about. It depends on the sector in which you are operating. It is not the same for all sectors. I would say that Indian economy is looking good overall. There is confidence and a new drive. I think the level of growth will further improve. The government should also play its due role in this process.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon, Bangalore THE COMPANY Biocon was established in 1978, marking the beginning of a biorevolution in India. It was a joint venture between Biocon Biochemicals Limited of Ireland and an Indian entrepreneur, Dr Kiran Mazumdar. Biocon has since evolved from an enzyme-manufacturing company into a fully integrated biopharmaceutical enterprise. Today, the company leverages a formidable combination of proprietary fermentation technologies and research skills in drug synthesis to propel its entry


into the field of biopharmaceuticals or fermentation-derived therapeutic molecules. The company has since earned many ‘firsts’ to its credit, both domestically and internationally. Its subsidiary companies are Syngene International Private Limited (which provides chemistry and molecular-based custom research services in early-stage drug discovery and development) and Clinigene International Private Limited (which conducts longitudinal research in diabetes and offers a wide range of comprehensive services in drug development and clinical trials). Biocon, Syngene and Clinigene together employ approximately 2,000 qualified personnel from biologists, chemists, computer scientists, medical practitioners, pharmacologists, engineers, finance/ legal/marketing analysts to general administrators. 10 per cent of the employees hold a Ph.D. degree, 30 per cent have a Master’s degree in Science and the remaining are graduates with a Bachelor’s degree in Science, Commerce or Arts. 30 per cent of Biocon employees are women. The employee attrition rate is less than 1 per cent and the average age of the company is 28 years. Headquartered in Bangalore, the company has offices in Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi in India and New Jersey in USA. Values, Vision and Purpose

Biocon’s mission is to be ‘an integrated biotechnology enterprise of global distinction.’ To fulfil this mission, ‘we will achieve excellence in intellectual asset creation through discovery, research and development; state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities; internationally benchmarked quality and regulatory systems; new medical insights through disease-specific clinical research; customer relationships through outstanding products and services; human resource development through training, mentoring and empowering; and research and business partnership management.’

KIRAN MAZUMDAR-SHAW Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, 52, is the Chairperson and Managing Director of Biocon. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Zoology from Bangalore University and has qualified as a Master Brewer from Ballarat University, Australia. She has also been awarded honorary degrees of Doctorate of Science by the Ballarat University in Australia and the Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India. She is, today, the richest woman in India.


Kiran started Biocon in 1978 in collaboration with an Irish firm, to extract an enzyme from papayas in her garage in a leafy neighbourhood of Bangalore. Her ambition was to build a world-class institution using India’s own scientific talent. She aims to make Biocon one of the world’s top five biotech companies in the not too distant future. Forward looking, driven, enterprising and definitely outspoken, Kiran is everything that one would look for in a woman of her stature. Kiran has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognition for her contribution to the field of biotechnology and the society. These include the Economic Times ‘Businesswoman of the Year’, ‘Best Woman Entrepreneur’, and Ernst & Young’s ‘Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Life Sciences and Healthcare’. Her most cherished awards are however, the Padma Shri (1989) and Padma Bhushan (2005) conferred on her by the Government of India. She has held positions in industry councils, including Vice President, Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Karnataka (AWAKE). She is a much sought after biotech pioneer who has been referred to as ‘India’s Biotech Queen’ by The Economist and ‘India’s mother of invention’ by New York Times. She has actively campaigned and raised her voice for things which she felt were needed—civic amenities, roads, cleanliness, etc. She was among the first to hail the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) initiative. She has donated generously to starting the Swachcha Bangalore programme of door-to-door collection of garbage. As Chairperson and Mission Leader of CII’s National Task Force on Biotechnology, she has led several delegations to USA, Canada, UK, etc., to propel India into the global super league of biotech trailblazers. She chairs Karnataka’s Vision Group on Biotechnology and has also served on the Board of Science Foundation, Ireland. She serves on the Advisory Council of the Government’s Department of Biotechnology where she has been instrumental in bringing government, industry and academia together to chart a clear and progressive growth path for Biotechnology in India. She is also a Board member of Bio-Ventures for Global Health (BVGH). She serves as a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry in India. Kiran Mazumdar is fully aware that she has become a youth icon and is conscious of her recognition in the society. She knows that she is embarking on a path that will take India to the global stage. She appears to believe that simplicity or austerity does not necessarily make great leadership. She is confident that leadership is what leadership does.


Ms Mazumdar, thank you very much for participating in my leadership survey for my book. I would like to start by asking you some questions relating to you as an individual. What are some of your basic values, beliefs and faiths? I think my core values have been deeply engrained in me from childhood. My father has had a great impact in me. One thing about values is that you have to walk the talk. He told me that honesty is something you never compromise in your life. That has stayed with me ever since. When I come across people who I thought were very honest and they turn out later to be dishonest, that bothers me. I think they let themselves down. It takes a lot of courage to be honest. What do you mean by honesty? Are you referring to transparency? When I talk to you, I must mean what I say. Honesty is also about fairness. I really value honesty in people like I value fairness in people. I try to be as fair as I possibly can. I never want to be unfair to people in my decisions. Is it integrity? Integrity has a broad scope. I think you are talking about a number of values when you talk about integrity. By honesty, fairness, having the courage to speak your mind, not being devious, not being manipulative—all these are qualities of integrity. Integrity is a powerful word, and encompasses all these. Apart from integrity, I value quality very highly. Excellence and quality are two things people should strive for. Whatever I do, I won’t accept anything that is sub-standard in quality. I always strive for excellence. You must always benchmark yourself against the best. Some people say that you must benchmark against yourself. It is not about having someone else as a standard. It is something like raising your own bar of excellence. What do you think? That is fine. In any business, there are some who are excellent and others who are not. So you need to benchmark against the best. What about you as an individual? I like to have a broad guideline of excellence and idealism. I try and benchmark myself against those guidelines. What are some of your experiences from early years of your life that have had a great impact on what you are today? I will give you one example. I did my schooling in Bishop Cotton girls’ school. I studied in Mount Carmel College for my PUC (Pre-University).


At the end of my PUC, I applied for admission to medical colleges. I wanted to do medicine to become a doctor. I could not get into St John’s Medical College and neither did I get into CMC (Christian Medical College), Vellore. I did not have adequate marks. The only colleges open to me were the colleges where there was some capitation fee to be paid. I had enough marks for getting a seat by paying the capitation fee. I went to my father and told him that there were seats available if he would pay the capitation fee. I wanted to get into the Devengere Medical College, I told him. They wanted only Rs 10,000. My father said to me that on principle, he would never get me a seat by paying capitation fee. He said that I could try again next year, but he would not pay any capitation fee. I was very upset. I told him that he would have paid the capitation fee, if I were his son. He said, ‘Kiran, I think you have not understood your father. To me, it does not matter whether you are my son or my daughter. Never compromise on your principles.’ This taught me a lot. Every one of us, my father’s children, learnt great values from my father. My father was heading the UB (United Breweries) then. When my father died, all the trade unions came to pay their respects. During my father’s tenure at UB, there never was any labour dispute or problem. He was very fair to everyone. He is the one who has had the greatest impact in my life. He always taught me to look for goodness in people. He has strongly influenced me. Do you believe that if you had some other characteristics, you would have achieved something different or some thing greater? Would you have been a different person? How can I answer that question? I am what I am. I have a strong sense of what I am. I owe this to my roots. I can never imagine myself otherwise than what I am. What gave you this entrepreneurial spirit? To begin with, when I finished my college, I wanted to pursue a career. I did not want to waste my education. That is another thing that my father taught me. He always felt that we cannot afford to waste any resources, especially one’s education. I believe very strongly in this. When I see a lot of women in this country who are highly educated and don’t utilise their education in any meaningful way, I get upset. When they say that they are happy being at home and they are content using their education by teaching their children, I don’t buy that argument easily. I have always believed that one must apply one’s education. So, I was very career-oriented. I went to Australia to be a


Brew Master. My father had told me that there was a shortage of good Brew Masters in this country and thought that would be a good career for me. It was just a chance encounter with an Irish entrepreneur who wanted to set up a company in India, which resulted in my setting up Biocon. It was not any entrepreneurial drive or anything like that. What are some of your major strengths? Clarity of thought is one. I think I have a strong sense of conviction, a sense of purpose and a spirit of challenge. Whatever I do, I want to do it well. All this is related to my core values. I want to build a company based on strong values, and I want to excel in everything that I do. I want to be pioneering in what I do. It has to be path-breaking. Would you say achievement-orientation? Yes. I have a very strong achievement-orientation. Do you have any weakness? Yes. I think I am impatient, that is a strength and weakness. I am impulsive, that is a weakness. I am outspoken, that is a strengthand a weakness. I call a spade a spade. I am a bit of a ‘no nonsense’ person. I am also not systematic in my approach and I tend to be rather reactive to situations rather than proactive. This is a serious weakness. Did you have any formal mentor or role model in your life at all? I admire a number of people because of their values. I consider them my mentors in some way. Anyone who inspires me, who motivates me, I admire immensely. One of them is Vaghul of ICICI. I consider him as a mentor to me. Dr Mashelkar has been very inspirational to me. He shared my passion for science and technology. He always believes that through innovation, India can be a powerful society. The other person who inspired me a lot is Dr Devi Shetty. I can really empathise with him because he shares the same values and passion as I do. Whenever I feel frustrated and not able to get things done the way I want, he always counsels me. He always encourages me to do whatever I want, without worrying about other people’s resistance or opposition. The other person I admire a lot is Dr Bala Manian, who is Vaghul’s brother. I think you always seek out like-minded people. What characteristics or behaviour in others would irritate or upset you the most? You already have talked about dishonest people. I don’t like arrogant people. I don’t like people who keep boasting about themselves. I also don’t like people who are devious. I don’t like people who compromise on principles. Such people upset me.


What about people who are considered inefficient? If someone is inefficient because of lack of knowledge or ability, it does not upset me, because then I know I can develop that person. But if a person is inefficient because of a lack of commitment or doesn’t give 100 per cent to his or her work, then it really upsets me. I can excuse mistakes made out of ignorance, but not mistakes arising out of negligence or irresponsibility. Is it something like what Jack Welch is reported to have practised? He was reportedly more in favour of people whose values were in alignment with those of the organisation than people who were competent but not value-aligned. Yes, very much so. I am like that. I really believe that you can’t acquire values. It is something intrinsic from childhood. I will, any day, support value-alignment more than competence of ability. I know that you are associated with a number of things outside of your organisation. Can you tell me some of your major concerns relating to society? Let me look at it in a broad sense for the country. I think there is too much rhetoric and very little action. Things stare everyone one of us in the face and yet we don’t seem to act on anything. I think we, as a society, are apathetic. It bothers me a lot. They expect a few people to do everything. It is impossible for one or two people to do everything. It has to be a concerted effort of all the stakeholders. That is the problem that bothers me a lot. I think internal locus of control is lacking in us. We don’t want to put in that extra effort to improve things. Have you ever regretted not having had time to pursue some of your passions outside of work? I think I have had a wholesome life. I have a great family, very good friends and wonderful colleagues. I don’t regret anything in my life. I have a sense of fulfilment. But, yes, I do miss doing some things I used to. I have not played a game of golf in six years. I have not been able to go to an art show in two years, which I am very fond of. I have not been able to go to music concerts. I have had to give these a back seat. So, at times, I do feel stressed. I have become such a workaholic that I find myself being bored at times, but I know how to take it in my stride. If you were to retire or take off from work, what would you like to do? I am really excited about some of the initiatives that we have started, like the Biocon Foundation. I would like to focus on those initiatives— areas like education. I have started a programme called ‘Arogya’ for


health. I want to focus on hygiene. I also want to get into public-private partnership in areas like hygiene and health, creating awareness among the less privileged. I want to improve the quality of life, like having access to good health care, hygiene, etc. So, when I retire, I would like to focus on some of these aspects. What would you consider as four or five major characteristics of business leadership? I think you have to be very inspirational. You have to be strong and decisive where you can lead people in a manner that demonstrates that you can take the organisation in the right direction. Leadership is also about being fair and about playing by principles based on good values. Are you saying that leaders should not be perceived as being ‘soft’? Yes, I think they must be strong. Humility is not the same as being soft. You must have humility but not be soft. You need to be strong in mind and in action. A good leader is someone who is inspiring, someone who has strength of character and someone who leads by example. It is someone who never fails? I don’t think it has to be someone who never fails. A leader doesn’t have to be ‘superhuman’. Can you name some business leaders you admire? I think Narayana Murthy is a great leader. I admire Azim Premji—he works silently but is very strong. The other person who is inspiring is Sunil Mittal. I think he is very smart. Of course, Dr Devi Shetty is another inspirational leader. I would consider Captain Gopinath as a leader in the making as he lives by strong principles. Ratan Tata is another great leader, he is strong, unassuming and has a tremendous strength of character. And Sudha Murthy is another person who has an inspirational quality in that she leads by a simplistic code. Outside of India, I admire Jack Welch, Anita Roddick, Meg Whitman and Steve Jobs. You have mentioned people from India and outside. Do you think business leadership in India is in any way different? I think that Indian business leaders operate in a different environment. The sense of purpose is very high and also different in India. We are trying to prove ourselves to the rest of the world. Most of the business leaders of the West don’t have to prove themselves to the rest of the world, only to themselves. That is the difference. Eventually,


we will also reach a stage when we will have to prove only to ourselves. Today, the picture is different. Today the whole approach is to look outside and show that we can be very much a part of the developed, global enterprise. What I am doing at Biocon today is to try to be the best in the world. What does it demonstrate itself in, on a day-to-day basis? I think you are trying to gain acceptance. You are looking at excellence benchmarks. That is why we in India are so proud of saying we have got ISO 9001 or some other international certificate. That is also why we are so besought by awards. What is your view on the emergence of women business leaders? You are yourself an icon today. I think in the past, women did not try to gain their rightful position in society. Today, the world is more accepting of women. India is certainly more accepting of women in the work place. I think women gradually perceive that they are equal to men. Women are now being recognised in society for their achievement. When I go to a shopping mall and young people say ‘there goes Kiran Mazumdar’, I feel proud that what I am doing is touching their lives in some way. I think I am able to give them a sense of hope, especially young women. I came from an ordinary, middle-class family. If I have succeeded, anyone can. That is the message I want to drive home, that is the hope I want to convey to young people. What worries me is that young people don’t get the right message sometimes. Do you think that one woman leader doesn’t promote another? It is not special to women. It is the same problem with men too. When we are in a very competitive space, it is only human nature that each one tries to protect his or her territory. I think it is because of competition. Having said that, I think there are many women leaders emerging today in many sectors. I know many women who are in senior positions in business all over the world. They are very strong. Unfortunately, we have not consciously developed a strong network amongst women. How do you see the relevance of ethics in business? I think there is always an ethical way of doing business. I find that there are many who adopt unethical means to prevent a competitor from growing. I believe there is space for everyone in our business. So, to me, ethics is very important. We must run a business on our merits, not by ‘running down’ others.


To what extent do you believe that the present growth of Indian economy is sustainable? Where do you see India in the next, say, 10 years? I think India is on a growth mode. So, the economy will continue to grow and will be sustainable. Technology will play a significant role in making this growth happen. My biggest fear is that if we don’t provide adequate infrastructure, it will retard and restrict growth. For example, if Bangalore had planned its infrastructure properly, we would not be in this claustrophobic mess that we are in today. Great companies anticipate, plan and manage growth, the same is true for cities and countries. Do you think the new economy companies like IT, ITES, Biotechnology or Financial Services are likely to grow and succeed in their current format? I think any company based purely on low cost as a competitive edge will not be sustainable. But if we can leverage that low-cost base to add greater value to the customer, then it will grow. In other words, high value addition will open new windows of opportunity for us. For example, in Biocon if we stick to only generic molecules, we can never hope to sustain the business in the long-term, but if we can develop a business based on innovative and specialty molecules, we can ensure sustainable growth. What about the changing aspirations of the youth? How do you think leaders should address this issue? I agree that today, young people are adopting a ‘get rich quick’ mentality. I think this is disturbing. It has to be based on something more fundamental. Today’s job market is so intense that young people can ‘command a premium’ even if they do not possess necessary skills and competence. This is leading to a false sense of ‘market worth’ or ‘self worth’. I fear that they will fail and derail. I think this is one of the leadership challenges of today. We can only tell these young people not to take a ‘fast track’ approach as there are no short cuts to real success. But you yourself took the fast track approach in your life. No, I did not. I have taken 25 to 30 years to get where I am today. I was not driven by money as the main motivation. Achievement has been the prime motivation. I never wanted to become a millionaire when I started. I only wanted to build a great company. I think we had a greater sense of purpose. I think people who have a greater sense of purpose are those that can build great organisations. People with narrow vision may build great businesses, not great organisations.


That is a wonderful insight, Kiran. Do you think that today’s business leaders in India have their values based on their family background? Yes, I think so. When we started our businesses, our purpose was not wealth or any material benefit. At that time, only a few privileged people had wealth—people like the Birlas or the Tatas. We had to eke out a living from our business and had very modest aspirations. Our purpose was not money-centric. Today, I feel things have changed. If you ask today’s youth why they consider Narayana Murthy as an icon, they admire him because he built the most powerful IT company in the country, not because he did so through meagre resources and hard work. I would like people to talk about the newer breed of business leaders like Captain Gopinath and others and get equally inspired by what they are trying to build. How many youngsters talk about them and the businesses they are building? Your reported Type on the MBTI is ENTP. The characteristics of this type are [reads out the characteristics]. What do you have to say? I think everything you said is true, except perhaps the last part. I am the type who likes to take decisions by consensus. I do try to bring in a lot of new thoughts and ideas in to our discussions. I encourage people to think of different aspects of an issue. I encourage people to analyse things not just from facts, but other factors. The last part of what I said was that you are not as much driven by relationships or sentiments as by logic, objectivity and analysis. Do you agree? Yes, when you put it like that, I agree. I can completely and easily divorce my personal equation and relationship with a person from work at hand. Very often, people are surprised by my differing views with somebody I am perceived to be close to. I am afraid people cannot sway me by appealing to my sentiments of emotions. I guess that also comes from a sense of fairness which calls for an unbiased frame of reference.

Subroto Bagchi, Vice Chairman and COO MindTree Consulting, Bangalore THE COMPANY MindTree Consulting is an international IT consulting company that delivers affordable business and technology solutions through global


software development. Co-headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey and Bangalore, the company’s seasoned management team and employees skilled in technology, business analysis and project management approach technology initiatives in a business context. MindTree develops applications to help companies enhance their enterprise operations. The company also delivers product development services and designs reusable building blocks for high-tech companies. MindTree is also present in California, Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia and Colorado in the US, United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore, Japan and the Middle East. Oneshore™ represents MindTree’s method for global development that achieves a balance of quality, cost savings and localisation. For every client, the company builds a unified team of both software engineers and business consultants that collaborate from start to finish on all stages of a project. The company does not have separate camps of front-end and back-end specialists. Projects are always managed on the spot, wherever clients are located. Oneshore™ also reflects the company culture. The company recognises that IT services firms cannot deliver quality and cost-and-time savings unless they commit to integrate disparate people, cultures, business processes and skill sets into a single corporate vision. Oneshore™ represents a complete fusion of global resources that enables the company to possess many locations, but one vision. This approach delivers a consistent customer experience. MindTree was started in 1999 by 10 industry professionals who came from Cambridge Technology Partners, Lucent Technologies and Wipro. The founding team was led by Ashok Soota who was at that time Vice Chairman and President of Wipro, one of India’s largest software companies. Among the many awards and recognition it has won are: • MindTree was named the leading service provider in the ‘Human Capital Development’ category by Global Services magazine. • MindTree was named among the world’s top 100 outsourcing service providers by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals. • MindTree was recognised as one of the fastest growing technology companies in India by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in the ‘Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India’ programme. • MindTree was ranked among the ‘Best Companies to Work for in 2005’ in the Business Today-Mercer-TNS study.


• MindTree was selected among the Best Places to Work for in 2002 by Computerworld magazine. • MindTree was adjudged one of the ‘Best Employers in India’ for the second consecutive year in 2004: Best Employers in India Survey by Hewitt Associates. • MindTree is the youngest company in the world to combine Level 5 in both CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) and PCMM (People Capability Maturity Model).

VISION, MISSION

AND

VALUES

The mission statement of the company reads, ‘to deliver businessenabling solutions and technologies by creating partnerships with our customers in a joyous environment for our people.’ The core values are indicated in the acronym CLASS—caring, learning, achieving, sharing and social responsibility.

THE LEADER: ASHOK SOOTA Ashok Soota is the Chairman and Managing Director of MindTree Consulting. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from University of Roorkee (now called the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee) and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Asian Institute of Management in the Philippines. Prior to co-founding MindTree, Soota was President of Wipro Infotech from 1984 to 1999. Under his leadership, the company grew from a US$ 2 million business in 1984 to a US$ 500 million business in 1999. Soota began his career in 1965 with the Shriram Group of Industries in India, where he quickly ascended the ranks. Prior to Soota’s assignment as Chief Executive Officer of Shriram Refrigeration, a subsidiary of the Shriram Group, the company was unprofitable for four straight years. When Soota assumed the role of CEO, from 1978 to 1984, his expertise and determination facilitated a complete turn around. Within his first year in this position, Shriram Refrigeration reached a positive net worth, setting off a steady increase in revenue, and the company achieved leadership in each of its product lines. In recognition of his invaluable contributions to the IT industry, Soota was named the ‘Electronics Man of the Year’ in 1992 by the Electronic Component Industries Association, ‘IT Man of the Year’ in 1994 by Dataquest and ‘IT Man of the Year’ in 1997 by Computerworld magazine. A clear leader in the IT industry, Soota was the President


of the CII during 2002–03 and has served on the Indian Prime Minister’s task force for development of the IT industry. He is also currently a member of the Advisory Council of the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva.

SUBROTO BAGCHI Subroto Bagchi is the Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of MindTree Consulting. He holds a degree in political science from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, India. Subroto has written hundreds of articles on management and technology issues in leading newspapers and magazines. He has lectured at management schools and industry platforms the world over and featured on PBS, CNBC and BBC World. Subroto Bagchi is a prolific writer on management and leadership issues. He is simple to interact with and is aware that he influences others. He believes that a strong value-base is critical to leadership success. He is passionate about whatever he has chosen to do in life. He is true believer in people’s potential and wants to develop people in his organisation. Mr Bagchi, thank you for agreeing to meet me today. Let me start with something related to you as an individual. What are some of your values? The view that personal values and professional values can be dichotomous is faulty. Leaders who say that they have different sets of personal and professional values are not correct. I believe that Indian business leadership is still playing below its potential. The reason for this is people in leadership positions think that they can have different values as individuals and as leaders. There is something missing in this. You cannot be a great father and a great husband at home and be a bad manager at work and vice versa. People will find that their personal life and professional life are not demarcated with a sealed boundary; it is porous. I personally believe that you cannot have two different standards. So, what are some of your values? When the founders came together, we articulated a set of six values. When we actually started the company and had about 500 people on board, we realised that these values were not being internalised. Therefore, Ashok and I met with each of the 500 people. We asked them to define the kind of company they would like to build. The responses were synthesised to five key values. These are Caring,


Learning, Achieving, Sharing and Social Sensitivity. We now find that these have been internalised. These have been imbedded into our performance management system and our recruitment system. When a person joins us at entry level, he or she is like clay and is mouldable. However, as he or she progresses higher in the hierarchy, we actively see if they are aligned to our values. In our performance management system, 60 percentage points is on performance measures and 40 towards our value alignment. It is also necessary for senior people to have their 360-degree appraisal done as they grow. Would you in a sense agree with what Jack Welch is reported to have initiated in GE—the choice between value alignment and competence? We certainly believe that value alignment precedes competence. The world is full of competent people. But, value alignment is more important. Competence should succeed value alignment. If values are in place, competence can always be developed. Tell me, in your early adolescent years, did you have any one or two experiences that have impacted you most? My father was a small time government servant. He was scrupulously honest. It is not that he was in such a high and mighty position with lots of opportunities to be dishonest. As district employment officer in Orissa, he was given a jeep for his work. He would never use it even to go to office, because he said it was given to him only for travelling in rural areas. Such was his penchant for honesty. He had this sense of custody and ownership that has remained ingrained in me. It was a similar situation with my mother. She was a homemaker. She would take her kitchen utensils and using them as garden implement, bloom flowers in the government quarters. When many people asked her why she was doing this in a government quarter, she would say, ‘my job is to create a bloom in a desert. My job is to leave something in a better shape than what I inherited.’ This has impacted me most. This, to me, is a sign of not only success but a sign of leadership. It is about leaving behind a legacy. You cannot be a leader unless you leave behind a legacy. If you embrace the fact that you are here to leave a legacy, then the whole paradigm of how far you will go to achieve that, at what level you will innovate, what wealth you will create—everything changes. Are there any things that you hate about yourself? No, I do not hate anything about me. Hate is a strong word. I have come to terms with what I am. I have gone beyond finding things I wish I had possessed.


Do you believe in destiny? Yes, I believe deeply in destiny. But, I am not fatalistic. I am fascinated by one thing. We are five siblings in our family. We grew up together. But, today when I reflect on our lives, I find that each of us is vastly different. Why? That itself tells you that there is something called destiny. You will also find that there is absolutely no rational reason why certain things happen in your life at a very opportune moment. It is destiny. But it is also about being responsible for your own actions, your own will. I deeply believe that people, who have made a difference to the world, did realise the points at which they felt they were different. Something like sources of inspiration, sources of power was bestowed on them. Destiny does that to people. We need to provide a space in all our plans for this thing called destiny. You do not know when lady destiny will come looking for you. If she finds that you have not provided a space for her, she will not enter your life. Have you ever regretted anything at all in life? Yes, I have regretted one thing. I studied law in Delhi by attending evening classes. I was married and had a baby. It was not easy. I could not complete the last semester. This is something I have always regretted. If someone came to you and asked for your advice on becoming a business leader, what would you say? There are so many things that can be said. I think if you asked me I would say that you need to be a doer-leader. Leaders have to dip their hand in the dirty stuff first and then teach leadership. I admire Rudy Giuliani very much. That man did not manage the post 9/11 sitting in his office. He was recovering from cancer, had just had a divorce. The way he handled the aftermath of 9/11 is amazing. If you take personal, physical involvement away from action, it is not leadership. The second example is Mother Teresa. I always say that she was the biggest MNC we ever produced. Supposing you were to quit work tomorrow, what would you like to pursue? Actually, when I was snorkelling in Hawaii once, an old man in his 80s said to me, ‘never ever think about retirement.’ It was an unsolicited advice. He was quite direct about what he said. He said that he had had his own business in the Netherlands and then came to the US. He now ran a ‘snorkeling gear rental’ business. I was perplexed by what he said. Then I realised what he was saying. He said, ‘when you get old, work a little less.’ So, you never retire from work; only


work a little less hard. My Chairman, Ashok is now 62 and says he wants to work till he is 70. I have 20 more years to go to reach 70. According to you, what are some of the five or six key characteristics of leadership? Number one is honesty. There is no question about it. The second important characteristic is to have imagination. And, the third one is to have the capability to inspire. The fourth is ability to execute. I rank honesty on the top of the list because my sincere belief is if you have to build above-potential businesses, you need honesty. Do you mean honesty as being the same as integrity? Or would you say honesty is one component of integrity? To me, they are the same. They are interchangeable. Will you take it to extent of being ‘impractical’ in real work life? Yes, I will. To me, there is no degree or extent. Even if it means not fulfilling a delivery commitment to a client, it is better to be honest. This will gain long-term results and benefits. If I go back to the client and admit that I have had to deal with this issue when someone required me to practise dishonesty and I made a trade off, the client will realise that I am trustworthy. In today’s world, trust is not a fuzzy thing. It is a key to successful relationships. I always tell my people in MindTree that trust is something that cuts cycle time. When you don’t have trust, you tend to build intellectual overheads. In the interconnected world of business today, trust is the foundation. You mentioned a few leaders you admire. Can you tell me some more names? J.R.D. Tata, Ratan Tata, Ashok Soota, Azim Premji, Narayana Murthy, Devi Shetty, Jack Welch, Bill Gates and Andy Grove. Many are from the IT sector. Unfortunately, the major part of my career has been related to the IT sector. I have a lot of reverence for the Japanese leaders too. But you tend to pick names based on your association. I did not spend much time in Japan. Do you consider any of them as your mentor? I have given you a document called ‘Lessons from My Bosses’. Ashok is featured in that. I never had a formal mentor in my career. One certainly admires some people. There are some characteristics that you imbibe from them. It is a sort of one-way mentorship. For example, I admire Andy Grove’s candour. He has spoken even about how he


dealt with prostate cancer in an interview for Fortune. How many other leaders would do that? Leaders must have emotional selfconfidence. It is not self-confidence based on your qualification, official title or experience alone. What is your perspective on the emergence of women business leaders? We have a billion people, half of them women. Still, we do not have enough representation of women in business leadership positions. I think women can change things far more deeply than men. For example, this characteristic of inclusiveness, it comes naturally to women. I think one of the ways in which we can help realise India’s potential is to enable women rise. In the IT sector, we have started getting many women at work. How long do you think it will take Indian men to recognise the emergence of women leaders? I think it will take very long. I think the role of women has to be rediscovered by the Indian society. At another level, we in the Indian business need to bring in more women voluntarily into the workforce. Then, over a generation, our mindset will change. Otherwise, we cannot call ourselves a pluralistic society. What do you think about the recent news of Indra Nooyi’s elevation at PepsiCo as CEO? I believe the US is the capital of capitalism. At the level of a CEO in the US, you are ‘de-sexed’. Your gender or ethnicity does not matter; what counts is your ability to deliver results and perform. What is your perspective on the India-China comparison? Recently Business Week did a round table with Chinese scholars, some Americans and some of us from India. I will send you my notes on that. You will know my response. Subroto, I would like you to take the MBTI questionnaire. This will help me understand your personality type and try to interpret it for you [administers the questionnaire]. Your reported type is ENFJ. Let me read the characteristics of ENFJ for you. What do you have to say? I think it is on the spot. Do you have any concluding remarks on leadership? For a long time, Indian business leadership has worked on the basis of ‘who you know’ rather than ‘what you know’. That is what makes us not rise to our potential. There are many examples. It is a part of our social system. Second, I think Indian business leaders have to embrace governance more readily and more voluntarily. The concept of


custodianship is very important. Something like trusteeship. For example, when I visited one of the world-class plants in India, the head of the organisation and I had some interesting discussions. He was telling me how he would not mind ‘buying out’ a person in the government if it came to that. This shocked me. That is not the way we can take on the world. We need a higher sense of purpose, a higher sense of competence. I think we are still very inward looking, our benchmarks are all internal.

R. Seshasayee, Managing Director, Ashok Leyland, Chennai THE COMPANY The origin of Ashok Leyland can be traced to Ashok Motors which was set up in 1948 in Madras, for the assembly of Austin Cars. The company’s name was changed soon from Ashok Motors to Ashok Leyland with equity participation by British Leyland. The company commenced the manufacture of commercial vehicles in 1955. Since then, Ashok Leyland has been a major presence in India’s commercial vehicle industry with a tradition of technological leadership, achieved through tie-ups with international technology leaders and through vigorous in-house R&D. Ashok Leyland is today a leading manufacturer of commercial vehicles and diesel engines with manufacturing locations at Ennore, Hosur, Bhandara, Alwar and Hyderabad. Committed to total quality management, Ashok Leyland is the country’s first automotive manufacturer to obtain the ISO 9002 certification, followed by ISO 9001 (1994), QS 9000 (1998) and ISO 14001 in 2004. Access to international technology enabled the company to set a tradition to be first with technology. Be it full air brakes, power steering or rear engine buses, Ashok Leyland pioneered all these concepts. Responding to the operating conditions and practices in the country, the company made its vehicles strong, over-engineering them with extra metallic muscles. ‘Designing durable products that make economic sense to the consumer, using appropriate technology’, became the design philosophy of the company, which in turn has moulded consumer attitudes and the brand personality. Ashok Leyland vehicles have built a reputation for reliability and ruggedness. The 375,000 vehicles Ashok Leyland has put on the roads have considerably eased the additional pressure placed on road


transportation in independent India. In the populous Indian metros, four out of the five STU (State Transport Undertaking) buses come from Ashok Leyland. Some of them like the doubledecker and vestibule buses are unique models from Ashok Leyland, tailor-made for highdensity routes. In 1987, the overseas holding by Land Rover Leyland International Holdings Limited (LRLIH) was taken over by a joint venture between the Hinduja Group, the Non-Resident Indian transnational group and IVECO Fiat SpA, part of the Fiat Group and Europe’s leading truck manufacturer. The blueprint prepared for the future reflected the global ambitions of the company, captured in four words: Global Standards, Global Markets. This was at a time when liberalisation and globalisation were not yet in the air. Buoyed by the backing of two international giants, Ashok Leyland embarked on a major product and process upgradation to match world-class standards of technology.

VALUES, VISION

AND

PURPOSE

‘We believe that our impressive strides in the marketplace stem in equal parts from our proactive approach and our customers’ unstinting support, earned the only way we know—by giving our customers the most appropriate transport solutions for each of their applications, and by backing them up with consultancy, finance, driver training and a responsive after-market network. We are conscious of the fact that vehicles are more than just a means of transporting people and goods; we understand that they have a deep and far reaching impact on society, the national economy and the environment. We have, therefore, always endeavoured to engineer products and systems that promote progress on all these fronts. We firmly believe that this honest approach will make the Ashok Leyland marquee the symbol of the very best in transportation, today and tomorrow.’ ‘You shape our perspective and influence our key decisions in more ways than you can imagine. As a customer, shareholder, business associate or employee, understanding and responding to your needs has helped us better the quality of your life in some way—big or small. At Ashok Leyland, we challenge our own standards—a challenge that has resulted in better safety, comfort, economy, and ecology sensitiveness. It has its own reward—enduring relationships with everyone associated with us. By bridging distances, moving people and products, aiding life and lifestyle changes, we are proud to make a contribution in engineering your tomorrows.’


R. SESHASAYEE R. Seshasayee, 58, is the Managing Director of Ashok Leyland. He is a Chartered Accountant by profession, and started his career with Hindustan Lever in 1971. He joined Ashok Leyland in 1976. He was appointed as Executive Director in 1983. In 1993, he was elevated as the Deputy Managing Director of the company, a post he held till 1998, when he became the Managing Director. On the national council of the CII for over a decade, Seshasayee has been Chairman of several national committees, including the Eighth Plan, economic affairs, defence, surface transport and finance committees. At the time of the interview, he was President of the CII. He is also the Vice President of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM). He has also been Chairman for the National Committee on International Trade and WTO. He was a member of the Government of India delegation to Doha Ministerial Round of WTO in 2001. He was also ex Chairman of the CII-Southern Region. Seshasayee has carved a space for himself in the history of the automobile industry in India. When he took over as Managing Director of Ashok Leyland in 1998, the industry was in the throes of a recession. He achieved a dramatic turnaround and set a new direction for the company; the secret for the turnaround being foreknowledge and anticipatory measures. Refusing to succumb to the gloom, the company concentrated on the much needed revamping of its functioning in the areas of customer focus, customer satisfaction, teamwork and unity of purpose. A great believer in teamwork, he achieved synergy by forming cross-functional teams. He accorded top priority to quality of products produced, as well as quality of administration. His strategy included shedding excess flab, better inventory management, improved productivity and judicious use of finances. He is the Director of several Public Limited Companies including ICICI and a member of the Southern Regional Advisory Committee of the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI). He is also associated with many professional and Academic bodies such as the Accounting Standards Board, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Institute for Financial Management and Research and the Academy for Management Excellence. He has been an active member of the group which made recommendations for framing policies in approaching World Trade Organisation (WTO) issues. Seshasayee has been with the company for so long that he seems to have grown as an integral part of it. He is multifaceted and was aware


that in his new role as President of the CII, he could make a significant contribution. He is very keen on development and growth of the society. He, like Bhaskar Bhat, is unassuming but knows that he is in charge. Mr Seshasayee, thank you very much for agreeing to this meeting. I would like to start with you as an individual. Before I get into other specifics, would you like to share with me your leadership journey? I started my career with Hindustan Lever, where I spent about five years. I was in finance, chemicals, research and foods. I had a fairly wide exposure, as would normally happen to any management trainee. Then, I joined Ashok Leyland in 1976. I started in internal audit, then moved to corporate planning, and after some other positions, became Executive Director, Deputy Managing Director and then Managing Director. If I were to distinguish between management and leadership, which point would you say was the point at which you started your leadership journey? I would say my leadership role started while I was in college. I was a student leader—so, in a sense I assumed the leadership role early in life. Since then the roles of my leadership have undergone some change. The challenges of leadership are similar—whether it is 12 people or 12,000 people. I always felt that I had to lead. Was it the challenge of the task or situation? Yes. I think so. I can readily recall an instance early in my career when I was working with HLL, Mumbai. The Chennai office of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) building was completely burnt down. We did not have any disaster management system in place at that time. It was a fully decentralised operation. There was no back up of documents. I recall the meeting we had with the Financial Controller of the company. I was in the lower rung of senior management. The Financial Controller simply said, ‘We have a problem. What do we do?’ In the given circumstances, I gave an approach. I decided to come down to Chennai and set up a new office. All I had was a burnt piece of paper. We managed to reconstruct all the documents and completed the task in record time. I knew it was a challenge. But I decided to give it a try. Would you say you actively seek challenges? In a sense of wanting to do something in order to learn or prove myself, yes. But I have not sought challenges for the purpose of advancing my own career.


In a sense, is it more for self-satisfaction? Yes, it is for self-satisfaction. What are some of your core values? I have no hesitation in saying that my core personal values are honesty and respect for others. Are you differentiating between personal and professional values? No, I am not saying that. If you stand for some personal values, you will find that they will be your professional values too. Even while scoring my ‘leadership strengths’ for your questionnaire, I used the feedback from the 360-degree appraisal that we do in this organisation. There too, it was my personal values that came out very strong. If you look at a combination of personal and professional values, I think staying with conviction in what you believe is important. You could call it intellectual honesty. I also think that respect for others is important. Be it my immediate colleagues or the people in the organisation I think the entire organisation needs to respect each other for what they are bringing to the organisation. Have you had any formal mentor so far? I would say, partly, it has come from my family. My parents were my strong mentors. Undoubtedly the values of honesty and integrity came from the family. You in fact wrote a lot in Tamil under the pseudonym of ‘Vasumathi’, right? Yes, how did you know that? It was my mother’s name and she was a famous writer. Though for some time I also used to write under that name, later I stopped and my mother also did not think it was right for me to do so. Is there anything that you regret at all in your life? Have you missed out on what you could have achieved or something that you wanted to achieve? There are many things. First of all, I did not want a career in business at all. I wanted to be an artist. I dabbled with painting and music. For a while, I was drawn into the literary world. I did not dream of a career in commerce or engineering. So, this business career is not something I have joyfully chosen. But since I am in it, I don’t have any regrets. It is just that this is not what I had chosen for myself. I don’t regret for whatever I am. But I do often feel dissatisfied with myself. I feel that I should have taken my own organisation forward a lot faster.


In leadership, would you say that there is no need to have a formal mentor? I don’t think there is need for a formal mentor. I think leadership qualities surface early in life and you get influenced by many people you interact with. Are you saying leadership is born in any way? It is difficult to pin it down to your genes. But I do think that in early stages of your life, you get inspired by people. You need to know what excites you, what motivates you. That motivation could come from teachers, friends or even parents. It could even be from books. But what you read and absorb from books depends on your own other experiences and inclinations. If you were to call off from work, what is it that you would enjoy doing for the rest of your life? I would like to do two things: Take up a mission to mount a massive programme to improve sanitation in this country. Second, I would like to write to share my perspectives on a wide variety of subjects. Who has had a great impact on you in making you whatever you are today? There are several people. Two people who have impacted me the most are Mahatma Gandhi and Subramanya Bharathi. I can never ever tire of reading their books and books on them. Early in my life, I got the chance to understand what they were saying. This got so deeply etched in my mind, that even now, I have to just scratch my memory on some of those ideas for an intellectually fulfilling experience, every time. You are not a person who loses his temper easily. But what or who would make you upset or make you lose your temper? Dishonesty upsets me most. I get very angry when I come across people who are dishonest. I also get upset with people who pretend. I don’t get angry with people who genuinely say they don’t know. But pretension puts me off. Are you talking about people who lack credibility? People who do not inspire confidence in you? People who have a vested interest—an ulterior motive or pretend to be someone else than themselves—they upset me. But it is not difficult to see through such people in a short time. There are other types of pretensions too—like people who don’t know a subject but pretend to know it. There are times when I have put on a show of being


angry, without being angry. You know what Bharathiar said, rowdram pazhagu. It means, cultivate anger, try to learn to be angry. Showing anger as an instrument of disagreement with what you see as not right—sometimes, there is merit in doing that. Is there anything else that you disagree with totally? What about the choice between value alignment and competence? You know, something like what Jack Welch is reported to have practised in GE. I agree with that one hundred percent. I think alignment of values with the organisation is far more critical. Competence that is not aligned with the organisation is counter-productive and often destructive. If someone much younger than you came to you and asked you for advice on how to become a leader, what would you say? I certainly think that today we have a lot more ambitious people. When we were young, the environment was not very supportive of risktaking. Even our parents did not encourage us to take risks, because the environment was not supportive. And, therefore, we did not have enough enterprise, we did not pursue excellence. We only had a large number of good or average people. Now it is different. We have a lot more young people willing to take risks and choosing to be different. You need not study only Engineering or Medicine in order to succeed in life. In our time, you could not have dreamt of so many options. Risk was not a part of our choice at all. Today it is far easier to choose what one wants to do. In that sense, I keep saying that the younger generation should think in an entrepreneurial way. I would like to interpret business leadership itself as having to do with entrepreneurship. Are you implying that you cannot find a truly professional business leader? No, I am not implying that. Even as a professional manager one takes many entrepreneurial decisions. So, I am only saying that the younger people of today should seek to be entrepreneurial, should seek excellence. When you look at the youth around you, would you say that the changing aspirations and expectations are sustainable? Yes, I believe so. Enterprise can be sustainable if there is an environment that encourages entrepreneurship without suffocating the spirit and if there is a source to fund the idea. Even if you are not looking at entrepreneurship, the environment has to be enabling. Such an environment exists in India today, which is good. It may not be as advanced as the environment in the US, but it does not matter. If the environment has a critical mass of people, it will be sustainable.


What do you think are five most important characteristics of effective business leadership? Honesty, forward-looking, determination, team spirit, and I would say—if I can bundle two things together—intelligence and innovation. When you use the word forward-looking, do you mean a vision? A leader is someone who will show a certain picture that is not evident to the rest of the group. He opens a window for others to see a different world. However difficult it may be—in fact, the more difficult it is, the more critical leadership issue is—the ability to get the group to move along with the conviction and determination in that direction. I am not saying forward-looking necessarily in terms of time dimension. To me, it is a different way of looking at things than what we see currently. Something like having a futuristic approach? Yes, futuristic approach, not necessarily on the time dimension. An approach that is not self-evident. Can you name for me about 10 business leaders who you admire, say in the past 50 years? There are enough Indian business leaders that I don’t have to even look outside. It must have taken tremendous foresight for someone like F.C. Kohli to go to Europe and state that India is not only about snakes and cattle, but we can write a software programme for them. To convince people in the Western world to seriously think of India as a centre for software in those days was pioneering work. Again, there is some tremendous leadership in the manner in which Ratan Tata did his job as Chairman of the Tata group. From where it was when he took over to the present day. To take on the many dimensions, like the businesses in which they operate, the structures, the people—it demonstrates tremendous leadership. He showed great determination and perseverance to stay the course. Obviously Narayana Murthy comes to my mind for what he has done not only for IT, but because he has established as a successful stand-alone business model for India. I greatly respect him for that. I would also give credit to Vaghul as a leader for different reasons. Vaghul was not only a great intellectual but showed the way forward for an institution like ICICI. He had tremendous breadth and depth of knowledge. I was on the board of ICICI when Vaghul and Kamath proposed that we should move into banking, from being a development institution. It required tremendous courage to bring about this change since the process was very


complex. I learnt a lot from Vaghul including the fact that a leader does not need to be in the front always. Tarun Das of CII is another leader. I have watched him closely. He built a completely new dimension to the CII. He created a vision for CII, he built this brand and he brought together powerful business people. Tarun never spoke a word in public but was always a behind-the-scenes leader. That is great leadership for me. One person that I don’t know enough, but I have seen from a distance is Parvinder Singh of Ranbaxy. He brought in the idea that the globalisation of the Indian pharma industry is possible. What about the leaders of some of the emerging sectors and industry? They have all made great progress. But I think there is a difference. When you mention Kohli or Vaghul, they were not swimming along with the current. A lot of growth today comes from what is happening around you in the economy. So, I think business leadership has to be admired for its ability to swim against the flow. That is why I admire Narayana Murthy more for the business model that he has adopted than for what he has done for the IT industry. You must have heard of the concept of co-leadership. When you look at most successful business leaders, you would invariably find equally effective co-leaders. What do you think of this? I think it is distributed leadership that is important. I cannot think of any success of leadership without the leader distributing leadership right across his whole team. A leader cannot say, ‘others are zero, I am the hero.’ If you study Gandhi closely, he practiced several things that are lessons in leadership. For instance, I have always marvelled at his idea of the salt Satyagraha. It was symbolism at its best. The very concept was revolutionary. He was able to connect with people immediately. He always consciously developed people around him who could express different views and different shades of opinions—somewhat like creating different viewpoint positions in an organisation. And he steered the course by getting people to lead the way and then joining course. It is about developing leadership in others and developing leaders at all levels. To what extent do you think ego plays a part in leadership? I think there is no way you can shake off the ego. Everybody has an ego. At the same time, I don’t think ego is essential for leadership. If ego is mulishly believing that your own way is correct and that you cannot retract from your defined position, then that is destructive. A true leader does not stick to his stand if he learns on the way that


it is based on some incorrect premise or he has been wrong in his judgement. He should be willing to change or modify his stand. If I told you that most business leaders in India have emerged from the middleclass and therefore have made middle-class values important for leadership, what would you say? I don’t think it would be right to say that. I think enterprise is born only when you have a great necessity. Therefore, I think the fertile ground is even below the middle class. During the course of this discussion, we have looked at leadership and entrepreneurship together. So, I am talking about an entrepreneur-business leader. I think you would tend to see successful entrepreneurship-leaders only from an environment or areas that are not naturally endowed. Take the example of the Marwaris or Sindhis or Punjabis. They have all become successful entrepreneur-leaders only because they were from an environment not naturally endowed or were constantly facing political upheavals in history. There was a compulsion for them to take risks and be entrepreneurial. You will not find many such entrepreneurs from South India. The middle class—which has a fairly secure environment—may not create many entrepreneur-business leaders. Unfortunately in this country, the economically lower sections of the society have not had access to education and hence we have missed millions of entrepreneurs. The other point is that I don’t think there is anything called middle-class values. Ultimately, values are a result of your upbringing, which is strongly influenced by the environment. If you look at India, if I said that you do not find many Indian women in business because our society does not encourage it, what would you say? I think our society is not at all supportive of women coming out of their dependency. Again, you can see more of this in the middle class. In the lower classes, you see the women toil on par with men if not more. In today’s context, do you think Indian values are getting eroded? I don’t want to use the word ‘eroding’. They are surely changing. For example, austerity and simplicity were regarded strong values in the olden days. We did not consider it correct to flaunt our wealth or position. Today, that is changing. And I don’t think this is wrong. Today the value is to compete, to win and to celebrate your success. That cannot be termed erosion of values. Being independent today is a good value. In our time, we believed in mutual dependence. In a competitive environment, it will take independence for the human spirit to flower.


You are the President of the CII and hence I will not ask you any direct questions on Indian business. But if I put it to you that the way Indian business is growing in recent years it will not be sustainable in its current form and format, what would you say? I would totally agree with that. I have always been saying exactly this in many fora. The current paradigm that we are pursuing is a paradigm that is not based on critical mass of innovation. It is based on conversion capability and labour arbitrage. It can be a starting point, but that will not be sustainable in the long run. Second, it is not sustainable because of the way in which we are using up the resources. Take for example, our energy consumption level—scarcity of resources itself will make the model unsustainable. What about leadership challenges? The challenges are no different. I think we have to look at it from the country’s perspective, to seek breakthrough technologies for the future. I think leadership in that respect is absent. We don’t have the kind of leadership that can think of 20 years from now. We are far too concerned with the current growth of the economy. As per your reported MBTI Type, when you face stress on account of anything, you would tend to become very aggressive and arrogant, you may seem detached and reserved and you may become hypersensitive. That is the time you may express your emotions and sentiments that may not come naturally to you. What do you say? That doesn’t sound like me at all! I rarely have stress. I think the reason I don’t have stress is because if you have been brought up in an environment that has had a high spiritual content, you tend to become detached. I have not faced any stress that I cannot think through rationally and manage through detachment. I think I have detached compartments in my mind. When I do something I can do it with total commitment and I can also easily shut off things from my mind if I want. If I were to leave this company tomorrow, I can do it with detachment. I may first want to complete some of the unfinished tasks that I have initiated. Would you like to make any concluding remarks? I think you have covered a lot. Let me just say this in conclusion. Although values are changing in this country, there are still certain values, which form a part of our DNA The concern for others (whether within organisation or outside), the concept of what is right


and wrong—these are strong values. I also believe that corporate governance in India has taken deep roots. Therefore it is easier to build governance values in India compared to the West. This is because of the Indian DNA. It was also because of this that Gandhiji was able to bring disparate groups of people together. I cannot think of any other instance in world history when one person was able to galvanise people by appealing to their values. This is also proven in our history of being invaded by others. The value of pulling ourselves as one is great in India. We respond when exhorted to come together and achieve a vision or a strong purpose.

Captain G.R. Gopinath, Chairman and Managing Director, Air Deccan, Bangalore THE COMPANY Air Deccan, India’s first low-cost carrier, is a business unit of Deccan Aviation Private Limited, India’s largest private helicopter charter company. Formed in 1995, Deccan Aviation Private Limited has carved a niche for itself in the Indian aviation scene with its reputation for providing speedy and reliable helicopter services for company charters, tourism, medical evacuation, offshore logistics and a host of other services. Air Deccan has 48-seater ATR-42s in operation in its fleet. In India, this aircraft has already proven to be a highly successful one, both for its efficiency and cost effectiveness. Air Deccan also has 180seater Airbus A320s. These new generation fly-by-wire aircraft, with plush leather seats and drop-down televisions have brought about low-fare inter-metro connectivity, bringing various destinations on the airline’s air map. The company has recently acquired 72-seater ATR-72 aircraft with superior engine power and improved interiors for a very comfortable flying experience. Air Deccan has adopted a ‘lean-and-mean’ approach to staffing and aims at maintaining a low aircraft-to-employee ratio. It has some of the most experienced administrators, aircrew and engineers on our rolls. A good work culture coupled with a skilled workforce is the backbone of the company. The company has won many recognition and awards including the ‘Most Innovative Company’ by Business Standard and ‘Editors Choice Award’ by the Indian Express.


CAPTAIN G.R. GOPINATH Gopinath was born in a remote village called Gorur in Karnataka. After his schooling in the village, he joined the National Defence Academy and later graduated from the Indian Military Academy as a Commissioned Officer in the Indian army. He served in the army for eight years. He took premature retirement from the army in 1979 and started farming, including sericulture. He won the Rolex International Award for Enterprise in 1996 for this effort. Gopinath started the aviation business with Deccan Aviation Services in 1995. Highly successful, he then started Air Deccan in 2003. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the ‘Chevalier de la Legion d’ Honneur’ from the French Government. When you meet Captain Gopinath, you will wonder how this simple person could possibly have so much passion and energy. You will also wonder how such an individual created a virtual revolution in the aviation sector. He comes across as a person who is driven by a deep concern for society. He appears to be a true believer in India and its people. He also sincerely believes that his background helps him understand the common man and his concerns. Captain Gopinath, thank you for agreeing to meet with me for my book. This is in three parts. Let us start with the first part, you as an individual. What are some of your core values? Let me start by giving you some background to my life. I was born in a remote village called Gorur in Karnataka. In those days, these villages did not have any schools. In fact, 25 or 30 villages together would have one primary school. The distance of travel could be six to eight kilometers. So, that was the condition in those days. Villagers used to come by walking, crossing the river, walking through the fields and then attend the school. My father was a schoolteacher. He also looked after our agricultural land. He used to work on the land himself and also supervise the work. They were not typically farmers in that sense. They were partly farmers, partly something else. We did not have the LKG, UKG or Kindergarten or anything like that. My father told me that he would teach me at home for the first four years and said that I should join straightaway the 5th standard. So, I never had schooling for the first four grades. I went straight to the 5th grade. My father’s sense of commitment, hard work and sincerity rubbed off on me. On the one hand, he advocated empathy for others. He always used to tell my mother to look after the poor boys and girls in


the village. He used to say that nature always helps people in its own way, and if you went against nature, it would punish you. His example was always the poor people. This empathy for the poorer sections of the society in some way got imbibed in me. After my schooling, I appeared for a competitive examination to get into the defence services. I took a bus in the night and arrived at the venue in the morning. The question paper was in English, and I could not fare well, because I had studied earlier in Kannada school and could not understand the questions. I told my school headmaster to write to the examiners to have the exam in Kannada. Then I succeeded. I got selected in the armed forces. I was not driven by any passion to be a soldier or anything like that. It was just to seek new life and to just go out of the village. You know, we have a saying in Kannada that means, ‘the home, the village, the community and then the country’. It means that we should just go out and explore the wider world. Though my father approved of my joining the army, my mother was never in favour of it. In any case, I joined the army. I was posted to far-away places. I participated in the Indo-Pak war of 1971. What I witnessed around me disturbed me a lot. It shook me completely, all this suffering and friends killing each other. You know, you drink together, you are friends and then suddenly you fight each other. I could not take it any longer. I wrote to my father that I wanted to resign and do something else. I found the army too regimented and not adequately challenging my intellectual curiosity. My father was shocked because I had no other specific plans. I went through a phase of depression, of turmoil. Are you religious? Not in the sense of worshipping an idol. It was more in the sense of accepting the world as it is. It is like accepting someone called God. Please continue with what you were saying. I came back from the army. During one of my discussions with my father and his uncle, I asked about our family lands. They said there was a piece of land owned by us quite far, inaccessible, about 100 kilometers from our village. They said it was barren and nothing was being cultivated there. I decided to visit that place and see what I could do. I wanted to discover something. When I visited the place I was amazed. There was a river flowing by the side of the land, there were shrubs all around, there was thick undergrowth. I started wondering what I could do to change the place. I wanted to convert it into a farm. The idea of working on the land was exciting to me. I returned to our


village and told my father to hand over the land to me and said that I would like to start farming there. You may call it my vision or dream or anything. I borrowed some money and started working on the land. I cultivated about 40 acres of land. After two years of work, I found that this was not producing any profits to enable me repay the loan I had taken. So I started asking myself some questions. I knew that there was something wrong with the way we were farming. The input cost was increasing but the revenue was shrinking. I knew it was not sustainable. It had to be done differently. In our grandfather’s time, we used to get crop throughout the life of the land. But I was not getting any such thing. I found that we were using fertiliser and using pesticides and all that to kill the termites. On the other hand, we were also saying that each of the insects on the land was nature’s way of making the land fertile. It is the force of nature. One termite lays probably 20,000 eggs a day. There is no way you can get rid of termites completely. I wrote a number of articles in the papers on this subject. I discovered that if something was not ecologically friendly, it would not be economically viable. You cannot work against nature. You must make nature work for you. So I started sericulture and silkworm culture. This was very satisfying financially and otherwise. I cleared all the loans. I also won the award for this effort of mine. To me, this was a means of sustainable development. I did a lot of work on water management and things like that. My father’s values of hard work and commitment became even stronger values in me. By this time, my daughter was growing up and moved to Bangalore for her education. My wife also moved to Bangalore. So, I divided my time between the farm and Bangalore. I also started realising that India cannot, under any circumstance, remain a socialist state. We had to move towards capitalism and free market. The political environment by this time was also changing and becoming more progressive. I believe that we cannot compete with international companies on things like toothpaste. We had to do something entirely different based on our own culture, our own heritage. Deep within me, something was evolving. One day, a friend of mine from the army told me that he had retired and was going to join a local courier company as a Regional Manager. I was shocked. I said, ‘you were an outstanding pilot, how could you spend your time in a courier company?’ So, when I heard that from my friend, I decided that we have to do something. The country was reforming fast. The environment was changing. At that time, we did not have any helicopter service in the public domain.


There were a handful of choppers owned by some businessmen. There was one public sector company with limited service. But there was nothing for the general public. I decided that we could provide chopper services for mining, oilrigs, tourism, geological survey and a host of other usages. The opportunity was there. So, I told my friend that we would become entrepreneurs and start a company offering helicopter services. I knew in my gut that we could not fail. This country had so many pilots, so many engineers—not so many helicopters. So, we started with one helicopter. Today we have over 12 choppers in service. The idea became very popular and we established ourselves as a major player in this business. We today have operational bases in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Surat, Delhi, Kashmir and other major cities and towns. We tied up with hotels and other service operators to promote the idea of using helicopters to access remote areas. We travelled to all places to explore possibilities. We did not take no for an answer. We have been profitable in this business of ours, though we are not very big. During this time, the country was changing and had changed in many ways that I did not realise. I saw the changes yet did not see the changes in a sense. This country was full of optimism. It was unlike the past. India was emerging. The diffidence had vanished. Social and cultural changes were taking place. Somewhere, somehow, there was an opportunity to utilise this emergence. When I flew over villages, I could see the TV antennas from rooftops of hutments. I said to myself, ‘by God, we are missing something here!’ This is a country of one billion hungry people wanting to be subsidised, but one billion people hungry for consumption. They were one billion consumers in the making. It sounds like what Kishore Biyani told me about the vast Indian consumers during his interview. Do you mean something like that? Yes. We are talking about one billion customers, two billion hands to produce and one billion mouths to feed. The question I asked myself was, ‘if all of them are buying TVs and other things, why are they not flying?’ Somehow aviation had not been a part of this emerging India. I said I must change this. Very few people were flying but not the majority of the middle class people. Regardless of all the archaic rules and regulations that we had, I was confident that we could make it happen. People may be divided on communal or class lines, but they are not blind to end results. Even while measuring the performance of the government, they would like to see results that impact their day-to-day lives. They are essentially consumers. I said to myself that


ultimately consumers would dictate state policies, not the government. This is assisted by the changes happening elsewhere. So, to cut the story short, we started the low-cost airline, Air Deccan in 2003. This has caught on so well that today, we have 37 aircraft in a period of 36 months. We have plans to acquire one aircraft every month for the next 80 months. We worked on our strategy, our business model and all related issues. We never doubted whether we should go in for this business. It was only a question of how and when. We knew that the middle class of this country offered a massive market. I believe that there is a potential to fly nearly 50,000 flights a day to fly nearly one billion people. Today, we have over 300 million people of middle class. In the next 25 years if we can make each one of them fly four times a year, the market potential would be huge. We are today offering only about one thousand flights a day. Imagine the gap that exists! Do you consider yourself a business leader at all, and in what way? I never thought about it that way. It is just the way my mind works. For me, the idea has to be very powerful. You need to be passionate about the purpose. It has to come naturally to you. The challenge has to be there. Changing the country, for example, is a very powerful motive. What are some of your greatest strengths? I think one is the ability to think of ways to get things done. I never ever take no for an answer from anyone. I believe there is always a way to get things done. I can give you many examples for this. One example that happened recently was when my COO came to me and said that one engine from Rolls Royce could not be dispatched because they were waiting for an LC (Letter of Credit) from us. That was Friday, and there was no way the LC could be established before Monday. I asked my COO if he had spoken with the President of Rolls Royce. I said to him, ‘go and speak with the President. Tell him that the LC will be there on Monday. Of course, make sure it is there on Monday.’ My COO later told me that everything had been resolved satisfactorily. It is like that for me. The second strength is my tenacity like perseverance. I do not give up. I stay the course. The third is my ability to inspire confidence in others. I can make others see what I am seeing. What are some of the leadership characteristics you admire? I would say honesty, inspiring, fair-mindedness, courage of conviction and determination. These are very important for any business leader to succeed.


Can you list for me some business leaders you admire? They can be Indian or others. I would say Sam Walton, Narayana Murthy, Lee Iacocca, Steve Jobs of Apple and Fred Smith of Fedex. Did you find anything common in them as leadership characteristics? Yes, those five characteristics that I mentioned earlier. Do you find that Indian business leadership is different in any way? I think it is different for historical and cultural reasons. I think the business leaders in the West have a better environment, conducive for innovation. But if you take Indian business leaders, we have really not done much in terms of innovation. What we have done so far is not something revolutionary or out of the box. We need to be innovative. Otherwise we cannot grow. We also need to identify ourselves with nature and see how we can use nature to our advantage. For example, see what Bill Gates did for Microsoft or Steve Jobs did for Apple or Stevenson did for steam engines or Edison did for electric bulbs. These were innovative ideas. We need that mindset. What in your opinion are the leadership challenges for the future? I think the leadership challenges are mindless globalisation and mindless homogenisation. We tend to forget our own culture and heritage. This is a major challenge for the future leaders. We need to apply our mind and thought to our own nature and culture. The big challenge is to maintain and preserve our heritage. For example, if we only consume our ecological endowments, who will take of the ecological treasures such as the forests, flora and fauna that we have? You cannot have tape recorders replace musicians, and you cannot have tigers replacing all other animal species. We need all to exist in balance. In conclusion, my advice for youngsters who want to become business leaders is, ‘follow your heart, have perseverance, be determined.’

NOTE 1. Gita Piramal, Business Maharajas, New Delhi: Penguin, 1996, p. 372.

6 INTERPRETATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

AND

LESSONS

I believe that the distinctive characteristics of Indian business leadership have evolved over a period of about 150 years as a result of, and conditioned by the Indian environment. By environment, I mean the social, political, economic and the technological frameworks that govern the way we live, the ideas that we cherish, and the manner in which we manage our businesses. My view is that the mooring of Indian business leadership in the social, cultural and political environment of the country is deeper than that of its Western counterparts. I also believe that Indian business leaders have a greater and deeper sense of values. These values have been conditioned by their social, cultural and political background. The Indian business leaders have an implicit sense of what is right and what is wrong. They appear to be able to manage seemingly contradictory factors. They value the rights of individuals to differ while simultaneously believing in a rigid hierarchical system with rules and regulations. They respect creativity and innovation while simultaneously nurturing a sense of stability and safety. They lead a much more complex system of people and processes.


Indian Business History in the 20th Century Let us now consider the business enterprises operating from the early part of the 20th century until 1990. These included the Godrej Group established by Ardeshir and Pirojsha Godrej in 1897; the Birla Group established by Shiv Narayan Birla in the mid 19th century and later developed by Ghanshyam Das Birla; the Tata Group established by Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata in the late 19th century and later developed by J.R.D. Tata; the Kirloskar Group established by Laxmanrao Kirloskar in 1888 and later developed by S.L. Kirloskar; the Bajaj Group established by Jamnalal Bajaj in the early 20th century and later developed by Rahul Bajaj; and the Murugappa Group established by Murugappa Chettiar in the late 18th century. They were mostly traders with a few manufacturing plants in fields such as steel and textiles. The ideology of socialism adopted by the Congress party and the resultant principle of self-sufficiency protected these businesses from foreign competition and imported goods. Apart from when they were first set up, the leadership of these businesses was primarily concerned with the maintenance of the status quo in their organisation with hardly any incentives for innovation, break-through ideas or revolutionary changes. Even when they were first set up, most of these business organisations were closely intertwined with the political ideology of the freedom struggle and had nation building as a concomitant principle and value. Indian business leaders at this time were greatly impacted by the political ideology and inspired by notions of patriotism. Laxmanrao Kirloskar, Ghanshyam Das Birla and Jamnalal Bajaj were all considered close associates of Gandhi and were influenced significantly by the great man’s ideology. It is true that many of them had great vision. Almost all of them nurtured strong values such as loyalty and social welfare. They possessed many leadership traits such as intelligence, stamina, courage, energy and determination. Almost all of them adopted a leadership style that was autocratic or benevolent, directive-oriented, hierarchy-bound and rule-driven. Since many of the businesses were family-managed, there was this practice of a lala culture in organisations when the head of the family was also considered the wisest and the ultimate decider. The economic environment of the early independent years often governed how business was managed and led. According to Dwijendra Tripathi,1 ‘the absence of inducement from the environment also explains why the business profession did not attract new elements into its fold—why new businessmen did not emerge from those groups and sections among the Hindus, that, under

Interpretations and Lessons for the Future 249

the time-honoured social divisions, had been traditionally engaged in other occupations. With the existing opportunities having been already pre-empted by the mercantile classes, for whom business had been a prescribed occupation for generations, others could have thought of transcending their own prescribed occupational boundaries to enter business profession only if there were a definite expansion of opportunities, generating a sufficiently higher expectancy of reward than they derived from their current occupations. This was hardly possible, given the static condition of the business situation.’ The impetus provided by post-independent India gave rise to a number of new entrants in Indian business. These included Dhirubhai Ambani of Reliance, Nambiar of BPL, Mammen Mappillai of MRF, Mittal of Ispat, Brijmohan Lall Munjal of Hero Honda, Anantharamakrishnan of Amalgamations, Uttambhai Mehta of Torrent, Karsanbhai Patel of Nirma, Raju of Nagarjuna Group, Raunaq Singh of Apollo Tyres, Nanda of Escorts and Bhai Mohan Singh of Ranbaxy. These entrepreneurs— many of them first generation—seized the opportunities presented to them and created business enterprises that were to become global after the liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991. But, they mostly remained family-enterprises. The other seemingly conflicting and significant characteristic of post-independent Indian business is the fact that most of the business houses, owned and managed by families, were on the verge of family splits. This started in the 1950s (with the split of the Sahu-Jain family business) and has continued even today. Urbanisation, Westernisation, higher education of the new generation of family members and changing socio-cultural landscape have all contributed to this phenomenon. As many as 25 family business houses have split during the last 25 years. These have included names such as the Birlas, Modis, Bajajs, Singhanias, Bangurs, Mafatlals, Kirloskars and more recently, the Ambanis. Despite this, control in family-owned business organisations has remained largely within the family. Recognition of the need for inducting professional leadership has been slow in coming and only a few organisations such as Eicher and Murugappa have gone ahead in this direction. The economic environment is closely tied to the political environment. As I said earlier, under political environment, the early part of independent India’s economic environment was one that was inwardlooking, closed and controlled by the government. Until the early 1980s, industry was expected to obtain licenses from the government for establishing facilities and for expansion of existing facilities. India’s


literacy rate was about 35 per cent at the time of independence. Foreign exchange reserves were low. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was not actively encouraged and consequently, the FDI inflow remained insignificant. The private sector was not allowed the necessary freedom and individual enterprise was not a quality that was promoted. The capital market was considered to be the playing field of a select few. Wealth creation was considered a social stigma. Public sector undertakings were present in almost every sphere of economic activity—from food processing to steel making. The few private sector enterprises that existed and grew were those left over from the British Raj. While the world was moving towards economic reforms and the concept of free enterprise, Indian industry was grappling within the clutches of the government. It was only post-1991 that Indian business started its outward-looking approach. The impact of globalisation started being felt in India too. Indian business leadership was impacted by this economic environment to a great extent. During the first 50 years after independence, satisfying the government and its bureaucracy was paramount in the minds of the business leaders. Not until the later half of the last decade of the 20th century did any Indian business leader consider realigning his or her organisation to the emerging needs of a fast globalising India. Orientations such as customer-focus, employee motivation, participative style of management and team leadership were all theories until then. Seshasayee of Ashok Leyland explains the impact of this environment on Indian business leadership as, ‘I certainly think that we need a lot more people who are ambitious than when we were young. When we were young, the environment was not very supportive of risk-taking. Even our parents did not encourage us to take risks, because the environment was not supportive. And, therefore, we did not have enough enterprise, not enough excellence. We only had a large number of average people. Now it is different. So, we will have a lot more young people who will take risks and choose to be different. You need not study only engineering or medicine in order to succeed in life. In our time, you could not have dreamt of such options. Risk was not a part of our choice at all. Today it is far easier to choose what one wants to do. In that sense, I constantly say that the younger generations should think in that direction. I would like to interpret business leadership as having to do with entrepreneurship.’ India’s diversity is intriguing and often frightening in its challenge. Language, religion, caste, class and community differences have continued to create barriers. Nowhere else in the world do we get see such


diversity. Yet Indian society is considered tolerant and mild. Tolerance to other religions or beliefs has been a way of life. The high familyorientation of Indians resulted in reinforcing this at the work place. In the business context, this often translated into a paternalistic style of leadership. Leaders were often looked upon and revered as father figures.

Indian Business Leadership Today Today, India is different. Everything has changed. The Indian business leadership has woken up to the reality of a globalised world, technological advancements, communication revolution and information explosion. No longer are employees prisoners of their own organisational constraints and narrow confines. They expect to be treated with respect, shown human dignity, valued for their expertise and given rewards for performance. Customers have a choice and shareholders desire wealth creation. Corporate governance has become something that organisations should embrace enthusiastically in order to sustain and grow. Indian business leaders have had to realign their thinking and styles to this new world. The extended families of yore have given place to nuclear families. More women are seen at work. It is reported that India has the largest population in the world in the age group of 15–40. Thanks to the economic liberalisation and globalisation, coupled with increasing literacy and education, the Indian workforce is getting younger. For example, the average age of employees at Infosys is reportedly only 27 years. This would have been unbelievable some decades ago. Even among the new-age entrepreneurs, many are not older than 35. The aspirations of the youth are changing at a rapid pace. Consumerism is catching on together with a higher level of disposable income. Indian business leadership is battling complex issues of the changing social environment. There has been a virtual revolution in telecommunication. It is reported that India has over 80 million Internet users and that about two and a half million are added each month. Computers seem to have invaded every place—both at work and at home. With the increase in the number of women going to work, automation of household work—in the form of cooking ranges, washing machines and the like—has come to stay. There has been an explosion in the entertainment industry. Banks like ICICI have embraced technology so much that it has created an entirely new breed of users of banking services.


A significant change that has unfolded in the Indian business scenario in recent times has been the background of its leaders. Unlike their predecessors of the pre-independence era, these business leaders have had the benefit of higher education—many of them having studied in the US or Europe—which has enabled them to appreciate the changing reality of globalisation and its complexity. The decision-making process in business has become far more informed. Communication with partners within and outside organisations has improved significantly. Technology has helped them gain competitive advantage. Every one of the Indian business leaders I met said that they were conscious of the values they cherished. Almost everyone mentioned integrity, honesty and ethical standards as their core values. They believe that they cannot sustain their business, let alone grow it, unless it is founded on the bedrock of values. Indian business leaders do not differentiate between personal and professional values. For them, the value set is one. These leaders also seem to be of the view that Western business leadership may not have the same sense of core values. They may not have a vision—at least not one that would fit into our academic understanding of the definition and at least not one that they can articulate easily. But every one of them has a dream to perform and a dream to excel. Some of them described this to me as their futuristic-orientation. They are able to visualise where they would like their organisations to be in the future. People like Kiran Mazumdar would like to even differentiate between building good business from building great organisations. They would like to look at the future within the constraints of the present. Bhaskar Bhat says that his major concern is not what his customers want today, but what they may like to buy in the future. He is concerned if his organisation will be able to anticipate the change in aspirations and expectations. They may not have a ‘devil-may-care’ attitude to work and life, but are adventurous. They are not reckless, but only less scared of risktaking than their fathers and grandfathers. They would like to set on an adventurous course. They want everything done fast. They are not given to procrastination. They cannot wait to be served. Resultorientation is getting a higher premium these days. Seshasayee says, ‘I certainly think that today we have a lot more ambitious people.’ They do not fear competition from external sources. On the contrary, they seem to enjoy such competition. What they are concerned about is if they will be able to compete with themselves. Can they raise the bar of excellence for themselves continuously? Almost all


the business leaders I interviewed said that the constant comparison between the economies of India and China was not necessary at all, since each had its own strengths and weaknesses. They believe that China’s entry into the globalised business world has opened great opportunities for India to re-focus its attention and resources. When I told him that the comparison with China helped India raise its own bar of excellence, Ravi Kant of Tata Motors said, ‘Yes, I agree with that view. Earlier, we used to think Europe or Japan was growing because it was Europe and Japan. Now, China has shaken India up from its stupor, its slumber. I agree with you. So, I take the competition with China as a very positive thing to have happened. But we need not fear China. We need not become obsessed with China. We should play upon our strengths. I agree that the pace of India’s growth is slow. But we will make up.’ They are passionate about what they do and have deep convictions. Bhaskar Bhat says ‘…the other most important, I think, is the power of conviction—internal conviction. That is, you are passionate about something. It could be a passion even about excelling and it may not be for a goal or objective. If you take Narayana Murthy, it may be his passion to excel and create wealth for a large number of people. This passion then comes through in all your activities. I don’t know whether passion and ambition are linked, I don’t think they are.’

Characteristics of Admired Leaders A summary of the responses to the questionnaire is given later in the book. Among 20 characteristics of admired leaders that I presented to each of the business leaders I interviewed, the five that were ranked most admired were honesty, competence, inspiring, forward-looking and fair-mindedness. These also correlate with what they said as their values during my interviews with them. The five least important characteristics were loyalty, independence, cooperativeness, maturity and supportiveness. One of the reasons for ranking these as least important could be the changed business scenario and social environment. No longer do employees or organisations consider loyalty as a key dimension. Loyalty seems to be important more as a personal characteristic than as a leadership characteristic. Indian business leaders seem to believe that loyalty is something that has to be earned through inspiration and not demanded through coercion. Independence is no


longer a key, as the leaders realise that we are today living in an interdependent environment. Though cooperativeness and supportiveness may sound very much as key characteristics, these are factors that leaders believe they must demonstrate not by being overly peopleoriented but by being empathetic. These leaders believe that maturity will come from age and experience.

Development of Leadership Capability A summary of responses to the questionnaire is given later in the book. I asked the business leaders to rate themselves to indicate the degree to which they believe they practiced specific leadership capability characteristics. This questionnaire was adapted by me from the one used by the government of Australia in their civil service. The top five characteristics identified by the leaders were demonstrating professionalism and probity (adhering to and promoting the organisational values and ethical framework as set out in the organisation’s code of conduct; serving the organisation irrespective of personal preferences; implementing policies and programmes based on corporate decisions rather than personal views), engaging with risk and showing personal courage (being prepared to be forthright and ‘tell it like it is’ and not how people might like it to be); being independent-minded and willing to challenge ideas and confront issues; being prepared to acknowledge when in the wrong and learning from mistakes; also being prepared to ask for help and valuing advice from others), committing to action (being determined, highly motivated and action-oriented; taking personal responsibility for getting things done and for the success of the organisation; handling issues proactively and trying to shape events; not procrastinating; readily investing energy and initiative into progressing work), communicating clearly (producing userfriendly verbal and written communication that is clear and concise; ensuring unambiguous delivery of the message and checking that it has been understood as intended; keeping people up-to-date and fully informed of any changes to the original communication) and showing judgement, intelligence and commonsense (grasping complexity and identifying issues that tend to be overlooked by others; thinking through problems from various angles, and analysing them dispassionately and objectively; probing and critically evaluating information before applying both intellect and experience to the final judgement; being willing and able to question traditional assumptions and practices


rather than taking things as given; having the capacity to provide originality of thought and develop innovative solutions). Out of the five identified by the Indian business leaders as characteristics that they practiced most often, three—demonstrating professionalism and probity, committing to action and communicating clearly come under the broad term ‘exemplifying personal integrity and drive’. This corroborates with what these leaders told me during my interview with them.

Personality Type The education system followed in Indian schools of business and management generates graduates with personality types that are often ‘atypical’ of them, leading to increased levels of work-place stress and social pressures, resulting in a less-than-desired quality of life. Earlier surveys and studies in India have shown that our ‘managers’ in organisations across sectors are predominantly persons with a preference for extroversion, sensing, thinking and judging. This predominance could be because of a number of factors including their educational background and training, the cultural milieu of the society including gender bias and the perception of expectations. Our entire education system has suffered very long due to the absence of an appreciation for personality differences. We have always believed in teaching the students ‘the right’ things, irrespective of the student’s own natural preferences. We have also always believed that the paper-and-pencil mode of examination is the best way of evaluating a student’s performance, irrespective of whether the student has a natural preference for other modes of examination. Further, we have often believed that the student should develop ‘sequential, logical, analytical’ skills for effective decision-making. We have believed that we should develop a sense of ‘objectivity’ in our perceptions of things and people. We have also tried to inculcate the value in our students that in order to make them good managers, they would need to be ‘extroverts’.2 The personality type of the business leaders I interacted with makes an interesting study and negates what our business schools currently practise in their curriculum. As I said earlier in the book, surveys indicate that over 70 per cent of business leaders and managers report ISTJ, INTJ, ESTJ or ENTJ as their Type. However, the following are the reported Types of the leaders to whom I administered the MBTI questionnaire.


Kishore Biyani: INFP According to the MBTI, the INFP leaders are warm, flexible and encouraging leaders. They support individual work styles and like to involve others in decisions; prefer collegial relationships, shared rewards and consensus in decisions. They take a facilitative approach; prefer unique leadership roles rather than conventional ones; work independently toward their vision; are more likely to praise than to crticise others; encourage people to act on their ideals. In teams, they lead by promoting group efforts through the creation of a positive atmosphere and affirmation of individual members; eliciting group consensus to facilitate goals and closure; and providing vision by speaking about ideals and values. They influence team members by challenging, stimulating, provoking and convincing; encouraging others to look at new possibilities; focusing on common ideals and underlying issues. When I asked Kishore Biyani about his reported Type being INFP, he said, ‘managers and leaders are different. I always think of how much detailed a plan should be. I can tell you exactly what is happening in each of my stores—plus or minus 5 per cent. I think it is not intuition, but a science. Yes, we need data, but I mix data with social science. Social science is subjective. I think management theory does not record anything that is subjective. We try to record anything that is subjective. Management only works on hard data. I think hard data means nothing and does not deliver unless it is coupled with environment. Management theory based purely on data analysis is an incomplete way of learning. I always challenge it.’ He went on to elaborate his understanding of personality type by saying, ‘ESTJ or ENTJ may be for leaders who were responsible for maintaining something, preserving something that has already been created. Not for creating something new. They are all preservers. But we are creators. For preserving, you may be a task master focusing on goal setting, planning and prioritising. Not for creative work. The biggest creations in nature are not systemic, but different. We also should not make our creations predictable or comprehensible.’ G.V. Prasad: INTP According to the MBTI, INTP leaders lead by example. They value and display technical expertise and create consistent and orderly frameworks for working; objective, sceptical and curious; will change course as new information comes in. They lead through conceptual analysis of problems and goals; apply logical systems thinking; want


to lead other independent types while seeking autonomy for themselves; relate to people based on expertise rather than position; seek to interact at an intellectual rather than an emotional level. In teams, they lead by enabling all team members to use their skills; setting an agenda, then clarifying and staying focused on that agenda; and providing options so that decisions can be made by majority or consensus. They influence team members by using logic and reason; summarising and generalising; knowing the subject matter well and acting as a resource to others. Prasad’s response to his reported type was, ‘obviously the “I” hinders me. A leader’s job is to engage a whole lot of people and mobilise them to align into a vision. So, my “I” inhibits me. It makes me less effective. Sometimes I can be an “E”, but I am not a natural “E”. To a large extent, execution requires a “J”. Mine is a “P”. That could be one of my weaknesses. It could sometimes lead to lack of focused execution of an initiative over time. In such cases, I rely on someone else to help me with the execution part. I create mechanisms where he can take the lead and own the initiative. I can not do this with my “I” since that part of my work—engaging people—cannot be delegated to anyone else. It is an integral part of the work that I have to personally do.’ Bhaskar Bhat: INFP Bhaskar’s reported type is the same as that of Kishore Biyani, though the preference clarity category is different. When I asked him about his reported type, Bhaskar said, ‘that is quite well who I am, what you said. I agree that it is how I am. It has not impeded my effectiveness. We are a company like that. If it were some other company, perhaps I might not have succeeded. I think ESTJ or ENTJ may be very efficient in managing a company, but I am talking about transforming a company and a business. Businesses and companies should become institutions and should outlast the persons who created them.’ Niru Mehta: ENTJ Santrupt Misra: ENTJ R Seshasayee: ENTJ According to the MBTI, ENTJ leaders are analytical, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on principles and systems, overall impacts and rational assessment of outcomes; and can be tough-minded in implementing those decisions. They initiate an action-oriented, energetic approach; provide long-range plans to the organisation; manage directly—tough when necessary; enjoy complex problems and are


resourceful in managing them; run as much of the organisation as possible. In teams, they lead by providing models to enhance understanding and completion; clarifying and redirecting; and presenting a vision and energising others to active participation. They influence team members by using straightforward logic; finding the flaws in a possibility; and having total dedication to the task. Niru Mehta says, ‘I think it is right on. That is what I am. I used to be an INTJ. But over the years, I have changed into an “E”. I think I have adapted myself to suit the requirements. But, it has not caused me any stress. I have learnt some advantages of extroversion. But I think I will revert to introversion after my retirement.’ Santrupt Misra says, ‘yes, it represents who I am. However, my strength is my adaptability to change to suit the needs. I may be analytical and objective, but I can also be creative and enjoy relationships. I am able to bring in the “feeling” and “sensitivity” part into my style at work quite easily. One of my challenges is to be tough sometimes. I find it contradictory in me that I am tough yet compassionate. It does cause me stress when I respond to situations using preferences that are not my natural mental preferences. But overall, my type has helped me be effective in my leadership role. I can give you a number of examples from my professional life.’ When I told Seshasayee, ‘as per your reported MBTI Type, when you face stress on account of anything you would tend to become very aggressive and arrogant, you may seem detached and reserved and you may become hypersensitive. That is the time you may express your emotions and sentiments that may not come naturally to you. What do you say?’ He said, ‘that doesn’t sound like me at all! I rarely have stress. I think the reason I don’t have stress is because if you have been brought up in an environment that has had a high spiritual content, you tend to become detached. I have not faced any stress that I cannot think through rationally and manage through detachment. I think I have detached compartments in my mind. When I do something I can do it with total commitment and I can also easily shut off things from my mind if I want. If I were to leave this company tomorrow, I can do it with detachment. I may first want to complete some of the unfinished tasks that I have initiated.’ R. Gopalakrishnan: ESTJ According to the MBTI, ESTJ leaders are analytical, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on principles and systems, overall impacts and rational assessment of outcomes; and can be tough-minded in


implementing those decisions. They seek leadership directly and take charge quickly; apply and adapt past experiences to solve problems; get to the core of the situation crisply and directly; decide and implement quickly; and act as traditional leaders who respect hierarchy, and achieve within the system. In teams, they lead by providing direction, seeking inputs and ideas and developing a result-oriented plan; by defining and clarifying issues, goals, problems, and purposes; and by being clear about each member’s responsibility. They influence team members by challenging others to think and do their best; defining the task and identifying issues to match personal goals; modelling behaviour for getting tasks done and displaying high energy and commitment. Gopalakrishnan says, ‘I agree with that. That is what I am. I agree that over time I have had to use the “feeling” part deliberately. I think we cannot be an ESTJ or ENTJ all the time. And over a period of time in life, all of us change our preferences, based on our experiences. My ability to tolerate diversity, of complexity or uncertainty will change based on my experiences. I will not, therefore, say that ESTJ or ENTJ is irrelevance.’ Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: ENTP According to the MBTI, ENFP leaders are warm, flexible and encouraging leaders. They support individual work styles and like to involve others in decisions; prefer collegial relationships, shared rewards and consensus in decisions. They lead with energy and enthusiasm; prefer to take charge of the start-up phase; communicate and often become spokespersons for worthy causes; work to include and support people while allowing for their own and others’ autonomy; pay attention to what motivates others and encourage them to act. In teams, they lead by democratically soliciting everyone’s opinions, listening carefully and negotiating any differences; focusing on areas of agreement; and developing personal relationships with team members. They influence team members by giving them the opportunity to share by recognising and validating their contributions; including them in ideas and visions; presenting positive alternatives for considerations; exuding a contagious enthusiasm. When I explained to Kiran Mazumdar the characteristics of her reported type, she said, ‘I think everything you said is true, except perhaps the last part. I am the type who likes to take decisions by consensus. I do try to bring in a lot of new thoughts and ideas in to our discussions. I encourage people to think of different aspects of an issue. I encourage people to analyse things not just from facts but from other


factors. I can completely and easily divorce my personal equation and relationship with a person from work at hand. Very often, people are surprised by my differing views with somebody I am perceived to be “close to”. I am afraid people cannot sway me by appealing to my sentiments of emotions. I guess that also comes from a sense of fairness which calls for an unbiased frame of reference.’ Subroto Bagchi: ENFJ According to the MBTI, ENFJ leaders are warm, decisive leaders. They make decisions based on their personal values and empathy with others; strive for harmony, consensus and a supportive environment; expressive and often inspiring. They seek leadership directly and take charge quickly; apply and adapt past experiences to solve problems; get to the core of the situation crisply and directly; decide and implement quickly; and act as traditional leaders who respect hierarchy and achieve within the system. In teams, they lead by facilitating goal accomplishment through cooperation and consideration of all opinions; providing insightful, focused planning to reach the goal; and utilising the resources of all team members and assuring diversity. They influence team members by encouraging others so that all opinions may be heard; calling attention to the process as well as the content; creating a clear organisation with agendas, time lines and task accomplishments. When I told Subroto Bagchi about his reported type, he simply said, ‘that is right on the spot.’ It is interesting that these business leaders agreed readily that they were what their reported types were. It would indicate that their degree of self-awareness is high. It also confirms what I have always believed to be the reality. Leaders may be very different individually in their personality types, but share some very common leadership characteristics. I have incorporated some of what I believe to be common leadership characteristics in my framework for leadership that follows.

A Framework for Analysing Business Leadership This framework is based on what is to be expected (output) from such business leadership characteristics (input). I believe that business leadership is the process or throughput of the leadership ingredients or characteristics (inputs) and what is expected to result from such


leadership practices (output). While I have argued before that in my opinion leadership is not born but made, I also believe that certain inherent characteristics (traits, if you like) will only help leadership to develop and grow. I propose that the ingredients that make up effective business leadership would need to be rooted in the leader’s personal values (values that arise from beliefs and faiths ingrained from early childhood), awareness of self (including one’s strengths and weaknesses), professional will (determination, drive, perseverance), an orientation to the future (willingness and ability to foresee future changes), a global mindset (recognising the winds of global change), a recognition of differences (acceptance of differences and diversity not limited only by geographic dispersion or ethnic disparity) and a concern for society (concern for the less privileged sections of the society). I find it hard to accept that leaders do not do different things but only do things differently. I believe leaders DO different things. I say this not from the perspective of their characteristics but from the decisions they take and actions they implement. They always want to create something that did not exist earlier. They want to experiment with something different, something that will hopefully be path-breaking. FIGURE 1 Business Leadership—A Conceptual Framework


When you ask Narayana Murthy or Kiran Mazumdar or Azim Premji or Mallika Srinivasan if they had a definite ‘vision’ of where they wanted to go in say, 25 years, would they say they had a vision? I am sure that the answer would be in the negative.

PERSONAL VALUES The business leaders I interacted with mentioned that they did not see any difference between personal values and professional values. For them, value was one. Invariably, the values they held close to their hearts included honesty, integrity and transparency. They believe that their personal values are also reflected in the way they lead their organisations. Bhaskar Bhat of Titan says ‘I don’t want to sound too intense, but there are some things one would not like to compromise ever on—basic things like honesty, integrity and respect for individuals—whether he is working in the company or not.’ Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon says ‘Honesty is also about fairness. I really value honesty in people like I value fairness in people. I try to be as fair as I possibly can. I never want to be unfair to people in my decisions.’ She adds, ‘integrity has a broad scope. I think you are talking about a number of values when you talk about integrity. By honesty, fairness, having the courage to speak your mind, not being devious, not being manipulative, all these are qualities of integrity. Integrity is a powerful word, and encompasses all these.’ Kishore Biyani of Future Group says that apart from his core value of ‘Indianness’ his other values ‘include honesty, transparency and confidence in oneself.’ G.V. Prasad of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories says, ‘I think this will sound like a cliché for any leader, but integrity is something I will place very high on my list. To me, integrity is an umbrella term, encompassing many values and virtues. Next will be transparency in actions. Finally, I strongly believe that for any business to be sustainable, it has to be perceived as being good to society. While every company has to be ethical in all its actions, being good or a force for good must go beyond being ethical and actually add positive value to society through its business and other actions.’ Ravi Kant of Tata Motors says, ‘I think first is integrity. To me, integrity is very important. Integrity is of two kinds—financial integrity and intellectual integrity. I would lay far more importance on intellectual integrity, including honesty.’ But, personal values need not include only integrity and honesty. As Kishore Biyani says, it can also be ‘Indianness’, or as Gopalakrishnan says, ‘hard work and determination in the sense that you need to


recognise that struggles will always be there and you need to overcome those. So, that is one value for me—value of persistence, determination and hard work. The second thing that is strong in my mind relates to what differentiates a manager—his character.’ Or as Niru Mehta says, ‘the focus was on doing the best of what you can do, keeping in mind the larger benefit to the community. These are some things deeply rooted from childhood—working hard, staying focused and having integrity in everything you do.’ The above are just a few examples, but they do show that these leaders possess a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong. I therefore propose that business leaders will not be able to provide effective leadership without a strong sense of what is right and what is not. I use the word ‘integrity’ here not in terms of whether one is vulnerable to corrupt practices (as is commonly perceived) but in the sense of whether the leader is willing and able to say what he thinks and do what he says. Integrity, to me, means building credibility. I believe that business leaders need to demonstrate highest degree of credibility in order to be effective.

AWARENESS

OF

SELF

Awareness of self does not imply only being aware of one’s strengths and weaknesses. All the business leaders I interviewed were keenly aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Kishore Biyani said his strengths were, ‘my ability to envision the future, my ability to understand human dynamics, my ability to act fast without stopping and my holistic approach to issues and problems.’ Bhaskar Bhat, on similar lines, considers his strengths as, ‘I am able to deal with every one equally, without any reservation or discomfort. It is a question of how comfortable you are with dealing with the CEO or the messenger boy. I treat every one as an individual and give them respect. The second is my ability to look at the larger perspective of anything, a holistic view and the implication of any decision on many stakeholders. It is common in running my company as well as my family. I consider the multifarious implications of any action that I take.’ But awareness of strengths and weaknesses is just one dimension of awareness of self. I believe that self-awareness goes much beyond that. It demands a deep reflection of oneself. You would need to travel back in time of your life, examine those instances that gave you immense joy and happiness and those that made you feel sad or unhappy. I believe that those that gave you a sense of accomplishment


or satisfaction are indicative of the foundations of your true values. This reflection should result in a greater degree of self-exploration— identifying your values, likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses and natural preferences. Business leaders need to be aware of what really makes them whatever they are. Gopalakrishnan puts it very succinctly when he says, ‘you might have gone through many struggles in your life and learn to overcome those struggles. But in the glamour world of business, over many years, it is easy to forget that. But the struggles that I underwent in my life and the way I overcame them has remained in my mind. Therefore, I believe that you have to earn the right to be successful. It is almost like, in the catholic religion, you must have the pain and the purgatory before you go to paradise. There is no easy ride. That is, therefore, a strong part of the way I think.’ Captain Gopinath of Air Deccan says, ‘I participated in the Indo-Pak war of 1971. What I witnessed around me disturbed me a lot. It shook me completely, all this suffering and friends killing each other. You know, you drink together, you are friends and then suddenly you fight each other. I could not take it any longer. I wrote to my father that I wanted to resign and do something else. I found the army too regimented and not adequately challenging my intellectual curiosity. My father was shocked, because I had no other specific plans. I went through a phase of depression, of turmoil.’ FIGURE 2 Leadership Ingredient Development Process


I do not believe that business leaders need to be invincible or indefatigable. They may not know or do everything themselves. As Prasad of Dr Reddy’s says, he is a ‘forest person’ and his colleague is a ‘tree person’ and this helps them complement each other in sharing responsibility for running the organisation. According to Gopalakrishnan, leadership needs to be a self-taught process. He believes that leadership development process is like a ‘flower that flowers and a stream that flows’ without a deliberate or conscious effort. He argues that some of the greatest accomplishments or successes of business leaders did not lie in their having had a great vision at the beginning, but working hard and persevering toward realising what they wanted to do. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon makes a very interesting observation. According to her, the new successful Indian business entrepreneurleaders were not focused on wealth creation or profit-making when they set out to start their business. Their primary purpose was to ‘create a great organisation’ and not a good business. She distinguishes between an organisation and business, implying the business may have a profit-motive but organisation serves a larger purpose. Subroto Bagchi says, ‘leaders must have emotional self-confidence. It is not self-confidence based on your qualification, official title or experience alone.’

PROFESSIONAL WILL There may be a number of words to describe professional will. Determination, hard work and perseverance are just a few of these words. Many of the business leaders expressed this in different words. I believe that Indian business leadership is driven by a deeper sense of professional will—the drive to ‘prove a point to the world at large’, as Kiran Mazumdar says. This creates a will to succeed against odd, and the will to challenge the status quo. Captain Gopinath says, ‘I never thought about it that way. It is just that the way my mind works. For me, the idea has to be very powerful. You need to be passionate about the purpose. It has to come naturally to you. The challenge has to be there. Changing the country, for example, is a very powerful motive.’ Professional will is demonstrated through acts of courage against odds. It makes leaders swim against the tide. They engage in decisions and actions that question the present and work perseveringly toward creating a future that is hard for others to see. Professional will is also demonstrated in the leader’s capacity to tide over the obstacles


that come their way. I have not known any successful business leader who said that they could not persevere against the confining and constricting systems currently in place.

ORIENTATION

TO

FUTURE

Futuristic orientation (willingness and ability to look at the future and to foresee the future) seems an integral part of the leadership character. This is expressed in a number of different ways. Kishore Biyani says, ‘I think growth is a way of life. Change is going to happen. No one can stop it. Everything is going to change.’ Such an orientation when a leader not only accepts change as a fact of reality but is also willing to embrace change whole-heartedly is being future-oriented. Gopalakrishnan differentiates between future-orientation and vision when he says, ‘If you consider a gizmo-freak, he may be future-oriented, but may or may not have a vision consciously. I have a view which I want to share with you. Some of the greatest visionaries have been those who did not realise that they had a vision. Take examples of Bill Gates, Narayana Murthy or anyone like them. I come back to the point I mentioned earlier—the flower flowers, the stream flows. I think vision is something that is natural in every person. I don’t want to sound cynical, but I think it is the writers and academicians who attribute this vision thing to these people.’ I believe that the process of envisioning for the organisation is closely intertwined with the future-orientation of its leader. It is unlikely that a leader without a future-orientation will be able to create any meaningful vision for his organisation. Recently, I was reading an excerpt from a talk delivered by Subroto Bagchi, Vice Chairman of MindTree Consulting on the subject of Leadership for the 21st Century. I was impressed by many of the thoughts he had expressed in his speech. In his view, leadership of the 21st century would be concerned with: • Complexities and Opportunities. • Creating a vision that is global and inclusive. • Maintaining and articulating consistent values while accepting decadence. • Making sense of events and actions that are often seemingly disparate and disjointed. • Thought leadership and innovation. • Putting purpose above self.


Complexity, uncertainty and diversity are just a few of the challenges for future business leaders. I believe that it would be easier for a business leader with an orientation to the future to foresee these changes and enable his organisation to adapt to the same.

GLOBAL MINDSET Business leaders would need to have a global mindset. By global mindset I mean a mindset that would recognise the changing paradigms, changing aspirations and expectations and changing cultural character of the world beyond a country’s borders and to recognise the changes that would result within its borders. It would require courage to be open to new ideas. It would need willingness to accept dissent. It would need an expansionist mind. There is nothing that is local any longer. The world around us has been changing and changing at an unbelievable pace. More importantly, the concept of time has changed. Today, we live in a world where time zones exist only to remind us of the time difference across countries and nations and not if we can continue to work only in our own time zones. Business organisations that had earlier been succeeding in a domestic environment have suddenly found themselves competing in a globalised economy. Information explosion, through revolutionary telecommunication networks and the internet, has changed the way consumers perceive value. Organisations are expected to deliver what the consumer wants, when he wants it and where he wants the goods or services. In this scenario, business leadership too has to change its mindset. The old mindset of maintenance function has to give in to the new mindset of creation and innovation. Gopalakrishnan says that Indian business leaders have, to a large extent, benefited in developing a global mindset in their own way. He says, ‘Let me say something else also. The Indian manager is a very unique species. I can’t think of any other species anywhere else in the world, which thinks in English and acts in the local language. Most of the Indian managers read only English books, magazines and newspapers. So their thinking is in English. We are all very Englishoriented. But the social milieu is very Indian, having a local culture and highly complex. You will not find this in any other nation. As far as the American or a European manager is concerned he is AngloSaxon and thinks and does everything in English. That makes the Indian manager very unique. I am mentioning this in the context of efficiency and effectiveness. The Anglo-Saxon model of a manager is


very efficient and effective, managing his organisation successfully. But take our Prime Minister for example. Dr Manmohan Singh is very knowledgeable and competent. He is not unaware of this. He is very efficient. But he cannot be effective unless his actions are based on the Indian milieu and complexities. The Indian manager, in my opinion, has recognised this dichotomy. This is a great advantage. You cannot find it commonly in many other countries. Indian managers do it without even thinking about it consciously.’ The global mindset of Indian business leaders is evident also from the list of who they consider as business leaders. Many of them mentioned, unaided, the names of Jack Welch of GE, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, Akio Morita of Sony, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Andy Grove of Intel and Steve Jobs of Apple as some of the business leaders they admire.

RECOGNITION

OF

DIFFERENCES

Almost every business leader I met was clear that they need to not only recognise the existence of differences but also willingly accept the differences—the differences in personality types, diversity and thinking. They recognise that the aspirations and expectations of people have changed. The motivation factors have changed. The way the youth of today perceives and experiences life has changed. This is the new challenge for Indian business leadership. I believe that the understanding of differences in aspirations and expectations as well as changing behavioural patterns can be facilitated by an understanding of the theory of personality types. The MBTI may not show us the way of understanding the socio-cultural changes happening around us but can change the way we look at and perceive others and ourselves in organisations. When I asked the business leaders what they thought of the emergence of women business leaders in India, all of them said that they did not think it was a phenomenon that they ought to be sceptical about. They said that it was but natural that as the society progresses, women would assume and play greater roles in organisations. Gopalakrishnan says, ‘I think it is a good thing that is happening in India. Even though India is a male-oriented society, you will see that we in South Asia have produced women leaders in politics—Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Sirimavo Bandaranayake and Khaleda Zia. But the US has not had even one woman President so far. So, I don’t know why women should not succeed in leadership roles. For example,


they are more multi-task oriented than men. They are very good on the softer aspects of leadership. I think they would add tremendous value. The emergence of women leaders is a slow development process. I believe when the demography is changing, like in India, it is bound to happen.’ I consider this as an indicator of the willingness and the ability to recognise and accept differences at work place. G.V. Prasad of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories puts it differently. He says, ‘we do not have enough women business leaders today. I admire ICICI in this regard. They have many women in the higher echelons of management. Of course, these women have become leaders because they are exceptionally good in what they do. More women should come forward to assume leadership roles. Women generally are more emotionally aware, less self-centred and more concerned with society. Unlike the traditional command and control management systems, today it is the qualities more often associated with women that make leaders effective. A leader who is softer, gentler, more consensusdriven, more able to share his weaknesses is far more effective than a macho type.’ I believe that when these leaders speak of the recent emergence of women leaders in India, they are also implying the need to recognise and accept differences at work place.

CONCERN

FOR

SOCIETY

Every business leader today recognises the need for their organisations to be socially conscious. Many of the business leaders that I met mentioned this concern for society in different ways. Kishore Biyani identifies his concern for society when he says, ‘I have many concerns. Indian society is getting polarised everyday, in every way—religion, caste, the gap between the rich and the poor. We are concerned about that. We are concerned about India not having a great vision as a country and not having a great leadership. One of my biggest concerns is the absence of the belief in India even among the political leadership.’ Bhaskar Bhat says, ‘my major concern is really at a larger macro level. Indians are very talented and very capable. But we are suffering on account of poor education at the primary school level. The lack of access to education to every Indian—quality of education—pains me a lot. Our democracy has been well established. Perhaps we are not able to do it due to our democracy. Because of our democracy, we have multiple priorities—food, water, etc., and education has suffered. Awareness of the need for knowledge is lacking. Opportunities are a


million here. We must create the awareness for knowledge.’ Harsh Mariwala of Marico believes in another kind of contribution to the society when he says, ‘the role of an organisation in terms of its impact on society is critical. Whatever we have to do in that direction, we have to do. Even things like housekeeping. I would like to work toward development of individuals. I would like to give them a wider exposure. At one level, that is a must for any organisation. I believe that we are trying to be thought leaders. We need to generate new ideas. My idea of contribution to society is sustainable development. We have undertaken certain initiatives toward this. We talk about socially relevant issues, spread awareness about them. I think that this culture of creating awareness itself is a major contribution to the society.’ When I asked Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon what she would like to do if she were to retire from work, she said, ‘I am really excited about some of the initiatives that we have started, like the Biocon Foundation. I would like to focus on those initiatives. Areas like education. I have started a programme called ‘Arogya’ for health. I want to focus on hygiene. I also want to get into public-private partnership in areas like hygiene and health, creating awareness among the less privileged. I want to improve the quality of life, like having access to good health care, hygiene, etc. So, when I retire I would like to focus on some of these aspects.’ Prasad says, ‘one of my major concerns relates to the sustainability of our development. The economy is doing well and there is growth all around. As our vast populations become wealthier and are able to afford the better things in life, the whole consumption patterns and demand for energy will rise dramatically. This will place enormous strain on resources and will lead to severe environmental degradation as well as habitat destruction. All this will lead to declining quality of lives for everyone as also irreversible damage to the environment.’ Indian business leaders believe that their societal consciousness is not in terms of any ‘charity’ but is in terms of their deliberate attempts to be an integral part of the growth of the society they live in. I believe that business leaders who donate money to charitable causes do not serve society as well as others who spend their personal time and effort in serving some aspect of societal development. This concern for society has to come from deep within and cannot be imposed from the outside. It comes from recognition of a sense of gratitude. Society has been kind to each one of us and we need to repay the ‘debt’ in anyway we can.


RESULTS

OF

LEADERSHIP INGREDIENTS

What do these ingredient characteristics of business leadership eventually result in? I believe that they should result in serving three constituents of leadership experience. After all, as Robert Greenleaf said, the ultimate purpose of all leadership is to serve others. Business leaders would need to serve three—self, organisation and society. I believe that business leadership is expected to serve its stakeholders and itself. In my understanding, there is nothing such as a self-less business leader. At best, the self-less leader is one who shares his success with others, like creating wealth and sharing it others. This is particularly so in the business context. So, I would believe that business leadership ought to result in serving three constituents—the society, the organisation and self. FIGURE 3 Leadership Results Development Process

SERVICE

TO

SELF

Service to self will have to be in terms of personal and professional development. As James Collins mentioned in his theory of Level 5 Leadership, business leaders will need to evolve over a period of time to combine humility with will and ferocity of purpose with simplicity of action. Personal experiences will enable leaders to become more mature emotionally, look at building relationships as a core value and become better humans. It is interesting to see what some of the leaders believe success to mean. Kishore Biyani says, ‘I am not sure if we can define success generically and universally. It would depend upon an


individual. I don’t believe that success comes from achieving numbers. I would like my success to be measured by how well I am doing things that are different, doing something that is different, in helping people achieve whatever they think they can. Our thinking on success should change. We have to make a difference to the society and community in which we live.’ On the other hand, Santrupt Misra says, ‘my definition of success is different. Success to me is not where you are today. It is not the destination. It is how far you have travelled. The distance between where you started and where you have reached is success. The destination may be the same, but the distance travelled could be different.’ Niru Mehta says, ‘for example, in India, leadership does not want to be seen as purely making money. In the West, it is still about making money. What is success in Indian business leadership is different from what it is in the West. How you define success varies.’ I believe that service to self is explained by whether a business leader has grown in maturity and wisdom over years. It supposes that the leader should have become a better person than he was when he commenced his leadership journey. By practising the leadership competencies that we said earlier, the leader should have evolved into a better individual, a better human being than what he started with. The success of an individual is not always measured in terms of the wealth that he creates or the financial results that he serves his organisation with. Many students have asked me if I thought business leaders should not be seen to be enjoying their wealth. They cite the examples of Azim Premji and Narayana Murthy as business leaders who shun all forms of extravagant life style and who lead simple, austere lives. On the other hand, leaders such as Vijay Mallya of UB Group seem to be in the limelight for their flamboyant lifestyle. I believe that business leaders need not necessarily live an austere life just to demonstrate their leadership characteristics. I would tend to agree that so long as these leaders are not exploiting others to live their flamboyant lifestyle, it is acceptable. Exhibition of their wealth will not be held against them while determining whether they are indeed business leaders. My view is also in a way corroborated by Mahatma Gandhi who told his clergy friend, Charlie that the primary reason for his choosing to dress in loincloth was because he needed to be identified with the millions of poor people who he was supposed to lead in the struggle for freedom. So, if a business leader of today is leading men and women who are comparatively affluent, there is no reason why


they cannot live life the way they choose. That is why I believe that service to self is an integral component of leadership.

SERVICE

TO THE

ORGANISATION

Business performance is arguably a direct indicator of the leader’s service to the organisation. It can be in terms of the growth in sales turnover, profits, and various financial ratios. It can also include improvements in employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and shareholder value. I believe that business leaders should serve their organisations in more ways than just financial performance. We have seen many organisations that focused only on financial results not being able to sustain over a long period. Therefore, it is imperative that the business performance is also measured in other ways. One method can be the Balanced Score Card approach.3 In my view, the business leader plays a vital role in driving the organisation to focus not only on the financial results but also on the customer, the internal process and the learning and growth of employees. It is the leader who sets the agenda and draws the strategy for the organisation. We can call it the vision and mission or strategic objectives. I believe that the business leader needs to align the entire organisation to measure its performance on all these parameters. Kaplan and Norton’s model of the Balanced Score Card may be quite useful in measuring a leader’s service to his organisation. Achieving excellence and benchmarking against the best would become standards of performance. An effective business leader focuses on these and ensures that his organisation grows continuously in a sustainable manner on these parameters. This service will also lead to the ‘leaving behind a legacy’ that Max De Pree wrote about.

SERVICE

TO

SOCIETY

Service to society can be measured in many different ways. It can include charity of setting aside sums of money to be given to the needy, or philanthropy work requiring personal involvement and commitment to a cause. I am deliberately distinguishing charity from philanthropy. I believe that charity is the easier of the two. This interest in and focus on service to the society often comes out of the concern that the business leader has for the environment and society. Prasad of Dr Reddy’s says, ‘One of my major concerns relates to the sustainability of our development. The economy is doing well and there is growth all


around. As our vast populations become wealthier and are able to afford the better things in life, the whole consumption patterns and demand for energy will rise dramatically. This will place enormous strain on resources and will lead to severe environmental degradation as well as habitat destruction. All this will lead to declining quality of lives for everyone as also irreversible damage to the environment. This is one big concern that I have. Another issue I see is that rapid growth of the economy will result in asymmetric development and the gulf between the middle class and the poor will become higher. We cannot have islands of prosperity amongst all the poverty. This will also lead to social tensions and we must find ways to bridge the gap rapidly and not rely solely on market mechanisms.’ He clearly goes beyond charity. Ravi Kant of Tata Motors puts it very well when he says, ‘as far as we are concerned, this compassion for the entire community in which we operate, has always been inherent in our company. For me, Corporate Social Responsibility is just a manifestation of this compassion. It is not that we are doing “them” a favour. We should not be arrogant to say that “we” are helping “them”. It should be about an understanding of the interdependent relations between “them” and “us”. In the Tata group, we do this all the time. We realise that the relationship between the company and the community is one of interdependence. It is all about connectivity.’ I taught a course on business leadership to working executives recently. In one of the class sessions, some students asked me if a business leader could consider it as service to society if his employees are well paid and if he provided them with stock options as a means of incentive. Their argument was that this increase of wealth for individuals would lead to greater consumption and thus result in improving the standard of living in society. I am not sure if I agree with this line of thinking. To me, service to society has to go beyond creating wealth to individuals and beyond giving money to charity. I believe that service to society should encompass a genuine concern for the development and upliftment of society and should demand the personal time and effort of the business leader and the organisation he leads. I knew that my students had Infosys in mind when they asked me that question. Therefore I said that the establishment of the Infosys Foundation and the excellent work that it does would reflect the organisation’s service to society more than the compensation paid to the employees.


Conclusion In an article published in Business Today in April 2004, I had written: The scorching pace at which the business environment has been changing and the impact of globalisation, changing aspirations and expectations of the youth, fast-paced lifestyle, have all provided temptations for change in values. But, in the midst of all this, there is growing realization that a business will only succeed and grow if it is founded on principles and beliefs. Increasing stress at work place, resulting in executives seeking solace with mushrooming “yoga” and “meditation” centres, has only reinforced the need to take a re-look at some of our fundamental values. Leadership, apart from possessing “leadership qualities and characteristics”, should aim to provide the much-needed relief to its followers, by unleashing the power of personal and professional commitment. This commitment is to a cause and a purpose and not to mere financial results of an organisation. Leadership myopia would continue to exist if our current leadership chooses to ignore this at its own peril! The question, then, is what ought to be the qualities and characteristics of emerging leadership? My own assessment and conclusion is that effective leadership for the future will be based on: • • • •

A strong commitment to a cause or purpose. A strong willingness to adhere to core values, come what may. A strong belief in self and others. A strong desire to make a difference, for betterment, in the lives of a large number of people. • A strong achievement-orientation, not merely in material wealth, but in service to society. We need leaders who are fearless and humble, committed and vulnerable, outspoken and sensitive, value-based and flexible. It is a tall order, but with effort, we can make it. Since 2004, I have not had any reason to change my views on the above. The more I read on business leadership and the more I discussed it with others, I have only become even more convinced that


business leadership is essentially a self-discovery process. Effective or successful practice of business leadership will have to result in service to society. During my interaction with business leaders, I had asked them what they would advise young people if they desired to become business leaders. The responses I got were very interesting. Kishore Biyani said, ‘I used to believe that leaders were born and not made, but I have changed my opinion now. I believe leaders can be made, if they have some basic qualities—something in them. I believe that people do transform themselves after certain age and they manage something entrusted to them—manage something bigger, make something better. Leadership can be bestowed upon on a person. Leadership can be developed over a period of time.’ I too believe that leadership can be developed through a conscious effort by development of the leadership ingredients that I mentioned in my framework. Prasad said, ‘I think such people must first discover their calling— what drives them, what their passion is. I believe that the motivation, drive and passion must go beyond the obvious—profit, size of organisation or the position and authority. For example, in our company, if a person is not passionate about our purpose of helping people lead healthier lives and is not excited about providing affordable medicines globally, it will be very hard for him to lead others.’ Clearly, Prasad is talking about the need for leaders to develop their sense of self-awareness. Passion for whatever a person undertakes to do in life, in my view, arises from a high degree of self-awareness. Expressing similar thoughts, Bhaskar Bhat said, very interestingly, ‘first I would tell him to understand himself fully—in terms of what motivates him and what his strengths are. I will tell him to play to his strengthens. Try to overcome weakness but play to your strengths. Don’t worry about your weakness. You should be aware of your weakness, but don’t prioritise on overcoming your weakness, but play to your strengths. And don’t worry being an ordinary person.’ Niru Mehta offered another perspective when he said, ‘I will say, “look at you and understand yourself.” That is important. Each person needs to be clear about his or her ambition and motivation.’ Santrupt Misra also spoke about the need for a business leader to be aware of self. He said, ‘I will first ask him whether he is clear on what he wants. He needs to be clear on what he wants. Clarity of thought is very important. I will say, “be clear in what you want”. Then I will ask him the source of his motivation. Then I will ask him to do what it takes to get what he wants.


Very often, I find that people who are ambitious are confused on what they want to achieve and why.’ I hope that my framework for effective business leadership that recognises the interdependent relationship between leadership ingredients (characteristics) and leadership results (service) will help us enhance our understanding of business leadership in general and Indian business leadership in particular. I believe that the framework provides us with a reference for understanding organisations and leaders in the changing global business environment. It provides leaders with lessons that they can practice to create long-lasting and sustainable organisations.

NOTES 1. Dwijendra Tripathi, The Oxford History of Indian Business, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 329. 2. S. Balasubramanian, ‘Inside the mind of the GenX MBA student’, Indian Management, Vol. 45, no. 11, 2006, pp. 38–42. 3. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, The Balanced Score Card: Translating Strategy into Action, Boston, MA: Harvard Businss School Press, 1996.

APPENDICES

Summary of Characteristics of Admired Leadership I asked the business leaders to rank each of the 20 admired leadership characteristics according to the importance they attach to them. This is what they indicated. The most important characteristics of admired leadership, according to Indian business leaders, appear to be honesty, competence, inspiring, fairmindedness and being forward-looking.

Summary of Leadership Capability Questionnaire I asked the business leaders to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest) to indicate the degree to which they believed that they possessed the particular capability characteristic. This is what they indicated.

3 8 9 16 2 11 10 1 13 7 4 5 15 17 20 12 14 18 6 19

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

1 5 3 2 17 10 4 11 16 6 20 15 12 13 7 9 8 18 14 19

GVP 1 10 14 2 7 5 9 16 12 6 13 8 3 15 4 11 18 17 19 20

BB 2 3 1 11 6 16 7 8 9 4 5 10 12 18 13 14 15 17 19 20

NM 1 4 3 7 2 6 16 12 9 15 13 8 10 11 17 19 5 18 14 20

SM 1 5 16 2 15 7 6 14 18 8 19 4 11 10 12 3 17 13 20 9

RG 3 5 4 6 10 2 7 1 14 11 15 20 9 8 18 13 16 12 19 17

RK 1 9 17 7 4 15 5 6 2 10 3 12 14 13 8 16 11 18 20 19

HCM 4 3 1 2 8 9 7 10 5 17 6 20 14 12 11 13 18 15 16 19

KMS 1 6 3 12 4 11 13 2 9 14 8 7 18 5 10 16 17 15 19 20

SB

4 – – 5 – – – – – – – – – – –

2 3

1

GRG 1 7 3 6 2 5 9 13 4 11 16 17 10 8 20 18 14 15 12 19

RS 1.7 5.9 6.3 6.3 7.0 8.4 8.5 8.5 9.7 9.9 11.1 11.5 11.6 11.8 12.7 13.1 13.9 16.0 16.2 18.3

AVG

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

RANK

Notes: KB = Kishore Biyani; GVP = G.V. Prasad; BB = Bhaskar Bhat; NM = Niru Mehta; SM = Santrupt Misra; RG = R. Gopalakrishnan; RK = Ravi Kant; HCM = Harsh C. Mariwala; KMS = Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw; SB = Subroto Bagchi; GRG = G.R. Gopinath; RS = R. Seshasayee.

Honest Competent Inspiring Fair-minded Forward-looking Courageous Intelligent Imaginative Determined Dependable Ambitious Self-controlled Broad-minded Supportive Straightforward Caring Mature Cooperative Independent Loyal

KB

Sl. No. Characteristic

TABLE A.1

13

12

9 10 11

8

7

6

3 4 5

2

10

9

9 10 10

9

9

9

10 8 10

8

7

7

7

6 8 6

7

8

BB

8

6 5

7

8.5 5 9 6 7 6

7

6

8

9 8 9

9

10

9

1

Demonstrating Professionalism and Probity Engaging with Risk and Showing Personal Courage Committing to Action Communicating Clearly Showing Judgement, Intelligence, and Commonsense Facilitating Cooperation and Partnerships Nurturing Internal and External Relationships Steering and Implementing Change and Dealing with Uncertainty Focusing Strategically Displaying Resilience Demonstrating Self-Awareness and a Commitment to Personal Development Valuing Individual Differences and Diversity Guiding, Mentoring and Developing People

KB GVP


8

7

7 7 6

9

8

8

8 8 7

9

9

NM

TABLE B.1

8

6

8 9 7

7.5

9

8

7 7.5 7

8

8

SM

8

9

10 8 10

10

9

9

10 9 10

10

10

RG

8

9

9 8 7

8

7

9

8 7 8

7

10

RK

6

7

7.5 6 9

8

8

7

10 7 8

7

9

8

8

7 8 7

7

8

8

8 8 8

8

8

HCM KMS

7

7

7 6 7

7

7

7

6 8 6

9

10

SB

7.55

7.55

7.73 7.73 7.73

7.77

7.82

7.91

8.18 7.95 7.91

8.27

9.09

MEAN

13

12

9 10 11

8

7

6

3 4 5

2

1

Rank

(Table B.1 continued)

7

8

7 8 9

6

8

7

8 9 8

9

9

RS

9

10

5

8 7

5

8

4

7 6

6

5

8

6 7

5

BB

5

6

6

5 8

8

NM

7.5

6.5

7

7 6

7

SM

7

7

7

9 7

8

RG

8

7

8

7 8

8

RK

7

7.5

8

9 8

8

7

7

8

8 8

7

HCM KMS

5

5

7

6 6

6

SB

8

6

9

6 6

6

RS

6.77

6.82

7.00

7.09 7.00

7.27

MEAN

19

18

17

15 16

14

Rank

Notes: KB = Kishore Biyani; GVP = G.V. Prasad; BB = Bhaskar Bhat; NM = Niru Mehta; SM = Santrupt Misra; RG = R. Gopalakrishnan; RK = Ravi Kant; HCM = Harsh C. Mariwala; KMS = Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw; SB = Subroto Bagchi; RS = R. Seshasayee.

19

18

17

15 16

8

9

14

Building Organisational Capability and Responsiveness Marshalling Professional Expertise Ensuring Closure and Delivering on Intended Results Listening, Understanding and Adapting to Audience Harnessing Information and Opportunities Negotiating Persuasively

KB GVP


(Table B.1 continued)


The Indian business leaders appear to be capable of demonstrating professionalism and probity, engaging with risk and showing personal courage, committing themselves to action, communicating clearly, and showing judgment, intelligence and commonsense in whatever they do.

Official Websites of Included Companies Aditya Birla Group Air Deccan Ashok Leyland Avaya GlobalConnect Biocon Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Future Group Larsen and Toubro Marico Industries MindTree Consulting Murugappa Group Tata Group Tata Motors Titan Industries

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

www.adityabirla.com www.airdeccan.net www.ashokleyland.com www.avayaglobalconnect.com www.biocon.com www.drreddys.com www.pantaloon.com www.larsentoubro.com www.maricoindia.com www.mindtree.com www.murugappa.com www.tata.com www.tatamotors.com www.tata.com/titan/index.htm

Some Leadership Theorists and Thinkers There are many thinkers who have contributed significantly to the evolution and development of management and leadership thoughts. Some are listed below: TABLE C.1 A List of Management Theorists Adair, J. Adorno, T.W. Argyris, C. Avolio, B.J. Babbage, C. Barnard, C.I. Bass, B.M. Bennis, W.G. Blake, R.R. Blanchard, K.H.

Fiedler, F.E. Fleishman, E.A. Follett, M.P. Gardner, J.W. Gordon, L.V. Graen, G. Greenleaf, R.K. Greer, F.L. Hackman, J.R. Heller, F.A.

Koontz, H. Kotter, J.P. Kouzes, J.M. Leavitt, H.J. Levinson, H. Lewin, K. Likert, R. Luthens, F. Maccoby, M. Maier, N.R.F.

Quinn, R.E. Rice, A.K. Roethlisberger, F.J. Sashkin, M. Sayles, L.R. Schein, E.H. Scott, W.E. Selznick, P. Senge, P.M. Shaw, M.E. (Table C.1 continued)

Appendices 283 (Table C.1 continued) Bowers, D.G. Hemphill, J.K. Boyatzis, R.E. Hersey, P. Burke, W.W. Herzberg, F. Burns, J.M. Hofstede, G. Cartwright, D. Hollander, E.P. Chandler, A.D. House, R.J. Cleveland, H. Hunt, J.G. Collins, J.C. Jago, A.G. Conger, J.A. Jennings, E.E. Dansereau, F. Kahn, R.L. Davis, K. Kanter, R.M. Dessler, G. Kanungo, R.N. Devanna, M. Kaplan, R.E. Drucker, P.F. Katz, D. England, G.W. Kets de Vries, M.F.R. Fayol, H. Kipnis, D.

Manz, C.C. Maslow, A.H. McCall, M.W. McClelland, D.C. McGregor, D. Mintzberg, H. Mitchell, T.R. Mouton, J.S. Myers, I.B. Nanus, B. O’ Toole, J. Peters, T.J. Pfeffer, J. Podsakoff, P.M. Porras, J.I. Posner, B.Z.

Simon, H.A. Sinha, J.B.P. Steiner, I.D. Stogdill, R.M. Tannenbaum, A.S. Tannenbaum, R. Taylor, F.W. Tichy, N.M. Ulrich, D.O. Vroom, V.H. Waterman, R.H. Weber, M. Yetton, P.W. Yukl, G. Zaleznik, A. Zander, A.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

References on Leadership The select bibliography that follows provides references to several key books relating to leadership studies. These include classics and recent books, and are intended to provide the reader a feel for the subject of leadership. This does not mean that these are the only ‘best’ or ‘most important’ books on leadership. Adair, J. 1973. Action-Centred Leadership. New York: McGraw-Hill. Adorno, T.W. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper & Row. Argyris, C. 1957. Personality and Organisation: The Conflict between the System and the Individual. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1964. Integrating the Individual and the Organisation. New York: John Wiley. Argyris, C. and D.A. Schön. 1978. Organisational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Avolio, B.J. 1999. Full Leadership Development: Building the Vital Forces in Organisations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bandura, A. 1977. Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. ———. 1997. Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: W.H. Freeman. Barnard, C.I. 1938. The Functions of the Executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1939. Dilemmas of Leadership in the Democratic Process. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1948. Organisation and Management. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Barrett, G.V. and B.M. Bass. 1976. ‘Cross-cultural Issues in Industrial and Organisational Psychology’ in M.D. Dunnette (ed.), Handbook of Industrial and Organisational Psychology, p.? Chicago: Rand McNally. Bass, B.M. 1960. Leadership, Psychology, and Organisational Behaviour. New York: Harper & Row. Bass, B.M. 1985. Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations. New York: Free Press. ———. 1990. Bass & Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership. New York: Free Press. ———. 1990(a).‘From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision’, Organisational Dynamics, 18(3): 19–31.

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Exclusive References on MBTI I have found the following books very useful for my understanding of the MBTI in the context of leadership. I have prepared my notes based on these. Barger, Nancy J., Linda K. Kirby and Jean M. Kummerow. 1997. Worktypes. New York: Warner Books. Barger, Nancy J. and Linda K. Kirby. 1995. The Challenge of Change in Organisations. Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black Publishing.

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INDEX

Aditya Birla Group, 18, 116, 174, 176–77, 282 Administrative Staff College, 107 Air Deccan, 17, 117, 240, 245 Air India, 186 All India Management Association, 104, 110, 177, 189 ambition, 49, 51, 151, 153, 166–67, 169, 213, 253, 276 Ashok Leyland, 117, 229–32, 282 Asian Business Leader Award, 177 Avaya GlobalConnect, 19, 116, 162–64 BHEL, 10, 105–08 Bangalore, 51, 116–17, 142, 145, 160, 186, 211–13, 220–21, 240, 243–44 Bagchi Subroto, 8, 114, 221, 224, 260, 265–67, 279, 281 Barnard, 23–24, 59, 282 Barrett, 52, 54, 62, 100 Bass, 44–47, 53, 54, 60–62, 96, 100, 282 Bazaar India Ltd, 119 Bell Labs, 164, 166, 170 benchmarks, 9, 103, 106, 214, 229 Best Employers in India Survey, 133, 223 Bharat, 111–12 Bhargava, R.C., 106–07 Bhat, Bhaskar, 12, 116, 145–47, 232, 252–53, 257, 263, 269, 276, 279, 281 Biocon, 17, 117, 211–13, 216, 219–20, 270 Birla, Ghanshyam Das, 175 Birla, Kumar Mangalam, 176–77

Biyani, Kishore, 12, 17, 116, 118–21, 135, 154, 244, 256–57, 262–63, 266, 269, 271, 276, 279 Body Shop, 119 brands, 109, 118, 144–46, 157, 162, 205, 209, 237 Briggs, Katherine Cook, 68–69 Bureau of Business Research, 60 Business India, 104, 134 Business Maharajas, 246 business schools, 114, 255 Business Standard, 240 Business Today, 222 Business World, 28, 133, 174, 189 CEOs, 18, 134, 148, 153–57, 156–60, 161, 228, 263 CII, 104, 176, 189, 207, 213, 231–32, 237, 239 COO, 245 Cadbury India, 207 Calcutta, 105, 190 Castrol India, 188 Central India Spinning, 185 Chairman, 10, 11, 103, 104–07, 110–11, 117, 138, 176, 186–88, 227, 231, 236, 240; and Managing Director, 102–03, 117 China, 12, 18, 56, 81, 93, 95, 126, 132, 144, 159, 161, 172, 194–97, 203, 204, 253 Cliffs, Englewood, 59–61 Co-leaders, 18, 50, 61, 125, 141, 156, 171, 183, 189, 204, 237

Index communication, 23–24, 42–43, 71, 74, 77, 81–88, 97–98, 114, 163, 185, 252, 254 Comparative Management Studies, 61 competence, 28, 43, 54, 56, 75–76, 97, 165, 217, 220, 225, 229, 235, 253, 278 competition, 42, 127, 147, 157, 180, 183– 84, 196, 203, 206, 219, 252–53 Computerworld magazine, 223 conflicts, 31, 66, 71, 75–76, 78, 84, 128– 29, 157, 165 Congress party, 91–93, 248 consensus, 77–78, 80–87, 221, 256–59, 254–60 Contingency Model, 36–37 ConvergeM Retail India, 119 core values, 44, 116, 120–21, 132, 135, 147, 149, 200, 207, 214, 216, 223, 231, 241, 252 Corporate Social Responsibility, 146, 199, 202, 274 Council on Trade and Industry in India, 213 Daewoo, 199 delegation, 104, 129, 207, 213 democracy, 60, 90, 123, 152, 269 diversity, 32, 84, 99, 114, 126, 160, 173, 182, 196, 198, 251, 259–61, 264–68, 280 Dr Reddy, 116, 132, 134–36, 138, 143 ENFJ leaders, 260 ENFP leaders, 259 ENTJ, 41, 65, 74–75, 88, 131, 162, 174, 184, 198, 255–57, 259 EPABX company, 164 ESTJ, 41, 65, 71–75, 85, 115, 131, 162, 198, 254–59 economic policies, 91–92 economy, 8, 12, 19, 50, 90–91, 93, 117, 126, 136, 159–60, 172–76, 220, 230, 237, 239, 253, 273–74 education, 24, 53, 57, 109, 123, 128, 130, 136, 146, 152, 158, 165, 175, 200, 212, 215, 217, 251–52 EID Parry (India) Limited, 108 emotional intelligence, 52, 61, 154; stability, 32, 41, 54, 58 empathy, 52–53, 77–78, 86–87, 150, 242, 260 Empress of India, 185

293

energy, 31–32, 47–48, 58, 64, 67–68, 84– 85, 136, 150, 169, 185, 241, 248, 254, 259, 270 entrepreneur–leaders, 17, 238, 265 entrepreneurs, 8, 11, 12, 18, 125, 144, 165, 176, 213, 237, 244, 249 entrepreneurship, 99, 132, 134, 144, 235, 238, 250 environment, 27, 29, 33, 36, 40, 48, 93, 109–10, 136, 143–44, 210, 235, 238– 39, 246–48, 250, 273–74; economic, 172, 248–50; political, 243, 247, 249 ethical, 109, 135, 171, 183, 211, 262 ethics, 42–43, 114, 124–25, 140, 154–56, 171, 183, 197–98, 207, 210–11, 219 expertise, technical, 80, 82, 85, 256 extroversion, 32, 40–41, 64, 68–71, 258 extroverted, 74 fairness, 124–25, 178, 214, 221, 260, 262 family, 9, 11, 57, 76, 102, 123, 135–37, 139, 143, 147–49, 151, 160, 165–66, 171–72, 233, 248–49; business, 110, 120, 122, 165, 207, 249 Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce, 207 Fiedler, 37, 40, 60, 282 finances, 52, 106, 108, 212, 230–32 financial results, 272–76, 275 followers, 21–24, 30–40, 43, 44, 46–48, 52–63, 58, 98, 113, 154–55, 182, 275 Free Press, 59, 61–62, 100 Gandhi, Indira, 30, 92, 126, 154, 196, 268 globalisation, 11, 12, 18, 53, 134, 137, 141, 162, 175, 184, 230, 237, 250–52, 275 goals, 29, 31, 34, 39, 41–42, 45, 47, 51, 54, 74, 81–92, 98, 256, 259–60; long-term, 97, 125, 156; organisational, 110 Gopalakrishnan, R., 18, 116, 185, 188–89, 200, 258, 262, 264–68, 279, 281 Gopinath, Captain G.R., 17, 117, 221, 240–41, 279 Government of India, 104, 107, 134, 188, 213; intervention, 144, 161 growth, 9, 12, 13, 79, 93, 103, 117, 126– 27, 129, 134–36, 141–42, 144, 203, 205–06, 220, 270, 273; economic, 90–91, 93; level of, 141–42, 211 Gujarat, 102–03

294 The Art of Business Leadership HLL, 188–89, 192, 209, 232 HarperCollins, 61 Harper & Row, 59, 61–62 Harvard Business Review, 10, 31, 59, 60, 151 Harvard Business School, 110, 187–88 Harvard Business School Press, 59, 61 heritage, 137, 170, 182, 186, 200, 243, 246 Herzberg, 27–28, 59, 283 hierarchy, 27, 85, 87, 95, 97, 110, 133, 189, 225, 259–60 Hillary, 171 Hindustan Aluminum Company Limited and Hawkins Cookers Limited, 200 hobbies, 121, 136, 151, 168, 179 Hofstede, 54–56, 62, 94, 97, 283 Hogan, 41, 59–60 Home Solutions Retail India, 119 honesty, 31–32, 58, 121, 124, 129, 147, 149, 187, 193, 201, 214, 227, 233, 252–53, 262 Hyderabad, 107, 116, 132, 134–36, 229, 244 IBM, 49, 54, 138, 142, 163 INFP, 65, 71, 73, 81, 130–31, 162, 255– 57; leaders, 256 INTP leaders, 256 ISTJ, 41, 65, 74–75, 77, 254 ideals, 44, 78–79, 81, 84, 256 identities, 95, 97 ideology, 91–92, 248 Imperial Bank of India, 92 independence, 26, 47, 51, 80, 85, 91, 93, 96, 126, 149, 185, 238, 250, 253 India AIDS initiative, 188 India–China comparison, 211, 228 Indian Accounts and Audit Services, 106–37 Indian Administrative Service, 11, 107 Indian Automobile Manufacturers, 231 Indian Drugs, 132 Indian Express, 240 Indian Hotels Company, 185 Indian Institute of Management, 105–06, 114, 146, 176; of Science, 186, 202; of Technology, 146, 188, 200, 223 Indian Journal of Applied Psychology, 62; of Industrial relations, 100 Indian Military Academy, 241 Indian National Academy of Engineers, 104

Industrial Development Bank of India, 231 Infosys, 11–13, 17–19, 142, 159, 201, 251, 274 Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, 231 integrity, 32, 58, 98, 132, 135, 138, 140, 147, 165, 168, 178, 200, 214, 227, 262–63; intellectual, 200, 262; personal, 32, 255 International Studies of Management and Organisations, 100 Isabel Briggs Myers, 63, 68–69 Israel, 163 JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award, 104 Japan, 54, 56, 60, 94, 96, 132, 203, 222, 227, 253 Jobs, Steve, 137, 141, 182, 218, 246, 268 Jossey–Bass, 61 Jung, Carl Gustav, 63, 66–68, 70 Kant, Ravi 18, 117, 198, 200, 279, 281 Kellog School of Business, 110 Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, 17, 117, 211–13, 215, 221, 279–81 knowledge sector, 18, 158, 172 Kotter, John, 23, 26, 46, 49, 52 Krishnamurthy, V., 106–07 L&T, 101–03 Leadership Ingredient Development Process, 264 Life Insurance Corporation of India, 232 London Business School, 176–77 MBTI, 13, 41, 59–60, 63–65, 70–72, 76, 88, 130, 144, 162, 174, 184, 198, 221, 256–60 MIRC Electronics, 207 Mallick, Pradeep, 113 management theory, 131, 256 Managing Director, 164 Marico, 204–05, 207, 209, 211 Mariwala, Harsh C., 117, 204, 206–07, 279, 281 Maruti Udyog, 176 Maslow, 27, 59, 283 Master of Business Administration, 146, 223 McGraw-Hill, 59–60 McGregor, 27, 29, 59, 283

Index Mehta, Niru, 18, 116, 162, 164–65, 174, 257–58, 263, 272, 276, 279, 281 mentoring, 167, 169, 191, 212, 280 mentors, 115, 140, 149, 166–67, 179, 191–92, 216, 227; formal, 179, 207, 216, 227, 233–34 mindset, 48, 127, 167, 170, 203, 228, 246, 267; changing, 103; global, 207, 261, 267–68 MindTree, 222–23, 227, 282 Ministry of Company Affairs, 176 Misra, Santrup, 174, 177, 189, 257–58, 272, 276, 279, 281 Mumbai, 101, 104, 112–13, 116–18, 130, 149, 160, 166, 174, 185, 198, 204, 206, 212, 232, 244 Murthy, Narayana, 13, 13, 30, 32, 51, 125, 138, 153–54, 182, 195, 210, 218, 221, 227, 236, 246 Murugappa Group, 108–11 Myers-Briggs, 60 NDTV Business Leadership Award, 18, 188 NID–Business World Awards, 146 Nagabrahmam, D., 15, 114–15 Naik, A.M., 102–05 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 91–92 New Delhi, 212 Non Resident Indian, 230 nurture, 36, 171, 173–74 Oneshore, 222 Pantaloon Retail, 17, 19, 118 Path-Goal Theory, 39, 60 PDI, 54–55, 94–95 performance, 28, 35–37, 39–40, 49, 53, 61, 98, 105, 113, 126, 225, 244, 251, 255, 273 personality, differences, 63, 66, 88, 255; traits, 31–42, 50, 58, 76; types, 58–59, 64–69, 74–76, 77–88, 115, 228, 254– 56, 260, 268 Personnel Director, 105–07 personnel management, 101, 177 pharmaceutical company, 132–34 pragmatism, 54, 56, 96 Prasad, G.V., 18, 50, 116, 132, 134–35, 270, 276, 279, 281 Prentice Hall, 59–61 President, 44, 103, 171, 188–89, 222–23, 231–32, 245; of India, 146

295

principles, 12, 57, 77, 79, 85, 88, 91, 135, 144, 150, 175, 179–80, 200, 215–16, 218, 257–58 private sector, 11, 15, 91–82, 107, 144, 175, 186, 250 probity, 254–55, 280, 282 professional values, 165, 207, 224, 233, 252, 262 professionalism, 254–55, 280, 282 profits, 45, 91, 110–11, 139, 170, 176, 197, 243, 273, 276 psychiatrist, 63, 66, 68 Public Limited Companies, 231 public sector company, 244 questionnaire, 33, 37, 41, 228, 233, 253– 54 Raghavan, S.V.S., 106–07, 110 Rallis India, 188 Reddy, Anji, 133–34 research, 13–14, 27, 32–34, 36, 40–41, 46, 58, 60, 62–63, 66, 109, 114, 132, 212, 231–32 Reserve Bank of India, 187 retail, 93, 118–20, 205 Sahu-Jain, 249 sales, 146–47, 151, 164, 198, 200, 208 San Francisco, 61 science, 26, 72, 130, 186, 188, 200, 202, 212, 216, 256 service sectors, 65, 93, 158 Seshasayee, R., 17, 117, 229, 231–32, 252, 257–58, 279, 281 Singh, Ajit, 107–08 Sinha, J.B.P., 96, 100, 283, 289 Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, 231 Soota, Ashok, 222–23, 227 South India, 112, 238 State Bank of India, 92 Steel Authority of India, 107 stress, 41, 53, 69, 71–73, 76, 143, 167, 174, 184–85, 191, 239, 255, 258 students, 9, 12, 14, 54, 65, 255, 272, 274 Subbiah, M.V., 17, 110–11 Tanishq, 145–46 TAPMI, 114 Tata companies, 186, 188; Corporate Leadership Award, 110; Engineering

296 The Art of Business Leadership and Locomotives Company, 186; group, 150, 152, 155, 161, 187, 202, 236, 274; Honeywell, 188; Hydroelectric Power Supply Company, 186; Iron and Steel Company, 176, 185; Motors, 18, 117, 186, 198–200, 282; Telecom, 164 Tata, Jamshetji, 185–87 Tata, Ratan, 47, 125, 138, 153–55, 187–88, 195, 201, 210, 218, 227, 236 traditions, 56, 94–95, 110, 137, 155–57, 199, 229 transformational leaders, 46–48 Unilever, 188 United Nations Global Compact, 199 USA, 18, 41, 94, 96, 110, 164, 187, 213 Vaghul, 236–37 vision(ary), 8–12, 18, 42–47, 49, 61, 78– 79, 85, 88, 97–99, 108–09, 114, 122– 25, 130–34, 137–38, 151, 155–57,

169–70, 181–82, 195–96, 256–59, 265, 266, 269 Vision Group on Biotechnology, 213 Vroom, 27, 29, 36, 39, 59–70, 283 Wärtsilä, 112–13 Welch, Jack, 18, 30, 45, 125, 182, 194, 201, 217, 225, 227, 237, 268 West, 11, 153–54, 160, 170, 182, 204, 218, 240, 246, 272 Western business leaders(hip), 139, 170, 182, 204, 252 Wharton Business School, 166 Wiley, John, 59–60 women, 93, 95, 128, 143, 146, 159–60, 173, 196, 202, 211–12, 213, 219, 228, 251, 268–69; leaders, 171, 182, 202, 211, 219 World Intellectual Property Organisation, 224 Young Global Leaders, 176

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Professor S. Balasubramanian is Director, GRG School of Management Studies, Coimbatore. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Madras and holds a PG Diploma in Management (MBA) from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. He is also a qualified administrator and interpreter of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). He has nearly 30 years of experience in both the private and public sectors in India and abroad. His wide experience spans functions such as production, planning, projects, industrial marketing, international trade, human resource management and general management. He has worked in some of the most reputed companies in India including Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL) and EID Parry (India) Limited in senior executive positions. He was also Vice President of the Wärtsilä Corporation of Finland. Professor Balasubramanian has written several articles in leading business magazines on subjects like leadership and management education. His academic interests are in the fields of business leadership, understanding personality differences using the MBTI, team building, values and vision. Apart from being a prolific writer, he also teaches International Business to MBA students. He has designed, coordinated and conducted successful faculty development programmes on Business Leadership. He has also conducted successful training programmes on Leadership, Strategy, Envisioning and Team Building for a number of leading organisations including Himalaya Drug Company, Infosys, Cognizant Technologies, iGate Global Solutions, Oracle, Corporation Bank, Jindal Vijayanagar Steel and Metlife Insurance.

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