LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM THE REAL WORLD
|
|
And just like that, we have turned 3! We are grateful and thankful to our team, partners, clients and everyone who has been part of this journey.
Being a leader is an opportunity that provides the ability to create an incredible impact. On the occasion of our third anniversary, we’ve put together some insights and experiences shared by various leaders.
Happy reading!
|
|
EMPATHY AND UNDERSTANDING ARE KEY
In the constant rush to meet organisational goals and make sales targets, it is easy to forget that leadership is all about people. The ability to build a strong connect with the team, empathise and motivate them to be their best is invaluable.
Here are some thoughts on being an empathetic and effective leader from Nirmala Menon, Founder and CEO, Interweave Consulting and Muniinder K Anand, Managing Director – India & South Asia, Center for Creative Leadership.
|
|
By Nirmala Menon, Founder and CEO, Interweave Consulting
Expert Take: Leadership is About Being Yourself and Building Trust
|
|
|
There is no one structured curriculum that “teaches” anyone to be a leader. There are as many styles of leadership as there are leaders. The only way to find out what kind of a leader you are is to just go out and be yourself! In leadership, who you are matters as much or more than what you do.
Authentic and trusting relationships are the fuel that businesses run on. Integrity and transparency in who you are and what you do is the real marker for building and sustaining a loyal team. At Interweave, my team knows my vulnerabilities as much as they know my strengths. It is this knowledge that enables them to step in for me when required. So also with all the other team members, as we try to understand and accommodate the values, perspectives and working styles of each other.
Simply put, when you love what you do and trust the people you work with, everything becomes that much more manageable and fun!
|
|
Expert Speak: Leadership in the VUCA Age Requires Awareness and Empathy
Muniinder K Anand, Managing Director – India & South Asia, Center for Creative Leadership
|
|
|
We are living in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world. With social media, digital transformation and globalization, leaders can easily become overwhelmed by the amount of incoming information and data.organisation that facilitates information and knowledge going up and down. They have to develop empathy and try to understand people and issues and the world around them in a new and different way, and not through a biased lens. They need to address
How do you deal with that? You have to be able to filter it all. And you cannot do it all alone. Long gone are the days of hierarchical leadership models with the person at the top being all-knowing and all-seeing and making all the decisions.
First, leaders need to understand and cope with today’s complex business environment. Second, they need to build a culture within thediversity of all kinds.
Those are the kind of challenges that leaders face.
|
|
COHESIVE TEAMS
An organisation runs on its teams. Effective team management – ensuring that teams are in sync not just with each other but also with the organisation’s overall goals is one of the most challenging, yet crucial tasks for leaders.
Lalitha Indrakanthi, Managing Director & Center Leader, Cargill Business Services shares her learnings and thoughts from her own journey at Cargill.
|
|
Expert Speak: Aligning Culture with the Big Picture in a Highly Matrixed Organisation
Lalitha Indrakanthi, Managing Director & Center Leader,
Cargill Business Services
|
|
|
As the head of Cargill Business Services(CBS) in Bangalore, I lead a highly matrixed organisation that supports Cargill’s global business processes across functions such as IT, HR, Finance, Sourcing and Procurement, Transportation and Logistics, Ocean Transportation. While all the functions report to me from a centre perspective, they get strategic function direction from their functional counterparts across the world. Such a matrixed set-up does create some challenges, especially when it comes to weaving a single cultural fabric that benefits from the vast diversity of thought. Here are some of my learnings gleaned from my own experience over the years.
Emphasis on a Uniform Culture
At the CBS, each function is at a different level of maturity, with different team profiles, based on the type of work as well asorganisational maturity in the area. For example, our IT team in India is quite mature and focuses mainly on architectural work in areas such as system design and mobility. As a result, the average IT team member has 8+ years of experience and comes from a deeply technical background. Our work in finance, on the other hand, cuts across the entire spectrum.
While we do a lot ofvalue added work such as building a CoE; we also do a large volume of transactional work such as payables, which mostly requires freshers and younger workers who are as far removed as possible from the mature IT experts. Bringing them together to build a common Cargill culture isn’t easy!
While these teams might not need to interact during the regular course of work, there is an immense opportunity to creatediversity of thought, which needs to be leveraged. For instance, IT can benefit greatly by better understanding the work of the highly skilled functional teams sitting alongside them.
To facilitate this, our approach has been to help them find common ground to come together. We’ve found that culture and sports are both great ways to facilitate this. We have across functional fun club called Synergy that celebrates company-wide cultural events. The ownership rotates across functions, making it a truly function-agnostic club. We also have an active centre-wide sports club that acts as a great unifier.
Creating a Sense of Ownership
Given the highly siloed nature of work, we place special emphasis on ensuring that each employee and each team understands how their work rolls up to the largerorganisational goals. We need them to understand that their role is as important as that of the person who manufactures our products or who sells to customers. Getting people to see the big picture and develop a sense of belonging is absolutely crucial.
Cross-functional leadership training is one approach. We also have a strong 90-day onboarding program that doesn’t focus just on their role or functionalarea, but talks about the company as a whole. Also, we ensure that each leader (irrespective of their functional area) meets all the new joiners once a month, to update them on their functional area.
We also did a leadership alignment exercise with Above N Beyond early on, to understandorganisational goals and break them into actionable pieces for each team to own and run with – Extremely crucial to drive the sense of ownership towards overall goals, and ensure that they percolate down.
Brand building is Important
Despite being a large MNC, Cargill is privately owned and quite media shy. When we first started, this created a considerable challenge in hiring since there was no brand recall. People simply didn’t know what Cargill was. We went on a deliberate brand building initiative to subtly and strongly build industry connect. Through participation in industry events, CSR initiatives, platforms such as NASSCOM, and selective PR, we worked to build the Cargill brand in India.
Your First Set of Leaders are Key to Growth
Leaders often think they should first get things off the ground before they focus too much on finding the right people. But in my experience, I’ve found that investing a disproportionate amount of time in finding the right leaders, even at the start, is important. These first leaders will be your brand ambassadors. They will also be the ones who pick your next set people. Therefore, your first set of leaders play a key role in defining company culture.
Over the years, we’ve worked to build a productive, cohesive team that is alignedto overall company goals. Of course, there’s always work to be done, but we’re on the right track!
|
|
STRONG CUSTOMER FOCUS
At the end of the day, each and every business is about serving customers. As much as leaders are the advocates for their team, it is equally important to be the voice of the customer too. This means that the team needs to be in tune with the customer’s requirements, business aspirations and growth path.
Ankit Kedia, Director, Manjushree Technopack Ltd. shares some thoughts on the importance of focusing on the customer, especially key accounts.
|
|
Expert Speak: Effective Key Account Management and Building Customer Trust are Crucial
Ankit Kedia, Director, Manjushree Technopack Ltd.
|
|
|
“Key Account Management is critical to any business that is on a rapid growth path. Identifying account management champions and setting up a dedicated hunting team is the backbone for any successful marketing team.
Over the last few years, we have intensified focus on nurturing and mining our top 25-30 clients who contribute to over 90% of our sales. A key part of this exercise is relationship building at various levels with initiatives such as newsletters, sharing pricing trends, pro-actively working on ideas, and generally providing this set of clients with top-notch service levels. This has resulted in a spike in sales and a higher number of inquiries, helping us maintain our leadership position in the industry.
Another aspect of effective account management is to build rock steady trust with clients. As clichéd as it may sound, this is often overlooked in order to make a quick sale. But one wrong move and a relationship of many years can evaporate in no time. As leaders, it is extremely important to take time out to initiate and drive cultural change and infuse an entrepreneurial mindset in our team members!”
|
|
LEADERSHIP IS LONELY
It’s sometimes hard for people to imagine leaders as being lonely given that they seem to be constantly surrounded by people who are available at their beck and call. Yet, for all its glory, leadership can be a pretty lonely experience because no one really understands the unique position that you are in, and decision-making is challenging in today’s dynamic environment.
So, what does a leader do to get through this? First, focus on the end goal. As a leader, your goal is to do what’s best for the company; and your biggest reward is the satisfaction of steering your company in the right direction. Second, trust your instincts and available data and ford your path. Mistakes are ok, as long as you learn from them. What makes decision-making particularly tough is that there is often no one to discuss your ideas with. Find an unbiased and trustworthy person who can be a sounding board for your ideas. Most importantly, cut yourself some slack. At the end of the day, you are human too!
Ashok Sudarshan, President, Complexcare Solutions had some interesting thoughts on why keeping your distance is actually an important aspect of being an effective CEO. Read on…
|
|
Expert Take: How to be an Effective CEO
By Ashok Sudarshan
|
|
|
For any professional, becoming the CEO of a company, large or small, is an incredible privilege and an opportunity for a tremendous amount of learning. But it can also be a stressful experience knowing the pivotal role that you play in determining the company’s future and steering it to success
Here is some advice for budding CEOs based on my own experience.
Be Yourself
.Once of the best pieces of advice that I got early in my career was to be unique and not emulate anyone else blindly. Leadership is an individualized trait and your teams will recognize sincerity. Use what you have seen that works (and does not work) to build your own style. People react best to you being genuine. They do not expect perfection, but they do expect honesty.
Maintain Your Distance
Always be conscious that your team members are not your peers. The role of a CEO is significantly different from any other role in a company. While it may seem strange not to speak openly with your team, there are simply too many topics that are inappropriate for your reports to learn about and discuss. Even though you run the risk of seeming aloof, keep those discussions separate with your Board, a mentor, or other CEOs you know. I have gotten remarkable and helpful counsel from other CEOs who also need someone to talk to.
Of course, this means that it is a lonely job, but it opens a different group of peers and concepts. Embrace that change instead of being frustrated.
Do Not Micromanage
Once you have assigned responsibilities to your team, try to refrain from micromanagement. Remind your direct reports that while you trust them, they will be measured on execution, rather than just intent. But give them the freedom to figure out how to do their job.
Savour the Opportunity
Instead of crumbling under the burden of responsibilities, remember to enjoy the position and appreciate the role. No matter what, you have worked hard for the role, been blessed to have the faith of the Board to take over. You have an opportunity to demonstrate your leadership.
Life is short, so remember to focus on the upside!
|
|
SELF AWARENESS
It is important to understand and be aware of one’s own biases, limitations
The one quality that trumps all when it comes to every great entrepreneur, manager, and leader, is self-awareness. By being more aware of what motivates them and their decision-making, leaders can considerably improve their effectiveness.and points of view. Conviction is a great quality, but a good leader needs to be aware of their blind spots or at least acknowledge that they could have blind spots. Self-awareness promotes humility and makes leaders more willing to appreciate and embrace new ideas.
Self-awareness is also essential for leaders to be able to enhance their own value proposition and meaningfully expand their influencing capability. Therefore, before they set out to transformtheirorganisations, leaders need to look inward and ask themselves, ‘What changes do I need to make for myself?’.
You can’t fix a problem unless you are aware of what needs to be fixed. And this awareness needs to start by looking inward first.
Here are some thoughts from Priya Mohan, Startup Sensei at Venture Highway LLP, on the importance of self-evaluation by leaders.
|
|
Expert Speak: The importance of self-evaluation by leaders
Priya Mohan, Startup Sensei at Venture Highway LLP
|
|
|
Personally - reading the right content, being amidst intellectually and emotionally stimulating people, folks who are just much better than me and stretches of alone time during my morning run helps me not just ask the right questions but seek pointers to self-improve. Having identified areas for improvement, we need to figure out ways to
It's a tough thing to introspect, tougher so to do in a meaningful self-improvising manner! That is my goal for this year - how can I be a better version of myself! In my view, a good base for kick-starting this is to start by asking the "right questions" to yourself across relevant areas - it can be existential questions right down to tactical ones - example: "What was my biggest learning this past week?", "Was I able to pass on any learning to my team?", "Could we have done the product strategy discussion better?", "Could I have handled a particular team conflict better?". Such questions force you to use the power of hindsight to make a note on the positives, but importantly the negatives or challenges or weaknesses however you may choose to call it.
If you are a parent, can you recount the number of times you may have asked your kids "to improve", "work on your weak areas"? Now, who tells us? Especially if you are at the top, a leader for your team or of an organization?action it. The tough part is to do this in a consistent, structured and continuous manner!
At the end of the day, we are not just a sum of our experiences but we are also how we participated/reacted/acted in those experiences.
|
|
WEARING DIFFERENT HATS
Versatility is an important virtue for leaders. As a leader, the ability to look at the big picture and yet get into the details is a useful quality.
Nupur Prothi Khanna, Founder of Beyond Built Pvt. Ltd. shares her learning on what it means to be an entrepreneur.
|
|
Expert Speak: My learnings as an Entrepreneur
Nupur Prothi Khanna, Founder, Beyond Built Pvt. Ltd.
|
|
|
I am urbanist with an education in Planning, Landscape Architecture and heritage conservation. Beyond Built Pvt. Ltd. (BBPL) was set up in 2003 in Bangalore (subsequently moving to Delhi) to deliver best practice spatial design based on in house research undertaken by Landscape architects, Planners, architects, and interns.
This experience has given me several valuable life lessons, which I’ve detailed below:
Be different
When most firms were picking up work with developers, we incubated an approach where we were doing ‘more on less.’ This meant taking up fewer works but spending enough research time to understand what made one endeavor distinct from the other and thereby more likely to succeed with the users.
My philosophy is to ‘deliver the difference.’ So, I believe in not restricting our work to designing, but to handholding the client and contractor teams right through to on-site completion.
Shatter stereotypes
Being a woman is not so unusual in the design realm, but I am usually the lone female on larger brainstorming sessions in the core construction sector. Being brought up as well as married into a defense services family, I usually do not give mind space to issues of gender identity concentrating instead on competence.
Thatsaid, while recruiting, I am empathetic towards the domestic responsibilities of women candidates and often find myself coaching them on the significance of persevering in their professions, irrespective of any other reality they may be faced with on a personal level.
Nurture the community
I am more a teacher at heart than abusiness woman. I consciously spend a fair amount of my energy coaching and nurturing those around me. Since 1998, I have been intermittently associated as visiting faulty at SPA Delhi and RVCE Bangalore. Since last year, I have been working with preteen students under the banner of a foundation we set up, called the Beyond Built Trust. Last summer, we held a series of workshops titled Cultu’re’connect for preteens to sow the seeds of our heritage, culture and relevance of design in our environment early on in their lives.
Trust your team
I cannot over-emphasize the importance of ‘trust,’ a guru mantralearnt in this journey. I have found there is nothing more empowering than this principle. We strongly encourage our team members to pursue their individual aspirations on our projects, while tying into the idea of the whole.
Embrace opportunities to learn
Our project profile has changed over the last 20 years. Each project has played a significant role in my professional and personal development. The small garden in Bangalore (2004) for an eminent ecologist where we went hunting for indigenous plants, sowed the seeds for the INTACH scholarship we won a decade later (2014), on the subject of indigenous planting.
The most challenging project (where my learning was trebled) was the 3.5kms-long landscape for Terminal 3 at the Delhi International Airport (2008-10), executed from the client’s office with an international consultant. Another project, which we brought from concept to completion, is Elante Multi Use Development for Larsen & Toubro in Chandigarh. We won the CDOS commendation for innovative use of stone for this project.
The last few years, we have centered our energies on primarily public projects from parks to a series of riverfront projects in North and Central India. It’s a long journey ahead where we hope to showcase the contribution of design in the life of the common Indian.
As I complete two decades of professional practice, I realize the power of entrepreneurship to ‘make a difference.’ As an entrepreneur, the power of possibilities, freedom of pursuing one’s desires, overseeing this dream turn into reality have made this journey most fulfilling.
But at the same time, I have come to believe that the responsibility of bringing about a change for the majority in India lies with us, the minority who are privileged to lead a life of choice.
|
|
LEADERSHIP PIPELINE
A Strong Sales Pipeline is Great, But You Can’t Afford to Ignore Your Leadership Pipeline.
Business development and growth are understandably the biggest focus areas for organisations in the growth phase. But they often tend to neglect leadership development, to their detriment. The lack of focus on leadership development every so often leads to an unfortunate situation where the organisation finds revenue slowing not because there’s no market, but because it has no leaders who can go out there and deliver.
Investing time and effort to help prospective leaders understand the ‘why’ of the organisation; enabling them to develop the skills and behaviours that they need to move to the next level, are crucial for sustainable growth.
ARE GREAT LEADERS MADE OR BORN?
The importance of leadership training is widely acknowledged. Companies spend huge sums of money on leadership development, only to find that the learning rarely impacts organizational performance. In fact, leaders revert to their original behaviour within months of the training.
Ideally, training needs to start much before you need the leaders to deliver. Once you’ve made the decision to delegate, invest time and effort in helping your prospective leaders understand the ‘why’ of the organisation.
Also, remember to focus on the individual. In most cases, the focus on growing the leadership team is very revenue driven. Therefore, training may focus on immediate short-term revenue goals, without an understanding of the end goal or vision of the company; resulting in a mismatch in values and judgment.
Ensure that all training is relevant in the context within which the organisation operates. Generic training programmes, though helpful for skills development, have little value unless they ‘make sense’ to the organisation.
STRUCTURED INTEGRATION FOR NEW LEADERS
Organisations typically invest significant time and resources to find the best leaders to run their organisations. Leadership hiring, more often than not, is a lengthy process involving multiple stakeholders using various methods like assessments, case studies and other ways to measure fitment.
Yet, multiple studies show that over 40 percent of leaders quit, are fired or forced out in 18 months. Those odds are not very favourable no matter which way you look at it. In fact, given the impact that a good leader has on an organisation’s fortunes, those odds are pretty alarming.
Generally, the belief is that the new leader will come on board and magically, the world will change. One of the toughest adjustments to make is for senior level leaders in a new environment. This is even more enhanced when they join the new company at a higher level than what they were playing in the previous organizations. Not only do they need to unlearn, they need to understand how to navigate in the new environment, get better clarity on their role and expectations, understand and live the values and drive the culture of the company.
With so much effort put into hiring the right person or focus on elevating internal people into a new role, it is surprising how so little focus is put into helping leaders transition seamlessly into their new role. Most organisations fall short when it comes to designing structured, thought through approaches that allow new leaders to embrace their new roles.
Instead, induction processes are often focused on just basic documentation and cursory introductions. Orientation is mostly around areas such as HR, administration, safety compliance etc.
Most of the time, induction processes focus largely on the ‘What’ and ‘How’ but neglect the crucial ‘Why’ of the organisation.
Senior management is rarely involved even though they are best placed to talk about the organisation’s vision, mission, goals, culture and customer expectations.
The fact is that these are areas where new leaders are expected to make the biggest impact and are likely to hit roadblocks in the initial days. For new leaders to be truly effective, organisations need to focus on integration, rather than simply ‘onboarding.’
|
|
|
Do write to us ar reach@abovenbeyond.in and share your thoughs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
