About two years ago I had pondered over the question of who is a better leader for business. Is it someone rooted in delivery and operations or someone with a sales background ( http://manishmo.blogspot.in/2011/01/delivery-led-or-sales-led.html)?
I think for a business to really grow, the leader has to be sales led. Having a sales oriented leader is all the more critical when the organization is in the business of service delivery. Perhaps in a products business where the product is evolving, a delivery oriented leader who is entrenched in product development and vision of the product might be better. But in most cases, it makes sense for the business to be sales led.
It was great listening to industry leaders in this year's NASSCOM India Leadership Forum. One of the sessions I enjoyed was listening to Vineet Nayar and R Gopalakrishnan. While the session was titled Cross Border Leadership, the discussion was not limited to that.
Vineet Nayar is Vice Chairman and Joint Managing Director of HCL Technologies Ltd., a $4.3 billion global information technology services company and author of the highly acclaimed management book “Employees First, Customers Second".
R Gopalakrishnan is an Executive Director with one of the largest Indian business groups - Tata Sons, a holding company to one of the largest Indian business groups The Tata Group.
The session was lively and racy. My notes from the session:
- I learned that there is thing like Upmarket
FDI. That's when India invests in developed countries.
- While companies are going global,
nations are becoming more border conscious.
- An interesting reflection about entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur have to deal
with ambiguity. If they cannot, they would be bureaucrats.
- We should not be too critical
about India. All countries have challenges. Nothing unique about India.
- In the context of effect of cultures in managing cross border organizations, one point of view was that footballers don't think of
cultural differences while playing in a club game. Why should we worry about cultures when
running a business? Focus on business goals and strategies to achieve them.
- Indians are the only managers
who think in English but act in Indian. We are very self aware
and can adapt easily.
- The younger generation doesn't
think about cultural differences much. This is the connected generation using social media.
- Unions are becoming obsolete
to protect rights of workers. Social media is a lot more powerful to
protect the interests of the workforce. Reputations can be destroyed in seconds on social media.
- Cash is plenty and human
capital scarce. HR is going to be central to business. Finest leaders will
be the ones who are people motivators.
- Corporations should act out of
their own will rather than being mandated, e.g. CSR mandate by govt.
- Why do people work for you?
Why do people go to temple or mosque on Sunday, spend money and feel
happy. And yet they feel troubled coming to office on Monday and get paid
for it. How can leaders build vision for something larger?
- Make managements appraisal
done by employees and make results public.
- We are moving into an age of
conscience in business.
So what kept training managers awake during 2012? What challenges
they have been facing? During last year I was fortunate enough to be in touch
with training managers of various companies in India. While not statistically conclusive,
here are some general trends I noticed from my various conversations.
- Cost:
Almost all training managers are pressurized to show some cost savings. Mostly
this is resulting in passing on pressure to reduce costs on their training
vendors. Cost seems to be their single biggest challenge these days.
- Uncertain Business Environment: There’s a constant challenge in planning the training for the
year. The business environment has a great deal of uncertainty. The hiring is unpredictable
making it harder to plan even the induction batches. There pressure of get
trained resources on projects, putting pressure on training managers to schedule
training with practically no notice.
- Training
Effectiveness: Many training managers spoke about showing training
effectiveness. This seems to be the biggest “ask” from training partners. How
can they show effectiveness of training to their senior management?
What I didn't find in my conversations with them:
- Elearning,
Blended Learning: Perhaps I was talking to “Training Managers”, perhaps
most companies I spoke with were large and already have elearning libraries, I
am not sure why but I didn’t find elearning as a strategic initiative while
speaking with training managers. Most want it, or have it, but it was not clear
to me how it was being used as a key initiative to drive down costs in the
overall learning strategy. In most cases there was no linkage between elearning
available and the training plans and goals in the company, or how to blend it
with classroom training.
- Social
Learning: Still too early for this. It didn’t get a mention even as a buzz
word in our conversations. I am fortunate to be working on a project for a government
department involving social learning where we are experimenting with using
Facebook for social learning. Unfortunately this is not something I found being
used in corporate customers, inspite of the LMSs and Corporate Virtual
Universities.
- Mobile
Learning: It’s still at the stage of “management fad”. Most training
managers don’t really care about this much, though still want to see some “proof
of concept”. My guess is “mobile learning” and “social learning” are likely to
take off together whenever they do.
