Hello Friends,
Welcome to Anbusivam’s blog page.
Isn’t it great, to have leaders of top companies sharing their leadership wisdom on a single stage. Yes, SliconIndia magazine made true in its SiliconIndia Leadership Summit held on Friday, 31 August.
One could see CEO’s and managers of big corporate houses, starting from pioneers of technology to small startups striving to take technology into a new higher level. I must say I am one among very few participants below 30yrs old. Leaders from different walk of lives added additional appeal to the summit.
Here are few excerpts from the summit and my learning’s out of spending a day with great leaders and visionaries. And the best part was none of them proclaimed themselves as leaders, instead they were humane and humble. Humility was the most commonly used word and every one of them insisted Humility as a must have quality to become a successful leader.
Sharad Sharma, CEO, Yahoo! India R&D gave first keynote speech on “From Offshoring to Incubation”. He talked in detail about, the importance of moving up in the global value chain by stepping ahead in to product incubation in place of offering only services. He said emerging markets are highly fragmented, hence one should come with niche solutions with customer focused design and innovative marketing. Only way to sustain and succeed is to out innovate in respective core domains by quick accelerating innovation, transfer of ideas and technologies within companies across global design centres and creating new products in close proximity to the emerging markets. He also insisted Leaders should encourage in bringing up “Intrapreneurs” with in their company to move fast ahead.
Ramesh Srinivasan, EVP, Bally Technologies India gave his keynote address on “Identifying Great Leaders Early”. He said “What I am today is lot of impressions people left on me”. He insisted the importance of identifying early leaders in a organization and the need for grooming them into future leaders. Though I personally couldn’t agree with few of his points, he gave a totally different perspective about early leadership.
Here are few key qualities of an early leader:
Humble and paranoid (Again Humility took first place)
Excellent work ethics
Great at improving
Can do attitude
Customer pleasers and not boss pleasers
Striking common sense
Challenging attitude
Respect for others
Aggressive commitments (will honor most of them)
Will not win popularity contests among team members
Peers will complain
Very good teachers
Not great long term thinkers (keen in completing the task in hand)
Attention to details
….and so on.
Dr. Vivek Mansingh, Country Manager, Dell India R&D enthralled the audience with his keynote speech on “Leadership through success: The Ramayana Way!”. He said we in India always “over manage and under lead” and I personally feel the same, as that’s how we’ve been learning from early school days.
He started with Daniel Coleman’s research paper "Leadership That Gets Results" published in Harvard Business Review. He also emphasised “Emotional Intelligence” as a key quality of a leader. Then went on to Ramayana from which he took few verses, where in Rama explains to Vibhisahan, what leadership means in a metaphorical way.
Rama said,
Battle field - Have a Noble cause or worthy result for fighting the battle.
4 wheels of the chariot – character, courage, ethics and valor
Horses to drive – strength, energy, passion, discrimination and empathy
Reins that’ll control – forgiveness, compassion, equanimity and consistency
Flag on the top – integrity and righteousness
Armours to fight the battle – right skills and attitude
Of course, Vivek was surrounded with the usual controversial topics in Ramayana, and lot of heated discussion went on during the lunch as well.
Dr. Biswadip (Bobby) Mitra, Managing Director, Texas Instruments India gave his keynote speech on “Leadership traits for emerging markets”. Bobby said volatility and uncertainty are the main characteristics of any emerging market. One who can plan accordingly and play effectively to mitigate the risks involved around uncertainties will emerge as a market leader in his domain of expertise. He said anchoring on customers, making right judgments/decisions on time to market neither too early nor too late and quality of the product will alone decide leaders in an emerging markets. He went on to add that leadership styles in developed countries will not suit our needs as we are totally different economically and culturally as well. Hence, we should learn from western leaders, apply accordingly in our context to be a successful leader.
There were interesting panel discussions on - how successful leaders think, great leaders take risk, managing the most talented and managing leadership derailers.
Overall, SiliconIndia Leadership Summit was an excellent platform to learn directly from the real life experiences and insights of great Indian corporate leaders.
Thank You SiliconIndia!!!
With Love,
Anbusivam
2 comments:
Hey Siva,
First of all,I can understand you had a great time in the Summit.A couple of comments:
a. Regarding what Sharad Sharma of Yahoo told "He also insisted Leaders should encourage in bringing up “Intrapreneurs” with in their company to move fast ahead." This has become more and more important for companies since,this would create an innovative environment.Also,the team work would increase however,IMHO this may be more applicable to product companies.
A startup out of a big organization would be great and this is where Google has an upper hand over most of the companies :)
Regaring the leadership part,it is rightly mentioned that leaders should be identified early and at least a leader should have a CAN DO attitude.Many times,we see people who may be called as MANAGERS but they cannot be called LEADERS and this is the area where the change should happen.
Something more to add,it is very important to capitalize on the positive aspects of any individual and that should be nurtured so that it becomes useful to the organization.But in most of the cases,we see the other side of the coin and see the weakness & than forget about the strengths.My funda is "Capitalize on strenghts and improve on Weaknesses"
Also,you can check out Sharad Sharma's blog http://orbitchange.com/ which is a very good resource for would be Entrepreneurs.It is a perfect guide as to how we can build a good INNOVATVE ecosystem in India(which is very it lacks) (:
-Himanshu Sheth
Thanks for your excellent comments Himanshu. Yes, we see more Managers than Leaders around who would even ask what is humility?. They always carry their ego attached to their position in a company that may not be permanent.
- Siva
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