ET Young Leaders

8/12/2019 ET Young Leaders

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Intellect, ambition and passion, she would fall short of experience. How does one then ensure that the

path she is treading is the right one?

SHIKHA SHARMA: If you have the passion within, and you want to learn, every role you do, every

incident, teaches you a lot. Whether you are willing to suck out the most from each experience is what

counts. You need to introspect and see what you are learning from that event.

VANITHA NARAYANAN: Experience matters, but it is not necessarily connected to age. You don't always

learn from the things you get right. Most often, the learning comes from things you don't get right.

Introspection is key. For me, it is important to never make the same mistake twice. Learn from others,

observe, and you will find that experience has little to do with age.

SAURABH SINHA, Mahindra & Mahindra What are the top two things CEOs had to let go, if at all, during

their journey to top of the ladder?

SUNIL KAUSHAL: My first one will be do not take yourself too seriously. Also you need to let go of your

ego. That will open you up to ideas and collaboration. Collaboration is important because a leaderwithout followers is no leader.

NOSHIR KAKA: I think the greatest challenge for all of us is to sometimes stop doing what made us

successful. Very often the asset that made you successful in your previous role is the most difficult to

give up. Also, there is this assumption that experience always gets you to the right decision. But the

correlation is pretty thin. Experience, if it provides you better judgement, is terrific.

KALPANA MORPARIA: When you are dealing with your family or your close group of friends, you can just

be yourself. You can have a shouting match with them, you can throw tantrums, but later kiss and make

up. But in the workplace, where you have to deal with young people, older people, experienced people,

you need to know where you really draw the boundary in terms of engagement. There is that line that

you just cannot cross in your professional lives.

SHIKHA SHARMA: Fear of failure will sometimes stop us from doing things which will be great in terms of

where you finally head and what you can learn. That was a big learning for me. The second thing is I

used to be a very private person. As you lead businesses you cannot hold onto that. Everything you do is

going to be watched and you have to be willing to live with that.

ANUPAMA HOON, Deutsche Bank What is your view on promoting conflict at the workplace even

though it may disrupt the harmony for a better outcome in the organisation?

VINEET NAYAR: A well-run organisation is like rafting on a river. Everybody's doing different things and

there isn't a lot of communication but significant understanding among everybody. If you don't achieve

that harmony within the organisation, you would not be able to raft through turbulent times. I don't

believe in encouraging conflict. For the organisation, it's not a very good idea.


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SHIKHA SHARMA: Creating negative conflict is not good. But getting diversity and differences of opinion

and giving people the confidence that they can have an opinion which is the opposite of someone a lot

senior and allowing an open discussion on that, that is great for the organisation. You want that diversity

to reach a better quality of decisions in a very volatile market.

SANJIV MEHTA: There should always be an honest and open debate before any decision is taken.Opinions and debates do not mean conflict. However, there cannot be any corridor talk once the

decision has been taken.

SANDEEP GURUMURTHI, ET Now How easy is it to do that in a large organisation? It can't be easy to

democratise decision-making in such a way. How does one do it?

VANITHA NARAYANAN: You are always going to have diversity of viewpoints, and you want that within

an organisation. The key there is to take those diverse opinions, and find a way to normalise. NOSHIR

KAKA: We have a wonderful line that is part of our values at McKinsey which says 'obligation to dissent'.We love that as it drives a certain degree of right decision, a certain degree of behaviour. It's in our

value system to actually have the obligation to dissent. You can't let that become personal.

HARSH MARIWALA: You need diversity and openness for innovation to happen in an organisation. But a

lot of conflict arises due to personality issues, ego issues and the organisation wastes a lot of energy

because of these. So they have to be surfaced and dealt with.

SUNIL KAUSHAL: How you encourage constructive challenge is very important. We operate in a market

like India where people have a view and they express it. But in several markets I have worked in Asia,

there is complete command and control. So we would actually encourage an environment of

constructive challenge, otherwise you will not get a debate.

NISHANT K RAO: Diversity of personality or even emotional quotient of a person is important. When I

look to my team, leadership team or project, I make sure we have different sets of people, be they

different genders, or those who think differently. It leads to diversity and reduces challenges and

conflicts.

VINEET NAYAR: If I were you and my boss or manager gets into a conflict with me I would follow the

process of structured questioning, where I systematically question the disagreement to understand the

core reasons of disagreement and then find the building blocks to either accept that it is right or

understand where that other person is coming from. And then go back to the building blocks andrepresent my argument with a clear understanding through my list of questions on why that person is in

disagreement. The focus is not on winning an argument but on winning through questioning.


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ANKITA AGARWAL, Aditya Birla Group How do we know when it is the right time to settle into a

company and keep growing there? Or does moving across companies provide richer experience and

diverse perspectives required to be a CEO?

SANJIV MEHTA: At your age you should ask if you are gaining experience, challenges and knowledge.

Don't run after money and stripes, they will chase you. But if you do not get these three or your purposeand values are not in sync with the organisation then you need to leave and leave fast.

SANDEEP GURUMURTHI, ET Now The flip side of this is getting into a comfort zone. When is a good time

to move on?

SHIKHA SHARMA: I stuck to one organisation for 29 years but in the early part of my career, I didn't do

the same things for more than 3 years at a time. I believe in continuous learning. You can learn in the

same role, in the same organisation, or because the environment has changed. My last role in ICICI was

running life insurance, when we went through some radical market cycles. You can learn from many

different things, just as long as you are learning.

NOSHIR KAKA: Let your decision come internally. Learning is an internal point of view. If you genuinely

believe you've stopped learning, it's time to move on.

NISHANT K RAO: While hopefully you can evolve in your role, there may be other roles within the same

company, and you don't have to go through a new learning curve of new organisation, new culture, new

people. You can get the same experience of learning faster within the same company in a different role.

SANDEEP GURUMURTHI, ET Now What would you do if a bright young executive, core to your

organisation, wanted to quit and pursue entrepreneurship?

KALPANA MORPARIA: I have a very strong belief that working in India in a large organisation gives you

the benefit of being an entrepreneur within a corporate structure. I would like to tell him/her that I

want you to unleash that entrepreneurial spirit while continuing to work for JP Morgan India because

that is what this country needs and what my firm needs. For the 33 years that I spent in ICICI, I felt like

an entrepreneur as the organisation gave me the opportunity to be exactly like one.

VANITHA NARAYANAN: To a great extent, companies look for people who are entrepreneurial. It

depends on the individual to see how he or she develops the entrepreneurial spirit.

HARSH MARIWALA: I think entrepreneurs add a lot of value to the society. You have all the freedom, youhave all the risks also and if you succeed, the kind of value you are adding to the society is far more than

working in a corporate set-up. So if someone from my company came to me and I was convinced that

she has a fully viable business proposition I would encourage her.

SUNIL KAUSHAL: In today's day, there are so many opportunities, ideas and breakthroughs and

technology will disrupt so many industries that you will find more youngsters trying to break out on their


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own. And if somebody came to me, I would constructively challenge their thought process and ideas,

and if I truly believe them, then I'd encourage it.

JITIN BHASIN, IndusInd Bank At times there is a thin line between strategy and tactics. When you are a

leader and you have to make a choiceone you have to make an overarching strategy for the firm and

two, you have to make strategies to achieve what you want to achieve. At what stage do you decide thisis strategy and this is tactic and how do you keep reiterating that?

SANJIV MEHTA: I come from an industry where execution is often strategy. When you talk about

strategy you need to be very clear where you want to get, how you will get there, what are the

competencies you need. After that it is about making it happen. Store by store, mile by mile, that is how

you win. It is not that just because you are a CEO, you sit in an exalted office. Let me assure you strategy

would not be more than 10 per cent of the job.

GAURAV LUNIYA, Mahindra & Mahindra A critical component of leadership is decisiveness. Today, with

so much data, decision-making has become more complicated. Should a leader be left-brained, data-

focused or should he/she be rightbrained, instinctive when making critical decisions for his/her

organisation?

NOSHIR KAKA: Frankly, you need both. No CEO does just strategy or just execution. You have a telescope

in one eye and a microscope in another. Data and information will only take you thus far, there's a lot

beyond that for making for right judgements, putting the right people in place to get the right outcome.

NISHANT K RAO: Sometimes it's about whether you are asking the right questions, do you know the

constraints, have you challenged assumptions etc. If that is right, the data is a signal, your gut is a signal,

what people are telling you is a signal, you make the right decisions.

VINEET NAYAR: The question I ask is are you in the business of taking decisions or are you in the

business of enabling people to take decisions? If you are in the business of enabling people then the

quality of decisions would be better. When I was running the company with 90,000 people, I always

believed instead of five big decisions, if you take 500 small decisions, we would move faster. So my

management style was how can I enable 500 people to take decisions and therefore we inverted the

pyramid and made that happen.

1.

High Energy & Passion: Quality, drive, passion and intensity is important.

2.

Curiosity & Feedback3. Entrepreneurship

4. Social Consciousness: Bigger purpose of giving back to society

PROBLEM AREAS

1. Long-Term Perspective

2. Introspection


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3. Sense Of Humour: in a tough situation or to diffuse a situation.

4. Listening & Soft Skills:Unease with the status quo is a positive. Impatient energy is not

5. Risk Taking

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