Management Research Paper

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 61

KEY WORDS

Self Leadership Development

Retail Leadership Management

Enabling Culture

Values

Assessment Centres

Satisfaction Indices

Performance Support Learning

Work-enabled Learning

Talent Lifecycle

Succession Planning

Self Awareness

360 Degree Feedback

Competence Development

Leading Change

Global Leader

Innovation

Transformative Leadership

includes debate by practitioners and

academicians on a contemporary topic

C O L L O Q U I U M Leadership Development in Organizations in India: The Why and How of It (Part I)

Aarti Shyamsunder, Anand S*, Ankush Punj*, Arvind Shatdal*, B M Vyas, Balaji Kumar, Binu Philip, C Manohar Reddy*, Chitra Sarmma, Gopal Mahapatra, Govind Srikhande, Kartikeyan V, Manoj Jaiswal*, Nandini Chawla*, Prabhat Rao, Prakash K Nair, Prasad Kaipa, Rajshekhar Krishnan, Rishikesha T Krishnan*, Rituraj Sar*, S K Vasant, S Ramesh Shankar*, Santrupt Misra*, Shabari Madappa, Sudhakar B*, Swasthika Ramamurthy, Twisha Anand, Vasanthi Srinivasan*, Vikas Rai Bhatnagar*, Vishwanath P, Vivek Subramanian and Neharika Vohra and Deepti Bhatnagar (Coordinators)

INTRODUCTION

Neharika Vohra and Deepti Bhatnagar

About six to seven years ago, probably like many of our professional colleagues,we started noticing a systematic change in the pattern of demand for train-ing. Almost every single request we received from training heads or learning and development heads of companies for training was for leadership development. Our management development programme on leadership and change management was receiving close to 100 applications from all sectors of the industry. These requests came from a variety of organizations, irrespec- tive of the size, ownership pattern of the organi- zation, or industry. Like everybody else, we got busy in designing and delivering programmes on developing leadership.

A few months ago, we stepped back, observed a pattern and wanted to decipher it. We noticed that while leadership development as a topic acquired prominence for executive develop- ment, either through customized or open-enrol- ment programmes, dialogue among academia and practitioners on leadership development was scant. It appeared that while everyone in- cluding companies, consultants, academic in- stitutes, and trainers were busy working on their leadership agenda, there had not been an adequate organized effort to collate experiences, share processes, look at best practices, reflect on trends, and learn from each other. This Colloquium is an attempt to put together in one place such practices and, hopefully, begin a healthy dialogue among academicians, consultants, practi-

* The contribution of these authors will appear in Part II of the Colloquium in the October-December, 2011 issue of Vikalpa. The names of all the authors appear in alphabetical order.

Multinationals, including

those with an established

presence in India as well

as the new ones which

have started their India

operations recently, are

endeavouring hard to find

the right people and

induct them in their

culture.

62

tioners, and users of such practices.

In our discussions and analysis of the reasons for the deluge of leadership development initiatives, we figured that part of the answer lies in the robust economic growth of India. Many Indian companies have been growing at a rate that was inconceivable even ten years ago. Compa- nies that grew at 3 to 4 per cent for the first thirty years of their existence — somewhat in sync with the rate of growth of the Indian economy at that time — have grown at 150 per cent in the last few years. According to the July 2011 Economic Report released by the Ministry of Finance, the overall growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) was 8.5 per cent in 2010-11 and the index of industrial production was 8.8 per cent. The growth of core eight in- frastructure industries was 5.2 per cent in June 2011 as compared to the growth of 4.4 per cent in June 2010.1

At the organizational level, it is not uncommon to find companies expand phenomenally over the last five years – from having single-country opera- tions to manufacturing in four coun- tries and selling in 35 countries, increasing their workforce up to five times the number of people they had ever hired. Selling targets are set any- where between 100 to 300 per cent as compared to the last year. Family busi- nesses have had to choose to induct professional talent to be able to sus- tain and grow, and to learn to deal with countries they may have only read about in geography books. Many or- ganizations in the public sector are being pushed to step out of their zone of comfort because of competition for their talent from private companies and intense competi- tion for their products from China and other countries. Besides India’s dominance in the field of IT and related services, of late, India has become an attractive location for multinationals to set up their Research and Develop- ment Centres. Multinationals, including those with an established presence in India as well as the new ones which have started their India operations recently, are endeavouring hard to find the right people and induct

them in their culture. Growth has been triggered by both, the growth of the Indian economy as also the changes taking place in different economies across the world.

It goes without saying that such unprecedented growth brings with it attendant opportunities and challenges. One such key challenge centres around managing peo- ple. If a company had grown organically at normal pace, in five to seven years, it would have been ready with its leadership pipeline, systems for training and develop- ment, and processes for managing expectations and ca- reers. However, given the explosive discontinuous growth, that privilege has been denied to many organiza-

tions in India.

To illustrate what we mean by explo- sive and discontinuous growth, we would cite a few examples. Subhiksha (now closed), added 500 retail stores across the country between February 2007 and December 2007. The fact that people had to be identified, selected, inducted, trained, and put in front of the customers so that the operations ran smoothly and the customers kept coming back to the store, suggests for- midable expectations. Equally press- ing were challenges like building a desired culture, norms for working and being in the organization, and devel- oping employee commitment and iden- tification with the organization. Similarly, when a twenty-five year old Ahmedabad-based company acquired the largest manufacturing facility in Mexico for the same product which

they have been manufacturing, there were challenges in running the operations in a distant country where peo- ple spoke a language that probably not even one of the Indian managers understood! Streamlining the operations in the Mexico plant so as to integrate the Gujarat facility with that of the Mexico was a redoubtable task. However, as if addressing such problems was not enough, there were additional issues to resolve. For example, the right people had to be sent to Mexico; the existing staff of the acquired plant had to be won over; maybe some had to be let go and new ones had to be hired, trust had to be built from scratch, relationships had to be built with the local government, businesses, and the local academic commu-

1 http://www.ibef.org/india/economy/economyoverview.aspx

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

If a company had grown

organically at normal

pace, in five to seven

years, it would have been

ready with its leadership

pipeline, systems for

training and development,

and processes for

managing expectations

and careers. However,

given the explosive

discontinuous growth, that

privilege has been denied

to many organizations in

India.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 63

nity; and profits had to be made to win investor confi- dence. For all of this to happen smoothly, having well- trained and committed people in leadership positions was the first prerequisite.

Multinational companies which have established shops in India over the last one decade have had to deal with similar concerns. They are faced with challenges of adapt- ing to the Indian context while keeping the norms of the host country or company intact. Choices have to be made with respect to having expatriate managers or hiring lo- cal talent. Employees have to be hired and inducted into the desired culture. There is stiff com- petition to attract managerial talent, and appropriately trained skilled and semi-skilled people have to be found.

Growth in sectors such as IT and fi- nancial services has been particularly impressive. In the last ten years, Indian companies such as Infosys and Wipro have grown 24 to 25 times in terms of the number of people they employ. For example, Infosys grew from 5,400 em- ployees in 2000 to 1,31,000 employees in 2011. Many other organizations have equally impressive accounts. Such stories of exponential growth and related people management concerns are becoming fairly common in India. The growth of the economy has brought with it unique opportunities and also unprecedented challenges and consequently the need for leadership development. In addition to attract- ing, managing, and retaining talent and the existing and new people learning new ways of doing business is the incredible task of making people comfortable with change. It goes without saying that in the face of growth and op- portunities, the established ways of working might need to undergo drastic changes. Organizations cannot be managed by mechanical approaches such as organiza- tional restructuring and reengineering. New mindsets and leadership competencies are required to lead, man- age, implement, and accept changes by all employees within the organization. Thus the demand for leadership development is also fuelled by the need to develop these new leadership competencies that help in dealing with change and bringing about change.

Another facet of this change and one more reason for the spurt in demand for leadership development training, we conjecture, is because today, more than ever before, continuing with what worked in the past is just not suffi- cient. The old notions of positional authority and manag- ing through command and control are fast losing their relevance. A recent study by Hay Group on best compa- nies for leadership, observed, “Leadership in the twenty- first century is about leading at all levels; not restricting it to title. As organizations become flatter, the best leaders are learning they must check their egos at the door and become increasingly sensitive to diversity, generational

and geographical issues.”2 The workplace of the 21st century is char- acterized by greater complexity, ambi- guity, and interconnectedness. There is undoubtedly more diversity and dif- ferent value systems of the Generation Y to be contended with. Employees seek challenge, meaningfulness, and pur- pose in the work they do. Working to- wards work-life balance is not something young employees are em- barrassed about. The increase in com- plexity and higher accountability makes it impossible to hold on to the older ways of managing and leading. Employees have to be trained to lead in more effective ways.

It is our belief that to be able to survive the challenges posed by growth, the changing nature of work, and the aspirations of the people, the need for lead- ership development has intensified.

Defining Leadership Development

The two seemingly innocuous words, ‘Leadership De- velopment’ are, of late, generating curiosity, intense de- bates, and multiple interpretations. There are many questions about leadership development: Is leadership development about the leader? If yes, then who is a leader? If no, then is it about developing leadership in the organi- zation? What does leadership in the organization mean – capabilities or processes, or both? Also the attendant questions are – What are leadership capabilities? Who

2 http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2011/01/hay_groups_ 2010_best_companies.html

Organizations cannot be

managed by mechanical

approaches such as

organizational

restructuring and

reengineering. New

mindsets and leadership

competencies are required

to lead, manage,

implement, and accept

changes by all employees

within the organization.

64

defines capabilities? What does it mean to develop them? Is it a consciously designed and carefully controlled pro- cess or is it something that happens on the sideline as individuals pursue their organizational dreams? Is it both? Neither? If it is structured, who structures it, and how should it be structured? If it is the process of devel- opment, what should be developed – knowledge, skills, attitudes, or behaviours? What role, if any, do the receiv- ers of development inputs have? What indicators depend- ably indicate that indeed the desired development has been achieved? If leadership development is an emergent process, then what is needed for the emergent goal of de- velopment to evolve? If it is development of the leader or leadership, then who should be the driver and who should be the receiver? We do not claim to have answers to these ques- tions. But we believe that the way a company or a group of managers choose to answer these questions sig- nificantly influences the route they will take to develop leadership within their organization.

However, just to give a flavour of the complexity of these questions, we would like to share some ideas on leader and leadership development. According to thinkers like Day (2000),3

there is a discernible difference be- tween leader development and leader- ship development. Leader development is the honing of attitude, behaviours, skills, and actions that a person might need to exhibit leader-like behaviours; it is a process of ‘differentiation’. Leadership development, on the other hand, includes focus on processes such as social influence, team leadership, attention to factors such as organizational climate and social networks towards effectiveness in organizations; it is a process of ‘integra- tion’. Leader development involves teaching communi- cation skills, sharing, and the ability to motivate individuals through positive social influences. Leader- ship development helps potential leaders with the how and when of leading. In their work, McCall, Lombardo and Morrison (1998)4 have defined leadership develop-

ment as a conscious effort to provide opportunities to ‘learn and grow’ to selected employees. It is expected that such efforts will prepare appropriately skilled people within the organization for future needs. The opportuni- ties provided may be in the form of assignments, projects, classroom learning, coaching or mentoring. Effective lead- ership development design would strategically link the opportunity to the needs of the person and the organiza- tion at that time. Quinn (1996) maintains that leader and leadership development are not independent but they mu- tually influence each other.5 Another approach combines leader and leadership development in the objectives of leadership development in saying that leadership devel- opment programmes have three-fold objectives: (a) Situ-

ate the leadership development programme within the existing busi- ness logic and the desired culture; (b) Match the leadership development needs to the programme for develop- ment; and (c) help individuals develop and grow in their personal skills and attitudes.6

Intent of this Colloquium

It is not our intention to engage in a debate on which is the best approach for leadership development. In our ex- perience, we have found that most or- ganizations are in fact trying in their own way to define leadership devel-

opment. Some have made major strides in this direction. Others are experimenting and evolving new approaches. However, the efforts, experiences, learning from experi- ences from various organizations, sectors, and industry are not all available in one place. Thus as a humble first step, this Colloquium brings together the current prac- tices of leadership development from a few practitioners, consultants, and academicians in one forum. We believe that this will help us to begin a dialogue on leadership and processes nurturing it within organizations.

Summarizing the above discussion, one can conclude that organizations today face the dual challenge of finding and retaining people who are willing to lead in these interesting times, and also steadily developing their lead-3 Day, D V (2000). “Leadership Development: A Review in Con-

text,” Leadership Quarterly, 11, 581-613. 4 McCall, M W, J r.; Lombardo, M M and Morrison, A M (1988).

The Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Leader development

involves teaching

communication skills,

sharing, and the ability to

motivate individuals

through positive social

influences. Leadership

development helps

potential leaders with the

how and when of leading.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

5 Quinn, R E (2004). Building the Bridge as You Walk on It, San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

6 www.hillconsultinggroup.org

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 65

ership pipeline. It is possible that after having invested heavily in training, several of those who were trained leave for other opportunities. The challenge for organiza- tions is to train and enhance leadership skills among a large base of employees and also keep them engaged with the organization. This Colloquium presents some inter- esting perspectives and experiences.

In trying to be broadly representative, we wanted per- spectives from organizations in the public sector, private sector, cooperatives, family business, and the multina- tional to be shared. Similarly, we wanted sectors such as manufacturing, software, finance and banking, retail, and service to be represented. We also wanted experiences from small, medium, and large organizations to be in- cluded. We hope that our final collection carries some flavour of each of these. In addition, the Colloquium car- ries a few contributions from consultants and academics active in the area of leadership development.

Our own experience of selecting contributors and reach- ing out to them was exigent and educative. We offer to our readers of this Colloquium a bouquet of varied ap- proaches to leadership development in India. We hope that the variety and diversity will lend richness and depth

to the readers’ engagement with the issue of leadership development. However, in trying to include several voices, the Colloquium became very long and the journal page limitations came in the way. It was simply not possible to carry the entire collection in one issue. We were asked to take a difficult call – have an unwieldy colloquium or split it into two parts. After much agony and delibera- tion, we opted for the latter. We decided to carry experi- ences from the manufacturing sector in the next issue (Aditya Birla Group, Ashok Minda Group, BEL, HUL, Lupin, Muruggapa Group, Siemens, and TCL). The next issue will also carry the perspectives on developing glo- bal leadership skills by Mark E Mendenhall. The present issue features experiences of the service sector (GCMMF, HDFC, Shoppers Stop), the IT sector (IBM, Infosys, IT Mul- tinational, Microsoft) and views of two consulting organi- zations, the Kaipa Group and Vistas Consulting. We invite you to read these contributions to enjoy a productive and thought-provoking experience and wait for our next is- sue. Part II of the Colloquium would carry the leadership development journey into a different terrain of manufac- turing and would also present insights drawn from the rich array of all the experiences included in the two is- sues.

Leadership Experiments at GCMMF

B M Vyas

Historical Background of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF)

The Kheda district of Gujarat, well-known also asCharutar Pradesh, is a delta between two perennial rivers, Mahi and Sabarmati, consistently receiving good rains. Inhabitants of this region are widely believed to be among the most enterprising and hard working commu- nity in Gujarat.

Since milk was produced in abundance in this region, the British Government had given monopoly rights to Polson Dairy to collect milk from Kheda district and sup- ply to Mumbai and to the British Army. For many years, Polson used this monopoly right to its great commercial advantage, and paid extremely low prices to milk pro- ducers, especially during the winter months when milk production would be much higher.

The milk producers were agitated due to this exploita- tion. When they went to complain to Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel about this patently unfair treatment, he advised them to organize themselves into a cooperative which would procure, process, and market milk and milk prod- ucts. If successful, their cooperative could remove the middlemen so that the major part of the consumer’s ru- pee could be passed on to the milk producer. Sardar Patel sent Morarji Desai to organize the milk cooperatives. Morarji Desai, in turn, entrusted the job to Tribhuvandas Kishibhai Patel to lead this cooperative movement. Tribhuvandas became the founder of the Amul Coopera- tive movement. He hired Verghese Kurien as the Man- ager.

The Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union Ltd. (KCMPUL), Anand was registered in 1946. The Un-

66

ion established the brand name ‘Amul’ in 1955. By 1964, Amul had emerged not only as a well-known brand for milk and milk products like butter, but also as a success- ful development model. In 1965, the then Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri saw the potential and created the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) and asked Dr. Verghese Kurien, to replicate the model on a nation- wide level, as he had successfully done with Amul since 1949. With more Amul-like cooperatives coming up in Gujarat, in 1974, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) was founded to provide an over- arching umbrella organization for the milk cooperatives. Dr Kurien successfully led the GCMMF and NDDB for many years. Sustained and focused efforts resulted in a high level of professionalism in the procurement, process- ing, and marketing of milk and milk products, moderni- zation of the Indian dairy industry, and raising it to the global standards.

In later years, farmer leaders visiting Amul would often request Dr Verghese Kurien, the then Chairman of the GCMMF, to identify a professional of his calibre to lead their cooperatives in their areas. In response, Dr Kurien would say, “There are many Institutes to produce a Kurien, but there is none to produce a Tribhuvandas. You give me a Tribhuvandas and I will give you a Kurien.” Tribhuvandas, a respected freedom fighter, was well known for his ability to organize farmers of that re- gion and to keep them together.

The above quip by Kurien implied that though there were schools to produce managers, the real challenge was to develop quality leadership among the farmers. I was not clear about the meaning of leadership – Who is a leader and how can leadership be developed? Does developing leadership mean putting in position of authority a few trusted and competent individuals who would share their vision with people and guide them to move in that par- ticular direction? Or, is it possible to develop a large base of leaders – people who can enable others to solve their problems themselves, especially in rural India? These thoughts would make me restless and I would wonder where and how to look for answers. I was unclear and my search for convincing answers continued.

Several years later, when I took over as the Managing

Director of the GCMMF to my good fortune, Dr Kurien was the founder Chairman of GCMMF. He allowed me a lot of space and freedom, so that I could dare to experi- ment towards developing some new models of leader- ship, and evolve some possible answers to my questions about the meaning and role of leadership. I share below a few such experiments with regard to self leadership de- velopment. I cannot claim to have obtained great success or final answers to my questions. In fact, there were some failures along with limited success. But I feel that none- theless my learnings are worth sharing.

Self Leadership and Learning: A New Approach and Some Experiments

Our society has numerous problems and most people look up to the government or others to take the lead in finding a solution. Most people who provide such services or so-

lutions expect to be compensated for their effort through adequate payment of dues. Rarely would anyone do any- thing meaningful out of self-motiva- tion. Organizations try to solve their problems by creating positions of au- thority and placing their preferred employees in those positions that would have the responsibility to solve organizational problems. This often ends up building a bureaucratic struc-

ture with selected people in positions of power who may initially be very upbeat about the prospects, but their re- sponse and enthusiasm towards solving organizational problems often slows down with the passage of time.

Developing Together an Agenda for Change and Skills to Achieve It

I wanted to evolve a new approach towards leadership in milk cooperatives. I put up a small team of young field workers (officers) to conduct a research in villages to iden- tify a few important issues/problems that farmers wanted to solve. Such officers were trained in change manage- ment and also in the process of designing solutions to a problem.

Our design team researched and designed solutions, cre- ated training materials, and trained a battery of about 1,000 field workers who in turn carried out training across thousands of chairpersons, secretaries, and committee members of the village cooperatives and also a large

Though there were

schools to produce

managers, the real

challenge was to develop

quality leadership among

the farmers.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 67

number of milk producers in 10,000 villages on select prob- lems and their solutions. Farmers were encouraged to come forward and take charge of their problems them- selves. The success of the first awareness programme with regard to ‘What and Why We Need to Change’ and later on the initiatives like ‘Clean Milk Production’, ‘House- keeping’ and ‘Installation of Quality System ISO 9000’ in village cooperative societies gave a lot of confidence to the design team and also to the participants.

Building Vision Mission Strategy at the Village Cooperative Level

It was then decided to conduct a Vision Mission Strategy (VMS) Workshop for all the village dairy cooperatives with the expectation that the milk producers themselves would arrive at a vision for their dairy cooperatives, the goals of the coopera- tives and the strategy they would fol- low to achieve their goals. In a typical VMS workshop, the design teams pre- sented factual data with analysis and described the current issues and chal- lenges. For example, water is the main raw material for milk production. It is, therefore, very important to have an assured perennial availability of good quality water, have a system and fa- cilities for proper storage and distri- bution of water, and develop practices to ensure that enough water is avail- able to the cattle. The issues debated in the workshop included questions like: If water is the key to increased milk production, then what are the gaps and what action should be taken by the Management Committee and members on their own without waiting for external inducement to fill the gaps?

The goals and action plans were discussed, debated, and documented. Efforts were made to understand the cur- rent situation with regard to pressing issues such as cat- tle breed and its management, disease and its management, feed and fodder production, membership strength and its enhancement, human resource issues and procuring and use of technology such as installation of bulk milk coolers, automated milk testing machines, com- puters, etc. It was found that once the two-day VMS work- shop was attended by 200 plus milk producers of the

village with the Management Committee members, their decisions and goals were aligned with the implementa- tion schedule, which was then put up on the notice board of the office of the cooperative. The progress was regu- larly reviewed during Board meetings.

Such workshops were conducted in about 7,600 villages between 2006 and 2010 and are being continued till date. It is my belief that those villages where members took charge and implemented such vital goals are bound to throw up farmer leaders who have done something on their own for common good without the politicians’ or Government’s inducements.

Improving Quality at the Village Cooperative Level

Five years ago farmers were not even fully aware of how liberalization and globalization would impact them. They did not understand the impor- tance of creating green cover through tree plantation for their villages. They did not realize the importance of clean- liness for their main business of milk collection, processing, and marketing. They did not know how to put Quality Systems in place in Village Society by having ISO 9000 or why they needed to install state-of-the-art automatic bulk milk coolers and automatic milk test- ing and weighing machines.

Awareness about these issues was raised among the villagers by involv- ing them. The Chairpersons and Man- agement Committee members of the village dairy cooperatives were encour-

aged to take the lead and make every member aware of the key concerns, and motivate them to participate on their own. Thus the Chairman and nine Managing Com- mittee members provided leadership to the cooperative in this area. The same team would lead a discussion of the benefits of the ‘Cold Chain Building’ (installing bulk milk coolers) and convince members to go for it and run it efficiently. Again, they would discuss with members the meaning and advantages of getting ISO 9000 certifica- tion, audit, and rectification for their village milk coop- erative, and convince them to bring clean milk, remove shoes as they entered the cooperative society building,

Organizations try to solve

their problems by creating

positions of authority and

placing their preferred

employees in those

positions that would have

the responsibility to solve

organizational problems.

This often ends up

building a bureaucratic

structure with selected

people in positions of

power.

68

and not smoke or eat gutka on the premises. Close in- volvement of farmers would make them feel proud if their cooperative received the ISO 9000 certification. The farm- ers felt embarrassed and ashamed in case the certifica- tion was suspended for deviations.

As a result of these efforts, all the village dairy coopera- tives are today ISO 9000 certified. You may ask any Chair- man or Management Committee member of a milk cooperative the meaning of ISO and its advantages, and you will get an informed and convincing reply. Even a casual conversation with an ordinary milk producer will impress you with the extent to which the members value their certification and the care they take to maintain the expected standards. In the last five years, thousands of bulk milk coolers and automatic milk collection systems have been installed all over Gujarat.

The increasing competition due to lib- eralization and impact of WTO led to the realization that doing business would be extremely competitive and that a focus on Total Quality Manage- ment (TQM) would be very important. And therefore, as a unique measure, several TQM initiatives were extended to our business partners whether it was the farmer producer in the village or a wholesale distributor in a metro town or its most sophisticated production unit. A number of TQM initiatives which ran successfully across the organization included Kaizen, Housekeeping, Small Group Activities, and Hoshin Kanri (policy development). It was believed that these ini- tiatives would create a culture of transparency, openness, and leadership in the organization.

Going Green: Involving Farmers

Sometime in 2006, I started dabbling with the problem of the need for green cover in our villages. I believed that if India had to become Green, the forest departments can- not do so single-handedly — the farmers have to be in- volved. Running the ‘Green India’ campaign on television, and actually turning India ‘Green’ are two different propositions. I strongly feel that our greatest asset is our people resources at the grass-roots and they need to be engaged in the right direction, including for the green initiative.

It was felt that there was a need to sensitize farmers about global warming. Moreover, the tree cover is fundamental for good rains as rains enhance ground water level, which is a pre-requisite for Animal Husbandry and Dairying. Milk Producers of Gujarat have understood that tree plan- tation is essential for Dairy Development and that it is an important measure to check climate change and global warming.

I wanted awareness and involvement of farmers in greening Gujarat and hence asked the Design Team to devise a programme for inspiring and involving milk pro- ducers to plant one sapling each on August 15, 2006 be- tween 9.30 and 10.30 am on an experimental basis. As a

first step, we set up a target to plant at least 2 million trees.

The Design Team consisting of 50 pro- curement officers from different milk unions and 1,000 trainers worked on the idea. The trainers conducted pro- grammes in villages and encouraged farmers to take up the idea. All Chair- persons, Management Committee members, Secretaries of village coop- eratives were involved at the planning and preparation stage. The design team developed an Activity plan and methodology for conducting tree plan- tation. They identified village level co- ordinators and arranged tree planta- tion awareness programmes. Roles

and responsibilities were assigned to each member. The District Forest Officers and the government authorities were contacted for obtaining the plan. The tree planta- tion awareness was cascaded to all villagers so that they could collect the required tree saplings. Logistics were worked out for delivery of saplings at least three days prior to the Independence Day. On the day of the tree plantation (15th August), after the milk collection and flag hoisting ceremony, saplings were distributed to mem- bers from milk cooperative societies. The members took oath to protect the saplings and accept the responsibility for successfully growing them into trees. The actual sap- ling plantation was carried out by members at their iden- tified places — in their farm, home, common plot of villages, schools, etc. The Chairman and MDs of Milk Cooperatives also participated in the sapling plantation activity.

Running the ‘Green India’

campaign on television,

and actually turning India

‘Green’ are two different

propositions. I strongly

feel that our greatest asset

is our people resources at

the grass-roots and they

need to be engaged in the

right direction, including

for the green initiative.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 69

On August 16, 2006, the Design Team reported that 1.8 million saplings had been planted on the Independence Day! This achievement was celebrated and it was decided to speed up the process and inspire farmers to plant three saplings each. Accordingly, on August 15, 2007, during the flag hoisting ceremony held in the village dairy coop- erative offices, saplings were distributed to all members in 13,000 villages. The farmers were advised to keep three pits ready in advance. Between 9.30 and 10.30 am, 5.5 million saplings were planted voluntarily.

The farmers were given a choice to select the type of sap- lings and their choices were procured by the village co- operatives. An evaluation showed a survival rate of more than 45 per cent over the next five months. This initia- tive was further intensified to plant saplings at the rate of five per farmer and include fruit trees like mango, chikoo, etc. In the years 2009 and 2010, about 8.8 million trees were planted each year. Between 2007 and 2009, out of a total of 15.6 million saplings planted, 8.4 million survived, indicat- ing a survival rate of 53 per cent. The initiative has subsequently got rooted in the dairy cooperative model.

This initiative of farmers has been rec- ognized nationally and internation- ally. In fact, GCMMF has won Srishti’s G-Cube (G3 - Good Green Governance) Award 2010 in the Service Category for the fourth con- secutive time. The “Amul Green” movement has also been recognized and selected for the award of the best envi- ronment initiative in the “sustainability category” by the International Dairy Federation.

In all the above cases, young leaders in their early thirties came forward to drive the change management processes. They helped in convincing other members, carrying them along with their movement, and implementing signifi- cant initiatives by sacrificing their time and in the pro- cess learning the most valuable lessons of leadership through experimentation.

My belief, that the leadership that gets built through self- learning practices is not party- or politics-driven and therefore does not need government props, has been

strengthened. It will sustain over the years even without external support. Once a person has experienced the abil- ity to move people towards a common agenda, he will surely recognize its power.

Conducting Self Leadership Programmes at the Village Level

I once attended a transformational spiritual leadership workshop conducted by a leading spiritual organization. However, I felt that just my attending it was of no use. All the Board members and others must undergo a similar programme so that they are able to transform the way we all lived and worked. I felt only such transformation could

sustain the success of GCMMF in the coming years. With the help of the lead- ers of the organization, I organized a short programme for the Board mem- bers. Subsequent meetings with the head of the organization led to the de- sign of a 4-day programme on self-lead- ership. The purpose was to expose all of the village cooperative members to principles and practice of self manage- ment and meditation. The workshop was expected to infuse discipline, self- management, and leadership skills in the participants while teaching them the values of life, and urging them to not treat selling of milk as a pure com- mercial act. Many such programmes were conducted from 1997 to 2009.

Even today, I feel happy when I go to visit the milk coop- eratives. I find a large number of members embodying the values discussed in the programme.

Outcome of the Experiments

When 10,000 Chairpersons, and their 90,000 Managing Committee members come forward and lead milk pro- ducers to implement these changes, handle the difficult process of managing change themselves, overcome the difficulties, experience the successful and not-so-success- ful results they encounter, it would give them a rare and invaluable experience in leadership and embolden them to take higher level of initiatives.

Hopefully, through these and other similar initiatives, the villagers would get a chance to ‘manage change’ di- rectly. The people who work with involvement and ex-

My belief, that the

leadership that gets built

through self-learning

practices is not party- or

politics-driven and

therefore does not need

government props, has

been strengthened. It will

sustain over the years

even without external

support.

70

traordinary drive emerge and get accepted as milk pro- ducers’ leaders.

Many of the present leaders (Cooperative Chairpersons and Management Committee members of village milk co- operatives) are very young and eager to learn and grow. Thanks to the various initiatives, there has not been a leadership vacuum as the old members moved on. I be- lieve that some of the initiatives gave the opportunity to thousands of youth to experience and exercise leader- ship and thus helped to churn and bring the cream on the top.

By sharing these experiences, I wish to urge others to exam- ine and look at alternative ways of developing leadership. I have tried some unique experiments and I feel that if they can be continuously refined and consistently imple- mented, we may throw up a different breed of leaders, not only in the villages but also in the country. I hope that at least a few of those village cooperative members who have experienced these initiatives or have participated through self-initiative and drive will emerge as good leaders sooner or later. I am fully convinced that we have to pursue the path of grooming young leaders relentlessly.

Leadership Development at HDFC Limited

Prabhat Rao and S K Vasant

HDFC is India’s first retail housing finance company.Promoted in 1977, it is currently one of the largest originators of housing loans in India. The primary objec- tive of HDFC is to enhance residential housing stock in India through the provision of housing finance on a sys- tematic and professional basis and to promote home own- ership throughout the country. It has contributed to increasing the flow of resources to the housing sector through the integration of the housing finance sector with the overall domes- tic financial markets. Since its incep- tion in 1977, HDFC has financed over 3.8 million housing units with cumu- lative loan approvals amounting to Rs. 3,732.46 billion (US$ 83.46 billion) and cumulative loan disbursements amounting to Rs. 3,025.33 billion (US$ 67.65 billion). It also offers technical assistance and consultancy services in mortgage finance to new and existing mortgage finance institutions in sev- eral countries in Asia, Africa, and East Europe. It has 203,966 shareholders, 74 per cent of them being foreign in- vestors.

HDFC has a wide network of 289 offices catering to over 2,400 towns and cities spread across India. To cater to the

non-resident Indians, it has offices in London, Dubai, and Singapore and service associates in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, and Saudi Arabia – Al Khobar, Jeddah and Riyadh.

Till mid 90s, the housing market comprised of very few players along with HDFC. Since then, the competitive landscape has signifi- cantly changed, redefining the nature of business. HDFC accelerated the learning process to counter the com- petition and reviewed the value propo- sition it offered to its customers. Thus it vigorously focused on the need to invest in leadership at all levels in the organization.

Organization Structure

HDFC has an organization structure that has a broad span of control at each level. The Company is managed by a Board of Directors comprising eminent personalities who are specialists in various fields. A team of Regional Busi- ness Heads based at different Regional Offices across the country are sup-

ported by Business Heads and Branch Managers who are responsible for managing business at their respective locations.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

HDFC has committed to

learning by continuous

improvement. It considers

people as its most

valuable assets and

therefore believes in their

continuous learning and

development. The

Company maintains that

the rate of learning has to

be faster than the rate of

change in the

environment.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 71

Employee Profile

HDFC has a strength of more than 1,700 employees, which includes over 800 professionals from the fields of finance, law, accountancy, management, marketing, and engineer- ing. Over 500 staff members form part of the middle and senior management executives. The overall ratio of males to females in HDFC is 80:20. Around 15 per cent of the Senior Management team comprises women, all of whom are professionally qualified.

Learning in HDFC

Philosophy

H T Parekh, the Founder Chairmain of HDFC said, “HDFC’s finest investment is in its human resources. It draws its per- sonnel from many disciplines. They are building blocks on which the company’s performance and productivity are based.”

HDFC has committed to learning by continuous improvement. It considers people as its most valuable assets and therefore believes in their continuous learning and development. The Com- pany maintains that the rate of learn- ing has to be faster than the rate of change in the environment. It recog- nizes the need for accelerating the learning process within the organiza- tion to enhance competitiveness and thereby contribute to stakeholder value. On-going train- ing, both in functional and behavioural areas, ensures that the customer experience is enhanced continuously.

HDFC as an organization has been built on the basis of fairness, kindness, efficiency, and effectiveness. A genu- ineness of purpose with transparency in execution has been a major building block, providing the foundation for learning organization. At HDFC, the emphasis is on “learning by doing” and the objective is not to make the same mistake twice over.

The Company focuses on employee’s career development to ensure that their aspirations are aligned with the or- ganizational goals. It has a highly motivated team of pro- fessionals and has one of the lowest employee attrition rates in the industry. The consistent high growth rate over the past 33 years has provided challenging career oppor-

tunities for young professionals, many of whom have grown to become functional heads, regional managers, branch managers, and service centre heads. The incum- bent Vice-Chairman and CEO joined the organization in 1981 as an entry level manager.

Also, HDFC has been a single product company over the last 33 years. However, we have looked at creating verti- cals such as “loan against property” and “rural hous- ing” which have created ample opportunities for leadership roles as well.

HDFC’s strategy in line with its goals of “growing through diversification and by leveraging off its existing client

base” is to create new companies like the HDFC Bank, HDFC Life, HDFC Asset Management Company, HDFC Ergo, and other such companies. The dual advantage of this strategy has been that it has been able to offer its existing clients financial products un- der the HDFC brand and that some senior managers have moved to these group companies into critical leader- ship positions.

Learning Needs and Communication Process

The primary objective of Learning and Development function is to ensure that staff members are not only adequately

trained in functional and behavioural skills to sustain high standards of service, but also evolve as learning and growing human beings. Learning and development are perceived as an investment. Job-specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes are identified during the performance ap- praisal process, through discussions with immediate su- periors/managers, based on the changing business needs discussed at strategy meets, etc.

HDFC’s communication process is highly penetrative and effective and is able to maintain transparency and ac- countability. The periodic business strategy meetings and review meetings are good examples of how communica- tion takes place. These meetings are conducted at all lev- els and not limited only to the top management.

Meetings are held periodically at branch and regional levels. In the branch level meetings, the branch manager along with the employees chalk out their strategic plan

A genuineness of purpose

with transparency in

execution has been a

major building block,

providing the foundation

for learning organization.

At HDFC, the emphasis is

on “learning by doing”

and the objective is not to

make the same mistake

twice over.

72

for the branch, in line with the overall corporate plan. Issues including customer service, product development, operational procedure, system requirements, and profit- ability and training needs are discussed in detail. Gener- ally, after such review meets, the areas in which training is required in the context of business requirements are communicated to the Learning and Development func- tion.

Every Friday, the Top and Senior management have a conference call, where the issues of the week such as the business achieved, major issues faced, strategies of the competition, the costs of borrowing, and in which direc- tion the action should focus, are discussed. This call is chaired by the Vice Chairman or the Managing Director. It has proved to be a very useful activity for sharing and escalation of business related issues in a transparent and participative man- ner.

HDFC has a transparent performance appraisal process. Training needs are identified after assessing performance at work and discussion with appraisees. Performance is evaluated on the basis of key result areas and specific attributes. The Learning and Development Needs Assessment form is completed during the appraisal process. The appraiser and the appraisee discuss the key areas where the appraisee needs to develop his/her knowledge, skills, and attitude. Learn- ing and development needs are also identified on the basis of internal au- dit reports. HDFC has also recently ini- tiated a competency mapping exercise for Branch Managers, the primary objective being identi- fication of learning needs. Based on the information avail- able, the HRD department develops an action plan for programmes, i.e., on-the-job training, job rotation or train- ing through various programmes – internal, external or international.

Nature of Training Offered

At HDFC, we have developed a multi-pronged training strategy for developing leaders. Starting from induction, on-the-job training to international assignments and pro- grammes, all are part of our training canvas. We neither

restrict ourselves to methodology or periodicity, nor to being thought leaders about leadership development. We believe in growing internal trainers, and stress on actual behaviour, on-the-job training, and classroom delivery as bonafide means of training.

On-the-job training: As indicated earlier, HDFC adopts the philosophy of ‘Learning by doing’. An employee learns more by actually performing. On-the-job training helps the employee to get access to their work and in relating to their tasks and role more efficiently.

Job Rotation: Employees should be familiar with proce- sses in other functions. This is achieved by moving peo- ple through various functions to appreciate, learn, and understand specific processes. This enables employees

to understand the various customer touch points in depth and the value creation process.

Training Programmes

HDFC’s aim is to create an enabling environment in which employees take the responsibility for making signifi- cant shifts in the value creation pro- cess for the customers and contribute to the goals of the company. Some of the training programmes offered to the employees, based on identified needs are:

HDFC School: The School provides a complete insight to the frontline staff into the operations of HDFC, its prod- ucts and processes on the assets and liability side of the balance sheet. The programme is facilitated by senior line

managers.

Enjoying Challenges Together: It is a teamwork-based programme that helps to clarify roles and responsibili- ties of each department by giving and receiving individual and departmental feedback. It helps in resolving intra/ inter-department concerns. Participants learn ways to work joyfully together, resulting in superior results.

Executive Development Programme: The main purpose of this programme is role clarification — to clearly define supervisory role in the overall context of the organization and initiate specific actions to improve effectiveness.

We neither restrict

ourselves to methodology

or periodicity, nor to

being thought leaders

about leadership

development. We believe

in growing internal

trainers, and stress on

actual behaviour, on-the-

job training, and

classroom delivery as

bonafide means of

training.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 73

Communication skills and ability to work in teams are important ingredients of the programme. Participants learn to manage time and energy better in relation to the multiplicity of expectations from their role.

Enhancing Managerial Skills Programme: This pro- gramme is designed to enhance awareness, inspire, and build on both behavioural competencies and managerial skills. The objective is to enable participants to cope up with the current challenges and achieve defined out- comes. Its contents include problem solving, decision- making, leadership skills, self-exploration, time management, and role clarity.

Leadership Programmes

Leadership effectiveness plays a significant role in the success of the team and consequently organizational re- sults. It is extremely important therefore for key individu- als in the organization to understand how they can enhance their skills and adapt their styles in response to the needs of the organization. Leadership skills facilitate learning in the organi- zation. Leadership programmes in- clude inputs on motivation, coaching, and counseling. They are conducted on a regular basis for Branch Heads as well as functional heads.

During 2011, HDFC initiated a Lead- ership Development Programme with a reputable management institute for a select group of middle and senior managers, specifically identified for future leadership positions. This exercise was under the direct guidance of the Managing Director.

Empowered Trainer

Empowered trainers are the driving force for organiza- tional learning and change at all levels. While relevant information required for training is available in books, exercises, slides, films, etc., it is the skilled trainers who translate it all into powerful programmes for the organi- zation.

At HDFC, senior executives in the line function who have necessary knowledge, traits, and inclination and drive to facilitate have been trained to be trainers in their respec- tive functional areas. These facilitators are not only capa- ble of scientifically identifying training needs but also

design, develop, and deliver training programmes in their branch/region. The HR department centrally coordinates their effort and gives necessary support.

Mentoring

In addition to training at HDFC, there is also a structured mentoring programme as another way to deepen leader- ship development across the organization. The mentoring programme assists new employees to integrate quickly into the organization; it serves as a vehicle to inculcate values of HDFC such as result orientation and team work- ing among new employees; helps outline and draw up a competency development plan; and find aspirations and work out solutions in real time to spot and retain talent.

Mentors are carefully selected on the basis of their func- tional exposure and experience and trained on the mentoring process. Each employee is assigned a mentor

and each newcomer is told in the ap- pointment letter itself who is going to be his/her mentor. Mentors and mentees submit meeting reports to HRD at periodic intervals after each meeting.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

The art of managing and leading has always been dynamic. Today it is changing more quickly and dramati-

cally than ever before. The soft skills such as the ability to understand oneself, understand people’s thinking and emotions, to inspire them by ‘selling’ them your vision and getting their ‘buy in’ to this vision, are critical in every role. The NLP programmes are custom-designed after identifying specific needs for credit risk manage- ment, loan origination, and other functional staff.

Enhancing Personal Effectiveness

This workshop is designed to empower participants to be fully in control of their lives and optimize their unlim- ited potential thereby enabling them to achieve break- throughs at work as well as in personal life. “Enhancing Personal Effectiveness” provides an opportunity and a platform to the participants to explore the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own self and become capable of de- veloping one’s potential to the fullest, while handling weaknesses effectively.

Every company has a set

of written values and

goals – but what sets

HDFC apart is that it has

institutionalized a set of

practices so as to live by

its values and principles.

74

Time and Stress Management

This programme is conducted in order to help partici- pants to manage their time and priorities better and han- dle stress in positive ways to achieve results. Employees learn to keep track of their time expenditure and accord- ingly identify and eliminate time wasters. They learn the benefits of delegation, thereby releasing more time for crea- tive work.

External Training Programme

Based on the identified needs, employees are nominated for external programmes conducted by various institu- tions and professional bodies, management institutes, etc.

International Programmes and Ex- posure

Selected staff members are nominated for international training programmes conducted by institutions of repute abroad. Some of them have also vis- ited various mortgage and retail lend- ing institutions in USA and Europe to study various products, processes, and work practices followed in these insti- tutions – especially those related to use of technology.

These study assignments have been instrumental in the development of new products as well as benchmarking some processes in HDFC. For some of the consulting as- signments taken up by HDFC for vari- ous corporate and countries, middle management staff is usually inducted into the team in order to nurture them and develop in them an international/global perspec- tive.

Overall Implementation Plan for HDFC Training Programmes

After the learning needs of the employees are identified, learning initiatives are planned to fulfill the requirements and accordingly participants attend different training programmes. Pre-programme questionnaire is sent to the nominees. Questions are framed such that it provides a clear picture of the role of nominee and specific skills wherein s/he needs development. After receiving the

questionnaire from the nominees, it is compiled and ana- lysed. Accordingly, the programme is designed/fine- tuned and data is shared with the facilitators of the programme. Participants in the programme are usually from various branches and departments. The programmes are designed for maximum interaction amongst partici- pants through discussions, role-plays, case studies and many more activities, which leads to better bonding amongst the participants. At the end of the programme, participants fill in the programme feedback questionnaire, where they rate the programme as well as the facilitators, which is compiled and shared with the facilitators and the senior/top management.

Training Management System

The training database is utilized for the purpose of updating needs identified through the performance appraisal process and other process mentioned earlier. Participation of employees is updated on a regular basis and data is available through various report op- tions. All staff members have access to their respective training related infor- mation. Functional heads, branch managers, and regional managers can access training related data for their respective staff.

Infrastructure for Training

HDFC has a professional learning cen- tre, Centre of Housing Finance (CHF), at Lonavla. It was set up in 1990 to pro-

vide functional and soft skill training to its executives from all locations in the country. CHF also conducts in- ternational training programmes on housing finance management and organizational development for hous- ing finance companies in Asia, Africa, and East Europe.

HDFC Culture

At HDFC, leadership development is not limited to as- sessment and training. We believe that leaders can be developed and kept in an organization only by having a consistent organizational culture. Each employee must embody the culture. The organization believes that it is this corporate culture or “the HDFC way of doing things” which forms the foundation for long-term success.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

The people who work at

HDFC do not view

themselves as employees

or see the company as an

employer. Senior

management has instilled

among employees a

feeling that “the company

belongs to us as much as

we belong to the

company.” This gives

them a sense of being part

of an extended family.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 75

Every company has a set of written values and goals – but what sets HDFC apart is that it has institutionalized a set of practices so as to live by its values and principles. At the heart of these practices is the organization’s firm commitment to building long-term, mutually supportive relationships with all its key constitu- encies: its employees, investors, de- positors, borrowers, and regulators.

HDFC has built a principle-centred organization – based on fairness, kind- ness, efficiency, and effectiveness. It has built trust between people, strengthened communication, and adopted a participative style of man- agement. The company works with an open-door policy. Everyone knows each other and people can walk into the office of the Chairman, Vice-Chair- man and CEO, Managing Director or Executive Director to raise their con- cerns and have them addressed.

HDFC values strong teamwork, interpersonal relation- ship, and supportive leadership. Senior managers want a lot of inputs with the initiatives of planning and deci- sion making to come from all employees, irrespective of their hierarchy. Employees are expected to exercise and accept leadership, thereby learning to lead and follow

simultaneously. Senior management view leadership as a creative process and depend on fluid communication – up, down, and across the organization, thus ensuring free sharing of information.

The people who work at HDFC do not view themselves as employees or see the company as an employer. Senior management has instilled among employees a feeling that “the company belongs to us as much as we belong to the company.” This gives them a sense of being part of an extended family.

HDFC’s robust growth story and im- pressive business results, coupled with numerous prestigious awards con- ferred over the years for, inter alia, in- vestor relations, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, ethical management, etc., seem to endorse the

fact that its leadership development efforts are yielding good dividends. HDFC has proved that an organization based on strong business ethics, an impeccable enlight- ened leadership, can not only survive, but also continue to remain a market leader even in an aggressively com- petitive market. Perhaps, all the above have resulted in the creation of a very strong HDFC brand.

HDFC has proved that an

organization based on

strong business ethics, an

impeccable enlightened

leadership, can not only

survive, but also continue

to remain a market leader

even in an aggressively

competitive market.

Retail Leadership Development: The Theory and Practice at Shoppers Stop

Govind Shrikhande

Govinda Pyramid

Everyone in India knows about the Govinda Pyra-mid,which celebrates the birth of Lord Krishna, through a ritual of ‘Dahi Handi’ (pot full of curd). The entire atmos- phere, created by the rains, a ‘Handi’ suspended high in the air, a joyous ‘Toli’ (Group) of Govindas, stretching them- selves to the ultimate to reach the pot, and the boisterous crowd cheering them, is a ‘Must See Experience’.

Apart from the formation of an eye-catching symmetrical structure, there is a hidden management principle in this

wholesome fun activity, which is not quite apparent.

The Govinda Pyramid is a combination of several levels of varying competencies that tries to attain a goal, in this case, the ‘Dahi Handi,’ through a coordinated team effort.

The bottom level brings in experience, strength, maturity, and planning to the Pyramid. The middle level adds flair to push the boundaries, provides tough support in ex- ecution and also gives flexibility. The top level triggers agility, speed, nimbleness and a youthful urge to beat the goals.

76

If all the three levels had the same qualities and compe- tencies, then the ‘Toli’ would never achieve the task of breaking the ‘handi’. It is the combined effect of team work and an appropriate mix of competencies that help the ‘Toli’ to plan, execute, and break the Handi.

What is the significance of this Pyramid to Retail Leader- ship Management?

Indian Organized Retail

India has been a country of traders from time immemo- rial. It is a land of ‘dukandaars’ (shopkeepers) with more than 15 million retailers spread across the country. Or- ganized retail, however, has been slow to start – with ration shops, textile chains, and footwear chains, ruling the roost, from 1960’s to 1990. 1991 saw the birth of Shoppers Stop, the first Department Store Chain of India. This was followed by many other chains and formats, post-economic lib- eralization of 1995. A number of chains including apparel and elec- tronics retailers came up in the new open economy. But it was only after 2001 that the pace of modernization of the Indian retail gathered momen- tum.

A lot of new formats emerged — from Hypermarkets and Home Stores, to Mobile Stores, F&B Outlets, and Multiplexes. Awareness and aspira- tions rose along with the rising con- sumer income. Malls became the new recreation centres and popular hang-outs for family and friends. Consumers also became more demanding, fash- ionable, and knowledgeable. Double income families had the additional means and aspirations to make their dreams come true.

As the industry exploded at a break-neck pace, the big- gest challenge was talent management. The other big chal- lenges included:

• High cost of rents • High competition from both organized and unorgan-

ized sectors • Low margins

• Poor infrastructure.

Multi-tax structure cutting across the states and the Cen- tre further added to the complexity. Retail business is de- pendent on a growing economy. Whenever the economy falters, retail sales are the first to take a dip as consumers prefer to save or postpone their expenses, and when re- tail sales go down, a lot of retail companies go down un- der, as we saw during the last few years.

The key foundation of retail success has definitely been talent management. Most management effort is dedicated to attracting, retaining, and growing talent. This strategy has worked wonders for Shoppers Stop as can

be seen from its history of growth. Launched in 1991, as a men’s-wear store, covering just 4,500 sq ft space, it has not only expanded across India, to 43 stores and 3.5 million sq ft in the department store format but has also started other formats like Homestop, Crossword, Hypercity, Airport Stores, etc., over the last twenty years,

The network of Shoppers Stop outlets covers 19 cities across India. While the department store is positioned as a house of brands for fashionable fami- lies — stocking apparel and non-ap- parel fashion brands – both international and national, Hypercity stocks food, grocery and general mer- chandise catering to the maximum wallet share of the customers. HomeStop and Crossword have a niche segment covering home and

books, music, toys, and stationery. All the formats have won several national and international awards. As of date, there are more than 4,500 associates working from Siliguri to Chennai.

Retail Leadership Management at Shoppers Stop

When organized retail started in India – very few people saw it as an attractive employment opportunity. While most of them were worried about losing their Sundays and holidays – the days of high retail sales – some felt that it was a tiring job – standing throughout the day in a store, waiting for their ‘God’ – ‘The Customer’ to arrive, and a few gave silly reasons like – “who will marry us!!”

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

Sketch by Sharon Pimento, Designer and a Category Visual Merchandiser at Shoppers

Stop

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 77

So, we had a tough time, recruiting people at all levels.

For an outsider, retail is a simple job of selling merchan- dise at a profit. In reality, it is much more complex, in- volving both science and art of retailing. The retail Industry requires three kinds of roles/skill sets:

a) The Buying, Merchandising and Design (B&M) Team works to create the merchandise offering, considering the target customers. This team comprises Fashion graduates, MBAs, designers, etc., who work on fash- ion insights, sourcing skills, and customer under- standing and is the backbone of the organization. The merchandise assortment is completed by working along with designers, manufacturers, and brands, and ensuring the right size and price along with timely availability. Cre- ating an assortment requires expe- rience, a proper understanding of fashion and consumers’ needs, and the ability to innovate and identify winning products.

b) The Operations Team works on achieving sales by actually servic- ing the customers and delivering the sales targets. This team is the ‘Army and Face’ of the retail or- ganization. They are young, ener- getic, and live-wire go-getters. This group mainly consists of under- graduates and graduates, along with MBAs and ac- countants.

c) A Third team, which is an amalgamation of various teams, makes the whole cycle of attracting, retaining, and transacting with the customer seamless. This group consists of marketing wizards, CAs, architects, IT experts, lawyers, engineers, accountants, HR ex- perts, and MBAs. They design and deliver great stores, recruit and retain the right talent, manage the supply chain and information chain, manage costs and prof- its, draw agreements, and sign retail spaces.

This also brings us to the parallel between the Govinda Pyramid and Retail Structures!

The B&M team is the bottom level of the pyramid, which provides experience, knowledge, and strength to produce

an attractive assortment for the customer. Their planning creates the platform for winning. The middle levels which are a combination of all enabling teams, are the backbone of the pyramid and hold the structure together. The top level is the operations and front-end sales team. This is the army that serves the customer with a smile and deliv- ers sales. This team is nimble, young, and raring to go, puts in long hours of work, and picks up the Dahi Handi.

Only when all the three levels work together, can the ‘Dahi Handi’ be won.

Retail Career Paths at Shoppers Stop

Everyone wants to grow fast in their career. Some are ca- pable, while some others are not. Some grow through experience and time spent in the organization. Others may grow through delivery of job. Yet some others grow through impressing and influencing the boss.

Organizations need a fool-proof sys- tem that would nurture the right talent for the right job at the right time. In a growing organization, maintaining the pipeline for current and future jobs is a key challenge. The attrition levels in retail are phenomenally high and fur- ther add to the challenge.

Realizing that the challenge could not be met in an ad hoc manner, we developed systematic proc- esses and tools for assignment of people to appropriate roles, ensuring that the leadership pipeline is filled with the right people. To facilitate career growth of employees, we developed the Assessment Centre, clarified the career path for each role, and then mapped them for selected employees. For example, a Customer Care Associate can grow to be a Store Head, by clearing stages of Baby Kan- garoo, Department Manager, ROM, to a Store Manager over a 8 to 10 year period. A Management Trainee can start off as a Department Manager, post-training, and then grow to a ROM, Store Manager, Area Manager, and Re- gional Head to an All India Operations Manager’s posi- tion. Similarly, each individual Customer Care Associate can see a path for his/her growth – in Role & Designa- tion. On the B&M side, a Management Trainee can grow from an Assistant Merchandiser to Deputy Merchandiser,

The key foundation of

retail success has

definitely been talent

management. Most

management effort is

dedicated to attracting,

retaining, and growing

talent. This strategy has

worked wonders for

Shoppers Stop.

78

Merchandiser, Assistant Category Manager, Category Manager, Trading Manager, and finally to B&M Head, over a 10 to 15 year period.

The Heads of both the functions have the prospect of lead- ing the All India Functions of B&M and Operations and can ultimately become the COO, CEO, or Head of the Com- pany or Divisions.

Assessment Centres

We adopted the Assessment Centre methodology almost 10 years back to identify the right talent for the next level. We intended to scale up at a pace of more than 20 per cent every year by adding a lot of stores across India and this needed a large pool of talent at every store level and at the Services Office – a team that could scale up their capabilities along with the growth of the Company.

The Assessment Centres determine the individuals’ ratings against specific competencies that are required for a specific role. The design was adapted from an international programme that was used as a benchmark. The top management itself went through an assessment programme to understand the relevance of the programme and check out their own competencies. This method uses a combination of tools such as group discussion, personal interview, case study, in-basket/trays, mathematical/analytical puzzles, etc. We use a mix of internal and external assessors depend- ing on the role and its importance. We also train asses- sors internally, as the number of Assessment Centres conducted every year are pretty large.

The level of difficulty and competencies change as per the role and level. While grade promotions can happen through yearly appraisals and experience, role change has to go through assessments, especially in the two key streams of operations and buying and merchandising.

From the beginning, we have faced two objections to this method:

• Many participants feel that it is like a one-day cricket match. If they underperform on that day - they lose at

least six months to a year. • The assessment does not consider participants’ on-

the-job performance.

We have used the feedback to strengthen the process and make it bias-free. Also, with multiple tools to check com- petency, the one-day failure is actually not a reality. This is communicated to our employees to assuage their fears and criticisms. Additionally, Development Centres have been set up to provide our employees with an opportu- nity to acquire skills that may be needed in the future.

The Development Centres were started two years after the Assessment Centres were operationalized. Typically,

the Development Centres act like ‘Semi Final Programmes’. They identify the key issues in an individuals’ compe- tency portfolio, after which, the HR team tailors a programme for improve- ment in each of the parameters. This is done through projects, team work, case studies, store visits, exposure, and mentoring. Once an individual has gone through a programme at the de- velopment centre, he/she is better pre- pared for an Assessment Centre, and even those who fail are in a better posi- tion to accept the results than earlier, as they acknowledge and understand the efforts underlying the whole proc- ess.

We also have a unique programme – Baby Kangaroo – at the starting point of

a Customer Care Associates’ career. It utilizes the con- cept of a Mother Kangaroo and her Joey whom she pro- tects and nurtures till he/she is ready to take off on its own. All fresh front-end Associates who spend a year on the job are eligible to appear for the Programme. After clearing the Assessment Centre Programme, the Associ- ates go through MAST (Managerial and Supervisory Training) spread over 37 days. They are mentored under an experienced supervisor before they take on the actual role. As an organization, we believe that every manager should be capable of conducting training; and hence, these Associates go through ‘Train the Trainer’ programme and are assessed on the delivery skills in areas like customer service, retail selling skills, and product knowledge, etc. Apart from the above, associates are trained through vari-

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

Organizations need a fool-

proof system that would

nurture the right talent for

the right job at the right

time. In a growing

organization, maintaining

the pipeline for current

and future jobs is a key

challenge. The attrition

levels in retail are

phenomenally high and

further add to the

challenge.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 79

ous courses to take up bigger respon- sibilities.

Being a member of the IGDS (Intercon- tinental Group of Department Stores), we nominate all our key managers for the Strategic Retail Management (SRM) Programme conducted by them. Man- agers from all functions including op- erations and buying and merchandising have attended the Pro- gramme which has helped in enhanc- ing their strategic perspective. We identify young potential managers and nominate them for the “IGDS High Po- tential Programme” annually. Our ex- change programmes help them understand the best practices adopted.

IGDS membership is only by invite and consists of only one department store from each country. It has famous retailers like, Woolworths from Australia, Bloomingdales from USA, Printemps from France, Central from Thailand, and Parksons from Malaysia. The programme is run by the IGDS secretariat and all members can send two or three nominees. The partcipants are guided by the CEO of one of the IGDS companies. They present their report in the bi-annual/annual summits of IGDS.

In another initiative – The Hi Pot Programme – Managers interact with their counterparts from global retail compa- nies, enhancing their knowledge of best retail practices.

Learnings and the Way Ahead

The biggest challenge in all such as- sessments is the fairness of the Centre and the belief of the participants in the system followed by the Centre.

As mentioned earlier, we have tried to instill faith in the system by using trained assessors – both internal and external. The HR Head also runs through the results to ensure that there is no bias in the assessment. One needs to continuously improve and update the tools, cases, and assignments as Associates get used to various tests over the years. Over the past 10 years,

this method has provided us with the CEO, B&M Heads, Trading Managers, Category Managers, Store Managers, etc., and majority of them have actu- ally delivered brilliantly in their jobs. This reaffirms our belief that it is a ro- bust programme which has grown from strength to strength.

Enabling Culture

At Shoppers Stop, we believe that it is important to have an enabling culture in the organization that encourages performance, openness, and growth. Retail, as we saw earlier, requires dif- ferent kind of competencies and talent

for different roles and it is important to bring empathy among the various team members spread across the stores located in various cities. This is especially required as the front-end team is working 365 days of the year – through Diwali and Christmas, sacrificing their holidays to serve the customers. Over the years, we have therefore made conscious attempts to develop the culture of empathy and respect through various initiatives.

Common Designation

The starting point of all these initiatives has been the re- moval of overt signs of hierarchy by introducing a com- mon designation, ‘Customer Care Associate,’ for all the team members. From the Managing Director to the Store Planner or the front-end Sales Associate – each one is first referred to as Customer Care Associate. The Associ-

ates feel proud to share the same des- ignation; it helps reinforce that all employees are part of one team that ex- ists because of and for the customer who is paying for their salary. It en- courages the team to be humble and united and on par with each other. It enhances the service leadership quali- ties amongst all managers.

Values

We have carefully chosen and adopted the following key values which guide the behaviour of all the employees:

The front-end team is

working 365 days of the

year – through Diwali and

Christmas, sacrificing

their holidays to serve the

customers. Over the

years, we have therefore

made conscious attempts

to develop the culture of

empathy and respect

through various initiatives.

Four years ago, Shoppers

Stop started the practice of

singing an Anthem every

day at 10.45 am in all the

stores and service offices

across the country. Very

few organizations have

utilized the force of a song

to get their teams charged

up.

80

• We will not take what is not ours • We will uphold the obligation to dissent • We will have an environment conducive to openness • We will have an environment for innovation • We will have an environment for development • We will have willingness to apologize and forgive • We will respect our customers’ rights • We will create an environment of trust • We will be fair • We will be socially responsible.

These values help the team to face vari- ous challenges that appear from time to time. For example, although we do not accept any gifts, we continue to re- ceive gifts on various occasions. These gifts are deposited in the CEO’s Office and auctioned every year, the proceeds from which are sent to CRY.

Satisfaction Indices

Shoppers Stop commissions three an- nual satisfaction surveys which are conducted by an independent interna- tional research agency. The surveys include Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI), Associate Satisfaction Index (ASI), and Partner Sat- isfaction Index (PSI). The results of the surveys are treated as interdependent and in combination, indicate the health of the organizational culture in dealing with its custom- ers, associates, and supplier partners.

It is firmly believed that if associates are happy, then both the customers and supplier partners would be happy. The surveys are not treated as mere rituals undertaken to increase the ‘feel good’ factor of managers. Instead, they are given weightage in the Balance Score Card of every individual’s performance appraisal. The ASI/CSI scores help the managers to take corrective actions and improve

performance.

Anthem

Four years ago, Shoppers Stop started the practice of sing- ing an Anthem every day at 10.45 am in all the stores and service offices across the country. Very few organizations have utilized the force of a song to get their teams charged up. The Anthem, “Hadh Se Aage,” written by Gulzaar, sung by Sonu Nigam, and composed by Ram Sampath is unique in its power to bind and inspire people. This song

unites all employees in the spirit of de- livering a service standard that is be- yond the capabilities of individual employees. It also helps the store to start the day with an adrenaline rush that keeps the employees in high spirits. Most employees feel that it creates a sense of oneness in all the stores and offices across the country.

Concluding Comments

We, at Shoppers Stop, have always believed in team power as the key fac- tor for success in retail. Our efforts in attracting, training, retaining, and

growing the talent pool have met with success in differ- ent metrices. Within the retail Industry, we boast of the most loyal and long-serving retail management team. Majority of the top management team members at Shop- pers Stop have spent more than ten years in the organiza- tion. Our Associate Satisfaction Scores along with PSI and CSI have held on well. Our attrition in the back-end has been relatively low. Most importantly, majority of the top positions have been filled by internal candidates. We are extremely thrilled to share that the Govinda Pyramid does work well and can meet international metrices and challenges head on.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

Within the retail Industry,

we boast of the most loyal

and long-serving retail

management team.

Majority of the top

management team

members at Shoppers Stop

have spent more than ten

years in the organization.

Leader and Leadership Development at IBM

Rajshekar Krishnan

This perspective has two distinct parts. One, whichgives an overall description of IBM’s leadership de- velopment philosophy and method and the other which

provides a portrayal of who is a leader. The first piece is descriptive and the second piece is contemplative and comes out of the experience of the writer in his current

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 81

role and his philosophical stance towards life and being.

Part A: The Organizational Journey of IBM into Leadership Development

It is appropriate to begin this article with a quote of Lou Gerstner from his book ‘Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?”- “The work-a-day world of business isn’t about fads and mira- cles. There are fundamentals that characterize successful enter- prises and successful executives:

• They are focused • They are superb at execution • They abound with personal leadership.”7

As Noel Tichy says, “A number of management theorists don’t buy the argument that leadership is the key factor in determining an organization’s success; they assert that a winning culture or efficient work processes, or any number of ancillary attributes are the sine qua non of suc- cess. I agree with them that those things are important. But leadership takes precedence over everything else ….. Without leaders, good results are a matter of random chance, and there- fore unsustainable.”8

IBM is celebrating its centenary this year which is a testament to its sus- tained success. It has weathered nu- merous storms and crises over the years and is seen as a dominant force in the technology sector. It has produced gen- erations of leaders across national cul- tures – leaders, who have successfully carried forward the corporate mission in their respective countries. What is the secret of IBM’s sustained success? What has been the rationale behind its leaders’ achieve- ments and how does it develop leaders to sustain growth and momentum? This article seeks to address these ques- tions from the perspective of a leadership development professional as well as an IBMer who heads the leader- ship development practice for IBM India.

Values

As Sam Palmisano, the Chairman and CEO of IBM, says in the booklet on IBM values which is given to every IBMer on joining: “Many companies define themselves in terms of technologies, products, pricing or even individual per- sonalities. This can work well for a time, but when the world changes, they often find themselves adrift. Just look at our own industry. Its history is littered with compa- nies that had their moment in the sun but they no longer exist or are largely irrelevant. I believe that is because they anchored themselves – their business models, brands, and cultures – to things that did not endure. IBM was different. From its inception nearly a century ago, our com- pany has been grounded in strongly held beliefs. These values shaped our market place identity, our policies and practices. They committed IBM to a broad definition of

leadership – to be a trusted partner for customers, a reliable long-term invest- ment, a progressive employer, and a responsible corporate citizen. They guided the company through decades of extraordinary change.”

The current generation of IBMers is unlike any of its predecessors. Major- ity of our workforce in India has been with IBM for fewer than five years. And, while earlier IBM used to hire most of its people straight out of school, today, it also hires many experienced profes- sionals, and many more come into IBM through outsourcing and acquisitions. These differences pose challenges in sustenance of the IBM culture.

Questions such as: How do we ensure, despite our size and complexity that we work as a unified team, in a man- ner that delivers on the promise of IBM’s brand and busi- ness model? How do we deal with the changed expectations of the IBM workforce gaining significance? We recognize that values must be genuinely shared; they can’t be imposed top down.9 They must be genuinely shared values. The values are the connective tissue that has longevity.10

7 Gerstner Jr., Lois V (2002). Who Says Elephant’s Can’t Dance ? London: Harper Collins Publishers, pp 217.

8 Tichy, Noel and Cohen,Eli (2003). Why are Business Leaders Im- portant in Business Leadership, New Delhi: Jossey Bass, Wiley Eastern, pp 4-5.

While the values are

universal in their

applicability to all IBMers,

it is the leaders who are

exemplars and

embodiments of the

values. The crux of

leadership development at

IBM is in the socialization

and internalization of

values.

9 Palmisano,Samuel J (2004). Our Values at Work –On Being an IBMer.

10 Kanter, Rosabeth Moss (2010). Leadership in Globalizing World in Hand book of Leadership Practice, Boston: Harvard Business Press, pp 580.

82

One of the early leadership actions that Sam Palmisano took when he became the Chairman and CEO was to re- fresh the IBM values through a unique participative pro- cess involving Web chats open to all IBMers. The values distilled from the exercise are presented below:

• Dedication to every client’s success

• Innovation that matters for our company and the world

• Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.

It is these values that are the fundamental drivers of lead- ership behaviour at IBM. While the values are universal in their applicability to all IBMers, it is the leaders who are exemplars and embodiments of the values. The crux of leadership development at IBM is in the socialization and internalization of values.

Socialization at IBM is driven at mul- tiple levels:

The first level is for the new employee. Succeeding @ IBM is a two-year pro- gramme designed to provide all new employees with the resources they need to develop into fully realized IBMers starting from the moment they choose to join the company.

The second level is designed for the newly appointed managers. In the lead- ership development intervention for new managers, called Basic Blue for IBM leaders, practising leaders and execu- tives provide instruction on values and their own leadership journey within the organization.

The third level is for the senior managers and is titled, The Integration & Values Team (I&VT). Senior leaders from around the world, who occupy key positions in IBM are selected by the Chairman to work as a team to integrate IBM based on its values. Members are viewed as an asset of IBM, not as representatives of the individual unit or position to which they are assigned. It is expected that I&VT members will act in the best interest of the enter- prise first.

Systematic Leadership Development: How IBM Develops Leaders?

It is interesting to step back in time and hear Thomas J Watson Jr., “Our training methods at that stage (1957) were still surprisingly primitive. We had our sales school and machine school, but nothing to teach a person how to be someone’s boss. A branch manager would call a salesman in and say, “You’re promoted to assistant man- ager. Be careful with people, don’t swear and wear a white shirt”…….I took one of our most gifted sales managers and put him in charge of executive development. At first he was using cases straight from Harvard Business School. I took him aside one day and said, in my usual undiplomatic way, if our company was going to be unique, we had to teach something unique. He said, I thought

you want them educated to be good managers. “You don’t understand,” I said, “I want them educated in IBM management: communications, su- preme sales and service efforts, going to a guy’s house if his wife is ill, seeing if you can help out, making post-death call.” You couldn’t read that in some other manual. They were practices we had built up over the years, and new IBM managers had to know them in addition to technology. So, he changed direction and the training system be- came so good that eventually we made a rule that people could not manage anything until they went to manage- ment school. The course lasted two weeks to six weeks, and I made sure that I or another top executive visited

each group of trainees that went through because it was critical for them to see who they were working for.”11

Leadership development has come a long way since the humble but dramatic beginning described by Watson. To understand IBM’s current leadership development efforts, a few fundamentals of the situation need to be consid- ered. IBM is the world’s largest information technology company; its revenues are in the order of $100 billion per annum; currently, it has operations in 170 countries. It has 400,000 full-time employees, 50 per cent of its

In the context of IBM, it is

the values that provide the

fabric of developing one’s

leadership capabilities.

While it is assumed that

all leadership

development is self-

development, the

organization plays a

crucial role in providing

the opportunities and

tools for growth.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

11 Watson Jr., Thomas J (1990). My Life at IBM and Beyond, New York: Bantam Books, Father, Son & Co, pp 303.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 83

workforce has less than 5 years of service with IBM, and 40 per cent of its employees work remotely that is not from a traditional IBM office.

As a globally integrated enterprise, the compulsions are to make informed choices in global market, secure unique value in a network of open partners, leverage the power of global assets, embrace open collaboration and knowl- edge sharing practices, and operate seamlessly across boundaries via value, processes, and skills. Given these challenges, it is imperative to have a charged and electric leadership and leadership pipeline too for the present and the future!

The Integrated Leadership Development Plan deployed by IBM is understandably colossal in conception and mammoth in execution. It is divided into three phases:

Planning – This phase consists of the following elements:

• Defining all roles across IBM • Creating success profile for all lead-

ership roles • Defining demand for leadership

roles through business unit and market

• Identifying critical gap role (requir- ing accelerated development and recruitment).

Pipeline Identification and Develop- ment – This phase consists of:

• Regularly evaluating leadership competencies of those in leadership positions

• Assessing leadership potential and functional skills with verification.

• Providing guidance on potential career paths and personalized development plan

• Providing innovative and extensive experiences and developmental opportunities.

Placement – This phase consists of: • Defining bench strength of each leadership role en-

suring diversity • Specifying a slate of candidates, with diversity and

high potential for each leadership opening • Having a disciplined process for placement through

candidate-opening drills • Conducting annual review of leadership at all levels.

There are multiple processes and reviews to loop these phases together in a coordinated fashion across geographies and technological support through innova- tive applications and tools designed to support and track every element of each phase to ensure desired outcomes, i.e., a constant and ready supply of the right leaders for the right jobs at the right time.

Leader Development

In the context of IBM, it is the values that provide the fabric of developing one’s leadership capabilities. While it is assumed that all leadership development is self-de- velopment, the organization plays a crucial role in pro- viding the opportunities and tools for growth. IBM has established a 4-tier learning blend. In fact, IBM’s 4-tier learning blend has provided an industry-acclaimed ap- proach to corporate learning; and not just for IBMers, it

has been adopted by Fortune 500 com- panies around the world.

Traditional Classroom Training

Traditional classroom learning is a solid component of the IBM Leadership Development model. This mode of learning has many advantages. It transfers knowledge in a highly con- trolled environment, eliminating work distractions to allow for safe skill prac- tice and deep reflection on fundamen- tal principles. It enables peer learning, relationship building, social network- ing, and face-to-face role-play practice,

and provides an opportunity to learn via mistakes with- out impacting workplace results. Although traditional classroom learning offers reflection and safe practice, it is arguably not the best approach for all kinds of learning. The workplace itself can provide the ideal venue for gain- ing certain new work task skills and knowledge and thus forms the second tier of leadership practice.

Performance Support Learning

A second learning approach happens when carefully tar- geted and measured guidance is delivered at the exact moment of need, without interrupting the flow of work. Research suggests that employees become more produc- tive more quickly, and through experience, they can un- derstand more intuitively the relationship between subject

IBM’s 4-tier learning

blend has provided an

industry-acclaimed

approach to corporate

learning; and not just for

IBMers, it has been

adopted by Fortune 500

companies around the

world.

84

matter and the work (Gery, 1991)12 when support is pro- vided to them at the time when they need it. The meta- phor for such work-embedded learning, is the automobile’s Global Positioning System that automatically and in- stantly informs lost drivers about where they are, where they need to go, and how to get there – exactly when they need to learn that information. A spell-checker is another common example of Performance Support Learning, in which learning occurs directly within the work task or work environment itself. This experience-based approach enhances knowledge and skill as its application occurs immediately and in context within the workflow. IBM’s world-class technologists have been designing, deploying, and developing Performance Support Learning into its Leadership Development workplace applications for years, most recently leveraging social networks via “IBM Excaliber” a just-in-time expert locator, and “Lotus SameTime” an instant messaging tool.

But Performance Support Learning alone may not allow for the reflection needed to convert knowledge into un- derstanding. Nor will experience alone necessarily help learners extend their insights beyond the immediate appli- cation. Performance Support teaches “what works,” but not “why it works.” The learner may not see how princi- ples of the new behaviour can be ap- plied to new and different situations. What is needed in conjunction with both traditional class- room learning and performance support learning is a third approach – one that provides both the workplace context and the opportunity for deeper understanding and re- flection.

Work-enabled Learning

Our third approach is called Work-enabled Learning, which uses the workplace as a learning environment, bringing the learning to the work. The workplace becomes the “classroom “and the work tasks become learning ac- tivities, that enable observation and experience and re- flection and review. The metaphor is the student driver

learning to drive on real roads, through real on-road ex- periences, sometimes with a teacher alongside providing guidance to stimulate proper understanding and reflec- tion – and sometimes the teacher not being present. It cultivates skill transfer to new and different situations by meaningful interactions that happen directly within the context of work, yet with the focus on learning and un- derstanding principles, underlying the enacted skills.

So, while the primary goal of Performance Support Learn- ing is to help the employee to perform a task (with learn- ing being a secondary outcome), the primary goal of

Work-enabled Learning is learning. With Work-enabled Learning, the workplace task is chosen specifically as a learning opportunity first and fore- most. Task accomplishment, though important, is not its main objective. Work-enabled Learning draws upon two research-supported approaches: (a) experience and (b) observation.13

IBM Leadership Development calls this design ‘PARR’, (Prepare, Act, Re- flect, and Review). It is the learner’s purposeful, guided way to acquire knowledge and skills in an immediate and relevant setting through primary experience. But primary experience is not the only route to building and im- proving workplace skills.

Observational Learning

More than five decades of research in social learning theory (Bandura, 1986, 1997)14 suggest that observational learning is a powerful teacher, as well. Watching an ac- complished and knowledgeable peer or colleague per- form a task is another effective way to begin acquiring a skill, especially if the learner has the opportunity to de- brief afterwards, ask questions, and review what she/ he witnessed.

Work-enabled Learning embraces the reality that most of the employee learning occurs directly in the workplace.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

12 Gloria Gery (1991). Electronic Performance Support Systems. Tolland, MA: Gery Performance Press.

IBM’s world-class

technologists have been

designing, deploying, and

developing Performance

Support Learning into its

Leadership Development

workplace applications for

years, most recently

leveraging social networks

via “IBM Excaliber” a just-

in-time expert locator, and

“Lotus SameTime” an

instant messaging tool.

13 Based on the works of Jean Piaget, John Dewey, Karl Lewin, David Kolb, and Chris Argyris.

14 Bandura, A (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bandura, A (1997). Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control, New York: W H Freeman.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 85

“We’re making real a whole new approach to learning,” says Ted Hoff, IBM’s Vice President of Learning, “one that’s truly embedded in work, truly pervasive day to day, not just courses.” It also builds a workplace learning ap- proach that reflects the long-standing tradition of master and apprentice, working together, learning from each other and enables employees to learn from each other on the job via networking technologies, expert connections, and instant communication such as Lotus SameTime.

There is no doubt that IBM is a tech- nology company. “But this is not just about technology,” says Steve Bartomioli, Director of IBM Leadership Development. “This is about learning – developing IBM leaders and employ- ees through a more relevant, personal- ized, collaborative and – more so than ever – a work-enabled learning envi- ronment”. Work has changed. Over the past decades, global employment in the manufacturing sector has fallen – from 40 per cent of total employment to less than 18 per cent. The service sector has risen from 14 per cent to more than 35 per cent. Demand for skilled jobs has risen from 40 per cent to 85 per cent, creating with it ever new knowledge gaps and skill gaps. [(Merrill Lynch, 2000]). IBM tries to keep ahead of these trends by customizing the learning ef- forts of its leaders.

According to the U S Dept of Com- merce, “At least 80% of employee learn- ing happens in the workplace.” A recent US Department of Labour study found that “Workplace learning is widespread across many em- ployee interactions and serves to fulfill most learning needs, perhaps as much as 70 per cent.” The learning is “ongoing, often unrecognized, and involves knowledge and skills that are attainable and immediately applica- ble.” Whether the number is 70 per cent or 80 per cent or even 50 per cent, it is large enough for us to rethink how best to leverage the workplace to enable employees to learn the ever-changing, essential skills.

Using this methodology and approach, IBM India has been able to train a majority of its employees and is confi-

dent of its depth of leadership talent for the growth of the company in India and elsewhere.

Part B: A Personal Journey into Writing of this Colloquium and Defining Leadership

When I was invited to contribute to this leadership collo- quium, I was pleasantly surprised and dashed off my immediate acceptance without giving a thought. I was

also secretly thrilled, taking the invita- tion to mean that I had “arrived” and felt pompous about me having some- thing to say and the world wanting to listen to it! However, life intervened and my grandiloquent thoughts were kept in abeyance while I got engrossed with the day-to-day professional work – I would have loved to say “grind” but it does not behove a professional leadership development leader to say so!

Nevertheless, here I find myself on a quiet Saturday morning , in front of my lap top, keying these words and won- dering what to do to live up to my prom- ise. The last five words woke me up to realities of life and I realized that we all have to live up to our promises – some made to others, some made to our- selves, and some as conceived by our parents, teachers and well-wishers and some also by our detractors (alas there are many of them!)

I have prided myself on my extensive reading but realized that I had seldom

tried my hand at serious writing. I realized that this was going to be a baptism by fire: I had read about authors who had disciplined themselves to write 10,000 words a day. If they could do it, I thought surely I could, especially when my article word limit was 5,000 words. Arithmeti- cally, half-a-day’s work. I should be done by lunch! Ex- cept that I was not a professional writer!

I fell into a reverie musing over my struggle when I heard voices. These voices were talking to me in my head quite animatedly about the very topic that was bemusing me and I am happy to record this colloquy for you the reader.

Over the past decades,

global employment in the

manufacturing sector has

fallen – from 40 per cent

of total employment to

less than 18 per cent. The

service sector has risen

from 14 per cent to more

than 35 per cent. Demand

for skilled jobs has risen

from 40 per cent to 85 per

cent, creating with it ever

new knowledge gaps and

skill gaps. IBM tries to

keep ahead of these trends

by customizing the

learning efforts of its

leaders.

86

Myself : How do people write ? I want to know as I am having a writer’s road block!

Overself : Well, writing is but the grandchild. The parent is thought and the grand parent is awareness – the self in all human beings. People can write when they have been thinking about something for a long period of time. But the ability to think clearly is powered by self- awareness.

Myself: I do not know who you are but your answer sounds interesting. Now, tell me who are you and can you help me write a 5,000 word article for the Leadership Colloquium? I confess I have not done much thinking on leadership and as to the self-awareness part of what you said, I am unaware of what you mean by it!

Overself: Leadership without self awareness! What have we descended to? But let me begin at the beginning and state who I am. I am your higher self – the self that you are not aware of because I am veiled be- hind all your thoughts, emotions, and actions. When you reach me, you have full awareness of yourself. This higher self in you is similar to the higher self in others and we are all parts of the universal self. I can definitely teach you all about leadership and writing an article is mere modification of the medium of expression – the substance is unchanged. So why don’t you ask me your questions on leadership?

Myself: Whew! You have given me some weighty philo- sophical dope! But in the spirit of your own response which was to begin at the beginning, let me do so by ask- ing you a basic question: What is leadership? Once I have your definition, I can build my understanding.

Overself: Brevity is the soul of wit: so here is a brief defini- tion. Leadership is selfless service.

Myself: What do you mean by selfless? I thought you mentioned a few minutes ago that you were the higher self and therefore present in all beings and also a part of the universal self, etc. So, how can there be service with- out you?

Overself: A turn of phrase really! Selfless service actually means ego-less service: where you work for larger pur- poses and not your own petty gains. And you must be

full of the higher self to get rid of your lower self which is the ego and the pettiness in you.

Myself: Do you really find such leaders in the real world? I thought leaders are the ones who drive you towards their goals and their objectives.

Overself: What you call their goals and objectives should really be a larger cause, mission or purpose, and not a personal agenda. Only when the self that is serving is the universal self and not the personal egoistic self that lead- ers are truly serving.

Myself: Is that all there is to leadership? Sounds simple! Yet there are very few leaders who can be called true lead- ers, by your definition. Why is true leadership so rare?

Overself: Yes, leadership is very sim- ple. True leadership is rare because there are very few who have complete self-awareness and are in touch with their higher selves. The people whom you call your current leaders are way- farers on the path – they are in search of themselves. Till the search is suc- cessfully completed, the demonstration of true leadership would but be partial and incomplete.

Myself: You are making leadership sound like a mystic’s quest!! I thought it was very practical: vision, mission, strategy, tactics, operations and all that stuff. Not to speak of competitive success and the next quarter’s earnings.

Overself: The world is nothing but the mind. And the mind is nothing but the reflection of the higher self. So, when you are united with the higher self, the world is yours and all material success will come to you.

Myself: Sorry, that is unacceptable. Conversely, does it also mean that those who have material success are united with their higher selves? How do you explain material success in the absence of any unity with higher self? Af- ter all, corporations are all about material success. My opinion is that no unity with higher self is required for corporate success.

Overself: Ah! I should have added the phrase ‘long last- ing material success’. As you are an observant and very practical person, tell me why do corporations fail after a successful stint? And, what kind of corporations are long-

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

True leadership is rare

because there are very few

who have complete self-

awareness and are in

touch with their higher

selves.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 87

lasting? Unless they are linked to eternal values which emerge from the higher self, there is little chance of endur- ing success.

Myself: You have given me a view of leadership from the peak of a mountain. It seems too distant. Tell me some- thing that I can do now.

Overself: What you can do now is very simple. Always remember that in the sky of your mind, I am the sun. Pay attention to the task at hand in the brightness of my light. Do not cast your shadow. Pay Attention. Pay Attention.

Now. Now.

I woke up from my reverie and discovered it was time for lunch. And that I had indeed said all that I had wanted to say.

As I completed this piece and wrote the part A, I realized that my being at IBM had influenced my views about lead- ership that had given me the conviction and energy to work on the leadership growth journeys of thousands of young people at IBM.

Growing Leaders at Infosys: An Evidence-based Approach to Leader Development

Prakash K Nair, Aarti Shyamsunder and Chitra Sarmma

“The primary purpose of corporate leadership is to create wealth legally and ethically”

N R Narayana Murthy Founder & Chairman Emeritus, Infosys

“Where have all the leaders gone?” asked Bill George,in his notable and much admired work, Authen- tic Leadership: Rediscovering Secrets to Creating Lasting Value (George, 2003).15

While George’s book was published in 2003 during the Enron crisis, we know that this question is still relevant today. In fact, the situation has gotten worse. Bernie Madoff and most recently Rupert Murdoch’s examples are evidence of serious, chronic leadership gaps. It is a similar story back home in India, with our scams now reaching monumental proportions. A conceivable root cause that underlies this crisis is the acute scarcity of ethical leaders, leaders with values. Bennis (2009) cap- tures this gaping hole in leadership well in the very first chapter of his book, On Becoming a Leader, where he pro- nounces that “the stage is littered with flawed and disap- pointing leaders.”16 The seriousness of these gaps is not lost on those of us who are tasked with developing lead-

ers. Such high-profile leadership failures and scandals including more dated examples such as Enron, Satyam, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, among others, have empha- sized the need for a scientific, value-driven approach to the selection, management, and development of organi- zational leaders.

Since its inception in 1981, values have been the corner- stone of the Infosys philosophy. The founders, starting with N R Narayana Murthy, have shown unwavering and unflinching adherence to values. In the book, Leader- ship @ Infosys, Narayana Murthy points at values as the singular most critical factor that will sustain Infosys into the future (Barney, 2010)17. This definitive statement dem- onstrates the primacy of values in the way we grow our business and in the way we grow people, including our leaders.

The emphasis our senior-most leaders, including Mr. Murthy, have always placed on values is not lost on our various stakeholders, including clients. As a leader in IT and business consulting services, Infosys has been privi- leged to enjoy a reputation of ethical conduct and high- integrity leadership. Yet, recognizing the potential risk of failed leadership and the necessity of developing a healthy pipeline of future leaders, the Infosys Leadership Insti-

15 George, W (2003). Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Se- crets to Creating Lasting Value, CA: Jossey-Bass.

16 Bennis, W (2009). On Becoming a Leader, NY: Basic Books. 17 Barney, M (Ed.) (2010). Leadership @ Infosys, Penguin Books India.

88

tute (ILI) has reinvigorated the approach to leader identi- fication and development by anchoring it in science and latest available evidence. It is in this context that we in- troduce leader and leadership development at Infosys.

ILI was established in 2001 by Mr. Narayana Murthy and Dr. G K Jayaram, Infosys’ first Chairman, to grow leaders who will sustain Infosys through its values. As employ- ees of ILI, the authors have the exciting yet daunting task of realizing this vision. We discuss these values, critical performance dimensions Infosys leaders are expected to have or acquire through the leader development process. This includes how we select, develop, and evaluate lead- ers’ progress. We pay particular atten- tion to the science that supports our approach.

Values @ Infosys

In 2000, the company decided to for- mally codify the values in such a way that would generate excitement and a shared ownership of our values. The Infosys Board members along with the senior leadership team, members of the Voice of Youth,18 and a sample of em- ployees representing different cross- sections of the company discussed the current understanding and concerns about the value system. Eventually, through an iterative process where participants provided real-life exam- ples, a consolidated set of primary and non-negotiable values were developed. It was ensured that these values were applicable across cultures and would stand the test of time.

The values were put together in an easy-to-remember or recall format, with the acronym C-LIFE, which stood for Customer Delight (recently revised to “Client Value”), Leadership by Example, Integrity and Transparency, Fair- ness and (the Pursuit of) Excellence.

At Infosys, these values answer the question, “How will we achieve this vision that we have for ourselves?” It is a commitment to the way the organization will act in a given situation. The values act as guiding stars for each

Infoscion. They inform:

• the behaviour expected from each employee • the foundation for all processes within the organiza-

tion • the practices of the organization within and with re-

spect to society and other stakeholders.

Since values are the fulcrum of any organization, it is vital to build in flexibility in order to transition to a fresh set of values if the business, social or global environment changes. A case in point being the decision to change Customer Delight to Client Value and Pursuit of Excel-

lence to Excellence in a recent Annual Strategic Planning Meeting held in January 2011at Mysore, India. Here is a brief description of the current C-LIFE values:

C - Client Value: a commitment to generating original ideas in the client’s best interest thus dis- charging our professional re- sponsibilities in a manner that leads to long-term partnering re- lationships

L - Leadership by Example: a commit- ment to set standards in our busi- ness and transactions and be an exemplar for the industry and our own teams

I - Integrity and Transparency: a com- mitment to be ethical, sincere, and open in our dealings

F - Fairness: a commitment to be objective and transac- tion-oriented, thereby earning trust and respect

E - Excellence: a commitment to constantly improve our- selves, our teams, our services and products so as to become the best.

The book “Leadership at Infosys” contains numerous ex- amples of how these values have been practised in the organization, especially by very senior leaders.

In order to sustain the values in a very positive and en- couraging way, events such as the annual excellence awards were given shape and these have now become an integral part of life at Infosys. Besides being consistent with C-LIFE, the annual excellence awards at Infosys also highlight leadership role models for all to follow.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

18 An internal organization where young Infosys employees (Infoscions) represent their generation to inform policy and serve as a liaison with senior management

Recognizing the potential

risk of failed leadership

and the necessity of

developing a healthy

pipeline of future leaders,

the Infosys Leadership

Institute (ILI) has

reinvigorated the approach

to leader identification

and development by

anchoring it in science

and latest available

evidence.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 89

Science as the Basis for Leader Development

Being evidence-based also requires an organization to inculcate a culture of making decisions based on meas- urements or research where it exists, and only using ‘gut feel’ decisions where data do not exist. Further, our approach to operations follows our de- sire to show respect to all stakeholders, basing everyday operations on a model of consistent excellence. In fact, the Infosys Leadership Institute (ILI) was created partly as a result of an evalua- tion by Infosys using the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria that placed the high- est emphasis on leadership in driving business results. ILI’s current vision is to be a globally recognized institution that grows leaders and advances the field of leadership development. In October 2009, ILI was reorganized to provide heightened focus on the leadership development needs of the senior- most and high potential leaders known internally as ‘Tier leaders’. ILI’s new focus includes ensuring that any de- velopment is tailored to the needs of each leader, per-

forming original research relevant to executing Infosys strategy, warranting sufficient bench strength of leader- ship talent to succeed senior roles, and mitigating the

risk of leader succession.

To develop these senior-most leaders or “tier leaders,” ILI proposed a nine- dimension model. The model was de- veloped by studying the approaches of eighteen global companies, and by examining relevant research in the area of leadership and leader development. Each dimension, called a ‘pillar,’ has its own unique significance to the de- velopment of leadership at the indi- vidual level. The model was further refined with the modified version hav- ing seven dimensions instead of nine. Two of the original nine, Adversity and Transition Leadership, are now sub- sumed within a third ‘pillar,’ Change

Leadership. All of ILI’s offerings are aligned with this model, including the multisource (360 degree) feedback instrument, the instructor-led courses or workshops, mento-ring, e-learning, and the various forms of experi-

Infosys Leadership

Institute (ILI) was created

partly as a result of an

evaluation by Infosys

using the Malcolm

Baldridge National

Quality Award (MBNQA)

criteria that placed the

highest emphasis on

leadership in driving

business results.

Table 1: ILI’s Leadership Dimensions

Leadership Dimension Definition

Strategic Establishing and committing to a long-range course of action to accomplish a long-range goal or vision that sustainably gives Infosys an edge. Continuously creating new differentiators, and challenging assumptions made about current strategies in order to continually move ahead of competition.

Relationship/ Developing, maintaining and leveraging long-term internal and external relationships/networks. Building Networking effective relationships beyond transactions with all internal and external business partners to the point

of being a completely trusted advisor.

Talent Selecting, developing and managing the performance of a team capable of executing the vision. Attract- ing, developing and retaining highly capable individuals to build the leadership pipeline are central. Similarly, creating an effective work climate to drive performance, and requisite learning is critical.

Change, (includes Managing through the inevitable sources of resistance that comes with transformational leadership. Transition and Devising change strategy, and creating processes and systems that mitigate the risk of adoption of Adversity) new innovations is key.

Operational Leading operations involves systematically applying a portfolio of methods that achieve high degrees of efficiency, productivity and quality. Institutionalizing a culture of achievement; proactive prevention of defects, process innovation and improvement in order to realize goals around delighting customers consistently and sustainably.

Content Creating and leveraging deep domain expertise required for success in one’s role. This is critical to energizing one’s strategy and team. Content leadership is about possessing and creating knowledge and mental models in one’s core discipline to maintain a competitive edge .

Entrepreneurial Incubating new business ideas, models and working arrangements in new markets, new product segments and services to drive growth.

Source: Leadership @Infosys

90

ential learning that ILI offers. Table 1 provides a sum- mary definition for each of the seven dimensions.

Evidence-based Leader and Leadership Development: The Case of ILI@Infosys

Strategic Leader and Leadership Development

A strategic leader would have the vision and the needed capabilities to ensure that the firm has a sustained com- petitive advantage over its rivals in the marketplace. Ac- cording to Barney (2011)19, competitive advantage is about creating more economic value than your competitors. Stra- tegic leadership at Infosys is about de- veloping leaders who not only create higher economic value for Infosys but also help create economic value for its clients. Hence, ensuring a supply of “strategic leaders” would in itself pro- vide Infosys with a competitive advan- tage. To that end strategic leadership is one of the core leadership dimen- sions identified by ILI for development of senior leaders at Infosys. ILI has adopted the DIME model of strategic talent management (Silzer and Dowell, 2010)20, in its approach to developing strategic leaders:

• Driven by business strategy • Integrated with other processes • Managed as a core business practice • Engrained as a talent mindset

For instance, leader and leadership development efforts at ILI are driven by critical strategic initiatives and are inte- grated with other processes. These development efforts are only targeted toward a group of high-potentials called “Tier Leaders,” comprising about 700-800 senior leaders (selected through a highly rigorous process from Infosys’ 130,000 employees worldwide).While ILI enables these “tier leaders” to perform and develop for future roles, it does not guarantee them promotion. In other words, be- ing focused solely on the high-potential senior leaders, ILI does not link ‘Tier Leader’ status to HR processes such

as compensation, promotion, or performance appraisals. To the extent that Tier Leaders take advantage of ILI offer- ings, they will reap the natural benefits of improved per- formance and potential and therefore can impact their likelihood of promotions and other outcomes in an indi- rect manner.

The development of leaders is indeed managed as a core business practice, evidenced by the very existence of ILI as a separate business enabling function, distinct from HR, or Education and Training functions. ILI reports to the Executive Co-Chairman of Infosys – highlighting the sen- ior leader commitment to leader development and suc-

cession. Finally, development is an engrained mindset throughout the or- ganization, from the time a fresh col- lege recruit steps into the world’s largest corporate university in the Infosys campus in Mysore for up to six months of training, until the time they reach the top echelons of the corpora- tion and become potential or prospec- tive board members themselves. This mindset is reflected in the very job title our founder and Chairman Emeritus, Mr. N R Narayana Murthy uses — “Chief Mentor.” As the primary force behind leader and leadership develop-

ment initiatives at Infosys, Mr Murthy actively engages in developing other senior leaders such as the Tier 1 Lead- ers and the Executive Council members in addition to constantly challenging other members of the Board to achieve greater heights.

ILI’s Mandate

Different organizations identify critical or high-impact roles or individuals to create competitive advantage for a company, called ‘pivotal talent pools’ (Boudreau, Ramstand and Dowling, 2003)21. For instance, GE gained a reputation for producing successful senior executives who turned out to be such a strategic asset that they were sought after by other organizations. Merck, on the other hand, focused on identifying and recruiting leading sci- entific researchers in specialized fields like diabetes, and

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

The development of

leaders is managed as a

core business practice,

evidenced by the very

existence of ILI as a

separate business enabling

function, distinct from

HR, or Education and

Training functions.

19 Barney, J (2011). Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage (4th ed.), New Delhi: PHI Learning Private Ltd.

20 Silzer, R F and Dowell, B E (Eds.) (2010). Strategy Driven Talent Management: A Leadership Imperative, Jossey Bass: San Francisco.

21 Boudreau, J W; Ramstad, P M and Dowling, P J (2003). “Global Talentship: Toward a Decision Science Connecting Talent to Glo- bal Strategic Success,” In Mobley, W and Dorfman P (Eds.), Ad- vances in Global Leadership (Volume 3), JAI Press/Elsevier Science, 63-99.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 91

Disney once identified their cleaning crews at theme parks as the highest-impact talent because they were the ones who had the highest number of interactions with guests to the theme park. Similarly, building a pipeline of high- potential senior leaders is a strategic move for Infosys and any investment here is considered a strategic asset.

Although Infosys Tier Leaders are provided specialized and advanced development opportunities, development is by no means exclusively for them. Infosys subscribes to a hybrid philosophy of selecting and developing its employees, from the very early stages of their career until they become seasoned executives. The focus on senior leaders is based on the fact that leadership capability is often the key differentiator between organiza- tions with sustained success such as Infosys, and other less successful or- ganizations.22

The Talent Lifecycle

According to Silzer and Dowell (2010)23, organizations use five main processes to ensure that the necessary talent is available to achieve their busi- ness strategies, with most human re- sources programmes, systems, and pro-cesses tied to these five talent proc- esses:

• Attract and select talent into the organization

• Assess competencies and skills in talent • Review talent and plan talent actions • Develop and deploy talent • Engage and retain talent

At Infosys, at least four of these five processes fall squarely within the purview of ILI’s vision and mission, as it re- lates to senior high-potential leaders. Engaging and re- taining them would hopefully follow from the first four, along with other HR systems that enable all of these.

Inspired by various organizational sciences including industrial/organizational psychology, systems design,

business management, and industrial engineering, ILI has developed an approach towards implementing various aspects of leader/leadership development for Infosys Tier Leaders within such a strategic talent-management per- spective. The following paragraphs briefly describe this approach.

Selection/Identification

The Tier Leadership pool is categorized into Tier 1 (po- tential successors to the Board in 1-3 years), Tier 2 (poten-

tial successors to the Board in 3-5 years), and Tier 3 (potential successors to the Board in 6-10 years). The current process is a much improvised and effi- cient model compared with the earlier process for identifying the leaders into this pool which was thorough but time- consuming. It involved a nomination process followed by in-depth inter- views, thus taking months to fill the tier positions. The revised approach is rigorous and leverages cutting-edge science and technology in the form of ILI’s multi-source computer-adaptive assessment methodology.

Although all leaders who meet the eli- gibility criteria can apply, being a part of the Tier Leadership Programme is entirely voluntary. Past performance is one of the eligibility requirements al- though it is not deterministic in identi-

fying someone as high-potential, given the distinction between high-performance and high-potential. “Future work potential is based on accumulated skills and expe- rience as evidenced by past achievement, ability to learn new skills and willingness to tackle bigger, more com- plex or higher quality assignments” (Charan, Drotter and Noel, 2001)24. ILI’s Leadership Journey Series assessment, described next, is the basis for selection into the pool dur- ing ILI’s annual “Tier Top-off” process.

Assessment

At ILI, assessment is considered as a critical and essen- tial element of leadership development. Absence of a rig-

22 Holstein, W J (2005). “Best Companies for Leaders: P&G’s A G Lafley is No.1 for 2005,” The Chief Executive, (November), 16-20.

23 Op. cit.

At ILI, assessment is

considered as a critical

and essential element of

leadership development.

Absence of a rigorous,

evidence-based

assessment process would

mean not knowing who

exactly to develop (that is

who has the right

potential) and what to

develop (the dimensions

and the levels of

development needed).

24 Charan, R; Drotter, S and Noel, J (2001). The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

92

orous, evidence-based assessment process would mean not knowing who exactly to develop (that is who has the right potential) and what to develop (the dimensions and the levels of development needed). ILI’s 360-degree as- sessment tool, The Leadership Journey Series or LJS assessment, is based on the Zaccaro, Kemp and Bader (2004)25

model of leadership predictors (e.g., personality, values) as well as proc- esses (e.g., performance), which will have an impact on ultimate leadership- related outcomes. This model (Figure 1) is derived from the findings of es- tablished meta-analyses around the impact of personality, goal orientation, etc., on leadership performance. The model also incorporates Bass and Avolio’s Full Range Leadership model (see Avolio, et al, 2009)26. The LJS as- sessment integrates the Infosys leadership model into its measures in order to retain contextual interpretability. LJS is thus a unique example of a multi-source, computer- adaptive assessment that measures leadership perform- ance and also accounts for leadership potential..

Measuring Leaders Objectively: The Leadership Journey Series (LJS)

What is at the core of LJS? It is a highly objective approach for assessing and selecting leaders for tier leadership.

It measures performance using:

• Infosys leadership model • Full-range leadership model • Other performance indicators

It measures potential in terms of:

• Distal predictors of leadership (e.g., personality, values, etc.)

• Goal orientation (e.g., motivated to learn vs. looking good?)

How does LJS work?

The steps for the LJS process are as fol- lows:

• The Tier Leader nominates his/her stakeholders from whom the feedback is being sought.

• After the nomination cycle closes, ILI provides the Tier Leader and the nominated stakeholders a link which

Succession planning at

Infosys is about

developing a systematic

process of defining and

identifying future

leadership requirements,

and identifying leaders to

meet those requirements,

in a methodical manner.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

25 Zaccaro, S J; Kemp, C and Bader, P (2004). “Leader Traits and Attributes,” In Antonakis, J; Cianciolo, A T and Sternberg, R J (Eds.), The Nature of Leadership, Sage Publications, 101-124.

26 Avolio, B J; Reichard, R J; Hannah, S T; Walumbwa, F O and Chan, A (2009). “A Meta-Analytic Review of Leadership Impact Research: Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Studies,” The Leadership Quarterly, 20(5) 764-784.

Figure 1: The Conceptual Model

Cognitive Ability

Personality Interests Motivate Values

Goal Orientation

Problem Solving Skills

Social Appraisal

Skills

Expertise/ Tacit

Knowledge

Leader Performace

Infosys Leadership Dimensions, Full-

Range Leadership, etc.

Outcomes (e.g. Promotions, Business Results

Distal Attributes Proximal Attributes Performance Performance Management & Succession Planning

Leader Operating Environment

Source: Process Model adapted from Zaccaro, Kemp & Bader (2005).

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 93

they can access to provide feedback through the com- puter adaptive assessment system.

• The system allows for automated report generation which is then used in coaching/feedback sessions and creating personal development plans.

• ILI prepares the report for the Tier Leaders based on the feedback and shares the report with the Tier Leader and helps him/her chart out a developmental action plan.

LJS has been validated successfully as a development tool, and is currently being repurposed for the use of Tier Leader selection/identification. It is a 360-degree/multi- source, computer-adaptive assessment that utilizes Rasch Measurement Methods that offer better precision and ac- curacy. As such, it is a distinctive and useful tool de- signed to help identify leaders’ strengths and weaknesses and thus fo- cus them on a couple of areas of devel- opment in a more structured manner.

Development

Van Velsor and McCauley (2004)27 de- scribe leader development as the “ex- pansion of a person’s capacity to be effective in leadership roles and proc- esses”. In order to enable the develop- ment of Tier Leaders and expand their capacities, ILI has adopted the follow- ing approaches:

• Personalized ‘coaching’ relationship: Starting with the results of the LJS assessment, ILI’s development spe- cialists offer feedback sessions for each of the Tier Lead- ers who opt for it. The sessions include highly personalized one-on-one sessions and group-coach- ing sessions, where coaching is done in small groups. Through these sessions, ILI coaches assist leaders in identifying action plans around their personal devel- opment, and provide them with concrete suggestions that include the many developmental interventions available to them. In short, ILI’s development special- ists or ‘coaches’ work with Tier Leaders set goals, iden-

tify developmental interventions, and facilitate their development journey.

• Structured developmental roadmaps: All development offerings are structured around the framework of the Infosys leadership model. Offerings are categorized as foundational, intermediate, and advanced. Lead- ers choose the levels based on their differing develop- mental needs. In addition, offerings span the spectrum of blended learning approaches starting from knowl- edge acquisition (e.g., books, podcasts, video clips, e- learning) to application via practice (e.g., experiential learning, computer-based simulations, and serious games), and knowledge dissemination (e.g., mentoring, “Leaders Teach” sessions where senior ex- perts offer their views on various topics; this in turn, is knowledge acquisition for the recipients thus per-

petuating the learning cycle). • Programme evaluation: There is no

dearth of recommended develop- ment and ‘best practices’ in the field of leader development. However, ILI feels strongly that even evi- dence-based approaches that have worked before in other contexts need to be evaluated in the current context to ensure ROI and effective- ness. As such, there is a program- matic evaluation methodology for various interventions allowing for comparisons across interventions and over time. This allows ILI to be sure that the differential invest- ments made in the Tier Leadership process really pay off.

• Leaders’ role in development: All the tier leaders are ex- pected to develop themselves and mentor and nurture junior leaders. This environment of support, feedback, and renewal is central to Infosys’ approach to developing leaders. Significantly, meta-analytic re- search highlights the importance of leaders creating a supportive climate for learning investments to payoff. (Blume, et al, 2010)28.

27 VanVelsor, E and McCauley, C D (2004). “Our View of Leadership Development,” In McCauley, CD and VanVelsor, E (Eds.), The Cen- ter for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Develop- ment (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1-22.

28 Blume, BD; Ford, J K; Baldwin, TT and Huang, J L (2010). “Transfer of Training: A Meta-analytic Review,” Journal of Management, 36(4), 1065-1105.

With the founding

members of Infosys slowly

leaving the organization

one at a time,

concomitant with the

rapid growth of the

organization, there is a

fear that the culture and

values that have allowed

Infosys to succeed so far

may dissipate.

94

Succession Planning/Forecasting

Succession planning/forecasting is the means to accom- plish our ultimate goal of de-risking senior leadership. Evidence shows that leadership accounts for more than 44 per cent of the variation in profit and 47 per cent of the variation in market capitalization (Weiner and Mahoney, 1981)29; and 45 per cent of the variation in organizational performance (Day and Lord, 1988)30. With such high stakes, succession planning is too important to be left to chance or ‘gut feelings’ of a handful of senior leaders. Succession planning at Infosys is about developing a sys- tematic process of defining and identifying future leader- ship requirements, and identifying leaders to meet those requirements, in a methodical manner. In evolving this methodology, ILI has borrowed tools from other sciences such as Systems Dynamics, Operations Research, and Industrial Engineering to create forecasting models which in- clude factors such as: past performance (from performance review scores and other organizational metrics), future potential (from the LJS and other as- sessments), motivation (from leaders’ own ambitions regarding future posi- tions), labour market, logistical and other risk factors (such as proximity to retirement age and willingness to relo- cate if needed), with Infosys’ Board holding the ultimate veto power.

The Future

Evaluation. Many of the approaches described here are relatively recent developments at Infosys. While several have been piloted and are currently deployed, not all have been implemented. As these start taking firm hold in the Tier Leader experience, programmatic evaluation and longitudinal research is called for in understanding the full impact of these initiatives. ILI has put in place the framework to conduct such an evaluation, using tools such as annual surveys and methodologies such as Rasch

Measurement and Latent Growth or Curve Analyses (Singer and Willett, 2003)31, which capture individual development trajectories over time. Such approaches pro- vide us with the knowledge of which interventions are effective over time for what sort of leaders, thus enabling further personalized leader development approaches in the future.

Alignment. In order to align talent management activities and functions, ILI is proactively building connections with various functions that enable leader development, ensuring connections between strategic imperatives, HR processes, and ILI’s leader development activities.

Sustaining the C-LIFE culture. With the founding members of Infosys slowly leaving the organization one at a time, concomitant with the rapid growth of the organization (e.g., about 40,000 new employees will join the rolls this year), there is a fear that the culture and values that have allowed Infosys to succeed so far may dissipate. Along with the evidence-based approaches to high-potential leader identification and development already described, there is a need to sustain this more amorphous legacy of values at Infosys. Encouraging the story-telling, mentoring, and nurturing tradition of leaders, growing other leaders is one way of sustaining this legacy, and ILI will ensure that the core of all it does is

centred on C-LIFE.

While there is recognition that a lot more needs to happen to fully leverage the evidence-based approach towards identifying and developing world-class leadership tal- ent, ILI has put the basic framework in place to allow this to occur. In order to ensure continued progress and im- provement using an evidence-based approach, the focus is on long-term outcome monitoring. We will continue to monitor long-term outcomes, enhance the robustness and the effectiveness of our leadership development model, and very importantly, continue our efforts to build glo- bally-suave and ethically grounded leaders.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

29 Weiner N, and Mahoney T A (1981). “A Model of Corporate Perfor- mance as a Function of Environmental, Organizational, and Lead- ership Influences,” Academy of Management Journal 24(3), 453-470.

30 Day, D V and Lord, R G (1988). “Executive Leadership and Orga- nizational Performance: Suggestions for a New Theory and Meth- odology,” Journal of Management, 14(3), 453-464.

In order to align talent

management activities and

functions, ILI is

proactively building

connections with various

functions that enable

leader development,

ensuring connections

between strategic

imperatives, HR

processes, and ILI’s leader

development activities.

31 Singer, J D and Willett, J B (2003). Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence, New York: Oxford University Press.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 95

Rapid globalization since

1990s, demographic

dynamics, and the lack of

quality manpower have

given thrust to talent,

more so, in rapidly

developing economies like

India. Consequently,

retaining and developing

top talent in a sustained

manner has become a

strategic priority for such

organizations.

Leadership Development in a Multinational – An India Case

Gopal Mahapatra and Vivek Subramanian

Overview of the Organization

The organization is a successful and globally reputedplayer in the Information Technology industry. It has a diverse product portfolio and has been in existence for over three decades. Headquartered in the United States, it has several thousand customers including many in For- tune 100. With thousands of employees around the world, it operates in well over 100 countries. The organization combines a vertical structure with ma- trix reporting lines.

The organization’s operations in India began in the late 1980s and have grown significantly over the years. The Indian arm is the 2nd largest development centre of the organization with a pres- ence of virtually every line of business (LoB) that exists in its headquarters. It has a diverse employee base and nearly a quarter of the organization‘s worldwide talent.

The Case for Leadership Develop- ment

Rapid globalization since 1990s, de- mographic dynamics, and the lack of quality manpower have given thrust to talent, more so, in rapidly develop- ing economies like India. Consequently, retaining and developing top talent in a sustained manner has become a strategic priority for such organizations.

The profile of the Indian managers has grown over the years and several of them lead teams based in other parts of the world as well. Hence, evolution of new paradigms of leadership and structured strengthening of leadership competencies was necessary. The primary trigger for the organization’s focus on leadership development was the

need to strengthen leadership to sustain the exponential growth of businesses in India and the world.

Phase 1: Evolution of the Leadership Framework

Globally, the organization‘s leadership development ini- tiatives have been largely decentralized and are LoB-spe- cific. Each region or LoB is empowered to develop its leadership programmes based on its business context and

location-specific talent management considerations.

In India, in 2005, a team of HR Manag- ers extensively researched leadership literature, and the existing regional and LoB practices in evolving a leadership framework for the Indian arm. The ob- jective of the approach, as envisaged by the team, was two-fold;

• To ensure leadership development at all levels in the organization in a planned and systematic manner.

• To ensure availability of a pool of global leaders from the India or- ganization.

The broad framework (Figure 1) was then presented to the top management team (TMT), a leadership forum of LoB

heads in India. TMT, in consultation with HR, vetted the framework and decided to focus on Senior Directors and Directors (Tier 2) before extending the framework to other levels.

Leadership Tiers

Tier 1 (Visionary leadership) – Create a vision for the busi- ness by inspiring people and leading by example.

Tier 2 (Operational leadership) – Set long-term direction, seek ways to grow the business, align people to vision and strategy.

Tier 3 (Team leadership) – Focus on short-term results, grounded in realities of implementation, use processes to keep people on track.

The views expressed by the authors are their own. This write-up is for academic purpose only.

Acknowledgment. The authors would like to acknowledge the con- tribution of the India HR Head, HR Leaders and the Leadership team members in developing and implementing the Leadership Develop- ment Programme.

96

Figure 1: The India Organization‘s Leadership Development Framework

Leadership Paradigms

Tier 4 (Personal leadership) – Manage self and in some cases a limited number of subordinates, focus on execu- tion of day-to-day work.

Phase 2: Design and Development of Leadership Development Programme (LDP)

In 2007, an in-house subject matter expert (SME) team comprising HR professionals from the India organiza- tion was formed to develop a leadership development model targeted at LoB Heads, the Senior Directors, and Directors in the organization. The SME adopted a struc- tured approach involving internal and external benchmarking for developing the leadership development model:

Internal

• Understand the business context, challenges, and opportunities

• Profile potential participants and their developmen- tal needs and priorities

• Study the existing leadership practices/frameworks in regions and LoBs across the organization.

External

• Study and benchmark leadership practices in IT and other leading MNCs and other Indian organizations which: - are reputed and high-performing - have institutionalized leadership development

models - are similar to the organization in complexity and

scale • Understand leadership enablement and development

offerings of reputed consulting organizations and

leading B-Schools in India.

The information gathered was consolidated, analysed, and evaluated for relevance and significance to strengthen the model for leadership development.

The commitment and involvement of senior management and SME was crucial during the development and firm- ing up of the model. The SME consulted senior HR lead- ers who validated the model from a global standpoint. The model was periodically reviewed by TMT and HR leadership in India.

The final model (Figure 2) was approved by TMT and HR leadership with a mandate to implement the Leadership Development Programme..

Developmental Interventions in LDP

The developmental actions of LDP (Figure 3) are as fol- lows:

Launch and Self-Awareness Workshop

The launch of LDP was aimed primarily at preparing participants for the programme. A psychometric-based workshop on Personal Effectiveness was conducted by a globally respected expert from a learning partner firm. The participants got varied leadership perspectives through talks by an external leader and experience shar- ing by TMT members.

Development Centre (DC)

A leading HR consulting firm designed and conducted the Development Centre. The learning partner finalized the design and implementation based on inputs by HR

Awareness of oneself (Work style, goals, aspirations)

Facilitating others’ success and growth, lead team towards common vision

Create a vision for the business, drive mutually beneficial goals, linkages

with internal and external customers

Understand customer and business, plan and organize resources

S e lf

Context

T e a m

Task

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 97

leaders and TMT. They interviewed a sample of partici- pants, their managers and direct reports to assess compe- tencies critical to their roles that needed to be assessed in the DC.

The competencies identified for development based on the organization‘s competency framework and global best practices were:

• Strategic thinking and entrepreneurship, customer focus, innovation, global mindset, managing flux, in- fluencing, and people leadership

The design of the two-day DC included in-basket (simu- lation) exercises, group discussions, business presenta- tions, psychometric tests and behavioural event interviews. Participants received preliminary one-on-one feedback from assessors at the end of the DC. This was later supplemented by detailed one-to-one discussions with participants on their strengths and development areas based on their individual DC reports.

The learning partner made a presentation to TMT and HR leaders on their observations and inferences of the participant group from the DC.

360 Degree Feedback (360 DF)

The 360 DF survey, administered through a global re- puted organization in the area of 360 DF, was custom- ized to the organization‘s competency framework.

Post-completion of the survey, participants received one- on-one feedback on their strengths and development ar- eas based on their 360 DF reports. The feedback was given by certified internal facilitators in the India organization‘s HR team.

The learning partner presented the programme manage- ment team a report on the participant group’s strengths and development areas emerging from 360 DF. This re- port, along with the group report from the DC learning partner, provided inputs on participants‘ competencies that needed strengthening through other interventions in the leadership development programme.

Development Dialogue

Development Dialogue was conducted post-DC and 360 DF one on one’s to enable participants to identify priority areas and development actions in the context of their long- term professional aspirations. The dialogue was facili- tated by senior professionals.

Competency Development Programme

The India organization tied up with a reputed B-school to deliver programmes on leadership competencies iden- tified for further strengthening based on the 360 DF and DC group reports. The B-school nominated faculty who would be Course Directors for the LDP. The Course Di- rectors were briefed on the Programme and the partici- pants by the programme management team and HR

Figure 2: The Leadership Development Programme Model

98

leaders. The programme management team and the learn- ing partner presented 360 DF and DC findings to the course directors to enable them to customize programmes to suit the participants’ development needs.

Perspective Sharing

This was meant to supplement participants’ learning through talks on various aspects of leadership by senior executives and subject matter experts. The aim of this in- tervention was to broaden participants’ horizons through multiple perspectives offered by senior professionals from various organizations and industries.

All participants were required to complete a project where they had to study issues, suggest solutions, and play a leading role in their implementation. This intervention enabled participants to apply their learning to live busi- ness issues to strengthen their competencies. The design of the project component underwent changes from the first offering to the second. In LDP 1, participants were asked to work on projects in groups of five. The focus of the project was on business issues in LoBs other than the one the participants worked in. Based on the challenges with group projects, arising out of the organization‘s matrix and vertical structure, it was decided to switch to

individual projects in LDP 2. It was felt that implementa- tion of projects, especially by teams, may be less challeng- ing in a unified organization.

Implementation of LDP

From the India HR team, a Director and a Senior Manager were assigned the task of managing the programme. The programme management team’s (PMT) responsibilities included seeking nominations through a defined pro- cess, engaging with participants, sponsors and learning partners, ensuring programme effectiveness through par- ticipant learning and inter-linkages across interventions, programme implementation and post-programme review by TMT.

Nomination from LoBs to LDP was based on the follow- ing criteria:

• A Senior Director or a Director with potential to as- sume leadership positions at the next level

• High-performers with high potential (top talent) • Experience of at least one year in the India organiza-

tion (screened and approved by VP for the LoB and HR)

The inaugural batch of the leadership development pro-

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

Figure 3: Developmental Interventions in Leadership Development Programme

Launch & Self-Awareness Workshop (Introduce LDP, perspective sharing, personal

effectiveness)

Development Centre (Identify potential by employing various tools

and methods)

360 Degree Feedback Survey Identify strengths and areas of development

through stakeholder perceptions)

Development Centre 1-1s (1-1 Coaching by DC facilitators)

360 Degree Feedback 1-1s (1-1 Coaching on feedback by certified internal

360 DF coaches)

Development Dialogue (Facilitated by internal experts to enable

participants channelize focus areas into goals in the context of personal & professional aspirations)

Competency Programmes (Programmes through a B-school and premier

global vendor)

Individual Project (Aligned to business goals for the year.

Opportunity to apply learning to build strengths/ work on development)

Perspective Sharing

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 99

gramme (Feb‘08-Feb‘09) had 27 participants from across the various LoBs. The participants represented 13 per cent of the overall Sr. Director and Director population in the India organization.

Action research, post-LDP, was conducted by the pro- gramme management team. PMT studied the implemen- tation of the programme and, with support from HR and TMT, implemented changes. Based on their review of the inaugural batch and feedback from participants, TMT gave a mandate to go ahead with the next batch. A total of 32 participants, across various LoBs, were part of LDP 2.

Action Research

PMT carried out action research at the end of both the LDPs. The highlights of the findings are mentioned below.

Programme Feedback (Qualitative)

Strengths • Self-awareness through DC and

360 DF and the one-on-ones • Competency development pro-

grammes • Perspective sharing sessions by

leaders • Scope for peer interaction

Focus Areas • Need to enhance peer interaction

beyond the leadership development programme

• Devote adequate time and attention to application of learning (Project)

It was also found that after 2.5 years, 89 per cent of the participants of LDP 1 and all participants of LDP 2 con- tinue to be employees of the organization. Of those who have stayed on 10 per cent have had changes in roles since their LDPs and 10 per cent have been promoted.

Learning and Suggestions

• As participants go through LDP, it is critical that PMT plays the role of an integrator of various interventions to enhance participants‘ experience and learning. In

fact, PMT ensured that all learning partners were briefed on the objectives of the Programme and the specific developmental role played by each of the learn- ing partners and internal facilitators. PMT also vetted each of their design outlines to ensure a logical flow of developmental actions in line with the stated objec- tives.

• The authors advocate the use of multiple tools to iden- tify strengths and development needs of participants. In the LDPs, there was a high degree of correlation between the development areas of participants as iden- tified through 360 DF and DC.

• The duration of LDP 1 was 12 months with 17 days of interven- tion excluding the 3 months which the participants devoted on projects. This required a very long- term commitment from participants to the programme. Based on partici- pant feedback, it was decided to compress LDP 2 to 10 months with- out compromising on the number of days of intervention. It was felt that given the pressure on the par- ticipants to hold their attention and get them to commit on the leader- ship development agenda, duration is an important consideration.

• Perspective sharing by internal and external leaders and subject matter experts can be a powerful input for enriching participants’ learning experiences. It enables participants

to broaden their horizons by getting a first-hand in- sight into diverse business contexts and the leader- ship styles of leaders.

• Since the participants are from various LoBs, there is a need to unfreeze and integrate them with one an- other to prepare them better for learning. This would also help increase the level of peer interaction and learning. Hence, from LDP 3 onwards, an outward- bound programme has been suggested at the begin- ning of the programme to facilitate peer sharing and integration. This integration is important for the par- ticipants to take responsibility for their own and their team’s learning and growth.

Perspective sharing by

internal and external

leaders and subject matter

experts can be a powerful

input for enriching

participants’ learning

experiences. It enables

participants to broaden

their horizons by getting a

first-hand insight into

diverse business contexts

and the leadership styles

of leaders.

100

Enhancing Effectiveness of Leadership Teams – Some Experiences from the Field

Binu Philip and Balaji Kumar

Prelude

In this paper, we would detail some of the work thathas been carried out towards leadership development in the organizations/business units we have been work- ing with. While doing so, we have based our narrative on our most recent experiences. We may hasten to add that these experiences have been primarily used as a refer- ence point and are to be solely seen as such. Similar expe- riences elsewhere within the organization have been extrapolated on the narrative for the sake of coherence and continuity. Suffice it to say, in other words, that the narratives are all real but are not restricted to just one business, leader or team.

We have looked at leadership team ef- fectiveness holistically and systemi- cally as comprising intra-personal effectiveness, inter-personal effective- ness, and overall team effectiveness, including that of the primary leaders themselves.

The journey at Microsoft, India com- prises a series of ‘interventions’ and the ‘work’ in between. These interven- tions were more in the nature of milestones that dictated the discrete start and end points of a particular leg of a journey. They also served as ‘containers’ of collective re- flection on the progress thus far, decision-making as to the next steps, and experimentation of newly-learnt be- haviours. It is noteworthy to mention here that, the time and space between these interventions were also equally significant from a collective learning point of view wherein an implicit – and at times informal – support system of feedback, individual and peer coaching helped the team stay on course. Some of these interventions were

running concurrently. It would be no exaggeration to say that it was indeed an intricate web of interwoven proc- esses and interventions driven by different agents at a given point in time, planned and delicately coordinated.

Context

The context which necessitated the design and deploy- ment of the above series of interventions was primarily in the wake of leadership change at Microsoft where an in- ternal leader took over from another leader. In the main

instance, the outgoing leader was widely regarded as very successful – having built the business from scratch and brought a lot of credibility to it over a 6-year period. The incoming leader too has been a veteran within the or- ganization and had been part of the business for a while and had been a peer to many of the members on the current leadership team. However, the authors and several other people in the organization saw that the styles of these two leaders were diverse from each other.

The composition of the team was such that it was prone to unconscious dynamics as is natural within any leadership team. The team comprised leaders who too were regarded as having been successful in build- ing and establishing their respective business units. The team was diverse – some members were old-timers within the leadership team; some were new to the leadership team but had been member of the same organization for some time; and then there were others who were both new to the team and to the business. It also comprised function leaders heading enabling functions like Finance, HR, etc. These changes happened at a time when the or- ganization was in the midst of certain significant changes which on the surface were structural in nature but had the potency to significantly alter the way in which the business units and the leaders heading these units would need to interact with each other. At the least, it called for

The journey at Microsoft,

India comprises a series of

‘interventions’ and the

‘work’ in between. These

interventions were more

in the nature of milestones

that dictated the discrete

start and end points of a

particular leg of a journey.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

Note 1: What we have described here is part of a continuing jour- ney. The process is not yet completed and is best described as work- in- progress. Needless to mention, what we have recounted here is from the point of view and experience of the present authors. Further, it was in response to a specific context. This, however, does not amount to a ‘standard’ intervention or a recommended solution.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 101

greater inter-dependency in relation to the delivery of busi- ness results as compared to the existing system where deliveries of each unit were independent of the other. In other words, the context required not only the need to manage change at an organizational level, but also at the team and individual level. More importantly, it mandated the need to change the ‘lens’ by which successful leader- ship had hitherto been viewed and adopt a different lens which accepted the view that a leader can have a diverse style and yet be successful and that the parameters of success too could differ from time to time and from con- text to context.

The Work and its Phases

Phase 1: Leading Self

In the first phase of the work, we focused on the indi- vidual leaders, around 12 of them, of the new top team and helped them understand what their strengths, devel- opment, and readiness needs were. However, the accent was more towards appreciating individual strengths and how these could be leveraged to overcome some of the limitations they might face in enhancing their role effec- tiveness. This was done with the help of internal and external instruments and methodologies including multi- rater surveys, proprietary instruments, and assessment tools. The aim was to help individuals gain greater aware- ness about their strengths, their motivators, their styles, and potential derailers. During this phase, they were pro- vided adequate coaching support not only to enhance their understanding of themselves but also to increase their understanding of others so as to be more effective. A key feature of this phase was a careful mix of individual and team learning. There were some components that had one is to one learning through e-learning and coaching while certain modules had a collective learning compo- nent which was a segway into team effectiveness. One of the outcomes of this phase was an individual develop- ment plan that not only captured the learning and insights but also concrete actions on how they would use these insights to enhance their personal effectiveness, role effectiveness as a leader, and as a member of a leadership team.

Phase 2: Leading with Others

In the second phase, the focus shifted to enhancing inter- personal effectiveness vis-à-vis others and also vis-à-vis team members of the leadership team and also with the

leader. There were two sub-phases. The first sub-phase was around enhancing inter-personal effectiveness in one-on-one interactions and the second was around in- ter-personal effectiveness within a team. During the first sub-phase, one of the critical capabilities to build was around coaching. This was the result of a multi-level di- agnostic that clearly indicated that coaching would be a phenomenal leverage for the leaders to exponentially en- hance their impact on others. Furthermore, the underly- ing belief was that coaching conversations not only help the coachee but the coach also stands to learn and grow immensely. In fact, this sub-phase was an end-to-end in- tervention in itself that had components of assessment, training, peer learning, and practical application. The aim of this stage was to create a framework and an environ- ment for having the right kind of conversations with oth- ers and thereby unleash the true potential of self and others. The intervention was based on cutting-edge prin- ciples and research on neuro-sciences and its applica- tion to leadership and coaching. In the effort, we partnered with world-renowned experts in the field of brain-based leadership coaching. A key outcome of this sub-phase was the building of capabilities to have solution-focused conversations as opposed to problem-centric debates. The second sub-phase had two touch points. The first touch point was a two-day workshop together as a team to un- derstand each other’s strengths and styles and how does each member complement the capabilities that the other brings to the table. The workshop was built around the strengths philosophy using the framework of a popularly available and proprietary tool. This was preceded by a deep understanding of one’s individual strengths and the workshop focused more on how to apply these strengths back at work, how to leverage the strengths of others as leaders, and also to reflect on the team strengths and potential pitfalls. The second touch point was in the form of a theatre workshop around the theme of teams followed by a self-diagnosis on their functioning as a team. It started with a one and a half day long programme which focused firstly, on a space to get familiar with each other and be oneself; and secondly, to diagnose the team’s be- haviour towards itself, and towards one another. This was done with a mix of theatre, administration of leader- ship team effectiveness instrument, and reflection on the conformity and contradiction between what the team be- lieves in and how it actually behaves. The major outcomes were: greater comfort with each other, willingness to ex- periment with oneself and others at a deeper level, and

102

understanding of the team’s conflicts and contradictions.

Phase 3: Leading Change Together

The third phase, building on the first two phases, was about getting the team together and building capabilities in them to manage change within themselves and within the team. By this time, they knew what their strengths and others’ strengths were; they also had mastered the art of solution-focused coaching conversations and most importantly had heightened self-awareness. Now, they had to focus on how they come together and operate more effectively as a team to lead the change that lay ahead of them. This had two components from a design point of view. One, assimilating the new leader and new mem- bers; and two, assimilating the new team in terms of its new identity. Similar to phase two, this was an intervention in itself and also a part of the leadership development journey. End-to-end it was spread over nine months and had three major touch points. In this phase, we made exten- sive but implicit use of our internal pro- prietary framework around leadership team effectiveness. The phase was a mix of process and content work where the team not only focused on certain tasks at hand but also on how they ap- proached the task and manifestation of inter-personal re- lationships.

Though having established the primary level of comfort between the team members, we noticed that back at work, there were still areas which needed to be addressed, such as, ability to confront each other respectfully whilst ap- preciating what oneself and the other brought to the ta- ble. Central to grappling with this challenge was the need to change one’s own mental models around leadership and teams. Hence, the first touch point was a three-day group process workshop built on the edifice of Apprecia- tive Inquiry (AI). Using AI as the starting point, the team engaged in powerful and meaningful conversations per- taining to their own strengths, that of the team, the dreams they had for the team, and the expectations they had of the leader. At the same time, the inherent struggles and the inter-personal conflicts that came in the way of the full effectiveness of the team surfaced and were acknowl- edged, if not resolved. Another element of this sub-phase was the assimilation of the leader and the team articulat-

ing their needs, and expectations from the leader. This gave an in-depth understanding of the leader’s style and also helped set expectations. The hallmark of this phase was to work on relationships with each other and the leader rather than the task.

The second touch-point started with the team coming to- gether to review and reflect on the task the team had un- dertaken for itself. In the meantime, the team and the leader had worked on articulating a vision for themselves and exploring its identity. The team set about defining its vi- sion as part of their regular work. The remarkable feature of this process was that the team did this task on its own without dependence on any external expert. Furthermore, the task was initiated and carried forward by the leader

in an inclusive and consultative man- ner with the rest of the team members. The team then assembled during the second touch point to reflect on the experience of the task and how they had carried it out. Not only did it re- flect on the content of the task, they also utilized the space to reflect on how the vision resonates with the team mem- bers at a personal level. What was re- markable about this stage was how individuals and the team had pro- gressed on their leadership journey –

wherein they were creating experiences for becoming more effective and also providing support and nurturance to each other in the process.

The third touch point came in the form of a workshop around organizational values. Having worked on the vi- sion, the leader and the team set about the task of operationalizing the values of the organization to them- selves and their teams. The outcomes of the second and third touch-points were a clear vision towards the direc- tion in which the business would go and the values that were fundamental across the organization in pursuing the vision. In other words, the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of the organization’s future was clearly articulated and operationalized.

The work which the individual leaders, the team, and the support system did in the intervening period between the phases and the different touch-points, and the elabora- tion of a significant component of the support system in- cluding – individual formal and informal coaching to

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

While it is fashionable to

‘measure’ outcomes for

almost everything in terms

of return on investment,

we have consciously

steered clear of that

temptation.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 103

leadership – are beyond the scope of this paper. We be- lieve, it suffices to say, that individual coaching for the leader and the members of the team received sufficient attention.

Figure 1 represents the leadership development path for leaders.

Outcomes

While it is fashionable to ‘measure’ outcomes for almost everything in terms of return on investment, we have con- sciously steered clear of that temptation. The three-fold expectations we had at the start of the journey were to enhance the individual leaders’ effectiveness by provid- ing a space to gain insight and experiment with new be- haviours; to enhance team effectiveness by assimilating the leader and the team, by helping them articulate norms and build capabilities in them to reflect on the task and process issues that they were facing and are likely to face in future; and to create a self-sustaining and a self-reliant support system that helps the leader and the team to an- ticipate and cope with opportunities/challenges they may encounter. On these counts, we are convinced that we have seen reasonable success so as to carry the work fur- ther and replicate it in the future while incorporating our learning from the process.

Building Blocks

Here we articulate some of the building blocks that were fundamental to the work we did. It would be only fair to mention that, this is not an exhaustive list:

• Focusing on the strengths of the individuals and the team rather than exclusively be pre-occupied with weaknesses.

• Creating capabilities in individuals and the team to carry their own work beyond a point and not create dependencies on ‘experts’.

• An action research orientation where diagnosing and intervention happened iteratively. Learning from ear- lier interventions and the impact it had created fed into the design of the next intervention.

• The series of interventions were both sequential and concurrent.

• Leveraging internal frameworks and external exper- tise to get the best out of both.

• Individuals and the teams have a hierarchy of needs and it needs to be filtered into the development plan.

• Using self as an instrument of change on the one hand being constantly vigilant of our own needs and biases and not let these ‘taint’ our work, while on the other hand recognizing that we are as much an integral part of the team as anybody else and hence effectively leveraging the ‘self’ to help the team.

• A strong commitment to foster ‘helping relationships.’

Key Learnings/Conclusions

• In the leadership journey, the individual and collec- tive paths are inextricably inter-twined and the best results can be achieved when one is leveraged for the other.

• The success of the team and the leader are inter-re- lated and one cannot take place at the expense of the

Figure 1: The Development Path in a Nutshell

Phase Component Methodology Outcome

Phase 1 Leading Self • Proprietary psychometric instrument & • Self awareness coaching • Self acceptance

• Coaching engagement • Being secure with oneself

Phase 2 Leading with 1st sub-phase: Effective one-on-one interactions • Understanding others’ strengths and styles Others • Coaching skills • Accepting others

2nd sub-phase: Effective interaction in teams • Appreciating complementary strengths • 1st touch-point: Strength-based leadership • Feeling secure with others

workshop • Understanding team dynamics • 2nd touch-point: Internal leadership team • Understanding functional & dysfunctional

effectiveness framework team behaviours • Build relationships

Phase 3 Leading • Appreciative Inquiry (AI) lab • Deeper understanding of team Change • Vision lab performance dynamics Together • Values lab • Review mental models

• Set agenda for LT effectiveness to master change in self, others and organization

104

other. In fact, in the case of a leadership team, the mem- bers have to be constantly reminded of and have to remain conscious of the role they play in contributing to the success of the leader and the team which in turn significantly contributes to their individual success.

• The journey itself is the constant; it is interspersed with key milestones or events. At no point of time does the work stop. In fact, the ability to create an environ- ment back at work to continue to experiment with the insights during the events is a critical ingredient.

• Each phase saw unfreezing, movement, and re-freez- ing of certain critical individual and team behaviours. In other words, the processes are best kept iterative and incremental so as to allow the participants to see and experience the progress they are making and at the same time bite what they can chew.

• Without ignoring the multiple models that are relevant and reli- able, we kept them at the back- ground without being overly obsessed. The broad framework we had in mind was the stages in the life cycle of the team and the leader centring on the hierarchy of needs of the individuals and the team. Though Maslow’s32 hierarchy of needs – and its later-day variation offered by Alderfer33 — is not with- out its critics, we implicitly relied on this model and adapted it while designing the sequence of interven- tions. In other words, the hierarchy of needs were categorized into ex- istence needs, relatedness needs, and growth needs. We were conscious of the co-existence of the needs of the individuals and the team. We made it the basis for designing several interventions and for encouraging the leaders to take this sensitivity back to their con- texts. We began with the knowledge that the team has its own identity – which it develops over a period of time. We also began with the belief that the team has its own unique needs – different from the needs of its members.

• At this juncture, we are keen to pause and acknowl- edge – and succumb to the temptation of inadvert- ently proposing a theory of team development. We would be quick to add that this exercise in theory- building is based on just a few experiences as observed by us in the course of the work we have done and may or may not be backed by earlier studies. As the team came together, the safety/existence needs of the mem- bers were predominant whilst the team’s identity was still developing and hence its needs were still prema- ture though not completely non-existent. Hence, the first phase of our work was focused on satisfying the

existence needs of the individuals. They needed to be secure in themselves and in the presence of others. However, the group was likely to grapple with basic physiological needs in the form of appropriate physical space, time, presence of members, skilled facilitators, etc. By the time we reached the second phase, the focus had shifted to the belongingness/relatedness needs of the individuals whilst the team needs were entering the realm of existence needs – the team wanted to survive and have an existence of its own. This phase was characterized by the individuals’ needs to belong to each other which in turn contributed to the formation of a meta-identity that took the shape and name of a ‘team’. The team had to grapple with its own safety needs and a parallel process of satisfying this need and the desire to exist commenced. From the team’s per-

spective, this was a phase where the unconscious force within tried to insulate itself from any external threat and became sensitive to issues regarding its identity. The third phase focused on the esteem/growth needs of the individuals and at the same time the relatedness/belong-ingness needs of the team. In other words, in this phase, individuals start demonstrating the need to contribute to the task of the group and thereby make their place in the team’s hierarchy. This inevitably ushers in conflicts since each member tries to satisfy one’s own esteem needs. However, at this crucial stage, an effective team responds by attending to its belonging-ness/relatedness needs thereby curb-

32 Maslow, A H (1954). Motivation and Personality, New York: Harper. 33 Alderfer, C P (1972). Existence, Relatedness, and Growth: Human

Needs in Organizational Settings, New York: Free Press.

The success of the team

and the leader are inter-

related and one cannot

take place at the expense

of the other. In fact, in the

case of a leadership team,

the members have to be

constantly reminded of

and have to remain

conscious of the role they

play in contributing to the

success of the leader and

the team which in turn

significantly contributes to

their individual success.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 105

ing the fissiparous tendencies that individual esteem needs may fuel. Undoubtedly, the team’s collective un- conscious realizes that its sheer existence could be jeopardized if these divisive tendencies are not bat- tled. As the third phase progressed, the belonging needs and the esteem needs of the individuals and the team took centre-stage especially during the first touch point. The second and third touch points represented the stage of the growth needs of the individuals and the team integrating with each other and also leading them towards the path of self-actualization. This is the stage when the realization occurs that there are interdependencies between individual success, the team’s success, and the larger organization’s success (see Figure 2).

• The sequence of satisfaction of the needs for the leader, for the members of the team, and the overall team are different. At the same time, we have observed that it is likely to follow a hierarchical order. We hypothesize

that the need-satisfaction of the leader of the team should be one step ahead of the need-satisfaction of the individual members – at least during the first two stages. In other words, the leader has to satisfy his/ her safety needs before leading the members of the team to satisfy their safety needs. Further, the leader has to satisfy his/her relatedness needs before creat- ing the space for team members to satisfy their belongingness needs. Beyond this, we reckon that the growth needs of the leader and the team members could overlap and need not necessarily follow the earlier sequence. Similarly, the team’s need-satisfaction fol- lows the need-satisfaction of the individual members and merges at the top with growth needs. In other words, the security needs of the leader, individual members, and the team are satisfied in that hierarchy. And this hierarchy is juxtaposed, with the hierarchy of the needs itself.

• In this case, success can primarily be attributed to the

Figure 2: A Model of Leadership Development

Note 2: It is pertinent to mention that, the frontline managers and their managers also were exposed to parts of the interventions described here. This was done to ensure that there was a system-wide intervention with some common elements for all and some specific solutions exclusive to particular segments of the management team. For example, in one business, all managers, their managers, and the leadership team were covered under Phase 1 of the work. Later, the managers of managers and the leadership team were all covered under Phase 2 of the work.

The needs are common but subject of the

needs are different, viz. leader, team members, and the team itself

106

leaders’ commitment and investment. The commit- ment which the individual leaders and the leadership team showed towards making each other successful was the hallmark of this journey. It had its own anx- ious moments, but the faith and trust with which the participants took risks were open to learning and was a unique experience in itself. Equally important was the partnership between the HR leader, the internal consultant, and the external consultant. The iterative process of reality-testing, sharing of information, and

closure of feedback loops at every stage was a remark- able feature. The realization dawned upon us quite early that, as internal change-agents, our primary role lay not just in designing the interventions and invit- ing external partners to carry out their work but to invest significantly in setting them up for success by constantly feeding the external consultant with insights and data points pertaining to the system that ensures that neither the consultant nor the client are strangers to each other when they start work.

Developing a Global Leader from India: Views of a Coach/Consultant in Developing Leadership Talent

An Interview with Prasad Kaipa By Twisha Anand

A thoughtful integration of perspectives, principles,and practices of business, science and technology, and spirituality is what makes Dr. Kaipa’s leadership development programmes unique. Sharing his insights on leadership development, Dr. Kaipa distinguishes be- tween two leadership strategies – be- ing a “cool cat” or being a “smart fox.” Citing metaphors from an old fable, he compares a “cool cat” that knows just one way of saving itself from the hunt- ers and a “smart fox,” which knows many different ways to do so. While the cat is learning other techniques from the fox, some hunters appear. The cat hides itself on the tree, the only way it knows to save itself. The fox gets killed while deciding on the method to use to save itself. Dr. Kaipa mentions that many of us act either as cool cats or smart foxes as per our natural in- stinct and that both kinds of behav- iours may be necessary at different times. Functional leaders are like cool cats- they know how to manage and get things done. They manage cost, quality, delivery, customer satisfaction, and are excellent in managing projects and bringing them to successful

and profitable conclusion. They can execute and deliver quarter after quarter. Smart fox brand of leaders are gen- erally out-of-the-box thinkers, innovators, and entrepre- neurs. They build the brand, differentiate their company from everybody else, but they may not add anything unique

to the execution process. They in their role as leaders are happy to be vision- aries and big picture thinkers and strat- egists and proud of their contribution. According to Dr. Kaipa, smart fox is one extreme and cool cat is the other extreme form of leadership and with- out each other’s help, they don’t make their best contribution to the organiza- tion. He suggests that, to be a better leader, we should take the approach of a wise owl as it integrates both kinds of leadership. Wise owls are not stuck with one way of leading and are able to move freely between the two styles and bring upon what is needed to get the job done — whether it is the execu- tion focus or the top line growth. They are flexible, resilient, and have the abil- ity to work with and do what is needed

for the organization concerned. The focus of leadership development in the future should be on developing wise

Functional leaders are like

cool cats – they know how

to manage and get things

done. They manage cost,

quality, delivery, customer

satisfaction, and are

excellent in managing

projects and bringing

them to successful and

profitable conclusion.

They can execute and

deliver quarter after

quarter.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 107

owls because they are the people who can deal with com- plexity, diversity, speed and scarcity more meaningfully than smart foxes or cool cats.

Shift in Leadership Focus

According to Dr. Kaipa, the leadership concept has changed significantly over the past twenty years. Total quality leadership, total quality management, and re-en- gineering have come and gone and in the recent times innovative leadership is becoming more essential for or- ganizations to grow. When the top line growth happens through not only mergers and acquisitions, but also through organic innovation, the organization benefits in the long run. Dr. Kaipa gives the example of Nano con- tributing to Tata Motors’ top line growth through innovation, and Jag- uar and Land Rover increasing top line growth through mergers and ac- quisitions. Over time, knowledge transfer can happen between various divisions of Tata Motors but the suc- cess of Nano and innovations in R&D that they have come up with will be- come the foundation for many new “products” that they could sell around the world.

Insights from Programmes in India

Having conducted close to 80 pro- grammes in India since 1990 in about 30+ companies, Dr. Kaipa narrates the challenges in developing Indian lead- ers. He feels that leaders in India are different in mindset and skill set and need to be developed in unique ways compared to those in the Western countries. Indian leaders seem to believe that their teachers and coaches must have more domain knowledge and should demonstrate their expertise about the subject. Gaining knowledge and having intellectual prowess is very important for leaders in India; as they are themselves intellectual and well informed, they are not easily convinced and need the facilitator to prove that they are “gurus” and worth listening to. Indian leaders believe that they gain credibility in their teams by being knowledgeable and the focus is not on group discussions, learning from each other as much as it is on listening to the “expert”. Dr. Kaipa differentiates this experience from

that in the United States and (West in general) where lead- ers and managers attending the leadership development programmes are not so concerned about how much the trainer/coach “knows” but are focused on what they can take away to apply in terms of tools, processes, and mod- els. Another differentiating factor is that the Western au- dience is well grounded in structures and processes and more interested in ideas that could be applied in their organization whereas Indian leaders are idea-rich but need structures, processes, and frameworks to think with. In other words, the Western world is good at execution and Indian leaders are good at vision and plans. Dr. Kaipa believes that Indian leaders are good at translating their visions into action and if a suitable structure, process,

and motivation is provided, they de- liver impressive results. They are also quick learners and can translate best practices to suit their organizational context and invest the rest. Dr. Kaipa believes that the majority of Indian leaders have high intellectual capac- ity but they might not be exposed to different execution frameworks and once they are, they not just copy but innovate and come up with ‘jugaad’ solutions if necessary to meet organi- zational needs. Dr. Kaipa addresses this challenge of knowledge-skill gap by getting leaders to first identify where they have the biggest gaps and help- ing them to bridge those and then move on to learn what they need to learn to become more successful. He also starts with building psychological capital by

focusing on unleashing their capacity and genius rather than fixing problems.

Dr. Kaipa feels that, sometimes, Indian leaders are very good at adopting best practices from outside and do not pay sufficient attention to homegrown approaches and solutions. As they try to compete with the Western com- panies, they implement ideas and best practices from eve- rywhere in their organization. Indian leaders often forget that each organization has its unique DNA and some practices are not easily translatable. The force-fitting of ideas into their own context slows them down and some- times gets them into trouble because whatever is done superficially might look very good but may not make them

To be a better leader, we

should take the approach

of a wise owl as it

integrates both kinds of

leadership. Wise owls are

not stuck with one way of

leading and are able to

move freely between the

two styles and bring upon

what is needed to get the

job done — whether it is

the execution focus or the

top line growth.

108

competitive in the global market. Dr. Kaipa’s programmes thus focus on contextually helping leaders to think through the implementation in their specific organiza- tion and not just look for good ideas and processes. In India, he feels that he has to work doubly hard to make the leaders receptive or else they just listen politely but do not spend their valuable time to come up with unique solutions that stand the test of competitive global market place. He believes that it is critical in leadership develop- ment programmes offered to Indians, we take time to cus- tomize the pedagogy to get participants to recognize the opportunity to not just become success- ful Indian leaders but to become suc- cessful global leaders.

Innovations in Pedagogy to Suit the Indian Audience

Perhaps the best-known evaluation methodology for training programmes is developed by Donald Kirkpatrick in 1959 (and updated in 1994).

The four-levels of evaluation consist of (Kirkpatrick, 1994):

• Reaction - how the learners react to the learning process

• Learning - the extent to which the learners gain knowledge and skills

• Behaviour - capability to perform the learned skills while on the job

• Results - includes such items as monetary, efficiency, moral, etc.

Majority of the leadership development programmes use smile sheets which are collected at the end of the programme that primarily measure how participants reacted to the learning proc- ess and rarely addresses what they learned, how they plan to apply, and what results they intend to produce. Hence the value of the programmes drops significantly once the participant leaves. Dr. Kaipa designs his pro- grammes focusing on participant learning, desired per- formance, and anticipated results. He believes in customizing the programmes to steer the participants to- wards application and outcome focus while they are en- joying the learning process and developing self-awareness (by identifying where they are and where they would like to be). He believes that a successful leadership develop-

ment programme has to simultaneously focus on perspec- tives, principles, and practices. If their mindset (perspec- tive) is changed, they pick up principles that are meaningful to them and come up with practices similar to best practices that they had heard about during the programme.

Dr. Kaipa’s programmes rest on the unique concept of ‘igniting the genius within’ which involves helping par- ticipants to change the perspective or the world-view in addition to learning principles and practices. The con- cept fits in with the positive psychology approach that

Dr. Kaipa works with and when par- ticipants develop self-confidence and connects what they are learning with what they already know and believe in, their self-efficacy goes up and their application of learning becomes intrin- sically motivated. Once they have a vi- sion that is clear in their mind and they are intentional about making that vi- sion come alive, they become passion- ate and take action consistent with their vision. This concept of connect- ing vision, passion, and action is closely related to the spiritual concept, ‘trikarana suddhi,’ where we talk about aligning the body, mind, and spirit. Once they align their actions with pas- sion and vision, self-imposed limita- tions do not get in the way and their genius is not just ignited but imple- mented appropriately to produce de- sired results. As an example, he narrates the story of the Olympic ath- lete Marilyn King, placed Second in the

1980 Olympics trials. About eight months before the Ol- ympics, a truck had hit her from behind and she had a disc bulge and dislocation; she was thus unable to prac- tice for the next several months. She got all the videos of her competitors from various countries, and watched what they did. She kept imagining her pentathlon run and visualized her practice in painstaking detail. By the time she got sufficiently healed to be able to participate in the track, there were only two months left for actual prac- tice. Two months later, she was ranked Second in the Olympic trials. Her detailed vision and passion to keep recreating her run mentally in exquisite detail and all the

The Western audience is

well grounded in

structures and processes

and more interested in

ideas that could be

applied in their

organization whereas

Indian leaders are idea-

rich but need structures,

processes, and

frameworks to think with.

In other words, the

Western world is good at

execution and Indian

leaders are good at vision

and plans.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 109

actions she took consistent to her vision allowed her to succeed when many others failed. She calls her approach the ‘Olympic Way’ and trains people in this approach in California.

Dr. Kaipa designs his leadership development pro- grammes to have all the three elements – action orienta- tion, pedagogy that creates meaning and passion, and finally, the commitment to help participants leave with a clearer focus and vision of what they want to achieve as leaders. He says that it is deeply connected with spiritual principles practised in India. It is said in Hindu mythol- ogy that one has to master three kinds of powers to truly become successful in the world” Iccha Shakti (power of intention), Jnana Shakti (power of knowledge/perspective), and Kriya Shakti (power of actualiza- tion through action). Igniting the gen- ius within means awakening and aligning these three powers in partici- pants. Dr. Kaipa uses relevant seg- ments of movies, tools from brain research and cognitive psychology, stories from all over, principles and best practices from the management world in his programmes to inform, inspire, and engage the participants.

Dr. Kaipa explains that leadership de- velopment occurs through multiple approaches and while the programme approach is one that is most used, executive coaching is becoming the second most used approach. The peda- gogy in programmes and coaching is significantly different though the end result is still helping them to align their vision, passion, and action and igniting the genius within them.

Executive Coaching vs Programme Approach for Leadership Development

In coaching, Dr. Kaipa works with one person at a time or a small group of people and focuses mostly on action and results rather than on knowledge and skills. He explains that coaching requires a lot of hand-holding, partnering, and is a lot more specific than programmes and also done in small doses over many sessions. He does not dictate the agenda, but week after week, he works with coachees on successfully addressing tactical, operational, and stra- tegic issues and in doing so, he learns the underlying

principles, practices, and perspectives. While pro- grammes take place in classrooms, coaching takes place in meeting rooms. In programmes, they discuss cases and best practices of industry leaders, while in coaching, they apply learnings from cases and best practices to problem on hand and see how they can come up with productive solution. Programmes produce results after the pro- grammes are completed (sometimes long after), whereas coaching produces results during the process. In pro- grammes, learning happens first and action takes place later whereas in coaching, the order is reversed.

While an executive coach is generally engaged to work with a specific leader, Dr. Kaipa feels that his approach works even better in a team coaching context.

Programmes focus on knowledge and skills of participants; executive coach- ing focuses on competence develop- ment in the context of leadership; consulting focuses on increasing effec- tiveness of the organization (not fo- cused on individuals). In a consulting scenario, one helps the organization to become successful, innovative, and sustainable and in achieving those goals, leaders become more effective. In that respect, the focus is on results and leadership development is a sec- ondary benefit as results get produced

through people and their efforts (and innovation).

Future of Leadership in India

Dr. Kaipa believes that leadership is all about action. The effectiveness of leadership is measured by results achieved in the organization and the bench strength of leadership talent. Leaders have to see and seize opportunities before the competition, make choices on a continuous basis (es- pecially in this complex and global reality), take respon- sibility and accountability for results and develop leaders around them. Dr. Kaipa mentions that if we can develop more leaders who can deliver on these four steps, then we will not be just exporting IT solutions but global leaders to other parts of the world. Dr. Kaipa feels that the world is ready and waiting for more leaders from India and hopes that Indian leaders are ready to step up to the plate and deliver.

Indian leaders often forget

that each organization has

its unique DNA and some

practices are not easily

translatable. The force-

fitting of ideas into their

own context slows them

down and sometimes gets

them into trouble.

110

Consulting in “Leadership Development” — An Ethnographic View

Kartikeyan V, Shabari Madappa, Swasthika Ramamurthy and Vishwanath P

Introduction

Over the past decade, “leadership development” hasbecome one of the hottest and most popular busi- ness conference topics. Most organizations today believe that this unknown, hard-to-pin-down development will mark the difference between success and failure in their businesses. Myriad books on the subject have been pub- lished in the hope of cashing in on what might prove to be the next magic wand. A Google search on “leader- ship” led us to 441 million hits! Con- sulting houses have launched global leadership practices and business schools have also partnered with or- ganizations to sell their wares in the lucrative leadership education market- place.

Every CEO today, irrespective of in- dustry or country, has a well-rehearsed speech on how developing the next generation of leaders is the biggest chal- lenge. And yet, with all the cacophony and a multitude of models, the strug- gle to define leadership development and a multi-dimensional approach to it persists. Most organizations to their dismay have discovered that eloquent statements and huge money invest- ments do not necessarily equal a pipe- line of quality leaders.

The reasons for such lack of clarity in the delivery of lead- ership development processes could rest in some flawed assumptions associated with most approaches towards developing leaders. Very often, the term “leadership de- velopment” is confused with “leader development” and the focus tends to be therefore on development of indi- viduals and not the system. Another cul de sac that we find organizations walking into is a “one size fits all” or a “best practice” approach without appreciating the nu-

ances of the cultural, country or industry context.

One of our key realizations is that it is more often the “practice of leadership development” that informs the theories of development rather than vice versa. This is the reason we have chosen to frame our own reference points on leadership based on an ethnographic experience rather than relying exclusively on a theoretical precept or a “les- sons from history” approach.

With over half a century of experience in the leadership development arena, questing for success and learning from mistakes, the VISTAS consulting team today approaches leadership develop- ment from a vastly different and wider lens than when we began. Our experi- ence with organizations across indus- tries, (with a cross-section of Indian companies and MNCs), as insiders and outsiders and having worked both “in the trenches” and in advisory ex- ecutive coaching and facilitating ca- pacities, has helped us assimilate our insights into a unique approach to leadership development that is con- stantly evolving. These insights frame and inform our practice, approach, and methods in this area and we wish to present some of these in this paper.

What Informs Our Consulting Practice

In all our leadership consulting work, we use certain models and frameworks. Apart from the inspiration we receive from Integral Psychology, particularly as written about by the renowned Ken Wilber (2000), we have cho- sen to construct models based on our real experience and then validate these through dialogues with scholars and other practitioners. While we have used these models and frameworks in diverse consulting settings, for the pur- pose of this paper, we are choosing to talk about them only in the context of leadership development (LD) en- gagements.

Every CEO today,

irrespective of industry or

country, has a well-

rehearsed speech on how

developing the next

generation of leaders is

the biggest challenge. And

yet, with all the

cacophony and a

multitude of models, the

struggle to define

leadership development

and a multi-dimensional

approach to it persists.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

Acknowledgment. The authors wish to acknowledge the inspiring conversations with the Founders and Fellows of Sumedhas, Acad- emy of Human Context, clients, workplace colleagues, co-workers, and many others who helped through the leadership journey.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 111

In this paper, we are choosing to present two of our core models, especially since they inform and impact our lead- ership work. These models are the AAC Model for de- signing transformative leadership development and the VISTAS™ model for leadership and organization devel- opment (this latter model is eponymous with our firm’s name). These models in turn rest on the following para- digms/axioms:

• That a leader’s role is to produce superior perform- ance and also make meaning

• That a leader is a person and leadership is a social role

• Leadership is both universal and particular

• Leadership development would need to focus not just on the think- ing- doing aspects but equally on the being-becoming aspects of one’s self.

The AAC model of Awareness, Align- ment, and Capability can be visualized as an inside-out vector, with the focus being on working from within a human system to effect transformation in the outside-in demands of Vision, Task, Realities, and Sentience, which is cov- ered by the VISTAS™ model.

Transformative Leadership Development – The AAC Model

Many approaches to transformation or change in sys- tems tend to focus right away on building capability to change or manage the consequences of change. While not arguing with these approaches, we believe that there are two essential steps that precede capability building in any human system, be it an individual leader, or a leadership collective such as a team. These are detailed and illustrated here.

Step 1: Generating Awareness

“Equanimity just looks on and observes, while calmly settled in composed neutrality, it is manifested as the quieting of both resentment and approval” – Gautam Buddha

This act, the first in the transformation process, implies casting a gaze – simultaneously inwards into the system and from there outwards to the objective context of the system-in-focus. Mindful awareness implies neither evaluation nor judgment but an impassive witnessing or contemplation of the whole system from various locations.

Such awareness enables the observer to gradually make out patterns that are not apparent in the normal course of things. This mindful awareness looks at everything in and about the system – the “what is,” the “desired,” the re- sistance, and the paths ahead. Vistas’ belief is that if awareness is absent, change would be ill-constructed and not lasting. Awareness, thus, is the foundation on which change happens.

Step 2: Creating Alignment

Following awareness is alignment. Awareness makes apparent the frag- ments in the system that needs to be constellated meaningfully for the change to take place. In an individual leader, it could be alignment of

thought, feeling, and action. In a leadership team, it could imply alignment of the various constituent units or dif- ferent individuals. Alignment enables the “coming to- gether” of parts to generate meaning – much like the coming together of swaras (musical notes) to create the form of a raga.

Step 3: Building Capability

Awareness and alignment create the ground on which lasting capability can be built. Vistas’ vision of leader- ship development is different from several others’ in that most other approaches that we have experienced or re- searched tend to jump to building capability, while Vis- tas proposes capability building as the final step in the whole process. We advocate a moving away from a “train- ing” orientation to LD and moving to an Organization Development (OD) orientation instead.

Mindful awareness looks

at everything in and about

the system – the “what

is,” the “desired,” the

resistance, and the paths

ahead. Vistas’ belief is that

if awareness is absent,

change would be ill-

constructed and not

lasting. Awareness, thus,

is the foundation on

which change happens.

112

Necessary Ingredients and Dimensions of a Leader- ship Development Intervention

In each of the above inside-out vectors of leadership trans- formation, we believe that three outside-in ingredients/ dimensions need to be considered to generate a whole- some leadership developmental experience. These three aspects are: Vision, Task, and Sentience.

• Creating alignment in the task sphere • Creating alignment within and between sentient struc-

tures in the organization/business • Building visioning capability • Building alignment capability • Building sentience capability

These pathways can also be visually captured in an enneagrammic yantra as follows -

Awareness

E n

v ir

o n

m e n

t/ C

o n

te x t

Task

C ap

ab ili

ty

V is io

n

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

Legend – represents the Pathways of Awareness represents the Pathways of Alignment represents the Pathways of Capability

Vision – This function of leadership refers to the leaders’ role in defining what their enterprise will look like in the foreseeable future.

Task – This function of leadership refers to the role of leaders in getting things done; by bringing in the required effort, marshalling resources, and working towards ac- countability for the whole system that surrounds the busi- ness outcomes. This aspect stands for the “objective” world of the collective.

Sentience – This function of leadership is not much writ- ten about. But we have a bias towards this aspect, which refers to the subjective world that the leader has an ac- countability to foster in the system. It is the world of hu- manness, of feelings, of emotions, the “underbelly”, the “soft” side and often the “vulnerable” side of the system.

Thus bringing in the three vectors of inside-out transfor- mation and the three outside-in demand dimensions, we can generate nine leadership development pathways as under:

• Generating awareness of vision • Generating awareness of the task realities and de-

mands • Generating awareness of the sentient structures of the

organization/business • Creating alignment towards the vision

A lignm

ent

Sentience

Some examples of development work that we have un- dertaken under these pathways are:

Workshop Description Purpose

Vision Generation and To generate awareness and Cascade Workshops facilitate alignment of vision

Goal Setting Workshops To generate task awareness

Depth Diagnosis of To generate awareness of sentient Organizations/Teams structures and patterns

Teaming Retreats To facilitate task/role alignment, sentience capability

Leadership Skills Capability building Workshops

Executive Coaching Awareness and capability in all three transformation vectors

Immersive Experiences/ Awareness and capability in all Action Learning three transformation vectors

VISTAS™ Model for Leadership and Organization Development

Architecture of Vistas’ LD Engagement

In architecting LD engagements, we have adopted a “4- D” approach, borrowing from our broad-spectrum Or-

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 113

ganization Development (OD) work. The four Ds – Diag- nose, Design, Deliver, and Deepen – are carefully chosen verbs that indicate a structured flow to any engagement.

• Seek both objective as well as subjective data – Our meth- odology for diagnosis stays instrument neutral. We believe, a more evocative story of the organization emerges only from a consolidated view of both the qualitative and the quantitative. So, we review exist- ing data that is with the client (e.g., internal surveys, metrics related to usage of people systems such as per- formance management, etc.); we may also choose to administer a survey for the leaders ourselves. Through intense one-on-one meetings, focus group discussions, we also gather the leaders’ perceptions, opinions, and views of current challenges. Put together, this informs us of not just the stated but also the unstated unex- pressed needs of the leaders.

• Diagnose through a multi-dimensional approach – Our diagnosis meetings go beyond the participants of the leadership development intervention. They involve a sample of the leaders, key stakeholders they report/ interact with, sponsors of the initiative, L&D team, etc., the objective being to unearth the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders.

• Be alert to one’s own biases – Our filters as a diagnosti- cian determine what we choose to see and what we choose to ignore. We stay alive to this, and more im- portantly believe that this must be stated when we share the diagnosis back with the client.

• Alert the client that the leadership intervention has already begun – Diagnostic meetings herald and raise expec- tations across the whole system; it is very difficult to retract a leadership intervention once diagnosis is completed.

While working with the HR function for a financial services firm, we first met with all members of the HR leadership team individually, the Country Head of the organization, and other key business stakeholders. This was then followed by focus group discussions with all members of the team. This phase revealed significantly more than what had been first articu- lated by the person who had invited us to work with them. For example, the leadership team’s perception of themselves was divergent to that held by the rest of the function about them as leaders. A decision was thus taken, to use the results of the diagnosis as the core of the workshop (during the deliv- ery phase) seeding all subsequent work in the leadership inter- vention. Example —

We see the diagnosis phase as a critical first step to build- ing an enhanced awareness of the challenge, helping move participants from a viewpoint to a consolidated

Diagnose – This phase, always the first, is intended to assess and understand the human system-in-focus, be it an individual leader or a collection of leaders. This phase helps the consultants design a customized LD interven- tion for the client(s).

Design – Following the diagnose phase, the consultants consolidate inputs and partner with the client to design the most appropriate learning intervention.

Deliver – This phase refers to the actual deployment of the LD intervention. This has taken various shapes (and com- binations of shapes), including leadership coaching, LD workshop sessions around various themes, team-level in- terventions with leadership teams with an intent to en- hance both their real-time collective leadership capability and fostering culture.

Deepen – Often ignored by consultants and clients alike, this is a phase where we work with our clients to go be- yond the initial delivery and help them institutionalize the learning. Typical ways in which this might take shape are process consultation, ongoing advisory, team coach- ing, review sessions, one-to-one coaching, and so on.

To reiterate, our practice of organization development informs our practice of leadership development.

Diagnosis

The tenets that govern our approach to diagnosis are the following:

• Organizations are not static entities — While diagnosis may be our entry point into a client system, we view inquiry as a more continuous process. During subse- quent stages of Design-Delivery-Deepen, there is a need to stay alive to emerging data. This also needs to be incorporated into the leadership development inter- vention.

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objective and subjective view of multiple viewpoints in the client system.

Design

A core change that we are witnessing in our approach to leadership development is, how we are increasingly in- volving the client and emphasizing co-creation of the de- sign of the intervention. We see this partnership helping both of us in multiple ways:

• Increases joint ownership for the success of the intervention – which in reality does not and cannot rest with only one party, i.e., either the consultant or the client.

• Acknowledges each one’s blind spots as the pragmatics of the leadership workshop are determined – as an example, the internal anchors’ own presumptions and those of the consultant of what will work and what will not, need to be brought to the fore and confronted.

• Builds trust between the consultant and the client, helps both understand each other and respect each one’s approach.

• Enables the internal anchor in the or- ganization to build capability for a continuity of approach to the inter- vention even after the delivery phase is completed.

In our design phase, we ask ourselves two core questions:

• What is the task outcome? • What is the experiential outcome?

As an example, the stated task outcome may be – a vision statement clearly articulated by the participants or goals/ deliverables for the year ahead to be identified for each func- tion or key leadership skills to be transferred. The experien- tial outcome could possibly be a sense of inclusion in building this vision statement or an increased sense of opti- mism of reaching the goals or a belief in the need and practi- cality of applying those leadership skills at work. While much of both (the task and experiential outcomes) is iden- tified in the design stage, much of it emerges through the delivery stage when we work directly with participants.

In one of our engagements, the country leadership team for a large manufacturer of mobile handsets engaged us to facilitate

a leadership session – the group was a diverse team of 17 lead- ers from across geographies. While the task outcome was a need for a synthesis of capabilities, a need to recognize the synergies of working together, processes to leverage capabilities across geographies, the experiential outcome was for a sense of ‘one leadership team’ to emerge at the end of the two-day workshop. Both outcomes were incorporated in the design and the deliv- ery phase. Example —

Deliver

In this phase, the consultant engages with the partici- pants much more directly and visibly. We believe that the success of this phase depends on three perspectives:

• The consultant/s’ own wisdom and wealth of experiences and how they can be brought to the fore — The “WHO” of

the person largely determines what the participant experiences and then learns from much more than “WHAT” the consultant is saying. We see the deliver phase as a large blank canvas on which participants paint their own unique perspective, questions, and re- sponses. The consultant helps to stitch these together to create new perspec- tives for the developing leaders. • Intent vs. Content - “Many roads lead to Rome” is a belief that we live by. While we are conscious of the out- comes desired by the client, we use our experience and wisdom to determine which methodology/instrument / technique seems most appropriate to

get there. In other words, the spirit of the framework or outcome is the key, irrespective of the methodology used. As an example, if deeper self-awareness as a leader or better inter-personal skills with the team is the clients’ expectation from the intervention, the in- strument/methodology we may choose to use will be determined by our perspective of what is most appro- priate in that context and would suit participant needs.

• The group is the client - In the previous phases of diag- nosis and design, the consultant interfaces mainly with the client system and works in collaboration with the internal anchor to define the leadership interven- tion/s. In a delivery setting, the consultant’s focus is the group in front of him/her and it is important to

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

A core change that we are

witnessing in our

approach to leadership

development is, how are

we increasingly involving

the client and

emphasizing co-creation

of the design of the

intervention. We see this

partnership helping both

of us.

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 115

stay alive to the group members’ responses and feed- back.

Client Experience - During one of our early leadership assign- ments, we focused intensely on the business leader’s personal agenda in the delivery setting. This led us to unconsciously ignore what the group’s emerging needs were, which at times were distinctly different from the leaders own personal agenda. Deep resistance within the group was visible, as they struggled to accept our inputs.

In another instance, during the lunch break at the workshop, the head of the leadership team we were working with wanted us to change direction in the post-lunch session. His motive was to make sure that his own agenda was clearly articulated and achieved; so he made suggestions of what he believed should be done. He even recommended the sort of discussions he wished us to encourage and which should be discouraged. This was difficult as our own sensing of the group’s need was very different and the leadership learning out- comes would have been compromised. Stay- ing true to the group’s needs helped us to direct the conversation with the Head of the function and get his support to work with the group to achieve greater synergy and alignment. Example —

Deepen

Many organizations lament that they do not see an adequate return on investment after spend- ing millions of dollars in leadership development. We believe that stand-alone leadership interventions do not guarantee sustained learning and application on the job. What is critical to make learning come alive and mean- ingful in the workplace is to design ways to sustain learn- ing.

If the ‘Deliver’ phase is successful, many seeds in terms of thoughts, perspectives, skills, and deeper awareness are sown. Participants may take tentative steps to change the way they lead during the Deliver phase. But there is also an accompanying vulnerability as participants take their first steps to apply the new insights and make changes in their work context.

The ‘Deepen’ phase helps to create a climate in the work- setting that can nurture and foster participants as they

apply this new awareness in the work context.

Each organization can be creative about ways to help leaders deepen their learning thus creating a culture of continuous learning within.

“Every workshop ends with some cross-functional teams: par- ticipants enthusiastically take up one of the challenges to work with, but this is always difficult to implement once we return to the workplace. This time I’ve seen a difference – if we had stopped with just the workshops for the leaders, I am not sure if these teams would have progressed as much. It would have been work as usual.” - Quote by the HR Head of a large software services firm during the deepen stage of the leadership intervention.

Dilemmas/Challenges

As the world and our contexts change rapidly, we continue to be faced with different sets of dilemmas and chal- lenges that spur us to refine and rede- fine our own deeply held assumptions and “theories-in-use.”

One clear contextual change has been the use of technology and “viruality” as a platform for development. The challenge is optimize their use with- out diluting the effectiveness of the process.

Another live dilemma that we con- stantly confront is the “components” vs “system” ap- proach. Across the world, be it in technology or products, there is a clear trend towards a “modular” approach, which views self-sufficient modules that can use a plug- and-play methodology with other modules. We some- times worry (with merit, we believe!) that this may not be the optimal approach to human systems – leadership de- velopment is not a module that can be plugged into a system – the intended and unintended consequences on the ecosystem must be examined and dealt with in more depth. As we mentioned in our approach, “alignment” of all parts of the eco system is essential to sustainable de- velopment.

A continuing challenge is also the pressure on “telescop- ing” and on the other hand, “amplification” of the “fad- of-the-day.” Client demands today centre around

Stand-alone leadership

interventions do not

guarantee sustained

learning and application

on the job. What is

critical to make learning

come alive and

meaningful in the

workplace is to design

ways to sustain learning.

116

condensing development times and sometimes around the use of the “edge” concepts or fads. Balancing the pres- sures with what is realistic will continue to be a struggle.

One of the areas that informs our practice is the ability to create “mindful awareness.” An important area for con- sideration here centres on the readiness of the client sys- tem in terms of what can be brought to its conscious awareness – too much and “drowning or rejection” can be a consequence – too little and the intervention can be- come superficial and shallow.

As most practitioners would appreciate, every phase of progress and evolution throws up its own challenges and dilemmas and perhaps the answers lie not in solving and resolving these dilemmas but in preparing to answer them and maybe sometimes transcend them.

Conclusion

As we hurtle towards a more uncertain and fast-paced future with a new generation of Millennials taking on the

leadership roles, our approach will need to continue evolv- ing to assimilate and adopt edge practices, ideas, and the contextual needs.

In the ultimate analysis, the leadership development jour- ney at both personal and organizational levels, is not a linear transit but an ever evolving spiral. As fellow prac- titioners, perhaps our only role in the journey is as fellow wayfarers who can help them pack what they need for their journey ahead and wish them Godspeed!

References

Nohria, N and Khurana, R (2010). Handbook of Leadership and Theory Practice (ed.), Boston: Harvard Business Publish- ing.

Schein, E H (1998). Process Consultation: Its Role in Organiza- tions (2nd ed.), New York: Prentice Hall.

Senge, P M (2006). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, London: Random House.

Wilber, K (2000). Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psy- chology, Therapy, Boston: MA Shambhala Publication.

Many white-paper publications of the Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL).

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

PROFILE OF CONTRIBUTORS

B M Vyas is currently working as an independent Consultant covering Dairy marketing, fruit and juice industry. He was the Managing Director of GCMMF Ltd, Anand during 1994- June 2010. Prior to this, he was General Manager (1992-1994), Asst General Manager (Marketing) (1987-1992), Manager (Pur- chase and Commercial) (1981-87), Deputy Manager (Purchase) (1978-81), and Officer (Purchase), Amul Dairy, Anand (1971- 78). Within a span of 16 years, as the MD, he could achieve an eight-fold increase in sales, launch of 38 new products, in- cluding special dietary products, development of India’s larg- est ice-cream brand, largest cold chain network, and Asia’s largest fresh milk brand. He has a Bachelor of Engineering from Sardar Patel University and an MBA from the Institute of Rural Management, Anand. Among his several awards are – Best of all Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award, Business World - India’s most respected Company Award, QIMPRO – Gold Standard Award, National Citizen Award, “Charotar Ratna” Award by Rotary Club of Anand. Besides, he has pub- lished several papers and participated in several international conferences.

e-mail: [email protected]

Mr Prabhat Rao is currently the Head of Human Resources at HDFC. He has been facilitating programmes within HDFC in the area of HR and customer service and has been associ- ated in consultancy assignments undertaken by HDFC. Ear- lier, he has been instrumental in the growth of the Hyderabad and Lucknow offices. Prior to joining HDFC in 1982, Mr. Rao was an Associate Consultant at Administrative Staff College of India, Consulting and Applied Research Division, Calcutta. He has a Master’s Degree in Management from Birla Institute

of Technology and Science, Pilani. In his spare time, he likes interacting with people and enjoys playing the role of a men- tor, especially of youngsters.

e-mail: [email protected]

S K Vasant joined HDFC in 1980 and is currently General Manager & Head, HRD and Centre for Housing Finance. His current responsibilities include assessing learning and de- velopment needs, designing and implementation of learn- ing initiatives, developing in-house facilitators, selection of external training consultants and measuring training effec- tiveness. His responsibilities also include managing HDFC’s training centre as well as customer feedback at the national level. Prior to the current assignment, he worked in Recover- ies, Corporate Planning, Operations, Resources and managed Contractual Savings Plans. He has undergone training at Bausparkassens in Germany and co-ordinated and conducted training programmes in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and the Middle East. He is a commerce graduate and has a Post graduate Diploma in Management Studies.

e-mail: [email protected]

Govind Shrikhande spearheads the largest department store chain in India, Shoppers Stop as its Managing Director since July 29, 2010. He is extremely focused on People and is pas- sionate about Products and Services for the Consumer. He firmly believes in Team Work and is committed to making the workplace into an enjoyable experience. A Textile Gradu- ate from VJTI, Mumbai and an MBA from Symbiosis, Pune, he has more than 26 years of experience in leading Textile

VIKALPA • VOLUME 36 • NO 3 • JULY - SEPTEMBER 2011 117

and Apparel companies like Mafatlal, Arvind, Arrow, and Bombay Dyeing. He was part of the team responsible for creating the Denim Revolution in India in the 90’s. He was also a key member of the Arrow launch team, contributing to making it the No.1 Shirt brand in the Premium Category. Mr. Shrikhande is a big fan of Pula Deshpande and P G Woodehouse. He has been a part of the Jury for the Pink Slip Awards by The Times of India, Emvees by Ad Club, Apex Awards by CMAI, and Effies Awards by Ad Club. He was selected as the “Alumni of the Year” in 2008 by the Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, his Alma Mater. He has also won the Retail Professional Of The Year Award by CMAI in 2009 and the Most Admired Fashion Retail Professional of the Year Award at the IFA 2010.

e-mail: [email protected]

Rajshekar Krishnan is the Head, Leadership Development and Learning Integration of IBM India Private Limited. He has 27 years of varied experience in the manufacturing, hos- pitality and information technology sectors. He has focused on learning and development since 1994. He is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Tech- nology, Allahabad. He is a voracious reader with a keen in- terest in the wisdom literature of the world.

e-mail: [email protected]

Gopal P Mahapatra is currently “Senior Director – Organiza- tion & Talent” Development with a leading IT MNC. He is a Ph.D (Fellow Programme in Management) from IIM, Banga- lore , and holds a PG in PM & IR from Xavier Institute, Ranchi. Dr. Gopal brings varied experience in academia, corporate and consulting in Indian as well as multinational corpora- tions in his 25 years of work endeavours. His areas of exper- tise include Performance Management, HR, Strategic HR, Employee Development including Leadership Pipeline, OD and TQM. Dr. Gopal is a certified Executive Coach in addition to being certified in 360 Degree Feedback, Assessment Cen- tres, MBTI and Appreciative Inquiry. A Former President of National HRD Network (Bangalore Chapter), Dr. Gopal has published several articles, co-edited books and presented sev- eral papers in international and national conferences. He has also been on the advisory board / academic councils of sev- eral academic institutions and a visiting faculty at a number of B-Schools.

e-mail: [email protected]

Vivek Subramanian is currently “Director – Organization & Talent Development” with a leading IT MNC. He is a post- graduate in Economics from MS University, Baroda, and a post-graduate in Personnel Management from Symbiosis In- stitute of Business Management, Pune. He is certified in 360 Degree Feedback and Assessment Centres. Vivek, who has held roles in line-HR and Learning & Development, has a total of 16 years of work experience across Information Tech- nology and Hospitality industries.

e-mail: [email protected]

Prakash K Nair has twenty years of experience working with diverse groups in both academic and industrial settings. Dur-

ing this period, he has coached and trained managers and sales professionals, and led OD and business development initiatives. Currently, he is with Infosys Leadership Institute engaged in the coaching and development of senior leaders. Prior to Infosys, he was in the United States for ten years, and had earned his doctoral degree from Texas A&M University. He is certified by SHRM as a Senior Professional in Human Resources. His current research interests include executive coaching, authentic leadership, and humour in leadership.

e-mail: [email protected]

Aarti Shyamsunder is a Principal at the Infosys Leadership Institute in India, where she supports the development of senior leaders. She has lived and worked in the US and India. She obtained her Ph. D in Industrial/Organizational Psychol- ogy from the University of Akron and worked for Kronos in Portland (Oregon) in the area of employee selection. In 2009, she moved back to her home country to work for Infosys and be closer to her family. She is currently involved in the mea- surement of leadership, creation of developmental roadmaps/portfolios, programme evaluation as well as re- search.

e-mail: [email protected]

Chitra Sarmma, in her current role at the Infosys Leadership Institute (ILI), is working with a group of high-potential se- nior leaders on their development. Her work focuses on im- proving client relationships, using virtual worlds in leadership development and designing a portfolio of devel- opmental interventions on “Content Leadership” (a key lead- ership dimension related to thought Leadership at Infosys). She has also authored a chapter related to Content Leader- ship in the book “Leadership @ Infosys.” She started her ca- reer in the engineering industry and brings with her a blend of experience with different industries. Over a career span- ning 18 years, she has held key positions in human resource development in various organizations delivering HR and OD initiatives. She has also started and grown two organiza- tions as an entrepreneur. She has worked in depth in areas such as HR strategy formulation and implementation, lead- ership competency development, organizational turnaround, team enhancement, and performance coaching. Her interest in immersive technology has led to her currently developing a Virtual World-based learning experience for the leaders at Infosys and also research related to this. At Infosys, she is a passionate promoter of tapping the tremendous potential of immersive technologies for leadership development.

e-mail: [email protected] Binu Philip is the Director – HR for two of the Microsoft businesses and is currently based in Bangalore. He has over 23 years of experience in HR with diverse businesses includ- ing Agri Business, Telecom, and IT. He is passionate about Leadership Development, Change Management, and Culture- building. He has also been involved with a wide spectrum of specialties covering IR, L&D, Compensation, OD, M&A, Six Sigma, etc. Travel and Photography are his personal passion.

e-mail: [email protected]

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Balaji Kumar is currently the Director – L&D for Microsoft India. He has more than 15 years of experience in the feilds of law, HRM, and OD ranging across industries such as FMCG, Financial Services, and IT. He has handled a variety of portfo- lios ranging from employee relations, staffing, OD, business partnership, leadership development, learning. A Post-gradu- ate in law and an M.A. in PM & IR from TISS, he holds a certificate in OD and Change Management from ISABS (In- dian Society of Applied Behavioural Sciences). His interests are in the areas of applied behavioural sciences and employ- ment law and he is an ardent student of leadership and orga- nization development.

e-mail: [email protected]

Prasad Kaipa has been working with CEOs and senior execu- tives in advisory and coaching capacity in 130 compqanies in 15 countries for the past 20 years. Dr. Kaipa conducts leader- ship development programmes mostly for senior managers, about 60 per cent or more for directors and above, and about 20-30 per cent the level below, and very rarely 10 per cent or less for the first level managers or individual contributors. Working with the Ex-Chairman, OM Bhatt, he has played an instrumental role in the turnaround of the State Bank of In- dia. He has worked with many companies including Biocon in the area of innovation management. His areas of consult- ing include Global Leadership, Innovation, Business Trans- formation, and Personal Mastery. His research areas are wisdom approaches, brain research, and its implications on leadership development; Indian models of innovation and leadership compared to Western models and transformation. Dr. Kaipa has been the H. Smith Richardson Fellow in the Centre for Creative Leadership for 2010-2011, and is a senior fellow in the Indian School of Business.

e-mail: [email protected]

Twisha Anand is pursuing Fellow Programme in Manage- ment in Organizational Behaviour at the Indian Institute of Management. As a part of her dissertation, she is exploiting help-seeking behaviour among software employees in a cross- cultural study. Her research interests include gender issues, work-life balance, cross-culture studies, and workplace is- sues in the software sector. Prior to FPM, she did her Engi- neering from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, and then worked for two years in Wipro Technologies, Banga- lore as a software developer. After completion of her FPM, she aspires to be in academics and research in the field of organizational behaviour.

e-mail: [email protected]

Kartikeyan V is the Founder and Managing Partner of Vistas Consulting (www.vistasconsulting.com). He was previously the Director of Human Resources in Texas Instruments India (P) Limited, and also held senior HR leadership positions in Motorola, Unilever, and the TVS Group. He is also an accom- plished Carnatic flutist, and works to integrate experiences from the world of music with his consulting work.

e-mail: [email protected]

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE WHY AND HOW OF IT (PART I)

Shabari Madappa is a Partner of Vistas Consulting. She has held senior HR leadership roles in Texas Instruments India (P) Limited, the Maharaja Group (Sri Lanka), and Sasken Com- munications (P) Limited. She also runs three restaurants suc- cessfully and forwards her insights in "tastes" and customer relationships to a very nuanced client consulting practices.

e-mail: [email protected]

Swasthika Ramamurthy is a Partner of Vistas Consulting. She has held senior HR/Learning & Development roles in Sun Microsystems, GE, and other companies. She practices Buddhist meditation practices and her consulting work re- flects her introspective approach to life.

e-mail: [email protected]

Vishwanath P is a Partner of Vistas Consulting, and with Human Endeavour, and has in the past led the HR function of Motorola Software Group in India, besides other global lead- ership roles in the same organization. He is a lover of music, books, meditation, and travel and his consulting work is of- ten a melodious, knowledge-soaked, reflective trek.

e-mail: [email protected]

Neharika Vohra is a Professor in the Organizational Behaviour Area at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. A Ph.D from the University of Manitoba, she has been a Visit- ing Professor in the same University and has also taught at the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar. Her aca- demic and research interests include leadership and gender issues in organizations; management across cultures; and lead- ership in educational institutions. She has published several papers in international and national journals and presented several papers in conferences and seminars. Her recent pub- lications include papers in Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Manage- ment Decision, and Organizational Development Journal. She is also the co-author of two popular text books - Organizational Behavior and Management - both published by Pearson. She has been on the editorial board of several international jour- nals and is also a regular reviewer for many international journals. She is currently the Editor of Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers.

e-mail: [email protected] Deepti Bhatnagar is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. A Fel- low of Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, she has also taught as Visiting Professor of Management at the RH Smith School of Management, University of Maryland at College Park, Fairleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey, and Lingnan (University) College, Sun Yet Sen University, Guangzhou, China. Her research and teaching interests in- clude work-life balance, emotions at workplace, leadership, and influence. Her work has been published in Human Re- source Management, International Journal of Management, Non- profit Management and Leadership, Human Relations, Sex Roles, Applied Psychology: An International Review, and Journal of Mana- gerial Psychology.

e-mail: [email protected]

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