Panel Discussion on Made in India Managers featuring: Former Tata Sons Director R Gopalakrishnan, SPJIMR Dean Ranjan Banerjee, Pidilite Managing Director Bharat Puri, GSK India Managing Director A Vaidheesh and Aditya Birla Group Executive President - Corporate Strategy D Shivakumar.
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00:00:00 this uniqueness that made in India managers have steadily made the climb leading several
00:00:07 global companies.
00:00:09 Our next panel, ladies and gentlemen, is brought to you by Raymond, the complete man.
00:00:15 May we have the AV, please?
00:00:35 Where the Indian way is an edge and where culture clash pushes us behind.
00:00:55 To tell us more about this and to moderate this panel, ladies and gentlemen, please help
00:00:59 me welcome on stage, Editor of Outlook Business, Ms. N.
00:01:04 N.
00:01:05 N.
00:01:06 Thank you for joining us.
00:01:08 I'm going to quickly go ahead and invite our panelists, ladies and gentlemen, former Executive
00:01:12 Director Tata Sons, former Vice Chairman, HUL and author Mr. R. Gopalakrishnan, Group
00:01:20 Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Aditya Birla Group, Mr. D. Shivakumar.
00:01:32 Joining us also is Managing Director Piddilight, Mr. Bharat Puri.
00:01:38 And keep the claps coming as I invite Vice President, South Asia and Managing Director
00:01:44 GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, Mr. A. Vaidesh.
00:01:49 And we also have Dean and Professor, Marketing, SPJIMR, Mr. Ranjan Banerjee.
00:01:56 Thank you, panelists, for joining me here for this very beautiful discussion.
00:02:02 It's inspired from Mr. Gopalakrishnan's book, Made in India Managers.
00:02:09 Over the past couple of decades, Indian CEOs have really made it on the global stage, whether
00:02:16 it is consumer, banking, academics, technology and now from Vendi Banga, Ajay Banga, Vikram
00:02:24 Pandit, Deepak Jain, Nithin Noria, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, the list is just growing every
00:02:31 year.
00:02:32 And of course, it's a very heartening thing to say that there is some Indianness, to think
00:02:40 that this Indianness in managers is really working and putting them on the global stage.
00:02:48 But I want to ask this fundamental question to the audience.
00:02:51 How many of you really think that this whole trend of rising CEOs is individual talent,
00:02:58 A, B, collective ingenuity or the Indianness in these people, and C, simply a reflection
00:03:07 of the rising importance of India on the global stage?
00:03:11 Hands up for A. Okay.
00:03:17 For collective ingenuity of Indian managers?
00:03:23 And the importance of India in the global pie?
00:03:28 Okay.
00:03:31 So does that result surprise you?
00:03:33 Sitting here, I can't quite hear your question to which they raised their hand.
00:03:39 So you'll have to tell me this.
00:03:41 So the question was, how many of us really think that this whole rise of Indian CEOs
00:03:48 on the global stage is to do with individual talent, second, collective ingenuity of the
00:03:56 Indian managers, and third, simply the rising importance of India in the global pie of companies?
00:04:06 So does that result surprise you?
00:04:07 Because most people seem to think it's a result of rising importance of India in the global
00:04:16 pie.
00:04:17 Your question to me was, does it surprise you?
00:04:21 Yeah.
00:04:22 And it does not surprise me.
00:04:24 That doesn't mean I agree with it.
00:04:26 Okay.
00:04:27 Okay, let me ask the panelists.
00:04:28 So how many of you think…
00:04:29 No, you know, as a co-author, I have a quick reaction.
00:04:32 If I were to give the audience a fourth option, there is…
00:04:35 Which is a combination of all three.
00:04:37 No, there is something unique about being… about growing up, competing and being brought
00:04:44 up in India, which is a unique preparation to succeed on a global stage.
00:04:48 Can you get a show of hands for that?
00:04:50 That's what the book claims.
00:04:51 Sure.
00:04:52 Because the book's answer would be none of the above.
00:04:54 Sure.
00:04:55 So if you get a show of hands for that, that might be interesting, that there is something
00:04:59 unique about being born, educated, brought up in India, which is a unique preparation
00:05:04 to succeed on a larger stage.
00:05:06 Now you look at the hands.
00:05:07 Okay.
00:05:08 So you've proven them.
00:05:12 So this is his way of telling you that we've got the answer, please ask the right question.
00:05:17 Right.
00:05:18 I agree, I concede.
00:05:24 So what is it about growing up in India that makes us so well prepared?
00:05:30 I know you've also quoted in the book that this was a quote by S.E.
00:05:33 K.
00:05:34 Perella that growing up in India is a great, extraordinary lesson in management.
00:05:38 So I'll make a few comments.
00:05:42 We've got a book of 150 pages, so to summarize it in three minutes is not easy.
00:05:50 To that question, is there something distinctive about growing up in India which prepares you
00:05:55 for a management career and some success?
00:05:59 You have to ask yourself, the first question is, am I going to look at this analytically
00:06:03 or anecdotally?
00:06:04 Am I going to look at it through mathematics, what is called mathiness, or am I going to
00:06:12 look at it through what I've observed and experienced?
00:06:16 And you've got people sitting around in this panel who have such experience.
00:06:21 And we decided to do the second.
00:06:23 We have quoted in the book what we could lay our hands on as apparently objective criteria.
00:06:34 One of those studies says India is fantastic, they've taken over the world, done by an HR
00:06:42 consultancy of great repute.
00:06:45 The other one done by two management professors in Europe says, well, it's not so clear.
00:06:51 So it's as reliable as our GDP data.
00:06:53 We've had a whole morning discussing from politicians about the state of the economy.
00:07:01 It is about as reliable as our GDP data.
00:07:04 So we sat down together and asked ourselves the question, what do we feel and touch around
00:07:10 us?
00:07:11 Between us, we have experience in multiple companies for a very long number of years.
00:07:16 We went out and talked to 50 people, people who are acquaintances.
00:07:21 And then we came to a conclusion, there is something happening out there.
00:07:28 And the fact that you're not able to articulate analytically what's happening there does not
00:07:35 mean it's not happening.
00:07:38 Before Mohenjo-Daro was discovered in 1923, our civilization was started after the British
00:07:44 came here or the Mughals came here.
00:07:48 Mohenjo-Daro showed you a very different picture of India.
00:07:51 So absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
00:07:55 If I may quote Mr. Nicholas Taleb, and that's what triggered our book.
00:08:01 And when we started to explore what these factors are, and I'm going to ask Ranjan to
00:08:07 speak to this, but I would just like to summarize it in the interest of continuity.
00:08:12 We said there are reductionist principle will make you look at five or six or seven different
00:08:18 factors.
00:08:20 In isolation, each of those factors occurs in other parts of the world also, poverty,
00:08:26 competitiveness.
00:08:27 But nowhere in the world do all those five or seven happen together.
00:08:32 And we borrowed a term from botany, which talks of emergence.
00:08:38 Emergence is when a number of factors which are not individually distinctive, combined
00:08:44 together, it creates a transformation which is unexpected.
00:08:51 What in Tamil for those who speak, it is called, you know, it has come out very nicely.
00:08:57 And I would request Ranjan to speak to that, because that is essentially the thesis we
00:09:01 have come with.
00:09:04 What is this confluence of factors?
00:09:06 You know, one, the factors have been effectively delegated to me.
00:09:10 So a couple of things, one is that when we started, we saw Pichai happening, we saw Nadella
00:09:15 happening and we went out and spoke to 50 or 60 of our own compatriots, who were global
00:09:20 managers, there are global managers on the stage.
00:09:23 And normally if you speak to an NRI about India, the first associations will be corruption,
00:09:28 there will be associations of pollution, but the common association that everybody said
00:09:34 is growing up in India gave me some strengths, and at critical points in my career, those
00:09:39 strengths helped me.
00:09:41 Now what are those strengths?
00:09:42 I am not going to go through all, I will come back to emergence, I will give you two or
00:09:46 three very simple examples.
00:09:47 Let's say you go to Target in the United States, and you have a bill for $22.40, or $12.40.
00:09:56 If you go to Target and you give them $20 and say give me change, they will give you
00:10:00 change.
00:10:01 If you go to them and say actually I have $2.40 and I have $20 with me, so I am going
00:10:05 to give you $20.40, give me 10 back, they will go crazy.
00:10:12 There is not a department store in the US that can solve this problem, every kirana
00:10:16 store in India will give you that 10 rupees back.
00:10:20 Now what am I saying, there is a certain propensity to deal with ambiguity, and know what to do
00:10:25 when the system does not work, that is a strength.
00:10:29 And it is a strength particularly because the world is getting more ambiguous, the world
00:10:33 is getting less predictable, so that adaptability, resilience and ability to confront ambiguity,
00:10:40 and it is in simple things.
00:10:41 You go for a speech, the lights go off.
00:10:45 In India you will see people switch on the mobile phone, put the lights on and the speech
00:10:50 continues.
00:10:51 Elsewhere you will waste for maintenance.
00:10:52 So our strength is we know what to do when the system does not work, we have to translate
00:10:57 that to making the system work also a little bit more often.
00:11:00 So that is kind of one dimension.
00:11:03 Second dimension I will talk about is competition.
00:11:07 And you know when an Indian manager goes into a corporate and they say there are 45 management
00:11:12 trainees, only one of you is going to make CEO, he says those odds are significantly
00:11:17 better than the odds I have overcome all my life.
00:11:22 Getting into a top 10 management institutes is more difficult than getting into Harvard
00:11:26 and London business school.
00:11:28 As head of SPJMR I regularly get mails from parents who say hey, my daughter didn't
00:11:32 get into your institute but got into LBS, there is something wrong.
00:11:36 That's not true.
00:11:37 It is actually more difficult.
00:11:39 So competition, the ability to deal with ambiguity, a very strong family base.
00:11:45 You go and ask 10 Indian leaders who your formative influences are, 7 or 8 will say
00:11:51 family.
00:11:52 You go and ask a group of global managers, a relatively smaller number will say family.
00:11:58 So there is a whole set of factors come together.
00:12:01 And I am not getting into all.
00:12:03 And again, you know the competition is typically in an academic domain.
00:12:07 The good managers are able to take that competitive intensity which essentially tells you if you
00:12:13 are bad at something, figure out why you are bad at it, work on it and get to where you
00:12:18 want to get.
00:12:19 And extend competition from the academic or analytical domain to the social skills domain.
00:12:24 And those are the people who become good.
00:12:26 And then, you know it's a phrase that he uses very often which is we have a critical mass
00:12:31 of people who think in English.
00:12:34 So the English language is kind of the icing on this cake.
00:12:37 And if you look at what we are calling emergence, which is a term from botany as well as from
00:12:40 systems theory, which is to say that if you look at the beauty of a flower, the beauty
00:12:45 of the flower cannot be decomposed to the calyx, corolla, sepals, petals.
00:12:50 It emerges from the arrangement of the elements and is far more than any individual element.
00:12:56 And I'll close with one reaction.
00:12:58 You know in a subject called design thinking, we talk about something called an insight.
00:13:03 And insight is a fundamental realization about human behavior that once you realize it, is
00:13:10 retrospectively self-evident.
00:13:13 What that means is it's obvious when you see it but you didn't know it before that.
00:13:17 And many people who have read the book have come back and said you have made us look at
00:13:20 our own experience differently.
00:13:24 And I think that that is a very very positive…
00:13:26 Wonderful story teller, that's what I can say.
00:13:29 That's my piece.
00:13:31 See, when you've got the two authors here who've done a fair amount as Gopal…
00:13:38 We shouldn't ideally have a panel discussion, I just realized that.
00:13:42 No, no, no, I think that part of the panel can do the analytics and this part can do
00:13:47 the anecdotes.
00:13:49 So as somebody who's been so as to say an Indian manager working across two continents,
00:13:55 I mean I agree with a lot of what is said there.
00:13:59 I think two things that a lot of times in a sense get missed but are evident.
00:14:06 I think the first thing is, I don't know what number it is, is it the one percent or half
00:14:11 percent or two… the one percent of every population is very very smart, right?
00:14:16 Fortunately for us, one percent of a billion is a lot of people.
00:14:20 They also have a fairly… in the hierarchy of making it, making it abroad is actually
00:14:28 therefore making it, you know, one step beyond.
00:14:31 And therefore, fundamentally in my experience and I worked across Asia Pacific and then
00:14:36 the globe, the smartest guys are reaching there anyway, so they're just fundamentally
00:14:41 very smart as a starting point.
00:14:44 I mean our schooling system gets a lot of criticism.
00:14:47 Frankly, I think a lot of it is unfounded.
00:14:49 All of us probably went through the same schooling system.
00:14:52 Yes, we all, you know, mugged one month before the exams, we reproduced what was in the textbooks.
00:14:59 But when I look at our world view, when I look at our ability to connect dots, when
00:15:05 I look at our information on geographies, frankly we are very very well informed.
00:15:10 So I really think there's raw intelligence, it's being well informed and I just think
00:15:16 Indians as Rajan put it nicely are obstacle busters.
00:15:19 We are used to things not working.
00:15:23 So therefore at any point of time when the guy says, "Hey, I have a problem in China,"
00:15:28 and this actually happened with me, we have a problem in China, we've made, you know,
00:15:32 over ten years a hundred million pounds of losses.
00:15:35 There are a lot of people in India and there are a lot of people in China, can you help
00:15:38 with the problem?
00:15:40 You realize that a lot of it is because they're looking at through the, you know, and now
00:15:45 it sounds almost funny, but Cadbury actually introduced chocolate in China with 200 gram
00:15:51 bars because that is what the Australians ate.
00:15:54 Now my point is from an obstacle busting stroke cultural comfort, as a young area manager,
00:16:00 when I go to Tamil Nadu, it's like going to any other country as far as I'm concerned,
00:16:04 right?
00:16:05 If Vaidhi comes to Punjab, it's the same.
00:16:07 So I really think this adaptability, cultural comfort, raw intelligence and very simply
00:16:15 the ability to get along with a variety of people makes the Indian manager a fairly smart
00:16:21 fellow.
00:16:22 Moderator (Vedavyasa): Vaidhi.
00:16:24 Dr. Vaidhi Kumar: Yeah, I would tend to agree with what Bharat is saying.
00:16:32 It's not unusual to see top talent of India.
00:16:35 They're really the top talent.
00:16:38 So when you look at people passing out from IITs or a chartered accountant or a doctor,
00:16:46 you know, to be at that level, you really have to be an outstanding person to reach
00:16:50 this stage.
00:16:51 So when these people go to US or abroad and then they study in the local institutions,
00:16:58 either Stanford or Wharton, now what you will get out of them, you're going to get the best
00:17:04 of the talent in the world who have figured out how to survive in a UKA world.
00:17:10 Actually UKA should have been invented in India because we leave, every day wake up.
00:17:15 As a managing director of a company in India, we wake up…
00:17:19 Moderator (Vedavyasa): That is why it was not invented in India because it's a way
00:17:21 of life.
00:17:22 When it is not a way of life, it's when you invent something.
00:17:26 Dr. Vaidhi Kumar: So when you go to a place, you know, I lived in other parts of the world,
00:17:30 I worked in the…
00:17:31 I can clearly see, some of the muscles that you have used here so regularly, it comes
00:17:37 to you so naturally for other people, it doesn't come so naturally.
00:17:41 So you would be a clean winner, particularly if you are from the top talent echelon of
00:17:46 educated society and you know, in multinational company, we have this leadership characteristics.
00:17:52 We say, somebody should be having a cognitive agility, leadership flexibility, somebody
00:17:59 should be collaborative, you should be able to have hold many balls in there.
00:18:04 If you really look at many of the stuff which we go through, all of them, anyway everybody
00:18:08 is doing in India, day-to-day basis and then when you get groomed with the kind of system
00:18:14 thinking when you study in a big institute, you get rounded off so well and I'm not
00:18:21 surprised that why Indian should be… should not be running corporations with such kind
00:18:27 of an outstanding background.
00:18:29 So in my opinion, there is one more generation that this may be biased to my generation,
00:18:37 which I'm not sure how much we are going to see that in the future.
00:18:40 In the seventies and eighties, we were in a little more, what I call it, the self-sufficiency
00:18:49 mode of the country where, you know, we all grew up in schools and colleges where we didn't
00:18:55 pay the kind of tuition fees that we paid, right?
00:18:58 Two-fifty rupees to college, in MBA you pay two-thousand-five-hundred rupees and… and
00:19:04 for us the value is about academic excellence, the… the way in which we all brought up,
00:19:10 I can say for many of us in my… is very different from the generation that's growing
00:19:15 up in nineties or little in two-thousand.
00:19:18 So I'm not sure whether you're going to see more Sundar Pichai or it's going to
00:19:25 be a different world.
00:19:26 Right now, we are all praising ourselves for the kind of people whom we are seeing in corporate
00:19:30 world, many of them belong to a generation of certain values, which is very different
00:19:35 from today.
00:19:36 So I would reserve that till such time I see how it's going to play out.
00:19:41 Dr. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Sure.
00:19:42 Dr. Sanjay Gupta Yeah, so I'd say… can you hear me?
00:19:45 Yeah.
00:19:46 So I'd say being Indian or being American or any of those comes with its own sets of
00:19:51 thinking as the authors have pointed out, which is all about values, thinking, behavior
00:19:56 and who are the role models that you really look up to.
00:19:59 That's obvious in any country and I'm sure India is no different and that would be my
00:20:03 first starting point.
00:20:05 My second point is I think India has had one advantage compared to other Asian countries
00:20:09 like China.
00:20:11 We had higher education like IITs and IIMs much before anybody else, okay, but that advantage
00:20:17 is going away.
00:20:18 We had IIMs in the 1960s, 1961.
00:20:21 Today of the top three Financial Times list of the best institutes as ranked by them,
00:20:27 their criteria, two are Chinese and one is Singapore Management University.
00:20:31 We have none.
00:20:33 So that advantage of high quality education is going now, okay.
00:20:37 So there are lots of people there and management education in America is actually dropping
00:20:42 significantly, okay.
00:20:43 That's my second point.
00:20:45 My third point is I worked with a number of CEOs, global CEOs.
00:20:49 If you look at CEOs, typically there are a lot of things.
00:20:52 All of them work hard.
00:20:54 They cannot but work hard, number one.
00:20:57 Number two, they can figure out who matters where, whether it's a country or, you know,
00:21:03 with a partner or whoever it is.
00:21:04 Third is they're good at building relationships and fourth is they're actually very articulate
00:21:10 and they work on it, okay.
00:21:11 That's what most CEOs do, okay.
00:21:13 So that's what I would say.
00:21:15 For every CEO we say from India who's made it, I can give you 25 names of guys who haven't
00:21:19 made it.
00:21:21 That list is a longer list than the guys who've made it.
00:21:24 So then we have to ask ourselves what is the common in that list that the guys didn't make
00:21:28 it.
00:21:29 If being Indian was the only criteria, then all, you know, 200 of them would have made
00:21:34 it.
00:21:35 They obviously haven't.
00:21:37 And so my own experience of working with Americans, Finnish, Chinese, you know, as big groups
00:21:43 and some Africans is as follows.
00:21:45 Where Indian managers can improve significantly to improve their strike rate.
00:21:50 Number one, time management.
00:21:52 Indians are terrible at time management.
00:21:55 Absolutely terrible.
00:21:56 In India today, you call a CEO for a meeting, till the last minute you don't know whether
00:21:59 he'll end up or not.
00:22:01 So now he's a CEO in India.
00:22:02 That's number one, which I believe is a huge source of, you know, change.
00:22:07 Second is power, especially listening.
00:22:11 Most Indian senior managers, even in multinational corporations, do not listen.
00:22:14 Okay, they've lost the power to listen when they become directors or beyond.
00:22:18 Third one I would say is, Indian managers, when they work in India, they go out in the
00:22:24 same company, they tend to start second guessing what the Indian company does.
00:22:29 Okay, so they're not actually collaborative in the context of their own company and their
00:22:33 own peers.
00:22:34 Okay, they actually do things to actually hurt the Indian company, etc.
00:22:39 And this is just not at the senior most levels.
00:22:42 I've seen it from senior brand manager levels.
00:22:44 Okay, so that's a very different mindset, which I believe Indian managers can improve
00:22:48 and do much better.
00:22:50 And the last one I would say is, Indian managers that I've seen, my experience only, have a
00:22:55 very thin skin.
00:22:56 They take everything personally.
00:22:58 Okay, these are the four if they were to improve, I believe we'll have more Indian CEOs.
00:23:03 These are the places where I would really ask them to focus on.
00:23:06 I'll just add in there.
00:23:08 In fact, you know, 10 years out of India, I used to actually do an initiation, not just
00:23:15 for Indian, but actually for a lot of emerging market managers.
00:23:19 But the abstraction was his first point.
00:23:23 I think, as far as Indians are concerned, especially in an Asia Pacific context, which
00:23:29 is a much softer environment, where the feedback that you would consistently get is, but they
00:23:35 never let us finish a sentence.
00:23:38 And the Indian would say, but haven't they been to a GD?
00:23:40 In a GD, who finishes a sentence?
00:23:43 Okay, the second thing is, when he, you know, there are these three magic words that most
00:23:50 Indian toppers, they've come through IITs, IIMs, there are three magic words that they
00:23:55 never say, I don't know, we know everything.
00:23:59 And a lot of times, therefore, this causes its own problems and, you know, married with
00:24:05 this time management in India, I will do this by 10th is an intention to try not a commitment.
00:24:12 In the rest of the world, it is a commitment and therefore it causes a lot of problems.
00:24:16 And the last point I want to raise is we're also very judgmental.
00:24:20 And our starting point, you know, when I meet Ranjan, I want to know what Institute he's
00:24:25 from, where, which, you know, I, there is a caste hierarchy via education.
00:24:31 We do this exactly the same when we are abroad.
00:24:34 Oh, but do you know he's an MBA from some obscure place in the US?
00:24:38 I can't understand how is it?
00:24:40 I mean, and you know, the British are the other extreme, our global marketing director
00:24:45 in Canberra, he was actually a graduate in zoology, but he was a very effective marketer.
00:24:50 But it would take six months for our guys to accept that he could actually teach them
00:24:54 something.
00:24:55 So, I mean, I completely agree with Shiv that I've seen three generations of multinational
00:25:01 managers.
00:25:03 One was the Ajit Vadekar generation, they were just happy to be playing at Lords.
00:25:07 There was the second Sourav Ganguly generation, we're equals, we can fight them.
00:25:12 There is now the Virat Kohli generation, we are much better, why are these people even
00:25:15 here?
00:25:16 So there's a little bit of a problem there.
00:25:19 Moderator (Anita): So any insights on what is, what is it, I mean, have you looked at
00:25:24 the other side, which is like the not so successful, because that's not a defined set, but that's
00:25:29 like a large number of people who might have made it but not have made it.
00:25:33 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan (JNNC): You know, I think what we are saying, and I think all
00:25:35 of everything that has been said is true.
00:25:38 The point is that there is a blend of strengths from your upbringing and things which a Western
00:25:45 company does better.
00:25:46 If you look at the best Indian managers, they have typically been made in India, but fine
00:25:52 tuned by Unilever or Asian Paints or PepsiCo, etc.
00:25:56 Because those companies have taught them systems, have taught them discipline.
00:26:01 And the good guy is the guy who knows when to turn on his systems hat and when to turn
00:26:07 on the ambiguity hat.
00:26:09 So that ability to discriminate and to have balance.
00:26:12 Secondly, they've talked about learnability.
00:26:15 Learnability, humility, I completely agree.
00:26:18 I don't know and I don't understand are the two most important preconditions for learning,
00:26:24 the ability to say that.
00:26:26 But again, it's the selection thing that, you know, the Indian managers who are able
00:26:31 to make this adjustment are the ones you're seeing.
00:26:34 And that number will grow.
00:26:36 Secondly, I am less pessimistic about the millennial.
00:26:40 We meet, I am in regular contact with the current generation and two or three things
00:26:45 have changed.
00:26:46 Earlier, I still remember when I went to engineering, that year in IIT Bombay from the college I
00:26:52 was in, Jai Hind College, 31 people from one college got into IIT.
00:26:58 So the top institutes were dominated by four metros and if I go further, 50 schools.
00:27:04 Today, the tier two and tier three people are coming in.
00:27:08 They are the second generation of a family which is moving out of lower middle class.
00:27:13 Their hunger is larger.
00:27:15 And they have grown up seeing an Indian cricket team which is winning.
00:27:19 They have grown up seeing a Sainiya Nehwal.
00:27:21 They have grown up seeing a Mahindra and Mahindra competing on the global stage.
00:27:25 Ultimately, we were the intellectually colonized generation.
00:27:29 The new generation of Indian managers has a level of self-belief.
00:27:34 It is our job to temper that self-belief with humility.
00:27:38 Sometimes that humility and let's say persistence of attention span is something that we will
00:27:43 need to work on.
00:27:45 But you know, there is another mistake we make.
00:27:48 We compare our millennials with our generation.
00:27:52 Why don't you compare our millennials with other millennials?
00:27:56 And there you may find that the values are still stronger.
00:28:00 I have students from seven different countries including Europe coming to my institute and
00:28:04 studying with my students.
00:28:06 Across the board, they say the Indian students are more focused, more determined.
00:28:09 Now we look back and say I recall studying more when I was giving my entrance and that's
00:28:13 how we judge them.
00:28:14 So the judgment has to be generation to generation.
00:28:17 I completely agree that this is not a panacea.
00:28:22 We are not saying you're made in India, you're good.
00:28:25 We are saying that there are strengths as a consequence of being made in India.
00:28:29 Understand and appreciate them.
00:28:31 Secondly, I also believe the flip side.
00:28:34 We are, there is no other country which is so fond of beating up on itself.
00:28:39 So be proud of something that are Indian, their assets, recognize those assets, don't
00:28:43 go overboard on those assets.
00:28:45 There is a hell of, I mean how did the Indian cricket team get to where we are?
00:28:49 We needed Dennis Lilley.
00:28:51 We needed Australian fitness.
00:28:52 So the ability to learn from the world selectively and the ability to preserve and be proud of
00:28:59 that which is Indian, which is a strength in certain situations, that was, this is meant
00:29:04 to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, not a happy radar prediction.
00:29:08 Right?
00:29:09 Shiv, I want to pose this question to you.
00:29:11 He talked about, you know, you are molded by the companies that you initially work for
00:29:16 and then you need to know when, you know, if you're with Asian Paints or any other company.
00:29:21 If you go and start working with a Western company, you need to know when you need to
00:29:24 wear that hat and when you need to wear the ambiguity hat.
00:29:27 You worked with European companies, you've worked with, with PepsiCo American company,
00:29:33 now with an Indian company.
00:29:35 Is that really possible?
00:29:36 Yes, it is.
00:29:37 Because, I mean, changing, I mean, something you have, I mean, if you spend ten years in
00:29:41 a certain culture, you're used to doing in a certain way, it must be really hard, I presume,
00:29:48 to sort of suddenly say that here is a culture that is different, I need to mold myself to
00:29:56 that.
00:29:57 Yeah.
00:29:58 So, at the core of it, most businesses follow, you know, some simple principles of, you know,
00:30:02 what they want to achieve, why they want to achieve, etc.
00:30:04 There's no, you know, every business is like that.
00:30:07 But, you know, companies which come from different countries have very different values in terms
00:30:11 of what they signal.
00:30:14 An American company is about being individual, get it done, okay?
00:30:18 You need to get it done, it's your call.
00:30:20 An American company and people who work for American companies clearly know that they
00:30:24 can be fired if something goes wrong, they can be separated, okay?
00:30:28 That's the nature, everybody understands that.
00:30:30 Okay, now, those are not written anywhere, but those are understood by everybody.
00:30:34 Now, you shift to a Finnish company.
00:30:37 For Finnish company, the company comes first.
00:30:39 If you do anything to hurt the company, you're gone, full stop.
00:30:42 Okay, so now that's deep-rooted because Finns have a huge amount of teamwork and they can
00:30:49 retire at 55 with 65% of last month's salary.
00:30:53 That benefit is there, so they're not a hire and fire gang.
00:30:55 So to them, work for the company first, the team second, the individual third.
00:30:59 If you reverse the order or do something wrong, in the next reorganization, which is 18 to
00:31:03 24 months, you won't have a job.
00:31:06 They mark that very, very clearly.
00:31:08 So you adjust to that again to say, "Hey, this is the order very clearly."
00:31:12 Okay, so every country has some nuances which impact on that company of that country.
00:31:19 There's no doubt about it, okay?
00:31:21 And values, by and large, most companies have similar values.
00:31:25 Tell me which company says we are not integrity?
00:31:28 Everybody says we are integrity.
00:31:29 Which company says we don't want speed?
00:31:30 Which company says we don't want boundarylessness?
00:31:33 Which company says we don't have respect for the individual?
00:31:36 So much so, I would say today that values are commodity.
00:31:40 You just mix and match and everybody is there.
00:31:42 I mean, does play a huge role in terms of, you know, what you encourage and what you
00:31:47 discourage.
00:31:48 For example, I mean, how much risk can you really take?
00:31:50 How much entrepreneurial can you really be?
00:31:52 I mean, these can really make huge difference in terms of how the, you know, organization
00:31:58 ethos is and how you're expected to behave in a certain situation.
00:32:01 So while companies may say we want speed, targets, goal, whatever, how you go about
00:32:08 it can be vastly different.
00:32:09 Yeah, so you're right.
00:32:11 So collectively, the company over its context and history has some lessons which it has
00:32:16 learned, hands burnt, successes, etc.
00:32:19 Nokia evolved over 150 years from gumboots to, you know, paper to everything.
00:32:23 So they took the big bet of mobile phones in the 90s, which nobody else did, okay?
00:32:28 But equally the same company lost by choosing Windows as opposed to Android, okay, after
00:32:33 25 years of success.
00:32:35 Okay, so it is finally the ethos of that company as defined by, I would think many a time when
00:32:42 you're talking of this kind of transformation, senior leadership and what matters to them.
00:32:49 Any anecdotes that you can recall working with your global peers, superiors, teams and
00:32:57 what were your takeaways?
00:33:00 An anecdote related to Indianness, is that what you're saying or?
00:33:05 Yeah.
00:33:06 See, as many of them said, at the end of the day, most of the Indians working in, I would
00:33:14 say in a multinational environment, I think tend to think they're really smart.
00:33:19 You know, whether you like it or not, whether they are smart or not, but generally the going
00:33:22 in belief is that I'm smarter than someone for some strange reason we tend to compete.
00:33:28 I don't even know why you need to compete in a place where you don't need to compete.
00:33:32 So I had, you know, interesting, there's a program that's going on, it's a management
00:33:38 development program and people have to do a lot of pre-work and be there and it was
00:33:43 in US in New Jersey and I had sent some people to attend the program and I was auditing that
00:33:50 program as one of the few audits.
00:33:53 So the person who was conducting this program was, while doing the program, asking a lot
00:33:59 of questions and every time Indian used to raise the hand, you know, the people who went
00:34:04 there and at some point of time, you know, it was a gutman training, you know, on.
00:34:14 So finally he got so vexed with this Indian participation, he says, you know, I'm not
00:34:19 sure whether you should be in this room, you guys know so much, why are you guys coming
00:34:24 for this program?
00:34:25 And it was so embarrassing, but the fact of the matter is that that is something which
00:34:30 is very interesting, I'm not sure whether right or wrong, but you wonder as to why did
00:34:35 you come here to learn, you know, when you talk about learn, but as if you're going there
00:34:40 for an exam, for everything is all about exams, scoring marks and being number one.
00:34:45 I think by way of upbringing in our education system has brought so much into our work.
00:34:51 So I think that's where, that's where one of the areas if at all somebody could soften
00:34:56 as you move up in the ladder in organization, listening that you talked about and learning
00:35:02 as one of the important.
00:35:04 So I can give multiple examples of that, but it's at the end of the day, I would also like
00:35:09 to believe that they are smart.
00:35:10 I don't think that they're not smart, it's just that this roughness, if it can mold it,
00:35:16 I think we can go much, you know, longer distance.
00:35:19 Participant - Is that a positive or does it put you behind Gopal, which is like, you know,
00:35:23 this whole, the fact that you are smart and you think smart, you want to be seen as smart,
00:35:29 so…
00:35:30 Sadhguru - It's…
00:35:31 I wouldn't like to classify it as positive or negative, because it depends on that circumstance.
00:35:36 Participant - What I mean is, I mean, does it work for you, does it work against you?
00:35:39 Sadhguru - Oh, it…
00:35:40 Participant - But saying that we don't know the three magic words that I don't know, we
00:35:44 never use.
00:35:45 Sadhguru - Yeah, so when you're in a situation where it is better to say, "I don't know,"
00:35:49 and you don't use those three words, it works to your disadvantage.
00:35:55 My interpretation, because I agree with the phenomenon, is we speak like we drive our
00:36:01 cars on the road.
00:36:03 Forget the rules and just say, "Shalpa, adjust maadi" and move your car in whichever way
00:36:09 you want.
00:36:11 That's not the way the Brits drive their cars.
00:36:14 And therefore, I didn't even get a driving license after driving in India for thirty years.
00:36:18 I failed my British driving test, rightly so.
00:36:22 And when I came back with my British driving license, I said, "People like me should follow
00:36:26 the rules."
00:36:27 I tried to drive in Bombay with a British type of discipline and everybody honked his
00:36:33 car at me, he said, "Get out of the way, you madman.
00:36:35 Why are you waiting at the pedestrian crossing?"
00:36:38 The same thing happens to us when we deal with these "I don't know" situations.
00:36:44 I think it's very important and I would like to take a minute or two to re-emphasize.
00:36:51 The thesis of our book is not that Indian startups are great, Indian everything else
00:36:59 is great, Indian cricket is great, India has now reached the big league, no, it's not.
00:37:03 I want to emphasize that.
00:37:05 It is an idea.
00:37:07 It's like a piece of… a little pearl set in a little gold jewelry.
00:37:10 It's an idea which you set in a context.
00:37:14 And only those who read the book who have the same experience of working in international
00:37:18 situations can relate with the book and some will agree and we understand some will disagree,
00:37:23 that's fine.
00:37:25 So what is this jewelry, this gold jewelry in which this pearl is set?
00:37:31 It is that India has always exported ideas.
00:37:38 A country like China has always exported things.
00:37:42 So 22 by 7, zero, these are the intellectual things that came from India.
00:37:48 I'm not saying Chinese are dumb, don't get me wrong, but they made compass and gunpowder
00:37:55 and that sort of stuff.
00:37:57 So this is in continuation with the tradition that India has always been good at.
00:38:03 So there's a natural propensity, that's a factor.
00:38:08 The second is, these things take fifty years before they manifest themselves.
00:38:13 People don't realize, today Americans think yoga is an American art, American science,
00:38:19 but actually it went out in 1920, but it took fifty years before yoga became popular and
00:38:26 today it's a rage and many Americans think it's really American.
00:38:31 So it will take, we have now had fifty years of Indian management, because the first management
00:38:37 school in this country came in 1949.
00:38:40 India produces more management diplomas per year than Britain produces in 25 years.
00:38:46 Now you may say Britain is a small country.
00:38:50 I said they produce people with a management diploma.
00:38:56 I didn't say the quality is comparable.
00:38:59 But out of that 120,000 you produce, maybe 3-4,000 are pretty good and that's all that
00:39:04 Britain produces.
00:39:05 Now I'm not saying Britain should produce more.
00:39:07 I'm merely stating that a culture of studying management, being management as a profession
00:39:14 has been long standing compared to say China or anywhere else.
00:39:19 And I think it's very important to not take the future for granted in the ways that were
00:39:25 described and I'm sure there are other ways.
00:39:27 And what we sought to do by writing this book and publishing it is to see what can management
00:39:33 pedagogy do for the future and what is it that we as a community of professionals, managers,
00:39:44 need to do to do well abroad, not be number one, number two, that's not the question.
00:39:52 And what gives you the propensity to succeed is the following.
00:39:57 Management is about identifying an opportunity and overcoming the obstacles amidst uncertainty
00:40:03 through people.
00:40:05 Anybody can define management whichever way he wants, that's it.
00:40:09 India has opportunity.
00:40:13 We have the largest number of obstacles compared to anywhere else.
00:40:15 Don't believe the ministers who spoke this morning.
00:40:18 We have the largest number of obstacles, continue to have.
00:40:21 They are trying to do their bit, that's fine.
00:40:23 The largest number of obstacles and you're working through uncertainty all the time and
00:40:30 so other countries are saying what will we do in the VUCA world.
00:40:35 We have never experienced what is not a VUCA world.
00:40:38 For all our lives we've had a VUCA world.
00:40:40 So when we go there, abroad, where there are systems and processes and rules following
00:40:46 and we learn those, we find a lot of our energy is saved.
00:40:51 When I was abroad, I could finish in seven, eight hours, what would take me 14 hours here?
00:40:57 That's not because I became smarter, eating the, drinking the water of that country, but
00:41:02 because things worked.
00:41:04 Here I spent, I'm talking of the 70s and the 80s, a lot of things didn't work so you had
00:41:08 to sit down and work on it.
00:41:10 I think if you can put this into the right context and say is there a great future for
00:41:16 Indian management, we're talking of make in India.
00:41:19 You can make armaments in India, you can make agriculture in India.
00:41:25 Government never thought of making managers in India.
00:41:28 Managers made themselves with or without the government help.
00:41:32 And like the software industry, which without the government knowing what's happening has
00:41:37 become.
00:41:38 So you're perpetuating the uncertainty.
00:41:39 You can't say that.
00:41:40 Well, yes, so they can continue to do that, but I think Indian managers have a lot going
00:41:45 for them if they nurture this little flickering flame extremely well.
00:41:49 I'll just build on this.
00:41:51 You know, there was this story of people going to a workshop and asking a lot of questions.
00:41:57 I think there are two points there.
00:41:59 One point is that competitiveness.
00:42:02 But the second point I think is that that comes out of insecurity.
00:42:07 You go to a forum where there are a lot of people from an international stage, and I
00:42:11 think the first thought which comes from your colonial hangover is do I really belong?
00:42:17 And it is this fear of not belonging that comes from the colonial hangover.
00:42:21 So ultimately we will have to be able to have this balance between where there is scarcity
00:42:26 and where there is abundance, where there is lack of rule of law and rule of law.
00:42:30 And I will give you two examples on the negative side.
00:42:33 So there is this thing called diplomatic immunity, that even the U.S., if you get a parking ticket,
00:42:39 you can claim diplomatic immunity and you do not have to pay for your parking ticket.
00:42:44 Now one smart academic researcher went and said, okay, which country's diplomats are
00:42:50 citing immunity?
00:42:51 So you can guess the countries.
00:42:53 India, Pakistan, and Italy, right on top.
00:42:56 So the respect for the rule of law and the ability to understand that is something that
00:43:03 we have to appreciate.
00:43:04 Why does the queue at Singapore airport change so much by the time it reaches Bombay?
00:43:10 And that is an inherent kind of a thing.
00:43:13 The second dimension is self-belief, because I think for too long the same idea coming
00:43:19 out of Harvard and coming out of India has been evaluated differently.
00:43:24 And I will cite a very simple example.
00:43:26 I took over in a premier business school, and somebody from a very reputed school, a
00:43:31 number two position, was staying in a five-star hotel and was supposed to come to our institute
00:43:36 to visit.
00:43:37 And at 6 o'clock I get a call saying this person's schedule is busy.
00:43:40 Can your dean come and visit in the hotel?
00:43:44 And I was new in the job, and I thought about it, and then I said, look, if I had gone and
00:43:49 done that in the U.S., it would not have worked.
00:43:52 So I simply said very respectfully, I told my people, say that, you know, we appreciate
00:43:56 his busyness.
00:43:57 We will wait till the next trip.
00:43:59 The next day the person came to the institute.
00:44:03 And my point is somewhere down the line, one of the larger issues is we have to be humble,
00:44:09 but we have to have a deeper self-belief.
00:44:11 You know, we still place a higher value on the same idea coming out of India.
00:44:18 And that deeper insecurity, I believe, is the reason why some of these people are trying
00:44:23 too hard to prove themselves.
00:44:25 So that's...
00:44:26 MS.
00:44:27 KANNAN: That's something you agree.
00:44:28 We have a deep sense of insecurity.
00:44:29 MR.
00:44:30 SINGH: I think we...
00:44:32 It is a deep sense of insecurity.
00:44:35 I would actually color it a bit and say it is a deep sense of wanting to prove oneself.
00:44:43 And every single occasion, it is about...
00:44:48 You know, what he talked about belonging and I deserve to be here.
00:44:53 It is, you know, he was talking about this workshop.
00:44:57 I was organizing Asia Pacific workshop in Mumbai.
00:45:01 And the CEOs of each country had to attend in a different country.
00:45:06 So our Japanese CEO was a very sweet Japanese lady.
00:45:09 I asked her to attend the India workshop.
00:45:13 And on the second morning, you know, I come for...
00:45:15 I was to have breakfast with her and she's like waiting at the door, "Bharat saan, Bharat
00:45:19 saan, can you please come?"
00:45:20 I said, "What's happened?"
00:45:21 "Bharat saan, you please come and join my group."
00:45:23 She said, "Inui saan, what has happened?"
00:45:25 She said, "There are these two Indian boys.
00:45:27 They are going to kill each other."
00:45:28 I said, "Inui saan, don't worry.
00:45:31 This is just the Indian way of arguing and they're both trying to prove to their boss
00:45:35 that they know more than each other."
00:45:36 "No, Bharat saan, please."
00:45:37 And she was genuinely agitated.
00:45:40 So I held her hand and I actually went to her group and we went to her group.
00:45:43 These two guys were busy back-slapping each other.
00:45:46 But now they are all right, Bharat saan.
00:45:48 I told her, "But Bharat saan, I promised you yesterday they were going to kill each other."
00:45:53 Now, you know, the thing is this cultural understanding of what works where.
00:46:02 I mean, we are on workshops.
00:46:04 I was at a workshop in Australia which had a nice British facilitator who at the end
00:46:10 of the day asked for feedback.
00:46:12 The Indians felt it was a great learning experience.
00:46:15 The Britishers… the Britishers have three answers for everything – interesting, challenging
00:46:19 or isn't it?
00:46:20 So it was interesting, a little challenging and quite good, isn't it?
00:46:24 So the Australian was very quiet.
00:46:27 Now this poor Britisher made the mistake of prodding the Australian and said, "But you
00:46:30 haven't spoken, you haven't given me feedback."
00:46:32 Now the Australians are… you know, the Dutch and the Australians are the two most direct
00:46:36 people you will get.
00:46:37 So he looks at him and says, "As far as I'm concerned, it was a waste of a day."
00:46:41 More than him are my Indian colleagues didn't recover for two days for the guy saying this.
00:46:46 So I mean, it is… you know, we are used to a certain humility, we're used to respecting
00:46:51 authority, we're very, very hierarchical.
00:46:54 I mean, I still remember I would have little more senior fellows, if a brand manager from
00:47:00 another country challenged them, they would come out and say, "But how can he speak to
00:47:04 me like this?"
00:47:05 I mean, it is… there is a cultural element to everything.
00:47:08 But having said that, I mean, you know, if you look at the big picture, is the Made in
00:47:12 India manager, is it a reality?
00:47:15 Yes.
00:47:16 Is it going to get more power?
00:47:17 Yes.
00:47:18 I mean, today, if you look at the percentage of Indian managers in multinationals, it is
00:47:23 far greater than the percentage of India to their sales.
00:47:26 I mean, you know, this whole adaptability, we would advertise jobs for Africa or the
00:47:31 less attractive companies of Asia.
00:47:33 The only two nationalities that will apply will be Indians and South Africans.
00:47:37 Indians will go everywhere and South Africans want to escape South Africa, that's it.
00:47:41 So to my mind, I think it's a phenomena that is going to be bigger and hopefully better
00:47:48 as we look along and I echo his thought on the millennial.
00:47:50 I think we like to pillory the millennial is far smarter than we were at their age.
00:47:55 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: Can I just add a little statistic to what Bharat said?
00:48:01 When I joined Unilever, which is a long, long time ago, there were three Indian managers
00:48:06 from Hindustan Lever who were expatriated.
00:48:09 Of the three, two went to Africa and one was having a short six-month training assignment
00:48:15 in the UK.
00:48:17 By the time people like Ranjan and Shiv came, there were about 80 managers, 100 managers
00:48:23 abroad.
00:48:24 Over the last 50 years, I'm counting 50 but really the operative years are about 30, over
00:48:31 2000 Hindustan Lever managers have been abroad, come back, they moved on to other companies
00:48:36 as CEO, et cetera.
00:48:37 I'm taking Hindustan Lever as an example.
00:48:40 I mean he can tell you about Pepsi and other companies.
00:48:44 The important point I want to make is today I inquired back from my alma mater, Unilever,
00:48:51 and there are Indian people running the following parts of Unilever, Russia, China, Indonesia,
00:48:59 all of Asia, all of Middle East, Turkey, Central Europe.
00:49:05 So I asked myself the question, that's not because Unilever loves them, Unilever thinks
00:49:12 they are reasonably good.
00:49:14 There is something happening out there and that's the limited hypothesis.
00:49:19 And that's happening in companies like Pepsi and McKinsey and so on.
00:49:22 There is something good out there.
00:49:25 If we can nurture this, it will be a good thing for this country.
00:49:28 That's the limit.
00:49:29 Moderator (Anita): Any anecdotes of cultural diversity like Bharat came up with?
00:49:34 Dr. Bharat Kishore: So right through the companies I've worked in, one thing that almost everyone
00:49:40 recognizes is that Indians are extremely bright.
00:49:43 You know that's a common…
00:49:44 Moderator (Anita): Extremely?
00:49:45 Dr. Bharat Kishore: Bright.
00:49:46 That's a common comment everybody says.
00:49:48 You guys are well-read, extremely bright.
00:49:50 We have a point of view on many of the world developments, at least managers at a very
00:49:55 senior level.
00:49:56 That's one comment.
00:49:57 A lot of other countries tend to be a little more isolated.
00:49:59 So that's feedback I get.
00:50:01 I had an Australian boss, a chap called Colin Giles, a wonderful guy.
00:50:05 So he used to handle lots of Indians from Finland to Australia to Africa.
00:50:10 So…
00:50:11 Moderator (Anita): In Nokia.
00:50:12 Dr. Bharat Kishore: Yeah, in Nokia.
00:50:13 So he said two things once to me, again in India when he was on a visit.
00:50:17 He said, "Shiv, in my two, three years of handling Indians, I've never heard an Indian
00:50:22 tell me I need help.
00:50:24 I need help."
00:50:25 He said, "I've never heard an Indian say that."
00:50:28 So either they are supremely confident, they are damn good, they don't need any help from
00:50:31 me.
00:50:32 The other point he made was in any Indian team management meeting, if he threw a challenge,
00:50:38 the whole team would gang up against him.
00:50:40 So he says there's no…
00:50:42 Nobody disagrees with the boss or nobody disagrees with the team view.
00:50:46 Now for right or wrong, they hold the team view right through the discussion.
00:50:50 Whatever I challenge, the whole team pushes me back.
00:50:54 So he says, "I don't see other people saying maybe there's a merit in your argument."
00:50:58 So those are two cultural things one of the bosses…
00:51:01 Moderator (Anita): Because in India we tend to argue, disagree endlessly.
00:51:05 So that's sort of…
00:51:06 Dr. Bharat Kishore: Amongst ourselves, you know, I remember there is a value in the craft,
00:51:13 this thing which is now in Mandalay, which is called discuss, decide, deliver.
00:51:18 And there was this senior manager who came from the US, two days.
00:51:23 He says, "Clearly in India, the value seems to be discuss, discuss and discuss."
00:51:27 We're outstanding at that until somebody pushes us to a decision.
00:51:34 So the argument and hierarchy piece, I would argue is going to change.
00:51:38 I will give you my personal example.
00:51:40 I think I first argued with my father, a serious argument, at the age of nineteen or twenty.
00:51:47 And it was a decision to argue with my father.
00:51:49 My father became my friend at twenty-nine and I think largely we're from a generation
00:51:54 where our parents said that if you don't do reasonably well academically, I'm not
00:51:58 sure that I have enough money to sustain three generations.
00:52:02 That has changed.
00:52:03 Secondly, let's take it one generation forward.
00:52:06 I asked my son to sit down and he says, "Why?"
00:52:09 So I think our children have been parented far less hierarchically than we were.
00:52:15 We have become friends to our children at a younger age.
00:52:19 When these children enter the workplace, they will be far less hierarchical, far more willing
00:52:25 to question.
00:52:26 Of course, there's another challenge, whether our generation of managers is ready for less
00:52:30 hierarchical entry.
00:52:32 But therefore, the hierarchical weakness is going to actually go down.
00:52:38 Also, I… you know, when I first went abroad and had an audience of fifty foreigners in
00:52:43 front of me, there is that moment of self-doubt because you've not experienced it before.
00:52:48 Actually our kids today have already gone on exchanges.
00:52:51 They've had foreign students with them, they've sat in classes with them.
00:52:56 Traveling abroad is far more common.
00:52:58 Awareness is far more common.
00:52:59 So it's a different… it's a different dynamic.
00:53:03 We cannot judge tomorrow's children.
00:53:06 You know, we… when we make career plans, I often feel that we are looking at the future
00:53:12 through the rear-view mirror.
00:53:14 That's not the best way to do it.
00:53:16 I have a question related to this command and control kind of thing that we as a culture
00:53:22 in India used to.
00:53:26 Now most… there was a time when, you know, India used to have expat managers managing
00:53:31 India operations, then we changed to Indians being hired for leading Indian companies.
00:53:37 And now it's changed.
00:53:39 Most country heads are just admin or licensed jobs and most organizations are vertical with
00:53:45 dotted reporting here and there.
00:53:47 So that… does that put managers on the back foot because you are used to a certain mindset
00:53:59 of command and control while managing things but in a vertical organization structure with
00:54:04 dotted reporting here and there, that no longer works or does it?
00:54:09 You know, I can give examples of having lived through two kinds of organization where all
00:54:19 functions reporting including the manufacturing to supply chain reporting at one point of
00:54:24 time and suddenly everybody reporting to different functional leads either in UK or in US.
00:54:32 What I personally believe is that I think it's time for people to recognize that's
00:54:37 the way the world is going to work.
00:54:40 This whole hierarchical way of running the company that everybody need to report, it's
00:54:45 a completely a different skill set of how do you walk in the matrix organization…
00:54:53 walk around the matrix organization to make things work.
00:54:59 I think the accountability, the fact that CEO taking the accountability irrespective
00:55:04 of the people reporting or not, I can tell you people start… whether you like it or
00:55:10 not without you telling them, people start following instructions.
00:55:14 You don't need people to report to you directly.
00:55:17 I've had this experience of… you need to remember the fact in today's context where
00:55:22 the DOJ is asking the American CEO, "Do you know what's happening in China?"
00:55:29 If you don't know, in fact it happened in one of the instance where the senator asked
00:55:34 the global CEO, "Are you saying you don't know what's happening in India and China?"
00:55:38 They said, "No, we are a decentralized organization."
00:55:41 He says, "This is the last time you're going to tell me that you better get to know
00:55:43 what's happening."
00:55:45 And you won't believe now every company is so worried about wanting to know what's
00:55:51 happening in the… in the respective countries where China, India, Indonesia.
00:55:55 So they put the entire supply chain reporting directly to them, compliance, HR, everybody
00:56:01 reporting.
00:56:02 Now this is not going to change.
00:56:04 So you're going to have a scenario where the CEOs have to figure out how to gain…
00:56:11 make things happen for the company, owning up the organization irrespective of whether
00:56:16 somebody is reporting or not.
00:56:18 I've had a fantastic experience of having transition into an organization where many
00:56:24 of them started reporting even without me telling them.
00:56:28 So I'm of the opinion this is the new skill set.
00:56:31 If people are hanging on to the old paradigm, I don't think they are going to succeed,
00:56:36 they won't get a job to start with.
00:56:37 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan: Yeah, I'd say…
00:56:40 I think the matrix organization for multinationals is here to stay, okay?
00:56:45 And there are very tangible reasons for that.
00:56:49 If you look at the last twenty years, every service function is now a global function.
00:56:55 You can get the best lawyers across the globe for you, you can get the best market research
00:56:59 companies, the best advertising companies, the best legal firms.
00:57:03 So the agglomeration of having the best across the world is far cheaper than having multiple
00:57:08 people across the thing, okay?
00:57:10 So that's a given.
00:57:11 I don't think they'll go.
00:57:13 Now how each MNC determines the way a matrix works depends on the CEO and how the senior
00:57:20 management works.
00:57:22 And I've seen the pendulum swing both ways.
00:57:25 A few years it goes everything centralized, then they realize it's failed, then they go
00:57:29 decentralized, maybe partially, etc.
00:57:31 So this is a fad which every MNC goes through, okay?
00:57:35 I can't think of a single MNC which has not gone through this in the last ten years.
00:57:40 Procter's gone through this, Unilever's gone through this, Pepsi's gone through this, you
00:57:43 name it, everybody's gone through this.
00:57:45 There is no correct way of working in a matrix, number one.
00:57:49 Second is, now all these guys reporting elsewhere creates a lot of problem, okay?
00:57:54 In some nationalities, people want to be very clear, whom do I report to, who is my solid
00:57:59 line boss?
00:58:00 Dotted line is a thing which less than half the countries understand in the world, okay?
00:58:06 Americans understand it, okay?
00:58:07 But everybody wants what solid line is.
00:58:10 Now because information is so quickly available, I can tell you, like in PepsiCo, at five in
00:58:16 the morning, you could get a ping saying, "Hey, this is the article on PepsiCo, did
00:58:20 we respond to it?"
00:58:21 Because they would wake up, you know, or their time at nine o'clock would be four o'clock
00:58:24 when the newspapers are released on the net here.
00:58:27 You wouldn't have woken up at six o'clock, okay?
00:58:29 Now MNCs are extremely worried about reputation.
00:58:32 Anything which goes against that is the holy grail, okay?
00:58:35 Because that really affects everything up and down the line.
00:58:39 For managers, what are the implications?
00:58:42 Number one, influencing.
00:58:43 I cannot tell you how important it is to influence.
00:58:47 Because the center of excellence guy might be ten levels below you, but he has a chance
00:58:50 to stop that project.
00:58:52 You have to influence continuously.
00:58:54 The second which I found is that you have to shoot for the common good.
00:58:58 You have to find what is the common good in the way you're working.
00:59:02 If you don't do those things, two things in my experience, then the country head or whoever
00:59:07 you call him, chairman or whatever it is, then he will truly not be successful.
00:59:11 Sadhguru: See, I have…
00:59:13 I mean, I agree with where they're going, but I have a different dimension.
00:59:16 I actually believe, and having spent a lot of my time in the multinational…
00:59:19 I actually believe that most…
00:59:21 And I can only speak for consumer goods, so I don't speak for the…
00:59:24 The consumer good multinationals have a serious problem.
00:59:27 They don't know how to grow.
00:59:29 None of them are growing over the last five years.
00:59:32 Each of them…
00:59:33 I came from the food industry, in the last three years, ninety-seven percent of the growth
00:59:39 has come out of small artisanal companies.
00:59:42 Only three percent of the total growth of the food industry has come out of large multinationals.
00:59:48 When you are not growing and you are a CEO which has Wall Street to report to, at best
00:59:53 if not a quarter, at least a half, then every two years, all you do is reorganization.
01:00:02 Reorganization is a nice, polite way of saying you cut jobs.
01:00:05 So therefore, when you have to cut jobs, you first said UP, Bihar, Jharkhand all had their
01:00:10 own area managers, then you say all three have one area manager, then you say India
01:00:13 has one manager, then you say India, Pakistan, Burma and Thailand have one manager until
01:00:17 you keep going and then one… until you realize all that is still not helping and you're
01:00:21 still not growing, by which time the CEO goes and the new guy comes and starts all over
01:00:25 again.
01:00:26 So when I left Cadbury, I was a full service MD, everything reported to me.
01:00:30 Two months they went to a regional structure, then they went to a global structure.
01:00:34 Two months back I meet the MD and he says, "Do you know now everybody reports to me
01:00:38 all over again."
01:00:39 So I really think more, you know, there is the cultural piece and there is also a lot
01:00:44 of change where the smaller regional, Asian, even Latin Americans, local companies today
01:00:53 are far smarter, far more dynamic and far greater risk taking.
01:00:58 I mean their investable surpluses, they are happy to invest in growth.
01:01:03 A lot of the multinationals, the investable surpluses are not there.
01:01:06 Yeah.
01:01:07 Questioner 3 (Kiran): Would you agree, I mean just to add to Bharat's points, would you
01:01:09 agree that in a matrix organization, the ownership level is lower than in, you know…
01:01:17 Sadhguru: I fully agree with what Bharat said.
01:01:20 If you look at the history of multinational companies and you look at where… which countries
01:01:25 they did very well, you will find that the local CEO was a true entrepreneur.
01:01:30 He had a long stint and he took the calls right or wrong, he failed and he succeeded.
01:01:35 Okay.
01:01:36 Procter worked brilliantly in China for a period of decade when they had Didier running
01:01:41 their business.
01:01:42 The moment he left and they started doing these changes every two, three years, they
01:01:46 collapsed.
01:01:47 Okay.
01:01:48 So empowering the local manager has been the strength of the multinational of the past.
01:01:51 Now I worry and this is my wife's expression, she says, "Multinationals have become huge
01:01:57 bureaucracies."
01:01:58 Okay.
01:01:59 And managing the bureaucracy actually drains some of your energy, which is not good.
01:02:04 So everybody wants to follow process.
01:02:05 I'm sure that these guys are running a big organization.
01:02:08 No CEO ever says, "I don't want to follow process."
01:02:11 But he says, "Empower me to ensure that the process and my ideas both come to the
01:02:16 table."
01:02:17 That is when a CEO wins.
01:02:18 No CEO wins just by following process.
01:02:21 That's operation successful, patient dead.
01:02:23 That's what happens when you follow just process without empowerment.
01:02:26 Moderator (Anjali Koirala): Sure.
01:02:27 We're running out of time.
01:02:28 So just one last quick question.
01:02:31 One trait, one Indian trait that managers should leverage and one trait that you should
01:02:37 unlearn or put behind?
01:02:40 Sadhguru: I think the trait that I think they should leverage is continued adaptability.
01:02:49 And the one that they should avoid is this inability to listen.
01:02:55 These two are related, their heads and tails are the same coin, but that's fine.
01:03:00 Moderator (Anjali Koirala): So, inclusion at a deep level and the ability to deal with
01:03:05 contradictions – it was not unusual to sing Christian hymns in the morning and pray to
01:03:09 the Goddess Durga in the evening and compete for a seat on the bus.
01:03:13 So inclusion and diversity, a deep kind of strength of the Indian.
01:03:19 The big one to me that we need to avoid is this tendency to take shortcuts.
01:03:25 And in fact, I'm not sure whether the word "jugaar" has done more harm than good.
01:03:29 So we need to recognize when we need to create systems rather than short-term fixes and the
01:03:35 ability to separate competitive context from collaborative context is what we need to learn
01:03:41 better.
01:03:42 I must point out, all of us had multinational experience and I hope you've demonstrated
01:03:45 the benefits of listening to each other (Laughter).
01:03:47 Moderator (Anjali Koirala): We are on time, I think.
01:03:50 Sadhguru: I would say the one to leverage clearly is, you know, we have this remarkable
01:03:56 ability you throw an Indian up in the air, he lands on his feet.
01:03:59 I think that is really worth leveraging because, you know, many years ago I had a problem in
01:04:04 China, I sent two Indian fellows, they… in two years they were speaking Mandarin and
01:04:09 they had solved the problem.
01:04:11 The one that we should avoid, on a lighter note, we should avoid this.
01:04:15 The Indian nod, nobody ever knows whether we are saying yes, no or maybe.
01:04:20 On a more serious note, I think the one thing that we should really avoid is, I see a lot…
01:04:25 I mean, you know, there is a lot more of Virat Kohli creeping into the young Indian manager,
01:04:31 this arrogance of, "Listen, I know it, you know, do you know who I am?"
01:04:35 I think that's something to watch out for.
01:04:37 And I think one thing every… my Indians should leverage is intellectual curiosity
01:04:43 and very innovative mindset.
01:04:45 I think Indians have the phenomenal ability to think multi-dimensionally.
01:04:49 I think that's a terrific quality too.
01:04:52 The one… probably one need to take a look at is, process-oriented thinking need to come
01:04:59 into the way in which we do things.
01:05:02 I think in India you… you know, one of the things that I always look at is, people make
01:05:06 fun of people who publish, become a PhD.
01:05:09 They think PhD is for getting a job rather than you publish or perish, right?
01:05:16 That's a way…
01:05:17 So the whole concept of publishing, whole concept of process-oriented thinking, if we
01:05:21 can adopt, we could be world beaters.
01:05:24 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan: So I would say curiosity.
01:05:27 Indians are innately curious, especially people at the top that I've seen.
01:05:30 I think they should build on that.
01:05:32 The second one I would say is creativity, which is where I think we can do a lot better.
01:05:36 We get bogged down by rational arguments and we don't take the leap and that's something
01:05:41 that Indian managers can do a lot more of.
01:05:43 Dr. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Sure.
01:05:45 Thank you so much.
01:05:46 We probably can take a couple of questions from the audience.
01:05:52 Are there any comments or questions?
01:05:55 There are no other questions, so I'll just take the opportunity of having so many CEOs
01:06:18 who work with food companies, international companies.
01:06:21 As a farmer, my question to the people who work in the food sector because lots of your
01:06:25 resumes say you have been in the sector in one form or the other.
01:06:28 Is financialization, international financialization of the commodity sector a threat to Indian
01:06:33 small companies and Indian farmers, small farmer livelihoods?
01:06:38 Because the way larger companies are growing, is there success, a risk for Indian small
01:06:43 industry and Indian farmers?
01:06:45 Is scale a threat to smaller companies?
01:06:47 Dr. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: I frankly don't think so.
01:06:50 I just think, especially in the context of food, Ajay, food is such a personal thing
01:06:56 that finally, you know, whether it's the local halwai around the corner, whether it's your
01:07:02 favorite rediwala down the road or whether it's your favorite restaurant, and the same
01:07:07 extent so… yes, there is a cycle of food, you know, local food companies becoming larger,
01:07:12 getting acquired, but newer fellows keep coming up.
01:07:14 And as I just pointed out, you know, all of the growth actually today is coming from small
01:07:19 fellows.
01:07:20 Shiv will tell you, twenty years back, Lay's had a 90% share of potato chips.
01:07:26 Today they have a 30% share.
01:07:28 And all of the balance has been taken up by local guys.
01:07:31 So I frankly don't think that's the problem.
01:07:33 I actually think as we go more towards organized food, actually the farmer must benefit.
01:07:39 I mean, in my Cadbury days, one of the things we were happiest with was we actually invested
01:07:45 in bringing cocoa to India.
01:07:49 In Kerala, the cocoa tree is still called the Cadbury tree because the only… you know,
01:07:53 we bought the tree to India, taught farmers how to grow it and we would collect all of
01:07:57 the produce of the tree.
01:07:59 So to my mind, I think over a larger period of time, I'm not worried as an Indian.
01:08:04 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan: Yeah, I would say, I don't know, Mr. Gopalakrishnan would know
01:08:09 this, I think 1995 or six, there was the FIDA report, sir, you know, McKinsey FIDA report,
01:08:14 F-I-D-A.
01:08:15 Two things of the five I will quote.
01:08:17 They said, number one, the winners in food in India will be local.
01:08:21 When they said local, people who understand local nuances and taste, whoever understands
01:08:25 it better.
01:08:26 Second, they said, money will be made or lost in the supply chain in food, which is the
01:08:29 point which Bharat was also making.
01:08:31 So I don't think that, you know, Indian companies in food will be at any disadvantage compared
01:08:37 to anybody else outside of India.
01:08:39 Thank you, gentlemen.
01:08:44 Yeah, hi.
01:08:45 My query is on the decision making and risk taking abilities of Indian managers working
01:08:51 for multinational companies.
01:08:54 At the firm, we do a lot of cross-border transactions and we are always worried when the decision
01:08:59 making comes to the Indian manager taking a decision on a, you know, inorganic growth
01:09:03 opportunity.
01:09:04 And typically we see that the managers sort of are either insecure or, you know, shy away
01:09:13 from taking important decisions on behalf of the multinational.
01:09:18 And I want to throw this question to the panel about your thoughts on the same.
01:09:22 And what is it that causes this insecurity or the, you know, the delay?
01:09:26 Is it the fear or the, you know, that my decision can get wrong?
01:09:31 It's almost as if that, you know, they are sort of paid to not take risks and, you know,
01:09:36 be stable in their jobs.
01:09:38 So your thoughts, please, the panelists.
01:09:41 Yeah, that's an interesting question because I thought it would be the reverse.
01:09:47 In my experience, I think Indian managers take many risks.
01:09:53 At least I know from my example that sometimes our parent company thinks, is it really worth
01:10:00 going after it?
01:10:02 I would say the Indian managers, I'm talking about the people who run companies, are pretty
01:10:06 good in decision making.
01:10:07 I don't think I would ever say they are risk averse.
01:10:12 It's just that our Indian environment is… there is a lot of variables are there.
01:10:17 So to that extent, to convince your top management to get some investments in India, it takes
01:10:22 a hell of a lot of work and heavy lifting you need to do.
01:10:27 But from a point of view of risk appetite, I think many Indian leaders are pretty good
01:10:33 in that.
01:10:34 I don't have a doubt about that.
01:10:35 I'll give you my blunt take on that.
01:10:37 I actually think frankly, you know, as multinationals have got more matrixed, frankly it's not
01:10:42 about Indian managers.
01:10:44 Multinational managers, nobody is rewarded for taking a decision quickly.
01:10:49 But if he takes the wrong decision quickly or slowly, he is hung upside down.
01:10:53 So therefore to my mind, the issue really is the speed of decision making.
01:10:57 It doesn't matter what manager it is.
01:10:59 In a lot of times, you know, multinationals, we are spending so much time doing these famous
01:11:03 racy matrixes that who's responsible, who's accountable, who has to be consulted, who
01:11:08 has to be informed.
01:11:11 In that whole process, therefore decision making is by definitionally very slow.
01:11:17 And therefore, you know, when you compete against a multinational, you know that this
01:11:20 is the minimum amount of time they will do to do anything.
01:11:24 So I, you know, I just think that when you make a country level conclusion based on behavior
01:11:29 in a single organization, I would suspect that organizational culture, organizational
01:11:35 incentives and local considerations affecting the manager, what one should look at.
01:11:41 Because in many of these contexts, organizational culture and incentives trumps nationality
01:11:46 effects.
01:11:47 So maybe the conclusion is a little premature because if you went to 10 different companies,
01:11:51 you would get 10 different conclusions on this.
01:11:53 So look at the local conditions and what are you doing on recruitment?
01:11:57 What are you doing on environment?
01:11:58 Who's mentoring those managers?
01:12:00 Look at those factors and see whether there's something that's controllable there.
01:12:02 That's what I would say.
01:12:04 Thank you.