Managing: How The Masters Learn

MANAGING
How The Masters Learn

Technology is changing rapidly, competition is getting fiercer, and shareholders and customers, more demanding. How are CEOs reskilling themselves in these turbulent times?

By Moinak Mitra & Vinod Mahanta

At 58, Kundapur Vaman Kamath can claim to have one of the best CEO trackrecords in industry. He's transformed a quasi-state-owned financial institution, ICICI, into a nimble financial powerhouse. He has hired the best of managerial talent to run ICICI's businesses, and empowered his executives to do what they deem fit. And he has in many ways made ICICI a benchmark for competition.

Surely then, a man who leads a financial behemoth with more than Rs 90,000 crore in total assets, and businesses ranging from banking to information technology to venture financing should know everything there is to know about managing, right? Most in his position would say yes, but not Kamath. Even today, the man who's talking of adding two ATM centres per day this year, is forever scouring for things that will add to his knowledge or in whatever way sharpen his skills. ''Re-skilling is a continuous process and I hunt for the best practices in every area,'' declares Kamath.

Two-and-a-half years ago, returning from a seminar on ATM technology, Kamath was convinced that ATMs were the way to go for convenience banking, and had ICICI Bank roll out ATM centres by the dozens. Today, the bank has 650 ATMs all over India-the largest in the industry. The other time, having sat through an e-enablement seminar held by McKinsey, which stated that speed would be the key, Kamath got ICICI to wire itself up in an incredible 90 days. ''Re-training is necessary to understand how new processes are changing and then imbibing such (altered) processes and practices in my own organisation,'' he points out.

These days, the man who hates sloppy managers is sinking his teeth into new application software. He has even appointed an executive whose only job is to trawl the net for data on the banking industry. Everyday, Kamath gets to read a condensed version of the findings. ''Other skills come from observation,'' he says.

GE India's CEO, Scot Bayman, does it differently. He does what he describes as ''reverse mentoring'', which, simply put, is learning from executives down the line. ''I learn a lot of technology stuff from bright young guys in GE, which in any case believes in constant upgradation of skills,'' says he. Coca Cola India's head honcho, Alex von Behr, on the other hand, relies on speed reading to manage the information overload.

That apart, the 42-year-old fitness freak, who travels extensively across Coke's 26 business units country wide, regularly attends international company meets, where best practices across Coke's businesses are shared.

Soon after von Behr took over the top job at Coke in India, he took time out to visit and listen to his managers around the country, and Coca Cola's bottlers who have had vast experience of the Indian market.

He met 600 managers of Coke India and set out the company's key directions to go forward. Says von Behr, ''Being able to listen, and then make decisions based on multiple inputs is a core skill. In our business, it is all about executing that.''

According to Anu Ganapathy, Senior Manager, National Learning and Development, KPMG, change management is a learned skill. She believes that a forward-looking CEO should actively seek re-training to lead or to keep up with the industry not just locally, but globally too. ''They are the initiators of change. They need to constantly hone their leadership and visionary skills,'' she says.

For Bangalore-based Srini Rajam, CEO of Ittiam (short for the Cartesian ''I think, therefore, I am'') Systems, which make digital signal processor software, the best way to re-skill is ''experiential, through real-life interactions and on-the-job learning''. In fact, Rajam claims to have spruced up his marketing skills after taking up an assignment as the technical marketing director for TI Asia Semiconductor.

Apart from drawing on job-related experiences, Rajam attributes his up-to-datedness to the day-to-day interactions with his 35-strong team, technical leaders and customers. ''I am always surprised to know how much I learn about complex technology in just a few hours by talking to our technical people,'' he says.

Dinesh C. Paliwal, the Agra-born, now Zurich-based Executive Vice President of ABB, couldn't agree more. He too is a believer in the ''touch'' mantra. According to him, the CEO should be in constant touch with customers and opinion leaders. ''It is very surprising to see many CEOs isolating and surrounding themselves with their own people,'' he explains.

Paliwal says that for any CEO to keep abreast, he has to essentially look at three sources of knowledge: people around him, the customers he meets, and the media ''which can be tough at times, but is a great source of education as well.'' The 43-year-old (first) Asian on the executive committee of ABB adds that the CEO should religiously invest at least a third of his time in honing his skills.

Paliwal himself indulges in ''constructive dialogue'' as part of his re-training exercise. Three weeks ago, he called his top global managers for an intense two-day session where he briefed them on the economic situation in general and also shared the impact of the recent downturn on companies like GE, Alstom, Siemens, and Alcatel. He also added his own interpretation of why each of these companies were affected differently. As far as pushing his ideas down the organisation from the re-learning process, the CEO should, says Paliwal, do so passionately. ''Otherwise, the self-development process for the CEO stops abruptly as well,'' he points out.

Indeed, just because you are the CEO doesn't mean you know everything and, hence, should stop learning. It's a corporate jungle out there, and only those chief execs who reskill themselves continually will stay at the top of the food chain.

Issue Contents Write to us Subscription Syndication