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I
am sorry. He's travelling." that's the standard reply I get
when I call up Aditya Vij's office in New Delhi. "You can try
him sometime next week," suggests the voice at the other end
of the phone. "Next month is more likely," I mumble to
myself. The President and Managing Director of General Motors India
collects frequent flyer miles like they are going out fashion. The
44-year-old Vij travels for more than 15 days a month. He is either
away in Baroda, where GMI has its manufacturing facilities, or he
is travelling to meet dealers or vendors. If nothing else, he travels
to schmooze at industry dos all over the country.
Forget the time and energy needed to keep up
a punishing schedule like that month after month. All I want to
know is why does he do it? After all, Vij has the option of staying
put in his corner room and still staying in touch with the gm network
worldwide. He has at his finger tips everything that a wired CEO
could ask for. The internet, teleconferencing, (Microsoft) Net meetings,
videoconferencing, email and fax. So just why does Vij make life
so difficult for him? "F-T-F (face-to-face) meetings are still
the most effective when it comes to business," comes the reply.
It's Better In Person
Vij isn't the only road warrior CEO on our
map. Sunil Mittal of Bharti reportedly logs 15-16 days of travel
a month. Coke's Alex von Behr is known to travel to the remotest
of Indian villages to make sure that the corner shops are happy,
have the Coke billboards in place and are supporting his brand.
Arjun Malhotra, the Chief Executive Officer
of TechSpan, concentrates his travel on TechSpan offices in the
US East Coast and India. His travel is scheduled around business
planning meets, quarterly sales meets, employee meets, senior management
reviews, meetings with customers and prospects, and such. He also
spends time visiting customers at these locations as well as at
other locations. "At this time with the economic slowdown,
I think it is important to be more and more in front of your customers
telling them that the organisation and you are there for them if
they need you", explains Malhotra.
Indeed. Ask any good CEO and he'll tell you
that face-to-face meetings have several advantages. They encourage
team work, create a sense of urgency, and keep the General better
informed of the developments that are taking place amongst his army
and in the empire. Ground level experience is more important to
work out business strategies. "When we were working on a really
big project, the customer wanted to be able to look me in the eye
and feel reassured that 'yes, this man can do it'," points
out Jerry Rao, CEO, Mphasis BFL. Rao travels to Mumbai and Bangalore
once a week, to the US six times a year, stops by in Europe two
out of those six times and visits the Far East at least once a year.
Apart from his customers, he spends time with his employees, who
are all over the world, and visits his investors every year.
Even if no amount of video conferencing can
make up for a personal meeting, you would think that the CEO would
be too busy for regular client meetings and surely a department
or branch head could manage it. That, our CEOs say, is not always
the case. "As relationships become larger, more complex and
more strategic, clients expect CEO level commitment. Therefore,
such travel is inevitable," says Nandan Nilekani, CEO, Infosys.
Face-to-face meetings are an essential part
of change management too. Change-be it a merger, launch of a new
initiative, or a simple change in top management-is always preceded
by cynicism and resistance because...well, nobody really likes change.
But "if you are there to address all concerned, remove barriers
and help people adapt, you can help motivate your employees,"
says Sanjiv Bhasin, Deputy CEO, HSBC India. True, the nomadic lifestyle
can get tiring and invariably comes at the cost of your family.
But when you are the CEO, you've got to show the way. Out on the
road.
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TREADMILL
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| Workouts In Winter
 A
sprained wrist, bitter cold winter mornings and too many cheery
evenings sometimes force even Muscles Mani to give the gym
a miss every now and then. And this time, it's been a couple
of weeks that he's not showed up there. Blame the twisted
wrist for that. And lest readers think I'm using it as an
excuse, let me tell you it happened at the gym itself, one
morning, when an attempt to pick a 20-kg dumb-bell from the
floor went askew. The other two, bitter cold winter mornings
and too many cheery evenings, are excuses.
But when you know you're going to miss your gym sessions-that
wrist's going to keep me out for another week-and yet don't
want to get out of shape, what do you do?
Try exercising moderately. Go for brisk walks in bursts
of 15 minutes, twice a day. Walk, don't take the elevators,
at least up to the fifth floor. I'm visiting an old friend
quite often these evenings, much to her surprise. Of course,
it's because her flat's on the fourth floor of a walk-up (yes,
there are such buildings in Delhi) and a brisk climb-up is
good cardio-vascular exercise. Walk up at a fast pace (don't
bound up the stairs, though), rest for a few minutes, then
walk down and start up again. Do it three times and you've
a good cardio workout. The problem is my friend on the fourth
floor walk-up is a heavenly cook so the calories burnt run
the risk of getting back again.
But seriously, how do you motivate yourself when it's too
cold to go to the gym and the general spirit of good cheer
starts manifesting itself around your girth? There's no one-size-fits-all
solution. Each one has one. Or doesn't. I've known people
who just let themselves go in December and say to themselves
that they'll get back into action in January, with brand new
resolve. Some make it happen. others drag it up to March or
even May before they notice that the waist size has gone from
31 to 32 to even 34!
I'll share my wintertime workout secret with you. I go to
the gym twice a week through December. That's against the
usual four or five times a week. Twice is good enough. A tip:
break your two-day workout as follows: Day 1 for the upper
body; Day 2 for the lower. On the first day do two sets of
exercises for each body part, e.g., the chest, shoulders and
back, and on the second, two sets each for the quads, hamstring
and calves. Add a bit of cardio each day you're there in the
gym and you'll be fine. Not great but fine.
-MUSCLES MANI
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