Leadership Series @ SIIB ( 12th September 2009 )

The theme of SIIB Leadership series every year is always in sync with the existing management scenario in India and abroad. In order to succeed we must first believe that we can and hence the theme in 2006 was “Dare to dream”. A dream is a dream till it is implemented and executed and that led to the theme of 2007 “From idea to action”. Success is not a destination but a journey and the theme of 2008 was “Journey to Success”.

The theme for 2009 is

“Leadership and Entrepreneurial Spirit”

because in a competitive and changing world “entrepreneurship” whether at corporate level or at individual level is absolutely necessary for long term survival. And to give you better insights we present to you the prolific speakers for this year's leadership series - they are:

Name	Designation	Company
Mr P.P Chhabria,	Chairman,	Finolex Cables Ltd
Mr Navin Suri	CEO	ING Investments, India
Mr David Wittenberg	CEO	The Innovation Workgroup, Delhi
Mr Ravi Deshpande	Chairman and Chief Creative Officer,	Contract Advertising, India
Mr Abhijeet Ranade,	Associate Director	Price Waterhouse Coopers

These leaders who have travelled the corporate road and achieved the pinnacle of success would share there experiences in their journey. Being an interactive session , this helps the budding managers of tomorrow to learn and understand what is required to be not just a good professional but a business leader.SIIB leadership in true sense, is the flagship event of SIIB and everyone looks forward of its arrival year after year.

S. Kalyanasundaram
MD, GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals





His talks on innovation in Pharma industry:
Historically, the pharmaceutical industry has been the fountainhead for innovation. It is the most specialized and innovative industry. It has breakthrough scientists who have won many noble prizes working for it.
The core strength of this industry is innovation and the three most important factors with regard to this industry being successful are:

• The key component is science for innovation and a long term inclination to be ready to invest in science.
• There is a major need to be in touch with the real life i.e. the people and the problems being faced by them to understand what all innovations are needed.
  

It is needed for companies to commercialize the whole string of operations because if they can’t then it will not be a successful business.
Deep understanding of science and intuition is what leads to a scientist to become innovative. Because, of the hundred thousand of molecules that are tested by them in the laboratories, its only a chosen one or two that are actually and finally approved to pass the regulatory standards. So the factor of risk associated with this industry is very high.
The inherent characteristics of the pharmaceutical industry that makes innovation a necessity are:

• It is dynamic, diverse and sophisticated.
  
• It is not exposed much to the public, rather more inclined towards the experimental and quiet side.
• Global and internationalized as each company in the industry is spread through various countries.
• Highly fragmented with large number of players in the market.
• Intensely competitive, as the returns are very attractive.
• Technology and research driven.
• Highly regulated as the product needs to be patented and permission needs to be taken by the government to sell the medicines.
• It is a knowledge industry.
  

Not many industries can cope with increase in spending when the outputs being given are zilch or almost next to them. Even when the product is introduced after so much of work, the industry is never sure whether the market will accept it or not and 90% of them never even break even. The amount of money spent by the various companies of the industry is almost the same for the development of the same drug but the realization that they get varies by leaps and bounds because of the advantage for moving at proper time.
Drugs don’t behave the same for all people and in all regions. So for this DNA sequencing is done for this to make the product safe for the patient. This is although expensive but gives the companies a vast group to manufacture drugs for.
Apart from all these scientific innovations there are also certain commercial innovations in the industry, which are achieved through:

• Product benefit is considered a part of innovation.
• Ability to offer a differentiated and different product and effectively interact with the customer.
  

Innovation in a business has some common elements that are: attitude, determination, patience, organization support, belief in people and team work and above all the ability to think differently. Supporting that, even the pharma companies follow innovation implementing these as well as the scientific innovations for the betterment of both the society and economy.

Mr. CV Krishnan, CEO Sterlite


As an individual, how do we define leadership?
Leadership means the ability to have a vision about what we want to be. What values will we continue to maintain through our life? How will we cultivate them? What is our mission during our lifetime? What milestones do we want to achieve? And so on and so forth.
We should have clarity of thoughts, decide on strategies, review them periodically and monitor them to check for faults. Lets ask this question .Do we have vision a picture of our morrow?
Family is at the first rung of an institution that we come across in our lives. What is leadership in family? Unlike on individual level, where our visions and strategies matter, leadership in a family is one of an integrator. The position of our parents and grandparents is that of an enabler for us. When we have children or siblings, small enough to need our attention, our role becomes that of an enabler, a motivator. Somebody who can provide resources, manages continuous change in family, and has an ability to perceive the thoughts and needs of the family. Organisations have many families many individuals. What they need are cheerleaders who can create a vision for organisation and make everybody accept it as their own vision.
Vision is something that is unreachable. If it is reachable then it will be a plan. Every employee dreams of achieving. A Leader should articulate the vision accordingly. He should continuously talk about it. It should be treated like a religion to ensure that it gets part of the system. It is not mere change; it is a kind of leadership that enables the exploration of new and innovative ways to drive value and to deliver in an ever changing business environment. It allows individuals to thrive at the edge of chaos. It is not just managing people in steady state; it is taking responsibility to remove barriers that inhibit the optimal and sustainable performance of the being, to follow the organisation. It is about recognising the explicit and implicit values of the individual and then energises and inspires others accordingly.
Leadership is based on principles of pioneering, innovating, exploring new dimensions. It provides greater anxiety in a way a company can integrate process, people, and technology to create competitive advantage. Transformational leadership includes a kind of visionary that can articulate will and success so that everyone gets completely engulfed in it. It is systematic process that involves purposeful and organisational search for change. It is a systematic analysis and movement of resources from areas of lesser production to areas of greater productivity. The transformational leaders have a knack of relating to people in an intuitive and empathetic ways and projecting ideas into them to excite them. They are also high risk takers where opportunities and rewards are high. Some more qualities of a transformational leaders are that they ensures open system in the organisation, are able to recognise the interrelationship and thus create synergies between people, process, resources and technology, harnessing creativity and inspiration from seemingly chaotic situation.
The leader should always have an agenda. The agenda is his road map to the vision he creates. He should see to it that the enthusiasm is channelized properly.
Many leaders are good speakers. They only preach. But a transformational leader must avoid over advocacy of any concept. Autocratic and directive behaviour is acceptable under crisis.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what the root of money is? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
…
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality. “


-Francisco’s Money speech ( http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1826 ) “Atlas Shrugged”, Ayn Rand

“To make money” or to “to create wealth”, as the parlance goes; has been glorified, vilified and much debated since when time for a chat was at hand. The self-made woman will have at some point said that given a canvas she can do a better job , using gumption, guts and a business sense tingling she sets out on a road to create her own job.


The entrepreneur, more often than not, is not enamored of the wealth or riches which a successful entrepreneur entails: he climbs the mountain because it is there. He has an idea, an idea whose time has come and then to paraphrase what Paul Coelho would have said:”if the entrepreneur desires the idea to come to life, the entire universe conspires to get the enterprise up and running”.

Any successful economy has its share of legends: of women lionized because they set out on a path which many chose not to because it was tougher. Entrepreneurs change rules of game: they often set out to challenge the established business model itself. New upstarts and ambitious startups are what keep the wheels of innovation constantly turning.

Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship is nurtured in a society which believes the better mousetrap is no less than a noble ideal : where failures in business are looked upon as a but an attempt to change the world which will have another go at.


Aby Johnson

United Health Group, a $ 70 billion company specializing in health care and services is world no. 1 among Healthcare Insurance companies ranking 21 in the Fortune listing.

Mr Prabir spoke keeping with the theme of SIIB leadership Series "Journey to Success" about the growth of UnitedHealth Group in India and how difficult it was to scale up the function in health care sector with too many regulations by Government. He emphasized on the growing additional working force of 83 million by 2010 and the educational capacity going up to 195 million and thus the opportunities it brings to companies like UHG.

Mr Prabir further explained the recipe for the success of UHG highlighting the fact that the approach should be a bottom up, starting with a motivated individual to good team harmony and co-ordination and moving upto to the organization aligning with the ultimate goal. He explained through equations like CQ + EQ> IQ stating that its actually competitive quotient plus emotional quotient should be greater than Intelligent quotient. He thus motivated students to take up challenges in life and not be scared to innovate and take risk.