EMERGEOUT Conclave 2008: Building & Sustaining the Right Team
Loading ...Mr. Natarajan kicked off the session and started with the traits of high performance teams, which is valid for organizations of all size.
- Creating an organizational engagement. Not just selecting the right team.
- Entrepreneurship
- Willingness to go the extra mile
- Integrity
- Personal drive or passion
These traits are even more important. An Entrepreneur is normally the biggest constraint in the growth of the business. Entrepreneur is not and cannot execute as a superman, so picking the right team to execute is the key.
Mr. Krishnakumar also talked about the importance of building leadership in the organization.
Anand Pillai: Anand talked about the Talent Transformation program at HCL. A program aimed at grooming and retaining senior management talent at HCL. HCL has produced the most number of CEO’s and senior management people in the industry.
“Age is too much of a price to pay for maturity”. So, an entrepreneur needs talent at his company at an early age.
Eagles program at HCL is focused on providing the maturity to its employees at young age. He talked about the following 7 qualities of the eagle as it applies to people entrepreneurs should look for recruiting.
- Dauntless: Look at the sun in the eye. Not get intimidated by competition
- Vision: See the target miles away. Identify an opportunity.
- Tenacity: Flies against the storm. Not get perturbed by challenges
- Nurturing: One by one, personally. This ability to mentor is the biggest stumbling block in emerging companies. One by one mentoring, not mass mentoring.
- High Flier: Nested and flying in high places yet swiftly on earth. See the big picture, but execute on the ground.
- Grip: Vice like grip. When incharge, they are always in control of situation.
- Vitality: Full of life all its life. When eagle has grown old, and has lost all 6 of its qualities. It goes through the painful process of revitalization.
Anand mentioned the 21 month rigorous training program that they have their high potential candidates go through to identify them as senior management talent.
Mali Mahalingam: Mali started with talking about the challenges of building, leading and sustaining a high performance team as growing as organizations grow in size.
He stressed on the importance of diversity of talent. He mentioned how it is important to build trust and empathy with the employees to build a long-term relationship. He said that depending upon your style of execution: you could be ambitious CEO who wants to grow fast or someone who wants to have a controlled and disciplined growth, you need to be selective on attracting and training the talent. He emphasized how leadership is important in all phases of business whether it is “Strategy”, “Engagement” or “Execution. On the same topic, he referred to “Blend of Functionality and Vitality” (Make Your Company a Talent Factory), a study by Harvard Business Review (June 2007). While talking on the technology driven companies (a significant portion of SME businesses in India), he mentioned that “leadership and management” should not be compromised, while focusing on technology.
While referring to emerging companies, he said rather than articulating the vision, the founders need to “Hearti”culate (he apologized for coining a new term which doesn’t exist in the English language J) the vision. For a startup, the leaders should focus on cultivating the culture of “Passion & Purpose” than “Pay & Perquisites”. Some of the best practices he questioned are:
- Nimbu Paani and Butter Milk
- Dating Allowance and Wedding Allowance
- Paternity Leave
- Chief Fun Officer (is fun more important than finance?)
Talking on CEOs business reviews, he said that instead of just reviewing the numbers on recruitment & attrition, the leader should review the process in between – only than you can make some impact. Talking on the same subject he coined another phase “Happy No Reason Attrition”, which is a real problem faced by businesses today. He suggested that instead of just doing formal surveys and benchmarking exercises, don’t full yourself in replicating the best practices of some other companies without analyzing the relevance of them for your business. He recommended reading “the 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave”, the book which gives insights on tracing the people, who by preventing the growth of other valuable people, are the bottlenecks to the growth of the business.
In the Q&A part, Mr. Natarajan asked the speakers “What are the top 2 issues you faced as an emerging company in retaining abd building the talent?”
Anand answered to the question and said that “ability to do something not done before” is the key. You must encourage your employees to taken on new responsibilities. And, you should treat people fairly rather than treating them equally.
Mr. Mahalingam answered the question by attributing the growth of his organization to the
of managers and leaders. He mentioned how valuable and important it is for them to build and nurture product mindset. He said that from day one we’ve hired high quality and high experience people who’ve worked with world’s top-notch product companies.
Mr. Natarajan summed the session by saying that “it is the fundamental job of the leader to attract and retain the talent in order to build a world class organization.” No one else can and should own this critical responsibility.
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