Building & Sustaining the Right Team – Mahalingam, Symphony Services

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 Hearticulate (he apologized for coining a new term which doesnt 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, dont 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.