Issue today and tomorrow is that organizations need to transform from a uni-culture setup to a true multi-culture setup
Anu Parthasarathy, CEO, Global Executive Talent (GET), an executive search firm, specializing in C-level recruitment and transformational leadership.
1. What would you say are the key leadership challenges that the Indian market faces?
The last two decades have been dominated by the growth of offshore services centers in India. This led to a significant talent pool moving into the IT (Information Technology) and ITeS (IT Enabled Services-BPO/KPO) industries. India leads in availability of leadership talent in the delivery of multi-site, multi-domain offshore services.
However, this decade and the next are about the growth of domestic Indian market at an unprecedented scale (e.g. Telecom, Automobile). This demands leadership talent which has done large scale manufacturing, distribution, customer service etc. This is lacking in the experience profile of most senior executives in the industry who have “grown” during the slow growth, low volume phase of the economy.
Plus, today Indian companies have to think global as they face fierce competition for the market from Chinese, Korean, Japanese, American companies. This again demands business leaders who have operated in the global market place and built businesses perhaps without the backing of a strong brand.
2. What are the best ways of meeting the above challenges? Any effective practices/ methods that Indian organizations are using to meet these challenges?
Indian organizations have taken a three pronged approach to addressing the above challenges:
Approach 1 – Hire Indians who have worked abroad and are interested in coming back. There is a tremendous amount of talent that India lost to virtually every part of the world including Africa and Middle East besides North America, Asia-Pac and Europe. Many from this pool have held leadership positions with global companies and have the experience that India needs. So this is an attractive option. This has its own challenges like the inability of even these Indians to adjust back culturally into Indian work environment. Another is the family’s resistance to move back and settle down in the non-cosmopolitan metros.
Approach 2 – Hire expat managers – Airline industry, Telecom industry and now even Automobile industry are trying this out. Here the challenges we discussed earlier for returning Indians gets multiplied manifold. Moreover, when times turn very difficult like the last quarter of 2008, expats prefer to pack their bags and move as the compensation, perks and stock values are not attractive enough.
Approach 3 – Throw the existing leadership talent into the expanded roles and hope that they would come through. They are sent for short term stints in partner companies and for Executive Programs in premier business schools like Harvard so that the exposure would raise their bars and help them understand the context of what is demanded of them.
3. Dearth of multi-cultural, global managers seems to be one of the top HR issues for the Indian market. What are your observations?
This I feel is a challenge across the world and not just with India. Most American managers only understand and appreciate the American corporate culture. Same is true for the Europeans, Japanese and South Koreans. And likewise, the Indian managers understand and work in the Indian corporate culture very well!
Issue today and tomorrow is that organizations need to transform from a uni-culture setup to a true multi-culture setup by adapting and absorbing the best of many corporate cultures so that people who work for them in different parts of the world feel an equal sense of belonging.
4. What are the burning trends vis-à-vis Top-level talent development and coaching? How do you see Indian employers mentoring their senior managers and empowering them to take on larger roles?
One major issue is that succession planning is completely non-existent in most companies. Also there is severe reluctance to hire laterally at senior levels. Even where it is done, the executive faces resistance from rank and file and is ejected out like a foreign body. These two issues get compounded during high growth times and that is what we are seeing today in India. These two issues are very addressable through coaching. But Indian managers resist one-on-one coaching. They are open to training programs and management courses always. But often what is needed is one-on-one coaching and this practice is not very popular in India. This needs to change.
Many corporates, especially the larger ones like Wipro, Tatas, Infosys have their own leadership development schools. Significant investment has gone into this and has resulted in these companies successfully generating leadership talent in-house. But the smaller and mid-size companies do face an uphill task. One approach would be for these companies to build a strong board of advisors who can mentor, coach and work with senior executives on a regular basis.
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