Column: On Global Leadership

Leadership is an in-born trait in women, whether they lead
global teams across the globe or manage a household-discreetly, always
ensuring that every member of the family or team is well nurtured and attended
to.  It is a quality that is fairly
unique yet very much a part of the DNA of a woman.
This is not to take away the talented and distinguished leaders of
today's world, who are mostly men. Yet, in a world that compels us to clock at
Internet speeds in decision making, risk-taking and team building, a woman's
leadership skills brings a new dimension of style, energy, experience, execution
and innovation that is compelling, yet discreet.
It is this multi-faceted talent that is inherent in global leaders that
makes them truly successful.

Managing global teams successfully is a role that requires
one to have deep understanding of the global markets, customers, competition,
cultures and business processes in these markets.  The typical technocrat represents the most uni-dimensional
role and typically lacks to provide the dynamism, multi-tasking, high sense of
awareness and energy that a global leader requires to run an organization.
Then how does a technocrat transform into a global leader?

While the environment, opportunity to perform, the ability
to rise to the occasion and cease the opportunity, and the ability to take the
necessary risks are all important factors, I believe there are four important
ingredients that are necessary and an essential quality of a truly successful
global leader: Innovation, Experience, Execution, and Energy & Drive

Why do I pick these traits as essential above all else?
When you have to rise above everyone else within an organization and
excel to be recognized as a global leader, you need to charter a course that
will transform your current role into a high value contributor that creates
intrinsic value to the organization and is recognized by global customers.

Innovation: A technocrat must expand her role within
the organization by creating a great sense of market awareness to the role and
adding new functionality through innovation.
Take the example of a quality engineer in an organization whose role is
typically limited to execute a set of processes routinely to ensure adequate
quality.  The engineer can be
successful by just executing the role diligently or can choose to innovate by
understanding the importance of the role in terms of the market competitiveness
it brings to the organization (a sense of higher purpose), and the unique
differentiation it can create to the products or services the company has to
offer to its customers.  She can
expand the functionality of the role to provide greater value to both the
customers and the company.

Experience:  A
technocrat needs to demonstrate deep sense of understanding of multi-faceted
views of global teams that is only cultivated by a set of diverse experiences
working with varied customers and teams across multiple geographies and
cultures.  This does require one to
travel and integrate and experience different cultures and people by working
with them shoulder to shoulder.  Tracing
my own career, I believe the greatest asset is the experiences that I have
gained working with teams over the past twenty years in the US, Canada, Brazil,
Japan, China, Korea, Australia, South Africa, UK, Germany, France, Switzerland,
Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, India and the Middle-east.
There are no short cuts to this journey.
This is by far the most valuable exposure and experience that one could
gain that offsets all the discomfort of being away from home and family.

Execution:  A
global leader is created through the test of execution-execution in a global
scale requires one to take advantage of all local differentiation, from the most
simple things like time-zones, holidays and culture to the more complex issues,
such as legal rights, commercial and trade policies, to complex business
processes that are unique. Finally what matters is the ability to execute
flawlessly in the eyes of the customer, which requires that the leader is able
to motivate and manage global teams 7 by 24.

In my own experience that execution excellence comes from a
deep sense of ownership of the customer and the team that one manages.
By far the most difficult and yet the most enriching experience in
flawless execution for me came from driving a multi-million USD project for an
Insurance company in Japan, over three years managing Japanese, Indian, US and
UK teams to an extremely tight and volatile delivery schedule.
The collective team size was over 300 people across these geographies.
We needed to factor everything from national holidays to children's
school vacation timeframes across these geographies.

The greatest pleasure for me came when the customer, the
CIO of the Insurance company, hand-delivered a letter of commendation to me for
our excellent efforts in Japanese, with a English translated version and invited
me to a Chinese authentic dinner (the highest honor in Japan).
Even today they stand as a testimony of success and reference.

Energy & Drive:
A global leader needs to follow the sun. This is by far the most
challenging part of the journey.  With
today's digitization, mobile and wireless technology-there is no 8-hour
workday!  It is all about finding
the 28 hours in a 24-hour day (you can keep traveling west-not just to get the
bonus miles, but to get the extra hours and an extra day squeezed in a week!).
The energy and drive I speak of must come from within.  It is a certain spirit and power that is un-daunting, a true
extension of oneself that continues to motivate the teams and oneself to
success.  That is the spirit of a
global leader.

As a global leader, I have always strived to bring the
above attributes in all the roles I have played:
an IEEE standard to success and to creating and managing truly successful
global teams!

Just try it!