The Global March

The annual Western Region conference of the Confederation

of Indian Industry (CII) in Mumbai showed that exports and globalization, which

was first chanted by the Indian software industry, has now been adopted with a

vengeance by every sector of the Indian economy.  And the results are beginning to show-not just in the

galloping stock exchange indices, which leapt over the ten thousand hurdles in a

jiffy, and seems to be racing to fifteen thousand, nor the zooming profits and

market capitalizations of manufacturing companies! The real dominance that

Indian companies are beginning to establish-in flexible packaging, forgings,

steel etc-is beginning to reflect in the market share data as well!

At the conference, a galaxy of luminaries-Baba Kalyani of

Bharat Forge, Surinder Kapoor of Sona Steering, Ajay Piramal of Nicholas and

Gujarat Glass, Ashok Goyal of Essel Propack, Gopalakrishnan of Tata Sons, and

Yogi Deveshwar of ITC spoke of the once in a lifetime opportunity that this

decade presents to Indian entrepreneurs and CEOs to fly the India flag, and

indeed flaunt their companies' brands proudly in all countries. The case in

point is early mover Essel, which has grown 15%; globally, in an industry, which

is growing at 4% or less, establishing 24 factories in over a dozen countries.

This was the firm that was one of the first to establish a manufacturing

facility in China, and today, talks about global dominance in much the same way

that Lakshmi Mittal has done in steel.

One refrain that was echoed through the packed halls of

this summit was the need for global leaders-who have enough multinational

experience to work with locally hired teams and build multi-shore organizations

to meet the expectations of future shareholders and customers. In his wonderful

book on Inspiring Leadership, John Adair, the world's first professor of

leadership studies at the University of Surrey looks for inspiration to the

legendary Athenian sculptor turned philosopher Socrates, who listed some of the

activities, which characterize a truly effective leader:

• Selecting the right people

• Gaining goodwill and inspiring obedience

• Setting a personal example of energy and industry

Each of these characteristics are beginning to be severely

tested in every industry segment as the search progresses for hundreds of CEOs

and thousands of business unit leaders making only the headhunters happy and

giving nightmares to every board.

The risk of emergency hiring is the propensity to settle

for less than optimum caliber at high levels of business leadership, and this

compromise in the first of Socrates' principles has its inevitable cascading

effect on the other two. A leader who arrives with the promise of showing

results in two quarters, but is shown the door within a year if he fails to

deliver will hardly display energy and industry. Worse still, the first signs of

success will bring the headhunters back to his door and the cycle for both the

individual and the organization starts all over again. And the question of

inspiring others does not even arise in such cases-it will need a modicum of

self-imposed discipline to stem the rot and build sustainable management teams

for the future.

Finally, back to the CII meet. Alan Rosling, Cambridge and

Harvard Business School alumnus, and now an executive director on the Board of

Directors of Tata Sons, spoke proudly of the way TCS had grown its South

American business to over three thousand people with development facilities in

Brazil, Uruguay, and Mexico. He sounded a note of caution when he said that

India's Tambrams (Tamilian Brahmins for the uninitiated) must learn to be more

global in their behavior and not spend their entire leisure time looking for

Indian restaurants when they travel abroad. Will the Ramaswamys and

Balasubramanians be spotted in more Sushi bars and British pubs in the not so

distant future? Only the new global Indians can tell!