I have never shared my reflections of the year gone by so why this time? The year 2023 has been a very special year for me in many ways- I and my wife, Vandna completed 50 years of our marriage in February and in March our larger family celebrated....
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Two decades ago on this day, 1st February 2004, I took over as Chairman and Managing Director of Dena Bank (now merged with Bank of Baroda). The bank faced the worst crisis of its long career as RBI had put the bank under close monitoring for its low asset quality....
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Meetings are part of organizational life. They are central to decision-making. From vision making to execution, one has to necessarily pass through the jungle of meetings. Managers love to complain about meetings and they are not wrong ....
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Fifty years back, on this day (12th January 1971), I walked into Johari Bazaar Jaipur Branch, Bank of Baroda (BoB) to report as a Directly Recruited Officer (DRO). I was nervous and unsure about my decision to take up a job in the Bank as I had no qualifications to build a career in banking.....
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Ten years back 'Dare to Lead' was published ( Sage 2011). This is about my journey of life, often walking the path of adversity both in personal life (especially childhood) and in certain phases of profession working, observing, learning, reflecting, understanding , and building perspective to practice leadership in various senior roles in Bank of Baroda, finally culminating into a CEO......
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Is this a good title to begin your blog? I'm not too sure. But, I intensely feel that in the midst of mounds of sermons about Leadership of all hues and especially those arm chair thinkers who have never practiced Leadership, I need to share some hard truths about Leadership. . After about forty years of experience of work organizations and at least 15 years in leadership roles as CEO of large and complex organisations, Board chair and Board ....
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Meetings normally invite cynicism, yawns and sometimes curse. I have been no exception to my own cynicism and dreadful boredom.
In my long career, I attended scores of meetings convened by my superiors. Some meetings were informative, some others were entertaining...
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It may sound strange, but it is true. In this competitive environment, most CEOs are driven by performance alone and this performance anxiety is percolated down to the lowest in the hierarchy. Today’s workplaces are full of tension caused by performance deadlines which are monitored, sometimes...
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We come across two shades of managers: one type who are tender minded and are always hesitant to communicate any feelings of displeasure to their subordinates; the other type who are quite business-like, bordering on rudeness, who simply dictate their agenda without consideration ...
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Someone has rightly said that in order to get success it has to be planned otherwise we unconsciously plan for the failure. How True!!
As the one who piloted major transformation in two large public sector Banks in India having multiple constraints, ...
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A decade back, we only wished that CEOs take more interest in HR and now in 2015, I believe that HR has become the main plank of CEOs work. The reasons are not far to seek. Today’s competition demands new ideas, innovations, out of the box thinking and it all boils down to having the right kind of people who are fired with curiosity, spirit of experimentation, ...
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The principal challenge for any CEO is to change the prevailing culture in his organization. Most CEOs in their anxiety launch transformational initiatives without looking at the existing culture and later face the avoidable resistance. The culture manifests itself in terms of attitudes of people, prevailing bureaucratic structures, siloed working, lack of team play, ...
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The CEOs, especially in large organizations, often get sucked into the operational routine in spite of best intentions. They have to often deal with mounds of papers that continuously flow from various verticals. Similarly, meetings also consume a lot of time. Many CEOs often complain about lack of time and consequently...
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Transformation is essentially a collaborative endeavour of the top management and therefore it is critical that the entire team at the top owns it up and become evangelists of transformation. This alignment in the top team is very crucial. Not everyone in the top team is enthusiastic for changes. Differences within the top team must be sorted out through a process of dialogues ...
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The success of any transformation can be measured by organizations new culture in terms of its responsiveness to customers, employees and other stakeholders, its enhanced performance, its capacity to respond to competitive pressures, etc. The internal environment characterized by constraints such as red tape, inter-departmental conflicts, and control driven communications, ...
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The people closest to customers (field staff) are the farthest from the top decision makers. How do we make accumulated knowledge at the field level available to the top management?
The CEO has to capture the untapped wisdom of the field staff through direct interactions and encouraging field staff to share their insights about “What is working” ...
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Transformation is normally triggered by disruption on account of new technological innovations,
new products and service innovations. The basic survival of the company calls for transformation.
The cost of not transforming is severe.
Thus, transforming an organization is essentially
...
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Transformation is often misconstrued as undertaking certain specifics only such as moving to
adopt new technology or reorganization of structure or adjustments post mergers or acquisition.
This would be a myopic view of the entire effort of transformation. Transformation is an
opportunity to simultaneously build Intangibles of the ...
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As the transformation takes place, the major focus of the CEO and the top management often remains on managing the concrete deliverables. While all this is imperative, often the other important aspects such as building an end to end service excellence, hassle-free problem solving, internal response mechanisms and front line attitudes, remain on the periphery. In building a tapestry for transformation, it is important to ensure ...
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Engage with people through their minds and hearts.
For transformation and implementation of the vision, engagement of the employees becomes the cornerstone of success. It is they who deliver the services, make customers experience their moments of truth, bear the brunt of irate customers, and also suffer the pressures of work. They need to understand the logic and rationale of the change, ...
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Reorder HR Processes to confront and be compassionate.This may sound oxymoron but in reality, it is not. When you change large size organizations, you need to confront a lot of legacy problems, challenge some of the existing ways of doing things and also deal with some individual and even trade ...
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