Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Feb 07, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Feb 07, 2003 |
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Industry & Economy
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Management `Managers should sense people's feelings' Our Bureau
KOLKATA, Jan. 6 "LISTEN to the song behind the words." That was the crux of the keynote address by Mr R. Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director of Tata Sons, at the 3rd Sir Jehangir Ghandy Memorial Lecture hosted by the Calcutta Management Association on Thursday. The subject was: "Navigating Leadership — The Compass, Not the Map''. The address presented a simple message for all managers: think out of the box, listen to people and sense their feelings. Indeed, apart from "sensing,'' a good manager should also do three other things well: think, do and correct. Indian society, Mr Gopalakrishnan said, did tolerate a lot of ambiguity. Such tolerance was not always constructive, and the news items published daily flooded the common people with doubts. Leaders needed to understand the root cause of ambiguity and act in order to influence the behaviour of the existing social systems. In this context, marked as it was by "daunting'' challenges, leaders would need a compass to chart new courses. The latter would lead to change, both technical and adaptive, Mr Gopalakrishnan, said, referring to his own experience as Chairman of Unilever Arabia. "The ability to change according to emerging situations is a way of displaying adaptive strengths. Unsuccessful leaders have been existing for years and have failed to change the shape of things for the better,'' he stated, adding that it was important to manage one's opponents as well as one's allies. Lessons from nature Managers needed to learn a lot from nature, insisted Mr Gopalakrishnan, whose address was peppered by stories involving birds such as homing pigeons, blue tits and robins and industrious insects like ants. In one story, the blue tit and the robin faced the same challenges. The former, however, was more successful because of its social behaviour; it circulated acquired knowledge among its peers. The robin, on the other hand, did not succeed because it was too individualistic. The habits of ants, in fact, helped the Tata Sons executive conclude his presentation. These insects, it was maintained, never gave up, always worked hard in summer for tough, wintry days, and instinctively knew that even bad times would not last for long.
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