The Hindu Business Line : On a mission to train the trainers...

About six months ago, Satyam Computer Services set apart a small team to grow the Satyam School of Leadership, coming up on a 2,40,000 sq.ft facility in the hi-tech Info city in Hyderabad, with 328 rooms and a five-star hotel to accommodate travelling executives.

The total cost of the residential facility is $25 million and its objective is "to enhance leadership within the company and grow leaders faster," says Edward Cohen, Vice-President, Leadership Development, Satyam Computers, who will head the Satyam School of Leadership expected to come up by mid-2007.

After an eight-year stint as the chief learning officer at an American company, Cohen has joined Satyam on the mission to train trainers. "I'm right now working with (Satyam Chairman Ramalinga) Raju to identify succession planning and strengthen the leadership base across the company, something that is essential for a company with a growth rate such as ours," he says.

The basic objective of the School of Leadership is to assess "how ready people are to lead. For every leader that exists in the company we want to identify at least an additional leader to succeed him. We've had tremendous growth in the company and our value proposition is to grow leaders from within, but we haven't been able to do that as successfully as we would have liked," says Cohen.

So is this due to attrition?

"It is more because of Satyam's rapid growth. When people leave, they take the wonderful skills that they gained from us and use them somewhere else, which is the highest compliment anybody can pay us to say that we want your people," he says.

Ask Cohen if attrition frustrates him and pat comes the reply. "Not at all; in fact that is job security for us. Can you imagine if nobody left? We wouldn't even have a job!"

Business vs everyday life

On the kind of cultural shock he and his wife underwent when they moved to India, he says acclimatising to the business culture in India and day-to-day life "are two very different things." Even though he finds India "fascinating" he is honest enough to say that he and his wife are still coming to terms with their decision to work in India. "Any time you make a major move, you go through the `should we or shouldn't we' process, because change is always hard, as is shifting. We're still in that stage." His 15-year-daughter goes to the international school in Hyderabad where the education is "fantastic, exceptional". The order in which his family is adapting to India is a little unusual... "Jasper, the dog first, he absolutely loves everything about India and adapted first and sits like a prince in the front seat of our car."

With a seat belt?

"Oh no, it was difficult enough to convince the driver to wear a seat belt. And my daughter adapted next because she made some good friends." It is easier for youngsters in India to make friends, unlike the US where teenagers are driven by clicks.

As for Indian food, while he has adjusted to it, his wife and daughter are still battling it out, with the latter having French toast for breakfast— "she won't touch idli and dosai" — , peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch and macaroni and cheese for dinner. Cereal is another staple, though she does enjoy the tandoori chicken, explains Cohen, as seriously as he would unravel the mysteries of leadership!

But Cohen's social life is literally rocking! Soon after they landed here "everybody was reaching out and our social life which was virtually non-existent in the US came to life here.

There you go to work, come home, have dinner and fall asleep on the couch... that was my life. But here, my social life is incredible, everybody seems to be having festivals, babies' birthdays, etc."

rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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