The Hindu Business Line : Understanding the Indian CEO

According to Tharuma Rajah, co-author of the recently launched book The Indian CEO, it is the altruistic business philosophy of business leaders of India that sets them apart from the business leaders of the West and the rest of the world. The book is an outcome of a study on the Indian style of leadership conducted by consulting firm Hay Group.

And, this quality possessed by Indian business leaders is not redundant for their counterparts in other parts of the world, feels Rajah. “There are studies that suggest that the percentage of people trusting businesses has gone down worldwide, especially in the US and Europe. The businesses in these countries are trying to get integrity back into their models.” The ‘service above self’ attitude is ingrained in the philosophy of the Indian leaders, he adds.

But, aren’t business leaders of the West, like GE’s Jack Welch, celebrated in India?

Indians value Western leaders for their management practices and their ability to make their organisation competitive, but the Western emphasis on quarterly results and return on investment are not enough for their Indian counterparts, says Gaurav Lahiri, another of the book’s co-authors.

However, there are some traits where Indian CEOs score lower than their Western counterparts. The ability to connect with employees on an individual level and treat a person as a person and identify what energises them at an intuitive level are some of the traits that they can learn from Western leaders. Not many Indian business leaders are able to connect with labour and excite and motivate them.

“If the Indian leaders can learn these qualities from the Jack Welchs of the world who made leadership development, people management and talent management at the heart of their business agenda, it would augur well for them.”

On the shortcomings of Indian CEOs, the book says: There is a dark side to their (Indian CEOs) strongly developed intellects and achievement drives — a relative absence of tuning in to other people. At times they are so focused on entrepreneurship that they neglect the task of energising their teams. So, on the one hand, the book mentions the strengths of Indian CEOs as their ability to think rationally and their business acumen, while on the other, it also lists their vulnerabilities — their inability to discern the individual characteristics of people.

However, the book does not chronicle the changes brought about by the various phases that the economy has been through i.e. the changes in management practices brought about by the entry of a host of multinational companies following the opening up of the economy in 1991.

“But what it does do is talk about the competencies of a manager who turned around a company and what worked and what did not, what a manager did in a successful start-up venture, what a manager did in doubling and tripling the revenues of a mid-sized firm,” says Lahiri.

The study, on which the book is based, is empirical to the extent that the authors spoke to leading CEOs and discussed at length what they did in various situations and stages of evolution of their companies.

It is a result of 3,000 pages of interview text. The book is relevant not just to managers and CEOs of private organisations, but also their counterparts in Government, according to the authors.