Building Excellence through Leadership

The Centre for Land Warfare Studies [CLAWS] and the All India Management Association [AIMA] jointly organised a one-day conference on 'Building Excellence through Leadership' on 03 December 2009, at Hotel Sheraton, New Delhi. Lt Gen K M Seth, PVSM, AVSM (Retd), former Governor, Chhattisgarh delivered the Keynote Address and Lt Gen A K Singh, AVSM, SM, VSM, GOC 1 Corps delivered the Special Address. Held in three sessions, the conference was attended by senior officers of the Indian armed forces, both serving and retired, and many distinguished from the corporate and industrial fraternity.
 
Welcome Address
Rekha Sethi - Director General, All India Management Association (AIMA)
 
AIMA is committed to bring about excellence in industry via management and leadership; and there is none better than the Indian Army to impart lessons on these topics. This will be the first in a serious of joint interactions between industry and the Army in the leadership space. The most important lesson which one can take away from the military experience is that a military leader is a person of character, who does things the right way even when no one is looking. The conference will address the various challenges of leadership, with both sides sharing success mantras with each other.
 
Keynote Address
Lt Gen K M Seth, PVSM, AVSM (Retd) - Former Governor, Chhattisgarh
 
It is important to reflect on the recent financial crisis, not only because of its relevance to the global economic scenario, but also for the reason it came about. This crisis had nothing to do with governance - it was a total failure of leadership, which was overtaken by greed, selfishness and an overall loss of moral values.  Similarly, in the past, the fall of the US Army at the hands of a rag-tag bunch of Vietcong, was also a manifestation of the failure of leadership. To this end, the US Army requested Stanford University to carry out a study, which revealed that in leadership, 83% is attitude and only 17% is skill. This was a factor that had not been considered in officers’ promotions. The same has been the case in the financial crisis. There has been undue focus on pure skill, technique and profit, and leadership was given a back seat.
 
Principally, leadership is an art, to accomplish more than the science of management says is possible. There are certain attributes which go hand-in-hand with leadership:
 
•         The ability and desire to lead from the front, and by example. While professional skill is something every officer is trained to have, the attitude to lead, such as the one exemplified by Alexander the Great, is innate, and can only be nourished, not invented.
•         The ability and the courage to take decisions, and to be accountable and responsible for the ramifications of one’s decisions and action.
•         The ability to inspire and motivate people to reach and think beyond themselves – an aspect the Army thrives on.
•         The ability to simplify, but not dumb down. Every great leader has been a great simplifier. It requires innovativeness and increases effectiveness.
 
As you grow in an organisation, you’re increasingly on your own. It is in this kind of environment where a leader must learn to rely on himself/herself, avoiding simultaneously the courting of yes-men and selfish tendencies. The larger the quotient of selflessness, the larger is the quotient of vision in leadership.
 
Special Address
Lt Gen A K Singh, AVSM, SM, VSM - General Officer Commanding, 1 Corps
 
Historically, the first traits of leadership emerged from the battlefield. And lessons from the same are applicable in the corporate arena as well. Leadership is the core competency in the Army. It is something which cannot be replaced with weaponry. Every course in the Army, from the level of the recruit to the general, has ingredients of leadership, and it permeates every aspect of the Army. There are certain challenges that society, including the Army, will have to confront in the 21st century, primarily the changing socio-economic order. There is, accordingly, a change in the soldier intake base. Initially, those who joined the Army accepted soldiering as a way of life and were easy to lead. The average recruit today is more informed and therefore, seeks, nay, demands leadership from his leaders.
 
There are leadership challenges in war and peace. In war, the soldiers of the country have experienced a spectrum of conflict from the high to the low, throughout the length and breadth of the country, facing a multitude of terrain and combat conditions. There are constant human resource challenges in these dynamic situations, and a need to balance high technology with appropriate delegation. In peacetime, despite the ensuing distractions, the Army needs to maintain operational preparedness constantly, and remain abreast of doctrinal and technological changes. It is the leader’s job to balance out the distractions and to constantly upgrade his skills.
 
Many diverse qualities go into making a leader. When the concern is battle command, a leader must be inspiring and responsible, directing and leading units under the most challenging conditions. Command is a combination of art and science, where the art of leading is that of the commander and science of management is the forte of the staff. These two attributes are closely interlinked and cannot be replaced with each other. As Churchill once said, “To create great armies is one thing. To lead them, is another.” To that end, there are five important attributes of leadership, known as the five Cs – character, courage, competence, commitment and compassion. These are all interlinked.
 
There are various levels of ranks in the Army – at the senior level is the divisional or the corps commander; at the middle level are the unit commanders, who form the bedrock; and at the cutting edge are the junior officers, who deliver. This kind of compartmentalisation applies to the corporate world as well. At the senior level, it is the responsibility of the officer to have vision, intuition, will, calm, and ethical values – most importantly, he must never give up. At the middle level, the officer must have confidence, focus, audacity, endurance and the ability to delegate. At the junior level, what is expected is idealism, spirit, basic knowledge, and most importantly, the esprit de corps.
 
The function of the leader, therefore, is to develop individuals and build a team and eventually, achieve the task at hand.  In that sense, leadership and management are really two sides of the same coin and therefore, there is much the corporate world can learn about leadership from the army. Whereas management, which is a staple of the corporate world, deals with different types of resources, leadership deals with the human spirit. It is the ability to meet the challenges of competing resources and objectives, to balance individual aspirations with the team goal. The key difference between the two lies in the selection process. The Army has a basic set of standards on which it will not compromise, regardless of outstanding vacancies. It focuses more on potential than simply mere performance. In the corporate world, the focus seems to be only on qualifications. This has much to do, of course, with the different role sets. While the corporate world is primarily concerned with the acquisition of money, the Army’s concern is with welfare, something the corporate world has started addressing now.
 
Concluding Remarks
Brig Gurmeet Kanwal (Retd) - Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS)
 
Leadership in the Army has changed over time. Initially, it was limited to ensuring that every jawan was able to get his food, his pay and his leave, all on time. Its come a long way from those priorities. Leading from the front, which has always been important, is now considered the acme of leadership.
 
Napoleon Bonaparte was known to have listed over 200 attributes of leadership, and yet, if there is one only which needs to be focused on, it is compassion – the innate desire within a leader to help a fighting soldier. Decision-making is also a part of leadership. P V Narasimha Rao once said that not making a decision is also a decision. However, there is no scope in the Army or the corporate world for maintaining such a view.
 
Plenary Session 1: Dynamics of Leadership
 
Chairperson: Prof (Dr) Gautam Vinayshil - Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
 
In today’s management schools, everyone is taught how to be a leader. There is no lesson taught on how one can be good follower – which is, more often than not, a more valuable lesson. To learn to be a follower means to understand oneself and one’s place, and a leader must understand himself before he can try to understand others. He must understand his own fears and anxieties, and learn to channel them, rather than be ruled by them.
 
P Dwarkanath - Director (Group Human Capital), Max India Ltd
 
In the world today, the economy is in flux, and so are the people. In such a turbulent environment leadership makes a difference in delivering core excellence. It is the ability to deliver high performance even in uncertain times. The people are the core concerns in any business – whether it be profit, productivity, value or talent. The resilience of an organisation lies within its people. And the ability to get the best out of people is leadership. Most organisations today are moving from manufacturing to service industries, where people will become more important. A leader must be able to merge business sense with a leadership strategy, to maximise his enablers, identify the capabilities of his people and develop them. He must do so in the face of the attrition problem which every organisation faces today.
 
Today, a leader needs to be able to lead his people in a toxic environment. To do so, he must possess, at all times, the attributes of honesty, credibility, inspiration, realism (tempered with optimism and vice versa), integrity and a perspective for the future. He must be able to take risks in an adverse environment. He must be able to channel the development of the individual employees and that of the organisation in the same direction to enable effective development of both.
 
Being a leader is about more than just being a visionary. One must be able to encourage one’s subordinates to perform to their optimum levels. It is important for a leader to embrace the idea of tough love – of being tough on issues and soft on people. He should never try to become bigger than the organisation. There are different types of people in the world – those who watch things happen; those who do not know how things are happening; and those to whom things happen. A leader is one who makes things happen.
 
Sunil Kant Munjal - Chairman, Hero Corporate Services Limited
 
Bill Clinton compared the running of a country to the running of a cemetery – you have a lot of people under you, but nobody’s listening. The ability to get people to listen and to believe in you – that is true leadership. In an organisation, it implies building a mission and making it the dream of the entire organisation. Colin Powell once said, ‘Being responsible means pissing people off.’ A leader needs to make decisions, whether they are easy or not. He will always need to deal with everyone’s problems. But the day people stop bringing him problems, either because they are unable to or unwilling to, he should know that he has failed.
 
It often so happens that the capacity of human beings is forgotten in the face of equipments. One must remember that they are just tools. Yet, the capacity of the mind is the most underrated. Most people use only a fraction of it. Imagine what they could do if they simply doubled their potential. A leader’s ability to encourage others to double their potential will increase his abilities as well.
 
Powell once said, ‘You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.’ A leader cannot afford to have barriers in his mind. He must be able to challenge himself and only then will he be able to challenge others. In an organisation, he must do more than manage – he must be able to predict pitfalls, to avoid them, and if not, to orient the company to change course and absorb them. It is also important for people to be leaders in their own roles.
 
There is a management lesson about how a leadership consultant took a group of businessmen to the top of the Jungfrau peak in the Swiss Alps. The temperature was minus 13 degrees Celsius. The consultant stood silent while the businessmen shivered and shook in the cold, as the minutes ticked by. After some time, he asked them what they thought the lesson of the experience was. When no one could answer, he said, ‘Getting to the top is easy. Staying there is tough.’
 
Discussion
 
•         China is making great strides in the world, because of forward thinking and planning. The Chief Economist of the Bank of China has a strategic plan for the next 100 years. To go up against such planning is a serious challenge, but is not impossible. In India, the excuse is often given that the practice of democracy would not allow measures akin to the ones China takes. But this is no excuse.
•         One cannot expect a person to be perpetually happy with their jobs and their organisations. It is not possible for any organisation to be successful if it does not know when it needs to be ruthless. But an organisation must always listen to people.
•         A company’s behaviour is often a reflection of the behaviour of the people employed in it. The same principle applies in society as well. We must be able to build leadership standards amongst ourselves.
•         A leader can rely on experts for data, not for judgment. That is something he has to rely on himself for.
 
Plenary Session 2: Changing the Tide: Leadership in an Uncertain World
 
Dr Naveen A Rao - Managing Director, MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd
 
What does it take to be a leader? It requires courage and the character to employ it in the service of others. A leader is one who steps up to the line when he doesn’t need to. The Bhagwad Gita, which is considered a treasure-trove of wisdom, is actually a guide to leadership, in the detailed manner in which Krishna takes Arjun through the various steps of leadership. To understand true leadership, it goes through the victim mentality, the feeling of apathy, of anger, of conflict – leading towards the performance of one’s duty. The lessons of leadership taught in the Bhagwad Gita and in Western texts are fairly alike. The difference is the manner in which conflict is addressed. In the Western context, all conflicts are externalised. In the Gita, the internalisation of conflict is given more importance.
 
There are three types of leaders:
•         There is the Great Man, who is born to greatness. Akbar is an example of this type. He is mythical and heroic.
•         There is the one who possesses certain traits, which makes him a leader. In the case of Gautam Buddha and Mother Teresa, that trait was compassion.
•         There is the situational leader, one who is at the right time, at the right place, like Churchill and Gandhi.
 
There are also three styles of leadership:
•         The Participative – a leader who takes everybody’s opinions, but makes the decision on his own terms.
•         The Transactional – the style of reward and punishment, which is a common style in the corporate world.
•         The Transformational – this is true leadership, when a leader touches the hearts and minds of the people.
 
The trick lies in knowing the right time to employ the right style. For example, in golf, one has the use of 12-13 different types of clubs. Not all of them can be used all the time. The skill lies in using the right one at the right time. Research shows that while leaders will always face challenges, today, they do so more than ever. One is confronted with disruptive technology, globalisation, consumerism, the culture of instant gratification, demographic shifts, and so on. It requires a special kind of leadership to cope with all of it. Yet, a leader cannot do everything. The captain of a ship may be its leader, but he can’t run the ship himself. He needs helmsmen, oarsmen, cooks and so on. His future is tied to that of his staff. That is how leadership works, both in the army and in the corporate world. No one person can be the repository of everything.
 
Lastly, leadership does not always mean to lead from the front. Sometimes, leadership means leading from the back. Nelson Mandela once wrote that it does no good to lead cattle and sheep from the front, to wave them towards greener pastures. One needs to coax them towards it. Leadership lies in knowing when to lead from the front, and when to lead from the back.
 
Maj Gen P G Kamath, AVSM, YSM, SM - Additional Military Secretary (A), Army Headquarters
 
Napoleon once said, “An army of sheep, led by a lion, is better than an army of lions, led by a sheep.” That is the true meaning of leadership. On the battlefield, leadership is pre-eminent. It is not transactional leadership, which is born out of fear. It is transformational – beyond perceptions, beyond self-interest. It cannot be monetarily rewarded. In the army, the crux of leadership is different at different levels – as a junior commander, leadership says, “Follow me”; as a senior commander, it says, “I’m with you, come hell, come fire.” At the highest level, it is transformational leadership.
 
The accomplishment of a mission lies in the instrumentation of all forms of power – political, economic, diplomatic, scientific and technological.  But when all else fails, military power has to be used. Being the instrument of last resort, it cannot afford to fail, not just in peace, but in war as well. There is no runner-up in a war. The attitude of leadership in the army is summed up in the maxim, ‘the difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a wee bit longer.’ One cannot lay the blame of failure on an unhelpful environment. One must make the environment conducive to the mission. There can be no excuses.
 
A leader needs to be professional, above all else. Beyond all else, a soldier needs his leader to be a professional. On the battlefield, one should not be concerned with ethereal responsibilities. An important part of this professionalism lies in planning and foresight. The true preparation for war is in the minds of men. It is here that wars are won. A leader’s vision is the ability to see what cannot be seen, to focus on the essentials and to delegate the peripherals. He must have courage and the ability to take smart risks. And a leader needs to be ruthless, but in a circumspect manner. The idea should be to use one’s anger, without having to show it. One must always be aware of it. He must be able to crush dissidence, should it arise, and while it is preferable to be likeable, it is better to be feared. Finally, a leader must have a spiritual temperament, especially on the battlefield. He must realise that he deals with creatures of emotion, and not necessarily of logic.
 
Chairperson: Mr Bharat Wakhlu - Resident Director, Tata Group
 
The fact that both speakers spoke of the spirit, in terms of leadership, is no coincidence. All of leadership springs from a source within people, which cannot be quantified. It is about going against the grain, against conventions. And it takes a deep conviction to envision something completely different, and to follow it through. But every reality starts out as simply an idea, and if followed, becomes the physical manifestation of that idea.
 
Leadership is not about doing things for yourself, but through you for everyone. It is not the same as skill. From the Mahabharata, we know that Arjun was a supreme warrior. But when his mind was in doubt, it was Krishna’s leadership which inspired him.
 
Discussion
 
•         Corporations and business schools spend so much time in creating leaders that they tend to forget that one can only be a leader if one has followers. But the idea should be to inculcate the attributes of leadership in every one – it is not necessary for everyone to be a leader all at the same time.
•         On the battlefield, one is often witness to emergent leadership, when casualties claim the hierarchical superior. Leadership and good values cannot be taken at face value. Those who behave as rogues in peace stations may well be the best leaders during war time.
•         As unfair as it might be, success is always taken to be a measure of good leadership. But failure is not necessarily taken to be a result of bad leadership. In truth, success is relative – even learning from a failure can be taken as success.
•         Every superior may not be intellectually superior to his subordinate(s). True leadership lies in being able to handle a smarter subordinate. A leader is one who takes the ethical and moral high road – it is not without sacrifice.
•         In times of crises, the leadership is routinely castigated in the corporate world. But because of the system in place, it is not so in the Army. Yet, it must be understood that stones are only thrown at fruit bearing trees. One can’t choose whether to be criticised or not. One can choose to be affected by it or let it slide.
•         The history of mankind is the history of warfare. Transformational leadership will always be in demand, for leaders to take people beyond themselves. Bertolt Brecht, in an allegorical play of Nazi Germany, wrote of the demise of Hitler: "Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again."
 
Plenary Session 3: Creating Lasting Value through Inspired Leadership
 
Moderator and Speaker: Anil Sachdev - Founder and CEO - School of Inspired Leadership (SOIL)
 
Leadership is about giving more than taking. Winston Churchill once rightly said, ‘we make a living by what we get – we make a life by what we give.’ Traditionally, businessmen have always been synonymous with corruption. And it is true that there are many business leaders who are corrupt – as there may be generals and politicians. They are ultimately a reflection of society. The majority of business and corporate organisations today are going the wrong way. A significant factor in this path is to do with the self-serving attitude which seems to pervade them. The gap between the average blue-collar worker and the chief executive of a company is increasing every day. The latter seem to be concerned solely with shareholders and not stakeholders, i.e. the members of the organisation.
 
Inspired leadership is required for businesses to put their act together. People have to be made aware for them to make the right leadership choices. Corporations today are not as concerned about sustainability as they should be. Allotting 1% of the company’s profit to ‘corporate social responsibility’ and spending ten times the amount on advertisements is obscene. Crises, very much like the one the world is facing in the economic realm today, are more often than not, self-created. It is the assumption of over-competence that causes havoc. While many people across the world enjoy various freedoms, many have not understood that this does not imply the freedom to destroy themselves. There must be some accountability. People must be made to understand that there are consequences for their actions, for themselves and others.
 
Inspired leadership has four core values – ethics, sustainability, mindfulness and compassion. For an individual to appreciate its importance, he must ask himself three questions:
 
•         How do you experience other people?
•         How do other people experience you?
•         How do people experience themselves in your presence?
 
Inspired leaders are those who make moderate people extraordinary in their presence. It is not about making others feel bad about themselves. A leader who doesn’t mention the word ‘we’ in the first five minutes is a problem. Inspired leaders show compassion, not by feeling sorry for others, but doing something about others’ concerns. The character of a leader shows when he speaks to those who can’t hit back. Great corporations are those which follow inspired leadership. They show resilience because the overall focus is on the long-term and strategic decisions are not based on quarterly assessments and market pressures. The consideration is towards doing the right thing for all stakeholders and the general community.
 
There are great leaders out there, especially amongst the young people, of which India has a large number. Many of them are not useless, but only ‘used less’. Management tests have no method of measuring the emotional quotient of individuals, their value systems and their character. Values are learnt behaviour, where the learning comes from one’s family and one’s society. As such, business leadership, while it can be learnt, is not the same as inspired leadership. Education is not about teaching competition, though it does appear to have come to that level. It has become about teaching individuals to fear ambiguity, fear criticism, fear failure. The true meaning of education is for an individual to know himself, and the true meaning of work is to be able to leverage that knowledge about oneself. To have values implies the possession of attributes ‘in progress’ – their final state is when these values become virtues. And if a leader is virtuous, he doesn’t have to talk about it. It affects every action he takes and every decision he makes.
 
Sunil Alagh - Chairman, SKA Advisors
 
There is very little that is absolutely black and white in life. There are mostly greys. Intrepid leadership is all about dealing with greyness. The first responsibility of a leader, therefore, is to define reality. The last responsibility is to say ‘thank you’ and in between, the leader is but a servant. After all, not every leader can be like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. In life and in marketing, competition is an inherent aspect. The cardinal rule is, ‘do unto others what you don’t what done to you’. Competition is a must – for instance, it is better that the other company loses market share than yours. Therefore, to say that every situation must be win-win is to be unrealistic.  If you are able to help yourself first, make yourself capable, only then can you help others. In the corporate world, if you are not making profits, it is not possible for you to focus on the bigger picture. The worst thing in life is to have a grand vision which you can’t belong to. Many companies and many leaders are guilty of engendering this trend. Britannia had an interesting take on it – their vision was to make every third Indian a Britannia customer. They considered this a realistic vision and it was perpetuated in every rung of the company. Thus, if there is clarity in your leadership, that is inspired leadership.
 
There is no greatness in a leader who can see what is there. A great leader is who can see something before it happens, and see something that others can’t see. Helen Keller once said, ‘The greatest tragedy in life is people who have sight, but no vision.’ Between character and strategy, it is important for a leader to have a good character as opposed to just a good strategy. While inspired leadership does flow from the top, it must also be instituted at lower levels. Therefore, people must be taught to become leaders at their individual levels, for different rungs call for different elements of leadership. It is the application of this principle that inspired leadership deals with. Apart from this, an inspired leader must be circumspect. While the nobility exemplified by Abhimanyu in the Mahabharata is undeniable, it cannot serve as an example of leadership. A leader can’t get into a situation without an exit strategy. He must know when to stop and when to pull-out. Inspiring others to inspire, is what inspired leadership is about.
 
Discussion
 
•         Competition and cooperation does work. Being competitive doesn’t always have to imply being greedy. Yet, competition is an essential part of life. The world hasn’t come around to a position where it can be replaced or its effectiveness rendered redundant.
•         The purpose of life is to have a life full of purpose. This is where inspired leadership is required. The goals in your life can keep changing, but your purpose in life should be constant.
 
Concluding Remarks: Brig Gurmeet Kanwal (Retd) - Director, CLAWS
 
One of the most important attributes of leadership is moral courage. An example from the life of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw is appropriate in this regard. On the 25th of March 1971, there was a political crackdown in what was then East Pakistan and 10 million refugees flooded into India. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called for a meeting of top officials and they agreed on creating conditions for the refugees to go back. And the only condition which would suffice was to create a government. When the PM asked the Field Marshal (then-COAS) how long it would take for him to get his troops together, he said 6 months. When the PM demanded that he should be ready to go in a month’s time, he simply told her to look for another COAS. He did not wilt under pressure. Moral courage as an attribute of leadership is not exclusive to the Indian Army – it applies across the board.
 
So, what, then, makes a good leader? A good leader is one who can step on your toes and still leave a shine.

(Report Compiled by Samarjit Ghosh, Associate Fellow, CLAWS)