Upwardly Mobile

Ranjini Manian is the founder of Global Adjustments, a Chennai-based professional services firm that helps foreign companies and expatriate managers adapt quickly to India. I have had the opportunity to hear her speak to a group of non-Indian managers, and she has a nice way of presenting Indian culture and dispelling the myths and mysteries regarding doing business in India.

In her latest book, Upworldly Mobile (Penguin Portfolio, 2011), Ranjini shifts her focus 180 degrees to provide advice as to how an Indian manager can be more effective in a global business environment. She covers a wide range of topics ranging from how to behave in meetings, to mobile and email etiquette, to communication skills. She emphasizes the need to retain one’s Indiannness, and at the same time reach out to the world.

This is a very practical book and will no doubt be of great help to Indians setting out into the global world of business. It’s infused with a spirit of pragmatism (in my cultural stereotyping, I see this as more like the Chinese!) but honestly, I found the tone a bit too gung-ho, and the advice an overly enthusiastic buy-in to the “flat world” philosophy. Worth a quick read though – it has some nice quotes from Gandhiji and Indira Gandhi among others, and the advice won’t do any harm.

Books read in 2011

I read 33 thought-provoking books in 2011. Sharing the details with you in case any of you would like to read any of these. Do write to me if you want more details.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_JQN9Y6fQRsOWVlOWRjMzItMmQ2Ni00MmYwLTllZDgtODI5Y2FkZjlkYjg4

Brick by Red Brick...Institution Building at IIM Ahmedabad

Professor T.T. Ram Mohan of IIM Ahmedabad recently wrote a book titled Brick by Red Brick, focusing on the role of Ravi Matthai and Vikram Sarabhai in building IIM Ahmedabad. My recent column in Edu Tech magazine provides a review of this book and what I learnt from it:




https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B_JQN9Y6fQRsZTk2NjhiMWUtMjU2OC00ZjNiLTgyODctMjlkMmZiZWM2NTFi&hl=en_US

The Books I read in 2010

Here's a list of the books I read during 2010, with my ratings. To be honest, I enjoyed reading all of them though I have given them different ratings. I hope to read more fiction during 2011.

Indian Design Edge

This book written in 2008 by Darlie Koshy, then Director of India’s National Institute of Design makes an impassioned plea for a greater emphasis on design in India.


He makes the following important points:
• Design thinking is more important than ever before.

• India needs to create a distinct design identity based on our culture, crafts and traditions. But this identity has to be relevant to modern times.

• Design has to be integrated with technology and the market. Design is an integral part of a brand strategy.

• Design has tremendous potential in the service / experience economy. Indian designers have not paid enough attention to the potential of design in this arena.

• India does not have a critical mass of designers. While the National Design Policy (2007) is a good first step, much needs to be done to make design a national movement.



Dr. Koshy provides useful insights into the transformation of NID during his tenure (2000-08). He set up new campuses at Gandhinagar and Bangalore, and expanded the number of programmes and intake. This will enable a comparison between the heritage campus at Paldi (Ahmedabad) and the new offshoots. This would enable competition, and a validation of different design paradigms.

The book has case studies of IndusTree, KAARU, new coinage developed by NID etc. These are useful in understanding how design and an Indian ethos can be coupled together effectively.

Overall though, the book left me worried. I had interacted with Ashoke Chatterjee, a former Director of NID, in the late 1990s. Even then he was talking about the Ahmedabad declaration on design (1979), and need for a national design policy. But it has taken such a long time even to get the design policy in place. Some of the new events started by Dr. Koshy like the CII-NID Design Summit, Businessworld-NID Design awards are valuable, but still a drop in the ocean. And the huge strides taken by other countries (I have some direct experience at least of the Korean efforts that Dr Koshy has documented in this book) show us up as very slow and fragmented. This story repeats itself in other domains as well. What a tragedy….

Employees First, Customers Second

Vineet Nayar's first-person account of the transformation of HCL Technologies certainly gives food for thought. While many companies talk about the importance of organizational knowledge and the need for managers to facilitate rather than control those who create value for customers, Vineet has explained the specific steps he took at HCLT to invert the pyramid. My favourites - posting the 360-degree feedback of the CEO on the intranet, and getting frontline associates to rate their managers on how they facilitate the customer value creation process. Vineet shows that companies can be run in a much more transparent manner without in any way diluting corporate performance; in fact, the greater openness can be a huge motivator for employees. This book is in the tradition of classics such as Ricardo Semler's Maverick, and is highly recommended.

The Professional

Subroto Bagchi’s new book The Professional is a useful addition to the universe of self-help books. Though a trifle preachy, its virtue is that it speaks direct and “as it is” without beating about the bush.
While the issues he has covered are quite comprehensive, there are a few points that I would add.
One important aspect of professionalism is respecting the work of others. I find in many organisations that technical people have a disdainful view of functions such as HR and Admin, and don’t realise or acknowledge that HR and Admin have an important role to play in providing the environment in which techies work. I am also amazed by the impolite way in which several of our “educated” and “professionally qualified” friends behave with people doing “manual” tasks. Some of the examples Subroto has given (Mahadeva, the customer service person in the Japanese store) hint at this, but I would have preferred a more direct reference.
Another important dimension is acknowledging the contribution of others. Many times, in a team context, the leader takes the credit for things that have been accomplished without acknowledging the contribution of his or her team. I would consider that distinctly unprofessional behaviour. A related issue is free-riding - for example, in R&D teams, many times the team leader’s name is routinely appended to all disclosures, patent applications, or papers written even though s/he may have made no identifiable contribution to the intellectual property created.
As a professional, one should value the professional contribution of others. I had an interesting experience a couple of years ago. I had given a talk on Strategic Management of Intellectual Property at a CII event. Shortly thereafter, a manager from the Bangalore R&D Centre of a leading MNC technology company came and invited me to give a similar talk as part of his company lecture series. I told him that I would be happy to, but also suggested that there should be a professional fee in return for the talk. I explained to him that in the same way that they would expect their knowledge to be paid for by their internal or external customers, it was only fair that they pay me in return for accessing my knowledge. I also told him that I would not negotiate on the quantum of money, but I was more interested in the principle involved. Being new to the company, he was not sure of the company’s policy, so he agreed to discuss this with his boss and get back. I was really amazed when he got back and told me that in the past they had not been paying academics for giving talks and that it would be difficult to change the “policy.”
Responding to calls/letters/emails is another area in which professionalism is lacking in India. While there is no doubt that a senior corporate executive would receive a number of unsolicited communications each day, and it may be physically impossible for him to personally respond to all of them, what surprises me is that most of them don’t have a system to deal with such communications.
On the subject of integrity, I am really glad that Subroto has emphasised the importance of having a clear Integrity Policy and walking the talk. A few years ago, a colleague (Prof Manohar Reddy) and I conducted a survey of the ethical attitudes of our students. While all such surveys have their limitations because of their dependence on self-reported responses, we found a consistent pattern over a few years. About 20% of our students see themselves as “aggressively ethical” – i.e. they would stand by their values and beliefs, and what is right, under any circumstances. At the other end of the spectrum, about 10% are totally ends-driven – they will do whatever it takes, including actions that would be considered unethical by others, to achieve their own goals. The interesting group is the big 70% in the middle. They will be shaped by their environment, go with the “hawa” and what the organisation says. This is the reason why a clear corporate code and integrity policy is so important.