Why Leadership-Development Programs Often Fails?

By M H AHSSAN | INNLIVE

Side stepping four common mistakes can help companies develop stronger and more capable leaders, save time and money, and boost morale.

For years, organizations have lavished time and money on improving the capabilities of managers and on nurturing new leaders. US companies alone spend almost $14 billion annually on leadership development. Colleges and universities offer hundreds of degree courses on leadership, and the cost of customized leadership-development offerings from a top business school can reach $150,000 a person.

Weekend Tadka: How Modi Fell Into RaGa's Political Trap?

"This is a suit-boot-ki-sarkar", said one Rahul, the Congress Dynast. "This is not the Modi government", said another Rahul, a patriarch of the Bajaj Auto group. The two statements are pregnant with meaning. The Dynast's meaning was to suggest that Narendra Modi's government favours crony businessmen. Rahul Bajaj’s quip was intended to suggest that Modi was not proving to be the friend of business that he was thought to be.

All the current problems faced by Modi – the parliamentary gridlock, failure to pass key legislation, the lack of new energy in the economy, and growing business disillusionment with him - can best be explained by the wide gulf between the statements of the two Rahuls.

'Heritage Fresh' Targets A Whopping Turnover of 1k Crores

SPONSORED: Heritage’s milk products have market presence in Andhra Pradesh,Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharastra, Odisha and Delhi and its retail stores across Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. Integrated agri operations are in Chittoor and Medak Districts and these are backbone to retail operations and the state of art Bakery division at Uppal, Hyderabad, Telangana.

From dairy, agri and bakery to a chain of 80 food and grocery retail stores, the Heritage Group has diversified business operations. Jagdish Krishnan, COO, Heritage Retail and Bakery Divisions, talks about their food and grocery retail arm Heritage Fresh and it’s strong brand positioning and ongoing expansion, with INNLIVE. Here are the edited excerpts:

The Business Of Progress

Top corporate houses have made major contributions to India’s growth.

Legends and Legacies is a pet project for me — and it’s a personal venture, not connected with the long term business plans of the Kinetic group or the Firodia family. I am deeply passionate about India and Indian business. The show highlights great contributions made by some of the country’s legendary business houses over the last four-to-five decades. This show is not about money, power and greed, this one attempts to chart out their journey and the different ways in which they have helped shape India’s future. For example, had the seven foresighted partners of Infosys not staked everything they had for a dream — putting India on the world software map — would the Indian IT industry have scaled such remarkable heights? For me, the Infosys dream and the way the company has been shaped is a unique, classy effort. Again, had it not been for the Mahindras, the Bajajs, the Firodias and the Munjals, would the Indian auto industry be where it is today? 

If we paused to consider the contribution of the Tatas, Birlas or the Godrej family to India’s progress, we’d know what a major role these jewels of corporate India have played in the development of post-Independence India. I wish to talk about these families, I wish to talk about their growth charts which, in turn, have helped the nation grow.

After some very, very, intensive discussions with these legends, I found that it was their strong value system that had guided their approach to business. Read about them and you will find that most of them started out with few resources and a very difficult economic environment: all they had was their dream to take India ahead. Can I give you our own example? The Firodia family entered business with the objective of making millions of Indians mobile and our auto industry self-reliant.

I was always curious to learn about the values that have shaped the fortunes of other leading Indian corporate houses. It was this curiosity, and the desire to present and archive the hard work and triumphs of Indian business, that motivated me to take up this project. It is a rare experience interviewing such personalities, learning from their untold journeys, and recounting their success stories for the benefit of other aspiring business people.

In many ways, Legends and Legacies is a landmark concept. Most business shows focus on products, services, profits and losses and the future plans of business houses. But mine is more about their value systems and the secrets of success; their past, present and future plans. I have also tried to get the perspectives of other stake holders too. For example, in the Infosys episode, Sudha Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and other partners of Infosys share their experiences — making it lively, interactive and multifaceted. They share their growth story and how they continue to remain rooted to some very basic values of life.

I am used to being on the other side — being interviewed. It’s different being a host. The format is designed so that it remains informal throughout. The show could later translate into an unique coffee table book on Indian business legends and the way they interface with the country’s common people. It is time the world reads about them.

Etiquette: Fostering business relationships

By M H Ahssan

Sound business relationships are a key pillar for business success, particularly in these turbulent economic times. While developing relationships requires immaculate planning, preserving them requires a Herculean effort. Here are a few guidelines to help you foster important business relationships :

Honesty: In business , being truthful isn’t easy, especially if you have to give or receive negative feedback . However, honesty promotes trust, a critical element for future business relationships.

Compassion/ Generosity: With the stakes being so high, it’s tough to be compassionate. Being generous can be tricky too, as you risk being taken advantage of. Yet, displaying both compassion and generosity wins fundamental, sustainable respect.

Using Power Words: I would rate “Please” and “Thank you” as the most powerful business words. Use them liberally in all your business interactions – with your colleagues, peers, clients, seniors and juniors alike.

Punctuality: With businesses becoming 24 x 7, we operate with constantly crammed work schedules . Yet, being late makes you appear unprofessional and displays lack of respect for others. Avoid packing in that “one last call” , before running into your meeting.

Staying Connected: Talking is the context in which all business is conducted. While emails benefit by being non-intrusive , phone calls are more personal and face-to-face meetings most effective. Use a healthy blend of all the three in your interactions .

Own up: By taking ownership for your work, you automatically accept responsibility for your mistakes. Accept the fact that “to err is human” . Acknowledging a mistake, apologising for it and providing a solution go a long way.

Learn by Asking: Asking relevant questions shows genuine interest and improves your ability to understand business situations better.

Lastly, learn to say “No” : At times, you may be asked to do things beyond your expertise and it’s best to say a polite “no” . Aligning your business partner’s expectations with your own capabilities helps bring focus and takes care of future problems.

Global powerhouses made in India

By M H Ahssan

The transformation of Indian companies from domestic to global players occurred in three phases. Pre-reform, prior 1991, Indian business was in shackles. The post-1991 economic reform necessitated decade-long corporate restructuring to make companies globally competitive. Now, in the third phase, Indian companies are increasingly going global.

Pre-1991, large Indian business houses were prone to stay at home in the sheltered domestic market. The institutional environment of licensing and limited competition led to domestic success without developing the unique competencies, the resources, or the viable scale necessary for competitive advantage in international markets.

Post-1991, Indian companies realised that the traditional Indian business model appropriate for ‘‘sheltered firms’’ had to be abandoned. The decade-long Indian corporate restructuring programme had four essential elements: cleaning the balance sheet, improving competitiveness, focusing on core businesses, and strengthening management. To a great extent, the promoter determined the degree to which the painful restructuring medicine was adopted. Some business groups and companies were rather aggressive in changing the old ways. Other business groups suffered from poor leadership and the family splitting of assets. As a result, some renowned family business houses witnessed unprecedented decline in the 1990s.

In that decade, dominant domestic leaders increasingly looked to become global but they had to overcome the mindset barrier. ‘‘We asked ourselves: Why don’t we become one of India’s MNCs in manufacturing? By doing so we will have better access to the market, better access to knowledge, better access to new developments,’’ explained Baba Kalyani of Bharat Forge. Nevertheless, it took Bharat Forge seven years to find its first customer because coming from a so-called underdeveloped, low-cost country, the company had to battle all kinds of doubts regarding its capability. The Bharat Forge experience raised three issues about overcoming the mindset barrier that comes up repeatedly in Indian companies’ global quest: making a leap of faith, persistence in the face of initial setbacks and overcoming the liabilities of the ‘Made in India’ origin.

For an Indian company to go global requires, at some level, a leap of faith into the unknown. In the face of scepticism, the entrepreneur or owner made the decision to go for it despite, what to unbiased observers, may have seemed like long odds. Anand Mahindra mentioned that while pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School, he was disappointed that there were no case studies or examples of Indian global brands. It fired his ambition and led him to decide that when he took over the family business, Mahindra would be a global brand.

Becoming global is a learning game. There are initial setbacks and in light of a growing and profitable domestic business, it would have been easy to retreat from global markets. Yet, they persevered and learned from their mistakes. The initial hotels acquired in the 1980s by the Taj Group in cities such as Chicago, New York, and London were B-level properties. But they were what the Taj Group could afford given the foreign exchange limitations the government placed. Taj realised that its competence was in the running of five-star hotels. Later, when it became serious about its international operations in developed markets, it shed all the initial acquisitions and acquired prestigious hotels such as the Ritz Carlton in Boston and Blue Sydney in Australia. What made Taj persevere? R K Krishna Kumar, vice-chairman of Taj Hotels, said: ‘‘The Tata Group has always recognised that the world marketplace is not divisible ... There’s a strategic compulsion to go outside India for many of our businesses because we believe the global market is one marketplace.’’

Until the late 1990s before the IT outsourcing boom, the image of India was detrimental to Indian business. At its worst, India was identified with abject poverty. It was extremely difficult to convince global customers that an Indian supplier could be a reliable source of good-quality products made by a technologically sophisticated company. Imagine an Indian executive a decade ago trying to persuade Procter & Gamble that Essel Propack should be its supplier in the United States.

Indian entrepreneurs learned that in competitive global markets there was always another supplier willing to match the Indian firm’s low prices. To obtain the order required more than that: demonstrating they had the world-class capabilities (assets, processes and knowledge) to compete in international markets.

Going global also requires a dominant lever. Companies such as Infosys and i-Flex Solutions were born global because they understood that India’s huge human capital advantage needed global fulfillment. The IT sectors were instrumental in sparking the imagination of Indian entrepreneurs to seek ‘born global’ business models that exploit India’s large pools of reasonably priced skilled workers.

A transformational merger is a frequently employed strategy to become a global firm. Hindalco did exactly that with its 2007 acquisition of Novelis, a world leader in aluminum rolling and can recycling. Several other Indian firms, such as Arcelor Mittal, Tata Tea and United Breweries, have also used acquisitions as a path to globalisation.

Other companies, such as Tata Motors, Godrej, and Marico, have utilised the specific product competencies developed for India to enter other emerging markets. Given India’s size, domestic leadership often confers global scale, as seen at both Mahindra & Mahindra and VIP. As Anand Mahindra observed, ‘‘India is the largest tractor market in the world, and if you are the largest tractor maker in India, it is a disservice to India if you are not a global force.’’

Digital Trends For Businesses In 2021

2020 was a rough year for sure, and we couldn’t have been more eager to bid our farewell to it. However, we can't help but think of the changes the year 2020 made in our personal and professional lives. All businesses have evolved to ensure that they can survive the financial blow that the 2020 pandemic caused them. Businesses have adjusted themselves for the upcoming 2021 fiscal year to crunch out the profits. You need to look at your business's future, and you need to grab the latest technology and implement it in your business for faster adaptation. Today, we are discussing some of the latest trends for small businesses in 2021. One must implement these measures to get higher profit margins along with the opportunity of expanding their business in new territories.

1. Keep Your Business Active On Social Media

During the global lockdown, businesses were only able to interact with their customers through the internet. As we moved to another year, we can still see social media as a more considerable influence for big brands and small businesses. There will be a significant push towards creating authentic content for social media, which is specifically curated for the audience. Along with this, businesses need to collaborate with the micro-influencers of their niche. Those who drive the conversation of the same niche.

2. Do Not Be Afraid Of Trying Something New

If you are a small business, you are indeed looking for something light and agile. But once your business picks up speed, there will be a lot on your plate every day. 2020 took a lot of businesses to test unknown territories, leaving no option for a company to stay on a familiar ground on which they used to work in the past. Adapting to the recent changes has now become an essential part of the business cycle. This resulted in small business owners being more creative and inventing new ways to cover their losses. 2020 brought forced restructuring with it, but now companies are taking it as a blessing as the changes have brought benefits outside the pandemic situation.

3. Data Is Your Biggest Asset

From the last decade, we can confirm that data volume will be increasing from 2021 to 2030 as more and more people are getting connected to the world through the internet. Businesses need to leverage the data to understand how their customers react and interact with their services. In addition to this, it improves the company's decision-making, helping it to stand out from the rest of the competition.

4. Focus Your Shift To Online

If you are not doing it right now, you might have to do it in the coming years. In 2021, businesses are trying to connect with their online customers to increase online sales. For companies looking for a change in their marketing, this is the best time to keep an extra budget for online marketing. While staying at home, we have already seen how humans can still do almost everything that they desire, and companies are working tirelessly to make this transition as smooth as possible. When you have an online presence, you have a place on the web where you can direct people to learn more about what you do and what type of services you offer. On the other hand, taking your business online will expand your customer base, which every business owner dreams of achieving.

Conclusion In 2021, you need to adapt your business to meet people's heightened demand to find useful information, so it will make things easier for customers to make purchases and be able to work with other businesses. #KhabarLive #hydnews

SUDIPTA SEN, INDIA'S STUPIDEST BUSINESSMAN

Saradha Chit Fund Supremo, Sudipta Sen in CBI custody

By M H Ahssan / Kolkata

In his letter to the CBI, Sudipta Sen portray himself as the honest man whose business was pecked to death by political and commercial vultures. But he merely comes across as a man who was as incompetent as he was crooked.

The things that go on at the shadowy intersection of business and politics aren’t edifying to either business or politics. Politicians with greasy palms look to milk moneybags for everything they can get away with, and even if businessmen resent being gouged thus – and there isn’t any evidence of that – they perhaps see it as the price of doing business in India, and pass on the corruption costs to their customers. It’s a cosy ecosystem in which crony capitalism thrives.

AIG's Nine 'Master Tips' To Ensure Business Travel Safety

SPONSORED: Today, enterprise knows no geographic boundaries. But as businesses move into emerging economies in pursuit of new markets, they are often entering unfamiliar territory, and their workers could be at higher risk for accidents. 

Both employers and employees need to appropriately protect themselves to mitigate those risks, whether large or small. To help reduce the likelihood of an incident, below is a nine-point checklist for business travelers.

Exclusive: Is MBA Degree WorthFul In Present Scenario?

In a preswent scenario do you think the MBA degree is worthful? No, etall. Many kept ide, jobless, unemployed, just serving as a primary school teacher, sales executive who sells door to door books, kitchenware, clothes and real estate bookings. This is the value of many MBAs not only in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and other parts of India too. No value to this degree. Just to get it and keep it to add value for your biodata. INNLIVE explores the plight of unemployed MBAs.

The Secret: How To Become A Fortune 500 Top CEO?

By Steve Tappin (Guest Writer)

Being a Fortune 500 CEO is a privilege and one of the amazing jobs you could ever wish for. It’s also one of the hardest to get, and even harder to do well. Fans of the movie ‘Top Gun’ will remember that only 1 in 100 makes it as an elite naval fighter pilot. In the corporate world, those odds shrink to 1 in 100,000 in major company.

If you want it for the money, prestige and the power, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons and will probably not make it. If the ambition is too much around you, then it’s hard to bring an organization with you.

Bharti Group's Sunil Bharti Mittal on Lessons of Entrepreneurship and Leadership

By M H Ahssan

When Sunil Bharti Mittal started in business more than 30 years ago in Ludhiana in Northern India, he borrowed $1,500 to make bicycle crankshafts. Today, he heads the $5 billion Bharti Group, whose flagship company, Bharti Airtel, is India's largest mobile phone operator. Forbes magazine, which estimates Mittal's net worth at some $11 billion, ranks him among Asia's self-made billionaires. Mittal spoke with HNN in an informal meeting, explored on the leadership and entrepreneurial lessons he has learned during his career. Among them: When faced with a choice between perfection and speed, choose speed; perfection will follow.

HNN: You started in business in 1976 at age 18, with $1,500 that you borrowed from your father. I believe your first business was making bicycle crankshafts. Could you tell us about your earliest entrepreneurial experiences and what you learned from them?

Mittal: I was raised in Ludhiana, a very industrious town, where almost everybody is an entrepreneur of some kind. It is the bedrock of small-scale industry, the principal industries being cycles or cycle parts, hosiery, or yarn to make knitwear, and light engineering items. Coming out of college with a small amount of capital, one could only do what was allowed in the ecosystem there. I decided to manufacture bicycle parts, in particular crankshafts. It was a hot forging unit that I put up, and that's where I cut my teeth on business.

HNN: You moved to Bombay in 1980. At that time, your business plans were a little more ambitious. Could you tell us a little bit more about your business ventures at that time?

Mittal: I realized that one could probably make some modest success out of what I started to do in bicycle parts, but there was a limitation. At the end of the day, the manufacturers of bicycles decided how much -- at what price you could supply to them. And just making shafts wouldn't have made you a player of any size or scale.

So, it was very clear that I had to get out of Ludhiana into a much bigger place, Delhi or Mumbai -- Bombay at that time. And I spent about two, three years in Bombay importing a variety of products -- steel, brass, zinc, zip fasteners, plastics -- and eventually bought India's first portable generator. And that was the first turning point in my career.

HNN: Was that the venture with Suzuki?

Mittal: Yes, that venture was with Suzuki. That's how I got in touch with the Japanese, spent two to three years with them, learning their techniques and practices. I internationalized my concepts, learned the art of diplomacy in international trade. I would say that was the period which gave me opportunities, on the one hand, to make some significantly higher amounts of money than I could have done in cycle trade. More importantly, it gave me independence and experience in marketing, brands, international trade. That held me in good stead later on.

HNN: What were the main lessons you learned at that point in your career?

Mittal: I think, two or three things. I realized very early on that you need to tie up with some large entities -- much, much larger than yourself. From there on, we set up a string of partnerships, and they were all with very large companies, multi-billion dollar corporations: Suzuki, AT&T, Siemens, Lucky Gold Star (now LG). Suzuki Motor Company was there, of course. We also partnered with British Telecom and Telecom Italia.

So, that is the course I followed: Tie up with large companies. It's easy to say, but large companies intuitively don't ally with small companies or entrepreneurs. So, one had to persuade these large companies, assure them that they needed to be in the Indian market. We also had to convince them that we had a high governance structure despite being a small company, and give them the comfort to join hands with us to exploit and come into the Indian market together.

HNN: How did you enter the phone business?

Mittal: That, I would say, was happenstance. In fact, you could call it an accident, because the government banned the import of generators. One fine day, there was no business. All the business that I had developed was gone. My beat was Japan, Korea, Taiwan. I went back into those areas looking for a new product. And one of the theories that I'd built around my entrepreneurship was to do things that have not been done before. Because if you are competing with the big boys in areas where they are strong, there's no chance for you to succeed. My quest to look for the next big breakthrough product -- which also didn't need too much capital -- was met in Taiwan at a trade fair when I saw push-button telephones. I brought India's first telephone set replacing the rotary phone.

That became a huge success, and my romance with telecom started thereafter. So, it went onto cordless phones, answering machines, fax machines, and then India's first mobile phone.

HNN: India in those days was such a highly regulated market, and an especially challenging environment for somebody who wanted to be innovative. How did you navigate your way around those currents?

Mittal: Tough, but as an entrepreneur you get trained on everything. You understand import policy, you know how customs work, you know excise laws. You practically learn to do everything yourself. You hit roadblocks, you have difficulties. I had to open my own LLC, take my own consignment, taking the material on trucks myself to the market.

An entrepreneur gets a huge amount of experience. Then, you also know how to deal and move into the system. And the good news is that my excellence in the entrepreneurial area truly started happening alongside the breaking down of these barriers. The more the barriers dropped, the more we surged. So, 1992, in that sense, was the turning point, when the Narasimha Rao government along with now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- then finance minister -- decided to open up, [and] about 10 to 20 of us young entrepreneurs really moved in. Each one of us has created a fantastic business out of that.

HNN: In concrete terms, how did the business environment change so that it allowed this entrepreneurial surge to happen?

Mittal: Take the case of telephone manufacturing. The government completely regulated what you could import, what you could not import, how much you could manufacture. I got my first industry license to make cordless telephones; it had a limit of Rs. 2 crores of sales. I mean, it's ridiculous when you go back -- half a million dollars today. You could not manufacture more than two crores of sales. Now, if you see that number, what does it mean? Sub-scale operations, [a] small, tiny factory, and you don't manufacture telecom products like that. It's not a small-scale factory that you can put up. Suddenly, one day, the government said, "No licenses required." From controlling what you could do [snaps fingers] it was gone in one day. That, to my mind, was the first time the entrepreneurial energies were released into a more constructive arena of marketing, branding, doing the right things.

HNN: In just about 10 years, you have built Bharti into India's largest mobile phone operator. How did that come about? What are some of the main lessons you learned from your experience that could be helpful to other entrepreneurs?

Mittal: I think, very clearly, we could have never claimed that we had more capital or better technologies, because everybody was buying the same technologies; GSM is a set standard. We couldn't claim that we had massive brand or distinguishing strength in the market. The only thing that we needed on our side was speed, and we used that to great effect.

We were in the market ahead of competition. We brought new products on the market ahead of competition. We rolled out our networks. We begged, borrowed, stole, put things out. And while they were never near perfect, they were first. And that gave us, to my mind, a lot of advantage.

Our theory was: If you're caught between speed and perfection, always choose speed, and perfection will follow. You never wait for perfect positioning, because in business you don't have the time; especially if you're small, you can't do it.

And the large companies took their own time. They were months behind us, and that made us pick up a market niche for ourselves, which in turn made us big.

HNN: How did you position yourself against your competitors? Was your strategy based entirely on speed, or did you also have other tactics?

Mittal: No. I think one thing was that we were very, very passionate about our business. This was the only business we were doing. Other competitors had other businesses and this was one of the new businesses they were starting. Speed, new products into the market, close to the customer, knowing what the customer wants -- I think we lived that whole space ourselves, day in and day out. And that made all the difference.

HNN: How do you see Bharti's future in the mobile industry? I know you tried recently to merge with MTN in South Africa, but that merger didn't work out. What were your strategic goals for that merger, and what else might you be considering for the future?

Mittal: We believe that while India is not done in so far as rolling out networks, the process is done. We'll keep on adding two and half or three million customers a month until we get to a point where India has seven or eight million customers, management teams are in place, brand is very strong, distribution is in place, the company has no debt.

So, India is done. Now, what does the senior management team do? You have to create new opportunities of growth. And they lie in other emerging markets -- therefore Africa, the Middle East. And we have today a business model which is the best business model in the world -- the lowest costs with the highest quality.

And I think that model is ready to go out. So, we would like -- whenever we get an opportunity like MTN -- to seriously attempt to put some assets together.

HNN: Would you look for partners in other parts of the world?

Mittal: Well, we keep on getting shown opportunities around the globe, and we remain open.

HNN: Let's turn now to the retail industry, where you have a partnership with Wal-Mart. Help me understand how you evaluated the retail opportunity and what your thought process was in making the decisions you did.

Mittal: We wanted to do something more in India. As we grow telecom outside of India, I think there are opportunities in India. And one of them, we felt, was in the area of retail. India's retail needs to get organized, and it will one day. It may take its own time, and everything in India does take time, but we will organize the retail to a point where $400 billion will come through organized retail stores.

We had opportunities to tie up with Carrefour, Tesco and Wal-Mart. And in fact, we were almost in the signing stages with Tesco when the Wal-Mart meetings started to happen and we liked the store model, we liked the same low-cost delivery mechanism, the values of Sam Walton. So, I would say that we are very, very pleased to venture into this area.

It has its own issues. Like telecom, this has resistances built in. There are barriers, there are issues. And we enjoy properly dealing with these issues.

HNN: Speed was the hallmark of you experience in the mobile industry, but of course the retail market is very, very different. How do you deal with those challenges?

Mittal: It's frustrating. I must confess that it's going much slower than what we originally thought. Speed is still what we like, but this is now a large company. We have a tie up with a large company. They believe that you need to tie up a lot of loose ends before you launch yourself.

The first three stores that have opened up with the assistance of Wal-Mart demonstrate that planning does make a difference. So, we are spending a lot of time planning; it's not wasted time. The supply chain is being built. The first distribution center has come up. The three stores are having in-fill rates of 95%. And they're having sales per square foot of 30% to 40% higher than the other top two or three operators in the country.

So, the start is good. It is surely slow. But, I think you'll start seeing some action fairly soon.

HNN: Are any political changes needed to make that happen?

Mittal: FDI must be allowed. We would rather have Wal-Mart right in there with equity rather than providing franchise support from the outside. So, we would like FDI to open up.

HNN: You have been quoted as saying that India needs a "football revolution." How exactly would that come about?

Mittal: It's a shame, and it in some sense saddens my heart that a country like India does not have any representation in world soccer. It's a sport which is watched by the largest amount of people in the world -- we're talking about hundreds of millions of people, topping over a billion people who watch soccer.

HNN: Did you play soccer growing up?

Mittal: No, we played everything else that kids in middle-class families do. I won't say football was my main sport, but it is for one of my sons. Both my sons play. My nephews play. And my son plays fairly competitive football. I enjoy watching it with them.

It's also, to my mind, a sport which can create a revolution of sorts in a country like India, very soon. One ball, one open field, a few kids, and it starts off. There are no expensive kits or equipment required to support this game.

And I also believe that India had a football base earlier on. In 1950, they were in the World Cup. They could not play because they didn't have shoes. They refused to wear shoes and they couldn't play. That was the last time India reached that point.

I see no harm in giving it one serious shot -- of carrying an Indian team into a 20-year team. I personally believe we can do it. Ten years is good time for us to plan.

HNN: Cricket has received quite a shot in the arm with the formation of the Indian Professional League. Is that in the cards for football?

Mittal: Yes, India is a cricketing nation. It's a cricket-mad nation. I think we need an alternative sport. We need something else to offset cricket. Will football have its own premier league? It will, certainly. In fact, the IPL (Indian Premier League) is a copy of the English Premier League. And that's the fundamental basis of football.

And yes, we will see something along those lines. It'll take a long time for people to switch from cricket to football, but younger people are watching a lot of international soccer. There is going to be the European Cup in Austria a few days from now. And you can see already some fever building up in India. The timing is right.

HNN: In all the years that you have been an entrepreneur, what is the single biggest leadership challenge that you have faced? How did you deal with it and what did you learn from it?

Mittal: It's hard to put down, in a single event, what would be the hardest decision. But, I would say bidding for a mobile license -- against all odds -- in 1992, when I was a rank outsider. I think the total sales were about $5 million in all, and going and bidding for a mobile license was tough.

But, we persevered, we went into it against the might of the biggest of the biggest in the country and in the world. And we ended up getting a license. More importantly, not only a license -- we rolled out India's first network and have now become India's largest.

So, that starting point of having, in a sense, defied the logic of, "This is only for the big boys. You need deep pockets. Don't even look at this." That defiance of the conventional wisdom, to my mind, was very important -- and being determined to challenge that thought that you can't do it as a young entrepreneur.

Bharti Group's Sunil Bharti Mittal on Lessons of Entrepreneurship and Leadership

By M H Ahssan

When Sunil Bharti Mittal started in business more than 30 years ago in Ludhiana in Northern India, he borrowed $1,500 to make bicycle crankshafts. Today, he heads the $5 billion Bharti Group, whose flagship company, Bharti Airtel, is India's largest mobile phone operator. Forbes magazine, which estimates Mittal's net worth at some $11 billion, ranks him among Asia's self-made billionaires. Mittal spoke with HNN in an informal meeting, explored on the leadership and entrepreneurial lessons he has learned during his career. Among them: When faced with a choice between perfection and speed, choose speed; perfection will follow.

HNN: You started in business in 1976 at age 18, with $1,500 that you borrowed from your father. I believe your first business was making bicycle crankshafts. Could you tell us about your earliest entrepreneurial experiences and what you learned from them?

Mittal: I was raised in Ludhiana, a very industrious town, where almost everybody is an entrepreneur of some kind. It is the bedrock of small-scale industry, the principal industries being cycles or cycle parts, hosiery, or yarn to make knitwear, and light engineering items. Coming out of college with a small amount of capital, one could only do what was allowed in the ecosystem there. I decided to manufacture bicycle parts, in particular crankshafts. It was a hot forging unit that I put up, and that's where I cut my teeth on business.

HNN: You moved to Bombay in 1980. At that time, your business plans were a little more ambitious. Could you tell us a little bit more about your business ventures at that time?

Mittal: I realized that one could probably make some modest success out of what I started to do in bicycle parts, but there was a limitation. At the end of the day, the manufacturers of bicycles decided how much -- at what price you could supply to them. And just making shafts wouldn't have made you a player of any size or scale.

So, it was very clear that I had to get out of Ludhiana into a much bigger place, Delhi or Mumbai -- Bombay at that time. And I spent about two, three years in Bombay importing a variety of products -- steel, brass, zinc, zip fasteners, plastics -- and eventually bought India's first portable generator. And that was the first turning point in my career.

HNN: Was that the venture with Suzuki?

Mittal: Yes, that venture was with Suzuki. That's how I got in touch with the Japanese, spent two to three years with them, learning their techniques and practices. I internationalized my concepts, learned the art of diplomacy in international trade. I would say that was the period which gave me opportunities, on the one hand, to make some significantly higher amounts of money than I could have done in cycle trade. More importantly, it gave me independence and experience in marketing, brands, international trade. That held me in good stead later on.

HNN: What were the main lessons you learned at that point in your career?

Mittal: I think, two or three things. I realized very early on that you need to tie up with some large entities -- much, much larger than yourself. From there on, we set up a string of partnerships, and they were all with very large companies, multi-billion dollar corporations: Suzuki, AT&T, Siemens, Lucky Gold Star (now LG). Suzuki Motor Company was there, of course. We also partnered with British Telecom and Telecom Italia.

So, that is the course I followed: Tie up with large companies. It's easy to say, but large companies intuitively don't ally with small companies or entrepreneurs. So, one had to persuade these large companies, assure them that they needed to be in the Indian market. We also had to convince them that we had a high governance structure despite being a small company, and give them the comfort to join hands with us to exploit and come into the Indian market together.

HNN: How did you enter the phone business?

Mittal: That, I would say, was happenstance. In fact, you could call it an accident, because the government banned the import of generators. One fine day, there was no business. All the business that I had developed was gone. My beat was Japan, Korea, Taiwan. I went back into those areas looking for a new product. And one of the theories that I'd built around my entrepreneurship was to do things that have not been done before. Because if you are competing with the big boys in areas where they are strong, there's no chance for you to succeed. My quest to look for the next big breakthrough product -- which also didn't need too much capital -- was met in Taiwan at a trade fair when I saw push-button telephones. I brought India's first telephone set replacing the rotary phone.

That became a huge success, and my romance with telecom started thereafter. So, it went onto cordless phones, answering machines, fax machines, and then India's first mobile phone.

HNN: India in those days was such a highly regulated market, and an especially challenging environment for somebody who wanted to be innovative. How did you navigate your way around those currents?

Mittal: Tough, but as an entrepreneur you get trained on everything. You understand import policy, you know how customs work, you know excise laws. You practically learn to do everything yourself. You hit roadblocks, you have difficulties. I had to open my own LLC, take my own consignment, taking the material on trucks myself to the market.

An entrepreneur gets a huge amount of experience. Then, you also know how to deal and move into the system. And the good news is that my excellence in the entrepreneurial area truly started happening alongside the breaking down of these barriers. The more the barriers dropped, the more we surged. So, 1992, in that sense, was the turning point, when the Narasimha Rao government along with now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- then finance minister -- decided to open up, [and] about 10 to 20 of us young entrepreneurs really moved in. Each one of us has created a fantastic business out of that.

HNN: In concrete terms, how did the business environment change so that it allowed this entrepreneurial surge to happen?

Mittal: Take the case of telephone manufacturing. The government completely regulated what you could import, what you could not import, how much you could manufacture. I got my first industry license to make cordless telephones; it had a limit of Rs. 2 crores of sales. I mean, it's ridiculous when you go back -- half a million dollars today. You could not manufacture more than two crores of sales. Now, if you see that number, what does it mean? Sub-scale operations, [a] small, tiny factory, and you don't manufacture telecom products like that. It's not a small-scale factory that you can put up. Suddenly, one day, the government said, "No licenses required." From controlling what you could do [snaps fingers] it was gone in one day. That, to my mind, was the first time the entrepreneurial energies were released into a more constructive arena of marketing, branding, doing the right things.

HNN: In just about 10 years, you have built Bharti into India's largest mobile phone operator. How did that come about? What are some of the main lessons you learned from your experience that could be helpful to other entrepreneurs?

Mittal: I think, very clearly, we could have never claimed that we had more capital or better technologies, because everybody was buying the same technologies; GSM is a set standard. We couldn't claim that we had massive brand or distinguishing strength in the market. The only thing that we needed on our side was speed, and we used that to great effect.

We were in the market ahead of competition. We brought new products on the market ahead of competition. We rolled out our networks. We begged, borrowed, stole, put things out. And while they were never near perfect, they were first. And that gave us, to my mind, a lot of advantage.

Our theory was: If you're caught between speed and perfection, always choose speed, and perfection will follow. You never wait for perfect positioning, because in business you don't have the time; especially if you're small, you can't do it.

And the large companies took their own time. They were months behind us, and that made us pick up a market niche for ourselves, which in turn made us big.

HNN: How did you position yourself against your competitors? Was your strategy based entirely on speed, or did you also have other tactics?

Mittal: No. I think one thing was that we were very, very passionate about our business. This was the only business we were doing. Other competitors had other businesses and this was one of the new businesses they were starting. Speed, new products into the market, close to the customer, knowing what the customer wants -- I think we lived that whole space ourselves, day in and day out. And that made all the difference.

HNN: How do you see Bharti's future in the mobile industry? I know you tried recently to merge with MTN in South Africa, but that merger didn't work out. What were your strategic goals for that merger, and what else might you be considering for the future?

Mittal: We believe that while India is not done in so far as rolling out networks, the process is done. We'll keep on adding two and half or three million customers a month until we get to a point where India has seven or eight million customers, management teams are in place, brand is very strong, distribution is in place, the company has no debt.

So, India is done. Now, what does the senior management team do? You have to create new opportunities of growth. And they lie in other emerging markets -- therefore Africa, the Middle East. And we have today a business model which is the best business model in the world -- the lowest costs with the highest quality.

And I think that model is ready to go out. So, we would like -- whenever we get an opportunity like MTN -- to seriously attempt to put some assets together.

HNN: Would you look for partners in other parts of the world?

Mittal: Well, we keep on getting shown opportunities around the globe, and we remain open.

HNN: Let's turn now to the retail industry, where you have a partnership with Wal-Mart. Help me understand how you evaluated the retail opportunity and what your thought process was in making the decisions you did.

Mittal: We wanted to do something more in India. As we grow telecom outside of India, I think there are opportunities in India. And one of them, we felt, was in the area of retail. India's retail needs to get organized, and it will one day. It may take its own time, and everything in India does take time, but we will organize the retail to a point where $400 billion will come through organized retail stores.

We had opportunities to tie up with Carrefour, Tesco and Wal-Mart. And in fact, we were almost in the signing stages with Tesco when the Wal-Mart meetings started to happen and we liked the store model, we liked the same low-cost delivery mechanism, the values of Sam Walton. So, I would say that we are very, very pleased to venture into this area.

It has its own issues. Like telecom, this has resistances built in. There are barriers, there are issues. And we enjoy properly dealing with these issues.

HNN: Speed was the hallmark of you experience in the mobile industry, but of course the retail market is very, very different. How do you deal with those challenges?

Mittal: It's frustrating. I must confess that it's going much slower than what we originally thought. Speed is still what we like, but this is now a large company. We have a tie up with a large company. They believe that you need to tie up a lot of loose ends before you launch yourself.

The first three stores that have opened up with the assistance of Wal-Mart demonstrate that planning does make a difference. So, we are spending a lot of time planning; it's not wasted time. The supply chain is being built. The first distribution center has come up. The three stores are having in-fill rates of 95%. And they're having sales per square foot of 30% to 40% higher than the other top two or three operators in the country.

So, the start is good. It is surely slow. But, I think you'll start seeing some action fairly soon.

HNN: Are any political changes needed to make that happen?

Mittal: FDI must be allowed. We would rather have Wal-Mart right in there with equity rather than providing franchise support from the outside. So, we would like FDI to open up.

HNN: You have been quoted as saying that India needs a "football revolution." How exactly would that come about?

Mittal: It's a shame, and it in some sense saddens my heart that a country like India does not have any representation in world soccer. It's a sport which is watched by the largest amount of people in the world -- we're talking about hundreds of millions of people, topping over a billion people who watch soccer.

HNN: Did you play soccer growing up?

Mittal: No, we played everything else that kids in middle-class families do. I won't say football was my main sport, but it is for one of my sons. Both my sons play. My nephews play. And my son plays fairly competitive football. I enjoy watching it with them.

It's also, to my mind, a sport which can create a revolution of sorts in a country like India, very soon. One ball, one open field, a few kids, and it starts off. There are no expensive kits or equipment required to support this game.

And I also believe that India had a football base earlier on. In 1950, they were in the World Cup. They could not play because they didn't have shoes. They refused to wear shoes and they couldn't play. That was the last time India reached that point.

I see no harm in giving it one serious shot -- of carrying an Indian team into a 20-year team. I personally believe we can do it. Ten years is good time for us to plan.

HNN: Cricket has received quite a shot in the arm with the formation of the Indian Professional League. Is that in the cards for football?

Mittal: Yes, India is a cricketing nation. It's a cricket-mad nation. I think we need an alternative sport. We need something else to offset cricket. Will football have its own premier league? It will, certainly. In fact, the IPL (Indian Premier League) is a copy of the English Premier League. And that's the fundamental basis of football.

And yes, we will see something along those lines. It'll take a long time for people to switch from cricket to football, but younger people are watching a lot of international soccer. There is going to be the European Cup in Austria a few days from now. And you can see already some fever building up in India. The timing is right.

HNN: In all the years that you have been an entrepreneur, what is the single biggest leadership challenge that you have faced? How did you deal with it and what did you learn from it?

Mittal: It's hard to put down, in a single event, what would be the hardest decision. But, I would say bidding for a mobile license -- against all odds -- in 1992, when I was a rank outsider. I think the total sales were about $5 million in all, and going and bidding for a mobile license was tough.

But, we persevered, we went into it against the might of the biggest of the biggest in the country and in the world. And we ended up getting a license. More importantly, not only a license -- we rolled out India's first network and have now become India's largest.

So, that starting point of having, in a sense, defied the logic of, "This is only for the big boys. You need deep pockets. Don't even look at this." That defiance of the conventional wisdom, to my mind, was very important -- and being determined to challenge that thought that you can't do it as a young entrepreneur.

Bharti Group's Sunil Bharti Mittal on Lessons of Entrepreneurship and Leadership

By M H Ahssan

When Sunil Bharti Mittal started in business more than 30 years ago in Ludhiana in Northern India, he borrowed $1,500 to make bicycle crankshafts. Today, he heads the $5 billion Bharti Group, whose flagship company, Bharti Airtel, is India's largest mobile phone operator. Forbes magazine, which estimates Mittal's net worth at some $11 billion, ranks him among Asia's self-made billionaires. Mittal spoke with HNN in an informal meeting, explored on the leadership and entrepreneurial lessons he has learned during his career. Among them: When faced with a choice between perfection and speed, choose speed; perfection will follow.

HNN: You started in business in 1976 at age 18, with $1,500 that you borrowed from your father. I believe your first business was making bicycle crankshafts. Could you tell us about your earliest entrepreneurial experiences and what you learned from them?

Mittal: I was raised in Ludhiana, a very industrious town, where almost everybody is an entrepreneur of some kind. It is the bedrock of small-scale industry, the principal industries being cycles or cycle parts, hosiery, or yarn to make knitwear, and light engineering items. Coming out of college with a small amount of capital, one could only do what was allowed in the ecosystem there. I decided to manufacture bicycle parts, in particular crankshafts. It was a hot forging unit that I put up, and that's where I cut my teeth on business.

HNN: You moved to Bombay in 1980. At that time, your business plans were a little more ambitious. Could you tell us a little bit more about your business ventures at that time?

Mittal: I realized that one could probably make some modest success out of what I started to do in bicycle parts, but there was a limitation. At the end of the day, the manufacturers of bicycles decided how much -- at what price you could supply to them. And just making shafts wouldn't have made you a player of any size or scale.

So, it was very clear that I had to get out of Ludhiana into a much bigger place, Delhi or Mumbai -- Bombay at that time. And I spent about two, three years in Bombay importing a variety of products -- steel, brass, zinc, zip fasteners, plastics -- and eventually bought India's first portable generator. And that was the first turning point in my career.

HNN: Was that the venture with Suzuki?

Mittal: Yes, that venture was with Suzuki. That's how I got in touch with the Japanese, spent two to three years with them, learning their techniques and practices. I internationalized my concepts, learned the art of diplomacy in international trade. I would say that was the period which gave me opportunities, on the one hand, to make some significantly higher amounts of money than I could have done in cycle trade. More importantly, it gave me independence and experience in marketing, brands, international trade. That held me in good stead later on.

HNN: What were the main lessons you learned at that point in your career?

Mittal: I think, two or three things. I realized very early on that you need to tie up with some large entities -- much, much larger than yourself. From there on, we set up a string of partnerships, and they were all with very large companies, multi-billion dollar corporations: Suzuki, AT&T, Siemens, Lucky Gold Star (now LG). Suzuki Motor Company was there, of course. We also partnered with British Telecom and Telecom Italia.

So, that is the course I followed: Tie up with large companies. It's easy to say, but large companies intuitively don't ally with small companies or entrepreneurs. So, one had to persuade these large companies, assure them that they needed to be in the Indian market. We also had to convince them that we had a high governance structure despite being a small company, and give them the comfort to join hands with us to exploit and come into the Indian market together.

HNN: How did you enter the phone business?

Mittal: That, I would say, was happenstance. In fact, you could call it an accident, because the government banned the import of generators. One fine day, there was no business. All the business that I had developed was gone. My beat was Japan, Korea, Taiwan. I went back into those areas looking for a new product. And one of the theories that I'd built around my entrepreneurship was to do things that have not been done before. Because if you are competing with the big boys in areas where they are strong, there's no chance for you to succeed. My quest to look for the next big breakthrough product -- which also didn't need too much capital -- was met in Taiwan at a trade fair when I saw push-button telephones. I brought India's first telephone set replacing the rotary phone.

That became a huge success, and my romance with telecom started thereafter. So, it went onto cordless phones, answering machines, fax machines, and then India's first mobile phone.

HNN: India in those days was such a highly regulated market, and an especially challenging environment for somebody who wanted to be innovative. How did you navigate your way around those currents?

Mittal: Tough, but as an entrepreneur you get trained on everything. You understand import policy, you know how customs work, you know excise laws. You practically learn to do everything yourself. You hit roadblocks, you have difficulties. I had to open my own LLC, take my own consignment, taking the material on trucks myself to the market.

An entrepreneur gets a huge amount of experience. Then, you also know how to deal and move into the system. And the good news is that my excellence in the entrepreneurial area truly started happening alongside the breaking down of these barriers. The more the barriers dropped, the more we surged. So, 1992, in that sense, was the turning point, when the Narasimha Rao government along with now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- then finance minister -- decided to open up, [and] about 10 to 20 of us young entrepreneurs really moved in. Each one of us has created a fantastic business out of that.

HNN: In concrete terms, how did the business environment change so that it allowed this entrepreneurial surge to happen?

Mittal: Take the case of telephone manufacturing. The government completely regulated what you could import, what you could not import, how much you could manufacture. I got my first industry license to make cordless telephones; it had a limit of Rs. 2 crores of sales. I mean, it's ridiculous when you go back -- half a million dollars today. You could not manufacture more than two crores of sales. Now, if you see that number, what does it mean? Sub-scale operations, [a] small, tiny factory, and you don't manufacture telecom products like that. It's not a small-scale factory that you can put up. Suddenly, one day, the government said, "No licenses required." From controlling what you could do [snaps fingers] it was gone in one day. That, to my mind, was the first time the entrepreneurial energies were released into a more constructive arena of marketing, branding, doing the right things.

HNN: In just about 10 years, you have built Bharti into India's largest mobile phone operator. How did that come about? What are some of the main lessons you learned from your experience that could be helpful to other entrepreneurs?

Mittal: I think, very clearly, we could have never claimed that we had more capital or better technologies, because everybody was buying the same technologies; GSM is a set standard. We couldn't claim that we had massive brand or distinguishing strength in the market. The only thing that we needed on our side was speed, and we used that to great effect.

We were in the market ahead of competition. We brought new products on the market ahead of competition. We rolled out our networks. We begged, borrowed, stole, put things out. And while they were never near perfect, they were first. And that gave us, to my mind, a lot of advantage.

Our theory was: If you're caught between speed and perfection, always choose speed, and perfection will follow. You never wait for perfect positioning, because in business you don't have the time; especially if you're small, you can't do it.

And the large companies took their own time. They were months behind us, and that made us pick up a market niche for ourselves, which in turn made us big.

HNN: How did you position yourself against your competitors? Was your strategy based entirely on speed, or did you also have other tactics?

Mittal: No. I think one thing was that we were very, very passionate about our business. This was the only business we were doing. Other competitors had other businesses and this was one of the new businesses they were starting. Speed, new products into the market, close to the customer, knowing what the customer wants -- I think we lived that whole space ourselves, day in and day out. And that made all the difference.

HNN: How do you see Bharti's future in the mobile industry? I know you tried recently to merge with MTN in South Africa, but that merger didn't work out. What were your strategic goals for that merger, and what else might you be considering for the future?

Mittal: We believe that while India is not done in so far as rolling out networks, the process is done. We'll keep on adding two and half or three million customers a month until we get to a point where India has seven or eight million customers, management teams are in place, brand is very strong, distribution is in place, the company has no debt.

So, India is done. Now, what does the senior management team do? You have to create new opportunities of growth. And they lie in other emerging markets -- therefore Africa, the Middle East. And we have today a business model which is the best business model in the world -- the lowest costs with the highest quality.

And I think that model is ready to go out. So, we would like -- whenever we get an opportunity like MTN -- to seriously attempt to put some assets together.

HNN: Would you look for partners in other parts of the world?

Mittal: Well, we keep on getting shown opportunities around the globe, and we remain open.

HNN: Let's turn now to the retail industry, where you have a partnership with Wal-Mart. Help me understand how you evaluated the retail opportunity and what your thought process was in making the decisions you did.

Mittal: We wanted to do something more in India. As we grow telecom outside of India, I think there are opportunities in India. And one of them, we felt, was in the area of retail. India's retail needs to get organized, and it will one day. It may take its own time, and everything in India does take time, but we will organize the retail to a point where $400 billion will come through organized retail stores.

We had opportunities to tie up with Carrefour, Tesco and Wal-Mart. And in fact, we were almost in the signing stages with Tesco when the Wal-Mart meetings started to happen and we liked the store model, we liked the same low-cost delivery mechanism, the values of Sam Walton. So, I would say that we are very, very pleased to venture into this area.

It has its own issues. Like telecom, this has resistances built in. There are barriers, there are issues. And we enjoy properly dealing with these issues.

HNN: Speed was the hallmark of you experience in the mobile industry, but of course the retail market is very, very different. How do you deal with those challenges?

Mittal: It's frustrating. I must confess that it's going much slower than what we originally thought. Speed is still what we like, but this is now a large company. We have a tie up with a large company. They believe that you need to tie up a lot of loose ends before you launch yourself.

The first three stores that have opened up with the assistance of Wal-Mart demonstrate that planning does make a difference. So, we are spending a lot of time planning; it's not wasted time. The supply chain is being built. The first distribution center has come up. The three stores are having in-fill rates of 95%. And they're having sales per square foot of 30% to 40% higher than the other top two or three operators in the country.

So, the start is good. It is surely slow. But, I think you'll start seeing some action fairly soon.

HNN: Are any political changes needed to make that happen?

Mittal: FDI must be allowed. We would rather have Wal-Mart right in there with equity rather than providing franchise support from the outside. So, we would like FDI to open up.

HNN: You have been quoted as saying that India needs a "football revolution." How exactly would that come about?

Mittal: It's a shame, and it in some sense saddens my heart that a country like India does not have any representation in world soccer. It's a sport which is watched by the largest amount of people in the world -- we're talking about hundreds of millions of people, topping over a billion people who watch soccer.

HNN: Did you play soccer growing up?

Mittal: No, we played everything else that kids in middle-class families do. I won't say football was my main sport, but it is for one of my sons. Both my sons play. My nephews play. And my son plays fairly competitive football. I enjoy watching it with them.

It's also, to my mind, a sport which can create a revolution of sorts in a country like India, very soon. One ball, one open field, a few kids, and it starts off. There are no expensive kits or equipment required to support this game.

And I also believe that India had a football base earlier on. In 1950, they were in the World Cup. They could not play because they didn't have shoes. They refused to wear shoes and they couldn't play. That was the last time India reached that point.

I see no harm in giving it one serious shot -- of carrying an Indian team into a 20-year team. I personally believe we can do it. Ten years is good time for us to plan.

HNN: Cricket has received quite a shot in the arm with the formation of the Indian Professional League. Is that in the cards for football?

Mittal: Yes, India is a cricketing nation. It's a cricket-mad nation. I think we need an alternative sport. We need something else to offset cricket. Will football have its own premier league? It will, certainly. In fact, the IPL (Indian Premier League) is a copy of the English Premier League. And that's the fundamental basis of football.

And yes, we will see something along those lines. It'll take a long time for people to switch from cricket to football, but younger people are watching a lot of international soccer. There is going to be the European Cup in Austria a few days from now. And you can see already some fever building up in India. The timing is right.

HNN: In all the years that you have been an entrepreneur, what is the single biggest leadership challenge that you have faced? How did you deal with it and what did you learn from it?

Mittal: It's hard to put down, in a single event, what would be the hardest decision. But, I would say bidding for a mobile license -- against all odds -- in 1992, when I was a rank outsider. I think the total sales were about $5 million in all, and going and bidding for a mobile license was tough.

But, we persevered, we went into it against the might of the biggest of the biggest in the country and in the world. And we ended up getting a license. More importantly, not only a license -- we rolled out India's first network and have now become India's largest.

So, that starting point of having, in a sense, defied the logic of, "This is only for the big boys. You need deep pockets. Don't even look at this." That defiance of the conventional wisdom, to my mind, was very important -- and being determined to challenge that thought that you can't do it as a young entrepreneur.

Developing Your Critical Thinking Leadership Skills

By M H Ahssan

By taking responsibility for your own leadership critical thinking processes, you are taking action to analyse and adapt your approach to decision-making and problem-solving. You put yourself - and your company - in a much stronger position to lead and succeed in the "new normal" business world.

There is a growing recognition that the old, pre-crisis way of doing business is never coming back. In its place is the "new normal". While some classic leadership strategies and skills will continue to be effective, leaders in this brave new world will need to lead differently - and think differently.

Critical thinking enables leaders at every level to understand the impact of their decisions on the business as a whole and ensures both alignment with organisational goals and accountability for results. 

The "new normal" is a different kind of competitive landscape, buffeted by geopolitics and global instability, rapid technological change, unique financial pressures, a rising tide of data and information to filter through, and the proliferation of new corporate business models.

The mind-set that made leaders successful in the past probably won't ensure success in the future. In fact, several recent studies and surveys have identified critical thinking as the number one requirement for successful leadership in the 21st century. Yet there is mounting evidence that many current and emerging leaders lack this quality. And it is this competency gap that is shaking up and reshaping leadership as we have come to know it.

 Leadership in the "new normal"
In the wake of the economic crisis, we all know what a failure of leadership looks like. The companies that folded in the GFC serve as stark examples of what happens when decisions are based upon erroneous, partially false or incomplete information and when management fails to think clearly and strategically about the full implications of its actions. The resulting fall-out put an end to business as usual and created a "new normal" that looks markedly different from anything anyone has seen before.

Business organisations must be prepared to do things differently if they expect different results. In this demanding, dynamic landscape, it is only natural that they also require a different mind-set from those in charge.

The equation works like this: Thinking drives behaviour; behaviour drives results. So enterprises that want to change the results - and, indeed, change the organisation itself - can achieve the highest leverage by changing the thinking of leaders and managers throughout the organisation.

But what kind of thinking - or rather rethinking - will be required of leaders if they want to succeed in the "new normal"?

Why critical thinking is critical
Critical thinking appears to be exactly what is needed from leaders who are navigating the volatility of the "new normal". Diane Halpern, an award-winning professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College and a widely read author on the subject, offers this definition in her seminal book, Thought and Knowledge:

"Critical thinking is the use of those cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. It is used to describe thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal-directed - the kind of thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions ... it's the kind of thinking that makes desirable outcomes more likely."

If ever there was a time for clear, discerning, solution-centric thinking, this is it.

Every two years since 1983, Executive Development Associates (EDA) has conducted an extensive survey on trends, growth and the evolution of executive development. The 2009/2010 EDA Trends in Executive Development: A Benchmark Report revealed trouble on the horizon for corporations seeking future business leaders.

To gauge the readiness of the next generation of leadership talent, EDA asked senior executive development professionals to share their views on the strengths and weaknesses of the incoming leadership group - the people who are most likely to fill executive-level positions in the next three to five years - and the subsequent impact on executive development.

The survey identified "hot topics" in executive development for the next two to three years. At the top of the list was leadership, followed by "business acumen, honing skills in strategy execution, leading / managing change, and talent management."

But when asked "What competencies are your leaders lacking?" their responses indicated little confidence that leaders had what it takes to execute in these critical areas successfully. Here's what they said was missing:

 •Strategic thinking
•Leading change
•Ability to create a vision and engage others around it
•Ability to inspire
•Understanding the total enterprise and how the parts work together
What critical thinking looks like

Having established the need for a mind-set shift to more critical thinking, we need to be clear on what that means in the workplace.

In general, critical thinking is the ability to deal with the contradictions and problems of a tumultuous environment in a reasoned, purposeful, productive way. Decisions are made using an approach that is fair, objective, accurate and based on information that is relevant to the situation.

Critical thinking is also reflective and focused, constantly evaluating the thinking process itself. It is thinking with a purpose. Critical thinking requires a healthy dose of skepticism and an equal measure of good judgement.

For decades, companies have relied on the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, a widely used assessment tool for evaluating the cognitive ability of current and future leaders. Developed in 1925, the model identifies factors that are key to critical thinking and decision making and predicts judgment, problem solving, creativity, openness to experience and other leadership behaviours.

Five sub-tests measure critical thinking as a composite of attitudes, knowledge and skills:

 •Inference
•Recognition of assumptions
•Deduction
•Interpretation
•Evaluation of arguments

Professionals with high scores in these sub-tests are able to identify and examine the assumptions, influences and biases that might sway them. They stand back from the fray and strategically assess the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems. They make business decisions that answer the right questions, solve the right problems, mitigate risk and improve productivity. They also lead from a position of strength, being able to motivate and move people both inspirationally and intellectually by providing solid reasons for actions.

Whether they lead teams, departments or entire enterprises, leaders who apply the skills of critical thinking to their roles perform at a higher level and offer their organisations a distinct competitive advantage.

Critical thinkers think differently about their impact on the organisation - understanding how their decisions and actions influence business both inside and outside their narrow functional silos. These leaders are able to balance department or team issues with broader company issues and embrace a larger responsibility for the success of the organisation. This keen sense of accountability is what enables them to execute for results now while fulfilling their obligations to positively impact the future.

Leaders who engage in critical thinking also understand the total organisation and how the individual parts work together. Context is key. Now more than ever, business acumen is foundational to effective leadership. It is impossible to apply critical thinking skills to the business of making money without an understanding of the business drivers that connect day-to-day decisions and actions to key financial and strategic performance goals of the organisation. It is one thing to understand one's role as a leader. It is altogether another thing to understand how to set direction and directly affect the outcomes.

Critical thinking is big-picture thinking too. As Hagemann describes it, "Leaders need to be able to comfortably climb to the 30,000-foot view and analyse a dynamic system, while simultaneously and adeptly analysing information to quickly make decisions across levels." Critical thinkers operate from a broad perspective in order to make sure the correct problems are addressed and they are taking acceptable risk. They recognise the difference between short-term gains and sustainable, long-term results and lead accordingly.

The advantages of this kind of leadership behavior are readily apparent. Critical thinking enables leaders at every level to understand the impact of their decisions on the business as a whole and ensures both alignment with organisational goals and accountability for results. It's exactly the type of leadership behaviour demanded by the "new normal" - and exactly what's missing. And this disconnect is likely to intensify over time.

Given the critical-thinking competency gap exposed by the EDA survey and other research, the obvious assumption is that the traditional development process that businesses have relied upon in the past to prepare leaders simply hasn't kept up. So, what's the solution? To accelerate development and raise leadership accountability to a whole new level of awareness and action, there needs to be a new emphasis on critical thinking in leadership development.

Learning to think like a leader
The good news is critical thinking is a skill that can be taught. According to Halpern, "There is a large body of evidence showing that people can learn to think better. Of course, education makes us all more intelligent, but critical thinking is more focused. Everyone can learn to recognise and use the skills of critical thinking, and we can always get better."

New competencies, however, may require a deeper, more analytical approach. The challenge today is not to discard what has been learned in the past, but to build upon traditional competencies with a whole new and more complex set of skills, tools and sensitivities.

Leaders in the new normal need to learn how to be discerning, how to think clearly and wisely, and how to be accountable for their impact on the business.

Discovery learning in leadership courses
Critical thinking can be impacted by the right leadership courses. However, the process can be more challenging than improving a behavioural skill, because you can't easily measure it. Success is demonstrated in results.

As with any skill, intellectual or otherwise, the key to building critical thinking - and achieving successful results - is practice. Research has demonstrated that people learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process and engaging in the behaviours they want to learn. But what's vital in developing critical thinking skills is framing the concept of practice within a relevant, job-related context.

Acquiring critical thinking skills requires participating in learning experiences that force you to consider new ways of thinking about and acting within complex situations that are directly related to the work you do. You need the opportunity to respond to issues, reflect on and reframe your experiences, develop new thinking, and, in turn, engage in new behaviours and actions that are relevant to your position and objectives.

Developing your critical thinking skills
In addition to participating in these types of leadership courses, leaders can take charge of their own critical thinking development by taking these actions:

 •Get some feedback about your critical thinking skills from a trusted boss, colleague or coach
Are you jumping to conclusions or using a reasoned, analytic process as you work toward a goal? Are you able to put aside biases and assumptions during analysis and decision-making? What kind of "thinker" are you perceived to be and why?

•Challenge yourself to develop a deeper understanding of your company's business, especially its financial and strategic drivers of success
Are you clear about what drives the organisation's decisions, how financial success is achieved and how you impact both strategy and the bottom line? Are you making decisions that are aligned with this understanding? Is your knowledge of the business strong enough to drive behaviour and to engage teams and employees?

•Use multiple sources of data to form an "information web" before making a decision or forming a conclusion
Are you asking a lot of questions? Identifying stakeholders and their issues and opinions? Separating facts from assumptions? Are you using the Internet as "one" source of information rather than "the" source? Can you analyse information from different perspectives and viewpoints?

•Take time to think
Are you rising above the fray when it's important to make a decision, take action or form an opinion? Are you aware of the distractions getting in the way of your thinking time and taking action to minimize these distractions? Are you finding time and space to let your mind focus and reflect on important issues?

•Ask for input, critique and opinions from others as you analyse alternatives
Are you checking tentative conclusions with others? Using peers, coaches or mentors to critique your thinking process? Are you willing to open your mind to other ideas or alternatives?