Art and Science of Developing Leaders: A BIMTECH Initiative.

More than two-thirds of industry leaders of 1990 did not exist in anymore 2004. Nokia which ruled the mobile handset industry last few years with market share of 61%, now have just 19%. Orkut which had 17.5 million Indian users in 2009 was toppled by Facebook with 27 million in 2010 and now almost made extinct.

No matter how successful or seemingly secure any business appears, it cannot take longevity for granted. The current scenario is changing in an ever increasing speed and the phenomenon holds true across industry and demography.

Birla Institute of Management Technology, (BIMTECH) Noida, in association with global consulting company, Aon Hewitt and National Human Resource Development (NHRD) took this burning topic, Art and Science of Developing Leaders: Leading Change and Transformation as the theme for this year's leadership summit in Delhi, Dr. H. Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH Noida, in his welcome note said, "Leadership can be created as per imagination or can emerge as per a situation".

Setting the tone added, "The objective of the summit was to collate the experience of the change leaders, to look into the best practices and share the processes and to seek answers to questions which shall lead to the future".

In her key note, Ms. Radhika Goplakrishnan, from Aon Consulting, Mumbai, presented some startling analytics, stressing upon the affect and cost paid by organizations for not at the right time.

Citing examples from case studies of IBM, Hindustan Unilever and Aditya Birla Group, she corroborated the fact that change needs to be lead and managed while critical element being the speed-of-change and not just mere change. It wasn't important anymore how perfectionist their leaders were, but how fast things got done by how efficiently their leaders managed the change.

Host of eminent speakers and thought leaders viz. : Mr. Ajai Nirula, COO, IL&FS Energy Development Co. Ltd. ; Mr. S.Y Siddiqui, COO Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.; Ms. Preeti Das, CEO Birlasoft; Dr. A .K Balyan, MD CEO of Petronet CNG Ltd shared their wisdom with case studies and best practices from respective industries which largely contributed to managing transformation and leading change in the volatile business environments.

The session was chaired by Mr. Ajay Soni, Asia Pacific Leadership Practice Leader, AON Hewitt who shared insights from top companies on the DNA of a global leader in uncertain times and stated three critical qualities a leader need to possess : A mindset to understand and adapt to the dynamic conditions of economic, social and political uncertainty; The ability to redefine self, adopt new attitudes and styles; To manage the differences that arise in the face of cross cultural amalgamations and functioning effectively.

Prof. Devi Singh, Director IIM Lucknow, shared his perspective from academia mentioning how his "open door - easy accessible" approach helped him overcome the initial resistance of acceptability by some members and how couple of new admission policies he initiated like inclusion of gender and cultural diversity, were later adopted by many IIMs.

On being asked to comment on why the topic of leadership was chosen again in which so much has already been written about, Professor K.K. Sinha, Chairperson Centre for MDP at BIMTECH, commented, "We thought with rampant high speed changes all-round and organizations like Infosys having to struggle with developing the leadership pipeline, the process of developing leaders needs to be looked at from multiple lenses.

Platforms like this with seasoned corporate leaders were probably the best way to understand the ingredients need to develop a pipeline."

And with changing scenario in the education system and management studies we hope the academia will also take a cue from this initiative and do the necessary to bring in the reforms and much needed transformation.

Around 250 delegates participated in the event which was covered by NDTV Profit. The series of leadership summit, a BIMTECH initiative will also be held in Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad over the next few months.

Source: DebriN Synergy.