The first GMC session of term 4 was about gaining understanding about the typical challenges encountered in a general management role and the skills needed to overcome these challenges. The discussion started off with the alumni from different backgrounds working in different corporate sectors sharing their views and experiences followed by Q&A with the GMC members. The panel members were:
Kamal Narang, MD - Capmark Overseas Processing India Pvt. Ltd.
Janardhan Singh, Regional Manager – IMS Learning Resources Pvt. Ltd.
Srinivasu Satti, Vice President, M&A - Satyam Computer Services Ltd.
Anirban Chakraborthy, Project Controller (MD Office) - Punj Lloyd
Kamal Narang
Kamal works with Capmark in the financial services sector related to commercial real-estate investments. He gave his perspective of what a general management role entails irrespective of the industry. He highlighted the “general” responsibilities, challenges that arise and the key characteristics of a general manager. He also touched on how ISB has helped him in being able to carry out his role as a general manager. Here is the summary of his presentation:
“General” Responsibilities
- Implementing strategic planning in the most cost effective and efficient manner
- Managing: P&L, operations, SBU or a department.
- Developing future plans and strategy for the business unit or organization
- Compliance to industry and organizational rules and policies
- Transparent reporting (answerable to superiors, peers and subordinates)
Challenges
- Every day is a new day!
- Stressful environment (could be due to stretched goals & high accountability).
- Not getting credit for what you have done (and sometimes getting credit for you haven’t done).
- Resistance to change: Be ready to fight the battles; assertiveness (not aggressiveness) is an important quality; act as a change agent.
- Taking unpleasant decisions: Not all your decisions will be liked by all, especially people decisions.
- People: At times, most of a general manager’s time is spent on handling people issues – conflict management, employee retention, egos, etc.
GM – The “Renaissance” Man
- You need to be jack of many trades, and a master of a few
- Leader: Be an enabler (reaching collectives goals of the organization), motivator, innovator (bring about new solutions), and executor.
- PPP: Purpose – People – Process. Purpose – why, what and how; understand people and what motivates them; understand existing processes.
- Project manager
- Extra-ordinary: Be grounded, approachable, humble, fair and friendly.
- Decision Maker: Judgmental, risk-taker, assertive.
- Expressing effectively leads you closer to success.
- Become a change manager.
ISB – How has it helped?
- Academics: Cases and discussions have helped in figuring out how to approach a problem; conceptual understanding of topics in your specialization area; some frameworks do help to streamline your thinking.
- Out of box thinking
- Confidence in problem solving and decision making
- Time management
- Resources: Friends, faculty, networks developed with the ISB community and beyond.
- Become a change manager.
Kamal ended his presentation with an anonymous quote to sum it all up – “We can’t win at home. We can’t win on the road. As GM, I just can’t figure out where else to play”.
Janardhan Singh
Janardhan chose IMS because of his passion to work in the education sector. He joined IMS 2.5 years ago. He said the company encourages the entrepreneurial spirit of its managers. He shared his perspective by giving us a glimpse of his journey in IMS so far as a Regional Manager located in Hyderabad.
- Understand your customer: He said he learned the ropes of the business by initially taking classes for students, and taking counseling sessions for students. He mentioned how his first class was with just one student and how he learned to connect with the students. By taking a class, he could gain an understanding of the pain points of the students. IMS Hyderabad had a 4% market share a couple years ago and has grown now to 16-17% market share. Established 9 centers in Hyderabad with a low cost strategy.
- Recognize the different needs: The directions to the Hyderabad office were coming from the head office in Mumbai. But, the situation in Hyderabad is totally different compared to Mumbai. IMS Hyderabad was hardly known.
- Connecting with people: When he joined the Hyderabad office, he said the first step he took was to the remove the barriers between MBAs and non-MBAs. He met every single person on the team, excluding no one. He made himself approachable and accessible. This helped in gaining valuable information. He went on to describe how he operated under resource constraints, how he invested his time in people. For example, the counselors had the feeling of being treated as mere receptionists. He tried to change their feeling by emphasizing how they are the career influencers of students who approach them.
- Encouraging transparency: It is important to provide employees opportunities to grow their careers and encouraging employees to be open about their career aspirations.
- Good listener: It helps in learning about people, retention management.
- Establish processes in place.
- Walk the talk: You need to be seen as a believable and trust-worthy person. Back up your team in times of crisis.
Srinivasu Satti
Srinivasu is VP of M&A at Satyam Computer Services. He had a variety of roles in the 9 years of experience before coming to ISB – Civil engineer at L&T, Project Leader , Corporate Strategy at Satyam, etc. The one thing he highlighted along with agreeing with what some of the other panelists conveyed is the integrated nature of learning at ISB. He believes that a person from any type of work background can play a general management role as long as he/she realizes the necessary key skills and works on acquiring them. He said that during the last 6 years of his work at Satyam he was been able to relate internal strategy measures with the external strategy followed by the organization. Over these last few years he has gained the experience of overseeing 30 deals (including the ones that they went through and the ones they chose to drop) Srinivasu closed his part by iterating the importance of “full lifecycle leadership” – you have to give importance to all the aspects of managements depending on the situation.
Anirban Chakrabarty
Anirban described his exciting journey so far after ISB and shared with some things that matter and some thing that don’t in the context of the work he was doing. Right out of ISB he started with Ernst & Young. He mentioned that his first assignment was a financial assignment. He was sent to U.S in his first week on the job and was requested to rehash the accounting system for Anheuser-Busch brewing company. This showed that ISB grads are expected to hit the road running on your first job out of ISB. After his stint at E&Y, he wanted to take on new challenges and moved on to Punj Lloyd because of the growth track the company was. He joined as an Executive Assistant to the M.D. at Punj Lloyd. He described some of the benefits and drawbacks of working for company without strict processes in place. It started with the difficulty of meeting his boss and to try to define his exact role. After he met his boss, he learned he had the freedom to structure his role and free operation. He focused on strategy. He the people at the profit centers at various countries that Punj Lloyd had presence in. Not surprisingly, the job entailed a lot of international and domestic travel. Some of his key points:
- Incentives define behavior, because most people don’t take targets seriously
- You will have to deal with resistance to change, be patient.
- Patience is important; you have to work on a sustained continuous basis.
- Understand what the adhesives for the organization are.
- Legacy needs to be understood and leveraged where possible before bring about change.
- Importance of extra-curricular activities in the long term. You will be a well-rounded person because of it.
The session ended with Q&A from the gathered students and was followed by lunch and resume review session with the panel members. Overall, it was a great session!
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