Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Etiquette: Fostering business relationships

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.

(Shital Kakkar Mehra is the founder of Soft Skills International)

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Features/Corporate-Dossier/Etiquette-Fostering-business-relationships/articleshow/4674417.cms

Thursday, June 18, 2009

The Recession Man: How CEOs are coping with assets acquired during boom

In May 2007, when Manmohan Singh made his famous “conspicuous consumption” speech at the National Conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Delhi, some dubbed it a critique of capitalism. At a time when GDP growth was 9% and the Sensex was 15,000-going-on-20 ,000, the Prime Minister called on the gathered CEOs to be “models of probity, moderation and charity” and “resist excessive remuneration to promoters and senior executives” . What a party pooper. He even quoted Keynes, saying that if the rich spent their new wealth on their own enjoyments, the world would have long ago found such a regime intolerable.

Surinder Kapur was one of the CEOs attending the CII meet that day and he recalls being quite affected by the speech. “There was a sense that quite a few things were going out of kilter in corporate India, including salaries,” says the chairman of Sono Koyo Steering Systems . “The downturn has shown that the PM was right. Corporates had far too much money available to spend and greed had come to be synonymous with success.”

Temptation was everywhere and nearly every company ended up splurging during the boom in some measure . But now all those the expenditures on acquisitions, diversifications, real estate, talent, are causing headaches akin to hangovers after a binge, except that these after effects aren’t about to fade easily with time. Today, the toughest task before the downturn CEO is to work the assets acquired during the boom.

As an auto component manufacturer, Kapur is one of the worst affected by the global recession. The leader in this sector, however, is Bharat Forge, a company that made several global acquisitions in the height of the boom.

Chairman Baba Kalyani admits he was caught completely unawares by the severity of the global recession in the automobile sector. “During the boom, we were focused on creating capacities ahead of the expected demand curve. We were making capital investments ahead of the curve, hiring people ahead of the curve, creating working capital ahead of the curve. Now we have to do just the opposite . The automobile industry is not going to return to previous demand levels anytime soon,” he says.

It’s not uncommon for corporates to accumulate fat in good times — some even make a provision for it. But as everyone knows, working off the fat is always much harder than putting it on, so the downturn CEO is forever on the treadmill. Kalyani, for one, is trying to diversify his customer portfolio and produce products for the global energy industry, which has been less affected by the recession. That’s actually a strategy adopted by many recession-hit CEOs. Rakesh Sarin, managing director of Wartsila India has seen demand for power plants dry up in the shipping sector, once the company’s mainstay. Now the Finnish company is trying to open up the market for smaller capacity power plants of 300 MW and less, meant to serve small cities and metropolitan suburbs .

“You have to be creative in a downturn ,” he says. “The CEO’s job today is to go out and spot new business opportunities.” The downturn has certainly changed the way the CEO allocates his time. Acquisitions are out and CEOs are no longer spending time with investment bankers. Instead, they’re spending more time with their staff, working out ways to deliver better products and services at lower costs. Labour and staffing policies can’t be left to HR — they’re strategic. Launching newer, competitive products and services for the shrinking market can’t be left to marketing, they’re mission critical. With the dollar swinging from Rs 39 to Rs 52, forex contracts are no longer the CFO’s prerogative, they’re strategic too.

“In a downturn, the only strategy is operational strategy,” says Accenture’s Jaime Ferrer, who heads the firm’s consulting business in for Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. “The companies that come out of this recession better will be those that achieve excellence in their operations.”

Since it’s become increasingly difficult to predict the economic weather, the downturn CEO is now busy building a boat that can withstand storms. This means envisioning worst case scenarios and building systems and structures designed to keep the organisation afloat if they actually occur . “Several CEOs are having problems because they have been unable to sense risk,” says Arun Maira, senior advisor, The Boston Consulting Group.

“Now, in order to grow their businesses in an uncertain environment, not only must the CEO have a mind that is permeable to a variety of ideas, but also an organisation that has permeable boundaries with the world outside.”

The Indian IT services industry is one that has always had close ties with the world outside, which may have helped it cope in a steadily deteriorating market. But as global customers negotiate increasingly tough terms, companies in this sector are gearing up to shed what is likely to be a voluminous quantity of flab. Ashok Soota, chairman of Mindtree Consulting says he’s seen many booms and busts in his long career but this has been different: “This time, our customers are in real pain. We have to do whatever it takes to help them.”

The pain after the champagne is familiar to French technology consulting firm Capgemini , where India CEO Baru Rao says, “Your hopes do ride high in a boom. Everybody wants to invest in a bright future. Indian IT has been relatively vigilant compared to other sectors , but we’re still under a lot of pressure. The downturn is a good opportunity to focus internally and reduce inefficiencies.”

As a people-intensive operation, Capgemini has been using the downturn to add flexibility to its work practices. For one, it is training its programming staff to work in sales, a move that might have been resisted two years ago, but is accepted today. These are the kind of policies that send out signals to the rank and file that the organisation is taking creative, proactive steps to counter the downturn. Says Praveen Vishakantaiah , President, Intel India, “People watch the CEO very closely in a downturn. They won’t accept empty assurances. You have to do things to make it better.” For Indian IT, the downturn has been the unimagined Black Swan.

An industry that till recently was complaining of talent shortages is now faced with the prospect of lay offs. As a result, IT’s leadership is still struggling with the restructuring process with many haven’t yet taken the bull by the horns. But as Akila Krishnakumar , country head of global software company Sungard says, “You can’t hunker down and wait for the downturn to pass. You have to be seen as someone who is thinking through this intelligently and taking action. This might mean doing things you would never have had the spine to do earlier , like letting go of non-performers . But you have to do it in order to hold on to your best employees and customers.”

The CEOs of MNC subsidiaries have arguably been under even more pressure than the average Indian CEO, since their parent companies have been severely affected by the recession. Ravi Chauhan was the managing director of Nortel India when the parent company filed for bankruptcy in the US (he has since moved to a different role within the company as head of the company’s Communication Enabled Business Solutions). He says: “The CEO’s job is to cut costs without doing damage to the essence of the business. Cost reduction is also the key selling point today. You have to position yourself as one who can help the customer reduce costs — that’s the only as you get traction.”

One thing is certain—the downturn is forever changing the persona and outlook of the Indian CEO. In good times, India Inc has been shown to be capable of irrational exuberance in the extreme. In these difficult times, its chastened leadership has to reckon with the bad karma of lay offs and cut backs. How will it cope? Two lines from the PM’s “conspicuous consumption” speech might help: “promote enterprise and innovation , within your firms and outside. If our industry has to make the leap to the next stage of development, it must be far more innovative and enterprising.”

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Features/Corporate-Dossier/The-Recession-Man-How-CEOs-are-coping-with-assets-acquired-during-boom/articleshow/4674230.cms

Managing worker dissatisfaction: R Gopalakrishnan

As the sentiment for business starts to improve in the future, I wish to reflect on just one unseen leadership challenge .

Managing worker dissatisfaction will be the next leadership challenge globally. Managements have enjoyed exceptional labour relations for two decades: industrial unrest (strikes and lockouts ) during 1992-2007 is drastically lower than 1977-1992 : by 80 percent in UK, S Korea, Japan, and 60 percent in India and US.
After three decades of Reagan-Thatcher super-capitalism , a new generation which has no experience of tough labour power is now leading enterprises. Unionists like Arthur Scargill in the UK, George Meany and Walter Reuther in US or Datta Samant in India have all been forgotten.

Many countries all over the world have experienced unprecedented growth in the last decade but skeptics doubt whether labour got its share. In the words of one union leader, “The time for corporate dictatorships is over. This is our time.”

Consider a sample of global events just in the last one year: In India, Jet Airways fired 1,900 employees to save the jobs of the balance 11,000. ET journalist Mythili Bhusnurmath observed, “The global financial crisis has finally invaded the middle class drawing rooms in India...... Jet layoffs are the first sign that the middle class is no longer safe from economic downturns.”

In May 2008, a trans-Atlantic merger was announced between United Steelworkers and Unite, UK’s largest union representing workers. President Leo Gerard said, “Now we have got globalisation running rampant over workers all over the world, and there is not a counterforce in the labour movement. We want this merger to be something that can deliver for workers.”

Andy Stern of Service Employees International Union, USA has expressed the view that “our world, is going through the most profound transformative economic revolution in history....the trade union movement has lost its way because it did not accept that the world has changed.” He has been campaigning loudly against private equity and sovereign wealth funds and is widely regarded as “the modernising face of America’s unions” although the Wall Street Journal dismisses Stern as a “drama king.”

A British newspaper reported these events on a single day in September last year, “France paralysed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris strewn battlefield....as unemployment rises, the Hungarian currency sinks to its lowest level against the euro....Greek farmers block the road in Bulgaria to protest the low prices for their produce....Revolt is in the air” Journalists used terms like “dawn of a new age of unrest” and “back to the barricades.”

In September, a strike shut down Boeing, which had customers’ orders for several years to come. The Machinists’ Association representing 27,000 Boeing workers halted the production of aircraft in Washington State, Oregon and Kansas. In Japan, with the slowdown, about 200,000 temps were to be fired. Tsuyoshi Takagi , president of Rengo, Japan’s biggest trade union confederation, said that temps are being treated “the same as robots and we need to go back to the old ways.”

Early this year, Waterford Crystal factory in Kilbarry, Ireland had to be shut down. The workers occupied the building and refused to leave. President Obama signed the astounding Liddy Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Leaving the company in 1998 after poor job evaluations, Ms. Ledbetter
collected her pension. Then she went to court claiming that she had been the victim of gender discrimination 15 years earlier (yes, in the 1980s!) . The Supreme Court rejected her claim due to the statute of limitations , between 180 to 300 days, depending on the state. You know what Congress did? It legislated to throw out the statute of limitations with the result that a worker can now claim gender or race discrimination for 20 years after leaving the company!

Everywhere workers despair about the uncertainty and fear of being short-changed by managements. As millions of jobs vanish in the worst slump in eight decades, something new and strange is happening in relations between company employees and leaders. Employee dissatisfaction is becoming deeper and uglier. The ground is shifting in the labour-management model that has prevailed for the last thirty years of supercapitalism . Managers have to be more and more sensitive; they must shed any unconsciously accumulated arrogance of the last 25 super-capitalism years.

They must truthfully engage with workers, and not to deny or dismiss their concerns. There are many ways forward but one theme could be prominent, viz putting humanism back into businesses. Alongside the focus on cost-cutting , down-sizing , managers must find the space and emotion for softer inputs: they must be more sensitive, while actively and truthfully communicating with workers. How can leaders intuitively bring human values , communications and openness back into their relationships with workers? Through 3 Es: explicitness, empathy and emphasis.

In his New Year letter to employees, Mr Ratan Tata, Chairman of Tata Sons, was explicit and direct. “This economic crisis may well be the worst we have ever faced in living history.” He reached out to employees, saying, “The greatest strength that our Group has today is the spirit of its people....the environment over the next twelve months will require us to display, more than ever before, the strength of this spirit... a period of crisis brings out the spirit, and marshals the strength to tackle unbelievable challenges.” When the Taj Mahal hotel employees were devastated by the terror attack of November, the leadership visited every single affected family.

When the HR folks explained all that they had generously done for the employees, the leaders asked with empathy, “What else can we do?” The Taj management went on to set up a welfare trust for the benefit of all citizens affected by the attack—including the public, policemen and guests at other hotels, not just its own employees. The first beneficiary was a guest at a competing hotel!

The approach of Tata CEOs is captured by the in-house think tank, whose internal paper emphasizes the soft aspects, “Effective communication is necessary to portray the changes in a proper light to ensure that morale does not suffer....Simple communication is essential, urging employees to redirect their efforts to achieving the company’s new objectives....Creating a sense of togetherness and belonging can reduce the execution risk,” the paper said. This is no rocket science. Yet the penalty for ignoring these simple things in an increasing complex environment will be severe.

(The writer is executive director, Tata Sons. He is the author of The Case of the Bonsai Manager)

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Features/Corporate-Dossier/Managing-worker-dissatisfaction-R-Gopalakrishnan/articleshow/4674370.cms?curpg=2