Leadership in action (First Session)

The leadership in action series for the Easter term was kicked off by Lord Dennis Stevenson (Chairman of HBOS and Governer of Bank of Scotland) . We had three key speakers for this session.

1. Helen Alexander - CEO of the Economist Group
2. Sir. James Crosby - ex-CEO of HBOS (until 2006)
3. Rick Haythornthwaite - Chairman of the Risk and Regulation Advisory Council

It was a two hour open session and a great source of information about life in business, risk taking and leadership.

There is a plan to write a book based on these session. Hence, I will not cover the details of these sessions at great length. Watch this space for more details about the book to be published in the future.

The Olympic Torch

I had never discussed political issues on my blog earlier. However, the recent events with the Olympic Torch has made me break this traditional convention.

The Olympic Torch run was one of the most controversial peace time events in recent history. It was marred by protests and high security.

There are people who think that sports and politics should be viewed separately (the true sports person). There are people who prefer not to interfere in the policies of other countries (the idealists). There are many who don't give a damn about any thing that happens in the world as long as it does not affect them (the self-proclaimed passive organisms). Then there are people who believe that we are all in one world, irrespective of nationality, color, religion or ethnicity (the illusionists).

China is a great country. It has a long history and has contributed enormously to the development of mankind. It is making great progress in opening up its economy and promoting reforms to improve the lives of 1.2 billion + people of the great nation. China deserves to host the Olympic games and every one should whole heartedly participate to make these games a big success.

However, on a personal note that is not linked to the Olympics; China has a lot of ground to catch up in terms of its human-rights records in Tibet. Coming from India, I had interacted with a few Tibetan refugees and know the pain they go-through. The Tibetan refugees have a hard life both economically and politically. They yearn for more autonomy and freedom to practice their religion freely. Their ultimate dream is to go back home (Tibet) and live in peace. The Chinese government should hold talks with the Dalai Lama and reach a peaceful settlement to the Tibetan problems. A peaceful solution to the Tibetan problem will be the sign of true Chinese leadership rather than 'iron-fisted' rule over Tibet.

One should not mix these two events (the Olympics and Tibet). The world should awaken to the repression in Tibet and force China to hold talks with the Dalai Lama and find a peaceful solution to the Tibetan issue. The world should also respect the fact that China as an independent country has the right to conduct the Olympic games, just as any other free country in the world.

I hope the Olympic games turns out to be a master piece showcasing Chinese success. I also hope that the Tibetan problem gets resolved peacefully. (As always I ask for a lot more than what most people ask for:) , as I want both the Chinese and Tibetan sides to succeed ).

Completion of the GCP

This week was a bit hectic. We had to complete the presentation and the report for the Global Consulting Project (GCP). It was a great learning experience for me. I had never before worked so closely with a small company (<1000 people). The small company we worked for (Martifer Solar S.A) was very cool and people were extremely passionate about their work.

People working in a small company feel that they are making a difference and aim to do their best. It is a challenge for larger companies to maintain a small company work-culture. Small team/company culture is much more productive, due to ease of communication and lack of bureaucracy.

In the last month working on the GCP project, we got an opportunity to practice most of the theoretical stuff we learnt in the previous term. I learnt more about the renewable energy business and the way Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) function.

Looking forward to Monday the 21st when the next-term starts. The third-term has a lot of electives and it will be fun.

The Portugal trip

I had a wonderful trip to Portugal, as part of the Global Consulting Project (GCP). Developing a market entry strategy for one of the fastest growing companies in Portugal was indeed a wonderful experience. The Portuguese work environment is so full of energy and life. Portuguese hospitality (especially in smaller towns) is just great.

The 5 of us consulting on the project spent the weekend in Lisbon. We even got a chance to enjoy renounced Portuguese Fado over dinner.

A few pictures from the Portugal trip.

A YouTube link about Lisbon and Fado ----
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qjjDZqb4CQ

Leadership seminar with Mark Pigott

Before coming to Cambridge, I had not heard about a company called PACCAR. I guess it was way below the radar in comparison to companies like Dell or Starbucks.

PACCAR is a 100+ year old company that manufactures trucks under the band names Kenworth, Peterbilt and DAF. It had acquired Leyland Trucks in the UK in 1998 (as part of the Operations Management tour, I had a chance to visit the Leyland factory). It had a revenue of about $15 billion in 2007 and made a profit of $1.2 billion. The most amazing thing is that it is one of the very few companies that has made a profit for 69 consecutive years.

Mark Piggot the CEO of PACCAR held a leadership seminar at JBS this week. He represents the 4th generation of this family owned business. The longest serving CEOs in the automobile industry.

What I was most impressed about Mark was his passion what what he does and the simplicity with which he puts his point across.

A few key take aways from his talk were
1) Education - Get all the education you can and continue to learn. Mark is currently working on his 4th degree.
2) Common Sense - Always look for people who bring in 'common sense'. It is the rarest and most valuable commodity in the business world.
3) Benchmark against the best in diverse industries - PACCAR benchmarks itself with Dell, Walmart, Wells Fargo to name a few.
4) Old paradigms may be useful - The world still works on factors like producing a product or rendering a service. This is never going to change. The most important aspect is to to do this with the customer and employees at the heart of it.
5) Give back - Make sure to give back.
6) Think long term - Successful CEOs and people thing long-term. This is the essence of doing the right thing every time.

Mark also talked about the dynamics of a family business and he feels that the CEO should not necessarily be from within the family, but should be the best person who can do the job done

I really enjoyed the talk.

Nearing end of second term

The last few weeks were quite hectic and I attended a number of interesting talks (a few of them are listed below)

1) Lecture and formal dinner hosted at Wolfson College - commemorating the life of Sir Vivian Fuchs (100th anniversary of his birth and the 50th anniversary of the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent). The talk was made by Professor Nichloas Owens, the current Director of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
2) Talk by Lord Karan Bilimoria - This was as part of the case-study we had done about Cobra Beer. Lord Bilimoria is one of the best speakers I have listen to during my term in Cambridge.
3) Enterprise Tuesday - Building a Dream Team with Lousia Fletcher of Property Price Advice fame
4) Enterprise Tuesday -Making It Happen with Prof Sir Richard Friend and Stuart Evans, CEO of Plastic Logic
5) Enterprise Tuesday -Avoiding Big Mistakes with Dr Hermann Hauser CBE, Co-Founder of Amadeus Capital Partners
6) Strategy implementation session with Bradley Fried, CEO of Investec UK
7) "High Performance in a Multi-Polar World" with Mark Spelman, Global Head of Strategy at Accenture
8) Issues of Corporate Governance and Valued Talent with Sean O'Hare, Partner in the Human Resource Services Practice at PWC

We will finish this term on the 14th of March and will start on the Global Consulting Project (GCP). Our team (of 5 souls) is heading to Portugal to work on market entry strategy for a Solar Energy turnkey equipment manufacturer. We will be spending about 6 weeks working on this project. Can't wait to finish the exams and head to Portugal and enjoy the sun :)

Seeding the UK Business Schools network

On Saturday (16th) a few of us from Judge Business School, Said Business School, London Business School, Warwick Business School and Manchester Business School met in Oxford to explore avenues of better interaction and networking among the various UK business schools.

As an outcome of this meeting, we plan to increase the interaction between the schools and have a lot of inter-school competition.

Daniel from SBS hosted this event at his school. He was a wonderful host and took us around to some of the wonderful places (pubs, monuments, colleges et al.,) in Oxford. It is really an impressive place (just as Cambridge is); with a lot of history and tradition.

Leadership seminar with Sunil Mittal

Today we had a leadership seminar with Sunil Mittal. He talked about how India has developed over the years from a socialistic economy to a more liberalized economy. In 1992 the country had only 7 days worth of foreign-exchange reserves and had to mortgage its gold with the Bank of England to borrow $500 million. India was even thinking of selling its prime-property around the world to raise money (e.g., the Prime real-estate where the Indian embassy in Tokyo is located). This is really what drove India into liberalization along with a lot of pressure from the World Bank and IMF.

It was in this liberalized economy starting in 1992 that Sunil Mittal build Bharati Enterprise to become one of India's premier business houses. Bharati's flagship company Airtel now has a market capitalization of over $35 billion. His story resonates like the story of many of the Indian businesses that were started by entrepreneurs in the 1990's.

His view is that India is at a cross-road with a lot of potential and is growing rapidly. The next two decades will make or break India. He feels that the areas that needs the most development and support in India are education, agriculture and research in pure-sciences.

I liked the way he explained complex things in very simple terms. What I liked even more was that he used numbers to make his point across rather than using casual rhetoric.

Chinese New Year

We welcomed the Chinese New Year (The Year of the Rat) with a big-bang party on the 9th. Our Chinese friends made every-effort to dish out some real nice cuisine and festivities. We sang and danced through the night. The 'God of Fortune' came around and gave us gifts. The person dressed as the God was none other than the great Tao from my previous study-group. Here are a few pictures from that eventful night.

How do we learn?

This term has been a killer one with too many assignment and so much ready. However, I like it as we are learning newer things every day and learning to manage our time in a better way. The learning methodology is also quite different. For each of the case study we do in clasee, we get industry experts come in and give us their view points.

Example : We had a case on strategy case on Google and we had someone from Google to talk more about the case. So was the case with cases about Patents, Innovation and People Management. I'm really enjoying the learning part of it and tired of the incessant reading.

Looking forward for the results of the Technology Enabled Enterprise Transformation contest we had today.