HEALTH IS WEALTH

Over the past one year, I have been repeatedly encountering a medical condition among Indian corporate executives that has startled me. Just how far will the effects of lifestyle go?

Vitamin D deficiency. Shows up as excruciating muscle weakness and bone pain. Back ache, joint pain and lethargy are classic symptoms of Vitamin D and D3 deficiency. Left untreated it can lead to other trouble. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with brittle bones, cardiovascular disease, asthma, autoimmune diseases and even cancer.

Bizarre? When I heard it first I did not quite believe it. Anyone knows that the biggest source of this vitamin is sunlight. In fact it is called the sunshine vitamin. So how could someone living in a tropical country, with the sun pelting down for hours and hours, ever get this deficiency?

My old homeopath explained it to me. This is the latest lifestyle condition. People leave for work early and mostly do not exercise outdoor before leaving. They sit all day inside closed and sealed offices. Few modern offices have any sunlight coming in. Fewer have windows that open. People sit in their cabins or cafeterias and eat. Few step out in the day. Then when they set out for home, it is mostly evening time when the sun has gone down. So there’s basically just no exposure to sunlight among the corporate execs. Even youngsters are increasingly suffering from it. Again, the same reason. Children don’t go out to play enough.

Few foods can replace this source. Vitamin D is available in considerable quantities like fatty fish, cod liver oil and eggs besides fortified milk and dairy products. Most of these foods are not consumed by Indians or, at least, not in the required quantities. To add to it, people try being ‘healthy’ by not eating ‘ghee’ or drinking low-fat milk, thus eliminating Vitamin D even further from their diets. Result: A recent study conducted across 33,444 people shows that 65% of women in Mumbai in the age group of 12- 35 years are Vitamin D deficient.

So here we seem to have a growing problem that can easily be contained. People could be made aware of this and take small, easy steps to avoid this trouble. A short walk before leaving for office? A late afternoon walk out of office instead of the tea machine chat? And probably adding ‘ghee’ and eliminating junk food? Of course, many of the usual excuses will pop up immediately to this. Meetings, presentations, no time….can’t help order outside foodstuff sometime or the other.

But health is a good enough reason to find solutions for, instead of hiding behind the usual reluctance to change. And any medical practitioner will tell you that preventive care is better than curative steps. Now don’t you think it’s worth considering at least?

Keeping It Simple

Only last week I was arguing with myself for days about the complexity of life around me, may be with a generous dose of self-pity. And in the most unexpected of ways, I found myself looking into the face of an answer. A very simple one at that, which left no space for my self-indulgence.

The answer came through my colleague. She had just listened to Venugopal Dhoot addressing school children. This is what she said:

I was listening to Venugopal Dhoot of Videocon addressing 700 school children who were there to impress a big media group and get the chance to become journalists for their school newspaper. Dhoot was introduced as the big man of business with a lot of social and community work attributed to him. But he came and spoke with disarming straightforwardness. He was comfortable not being proficient in English. He described his modest background to the students and told them that they were very bright. He spoke and quoted from the Bhagvad Geeta, his biggest source of inspiration. And he gave absolutely simple answers when they asked him cleverly-framed questions.

What philosophy has guided him to do so well in the field of business? He said that Vinoba Bhave was his greatest inspiration and taught him the principle of ‘karma yoga’.

What’s his success mantra? Hard work. Easy to say, hard to do.

What made him think of electronic goods? You must have a passion for what you do. I was an engineer and loved engineering products. When I worked with Toshiba as an intern the video was the latest gadget. I simply wanted to bring it to India.

How did you decide on products as you went along? Products have to be liked by customers. He described here the failure of a prestigious dog biscuit company in a market. Simply, dogs didn’t like their biscuits!

How different are you as a person and as a professional? You cannot have two sets of values. Personal and business values have to be the same.

So how does he predict the markets? I don’t. I know very little. Nobody can predict the markets. Here he quoted his favourite flautist Bismillah Khan who said when asked about his achievements, “Abhi toh teen taal ka bhi gyaan nahi hua hai.”

For a small- town boy who wanted to study literature and play the flute, Dhoot took off in quite an unexpected direction. But life’s like that. He continues to simply perform his daily tasks and follow the path he set upon. No existentialist doubts. No grand, intellectual arguments. Simple now, isn’t it?

Crisis-time leadership

First of all, A Happy New Year to you.

I wrote about leadership last week as a follow up on the previous week's post. Leadership positions sometime come early if you display the talent. But this talent, I said, gets overexploited. In the run of the daily target the young leader is utilised for his skills but not enough may get invested in developing him further. This often leads to the ripe-from-the-outside-but-raw-within syndrome.


Now there's an interesting blog by Jack Zenger of the Harvard Business Review which takes this thought further. He believes in starting them young but stresses on the criticality of training and the damage possible without it. Do read it at: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/12/why_do_we_wait_so_long_to_trai.html


It is difficult not to look at the leadership issue in the wake of the recent happenings: a gang rape bang in the middle of the capital and nobody from the government stepping forward to take charge and show leadership. Sundeep Khanna writes a super piece in Mint about the leadership of listening; the leadership that needs to have both ears to the ground; the leadership of accountibility. You could read him here: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/3qqdxxcCKHX9MNhK1bAVZM/Leadership-lessons-from-the-mishandling-of-the-Delhi-protest.html

From the last POST

Can you enjoy the luxury of sauntering up the learning curve when what you have to do is to climb up a steep pyramid?

The responses to my previous blog post have been thought-provoking. A plethora of subjects have popped out of the stimulating discussion and I hope to keep your attention by turning the spotlight on each one, one post at a time.

But first let me draw your attention to leadership. There’s no end to material available on this one, I know. But it seems to yet be the missing link in the evolution of many an organisation. While large organisations of traditional industries have their in-built patterns of developing leaders through well-oiled processes, it is the younger industries that draw my attention. Since liberalisation we have been witnessing the rise of industries like IT, ITES, asset management and insurance. These are all people intensive. Their pyramids are very steep- the bases are very broad. Hundreds of hands are required to be at the service counter. These first level jobs are a plenty and need very basic qualification. But on the flip side these businesses are characterised by high attrition. So keeping these teams going, giving them the basic training required and meeting the needs of a huge customer base, all at one time is a trying task. Anyone with a spark can become a manager in a short time. This spark however works against him or her eventually because the seniors think he can handle it, so he may have to chew much more than he can bite.

Take the story a little ahead, a lot of managers climb up with excellent task related skills- where ample training is provided. As they take bigger and still bigger responsibilities the chinks in the armour start to show up. This is more often than not related to their dealing with people. For e.g. a senior manager in an MNC consulting firm says “I find it very irritating when people are slow” or another says “ how can they challenge what I say?”

My observation is that everybody agrees that people skills are most critical for a leader. Ironically the investments in this area are rarely commensurate with this criticality.



The question then is: does building of effective leadership require a certain amount of time? Won’t the required maturity be compromised if the roles change vertically too fast? Does it help the individual himself in his long- term growth?

After all, how sweet can that fruit be that has been ripened in haste. Its colour on the outside may be perfect but its taste may leave a lot to be desired.

I yet don’t know how to react.

At a recent training program at the local office of an MNC I was told unambiguously by the participants: “The rule is clear. If we are told by our ‘white’ counterpart to do it then we just have to do it.” I asked for further explanation before jumping to conclusions. What I was given to understand was that even though the American and Indian offices ostensibly work together, it is understood that one person’s word will have to be accepted over another even at the same designation level. No, that is not done after talking it over but is the diktat straight away.


So what is this?


From the one side the American company may just believe that its local employees are better-equipped to take more suitable decisions than its Indian employees. It may feel that it has better controls this way. It is not so confident about its employees who don’t have the American approach and training. And, it is ready to take the responsibility for that decision.


From the other side, the Indian employee could feel like almost bonded, mute labour. And in such a situation, a designation could become a bit of a joke. The self-esteem of the person who has to work in such a place may take a daily beating. He may stick around but with no interest or sense of pride in his job. Not the best way to grow an organisation, I imagine.


Not surprisingly, I have on many occasions found the energy and morale in this place very low. Lackadaisical time-keeping, initial ennui among participants; unimpressive co-ordination are some of the very unattractive features during the sessions.


So I continue to ponder: What makes people stay in such a work environment? Does the new generation have a completely different, may be a more practical take on this? Am I reacting with the cross of History on my shoulders? Do Indian MNCs have similar, unwritten rules for their employees in the West?


Have you been exposed to this kind of governance, directly or indirectly? Please do share your thoughts.

How Long?

I remember reading an article in a magazine which displayed the grand salaries that young CEOs had begun to take home. The search company executive quoted said that a competent CEO could be taking home anywhere up to a few crores a year. The examples cited were of CEOs who had hopped jobs efficiently. He concluded explaining that the way to grow the pay packet was to basically not stay in a place for more than three to five years. The cases were mind boggling- like say, a 30-something fellow grows from a senior manager to a CEO many times over in less than a decade.

As I talked to people after that, the general opinion that emerged was that you are perceived as ‘successful’ if you move within five years and a ‘laggard’ if not a ‘loser’ if you don’t. Smart people move. That was the essence.

But recently for some material that we had to put together, Charubala and I were going through the work histories of over a dozen industry and public leaders. Verghese Kurien, K.V. Kamath, Lalita Gupte, Chanda Kochhar, Deepak Parekh, Shikha Sharma, Kalpana Morparia, Bharat Patel, Pradip Shah, Naina Lal Kidwai, Vinita Bali, Shashi Tharoor were among others were those we looked up. And this is what we discovered: None of them had changed jobs more than once or may be twice in their careers; they built their reputations as people of reckoning at jobs they held for generally close to a decade or sometimes more; they moved up stealthily in their companies and organisations and grew their roles and profiles within rather than looking for greener pastures outside.

And was I surprised? For a moment, may be. And then when I thought about it more closely, may be not, really. If one defines success with simply what one is able to buy with his salary one needs to jump on to the former bandwagon. But if you want to become someone who stands for a success story and become an icon, an inspiration, then these case studies indicate that you have to look beyond. You may be a smart mover but people do not understand what you stand for, sometimes. On the other hand, leaders such as these are clearly identified with their beliefs to make the brand they choose, to become a success. So in short, you probably have a longer shelf life as a success story if you build the success of other brands besides your own self. What do you think?

EDGE-OF-THE-CLIFF HR

When one sets out to do Human Resource Management as a student he hardly imagines it comes with perils of becoming a soldier. But the recent case of Maruti human resource manager, Awanish Kumar Dev, has shocked just about everyone.

 There are discussions on every day about the issue from varying angles: Was it pre- meditated? Will the police actually get all the culprits? Who’s behind it all?

It is ironical that sometimes being good at your job can serve against your well-being.

There have been enough cases in the recent past of good men paying for doing their jobs well with their lives- bureaucrats like Satendra Dubey who defied the corrupt road construction mafia in the Golden Quadrilateral Project; policemen like Hemant Karkare, Vijay Salaskar and Ashok Kamte in the Mumbai Kasab killings; journalists like Sushil Pathak of Dainik Bhaskar, J.Dey of Mid-Day and Umesh Rajput of NaiDuniya who got knocked off for knowing too much. A threatening note was found near the scene of Rajput’s murder which said,"Khabar chaapna band nahi karoge toh mare jaoge" (If you don't stop publishing news, you will be killed)."

Dev probably knew which way the issue was building and resigned six months back as did also a couple of his junior colleagues. But while their resignations were accepted, his wasn’t. The management knew he had negotiated very well earlier and now hoped he would re-work the miracle.

 So Dev stood jammed between the arguments of the company and the workers and paid for the disagreement with his life. He tried to do a fair job. He was the one who registered the present workers’ union.  So how exactly did the ones who killed him think that their purpose would be better served this way, we still don’t know. But history has shown clearly that if the key spokesperson of a cause is knocked out of the story, a reasonable delay in decision-making is definitely achieved. This delay can help the perpetrators work out things in their favour. What exactly is happening behind the scene will emerge surely, if slowly, as media goes further into its research.

 So what do such stories and cases do to the rest of us? Do they inspire us to work at our best or can they scare us from going up to the last point? What would we advise our youngsters then? To do glorious, memorable work or to play safe?