HR should stop doing politics – D Shivakumar

Excerpts from the Q & A session between Pankaj Bansal, Co-Founder & CEO, People Strong and D Shivakumar, Group Executive President – Corporate Strategy & Business Development, Aditya Birla Management Corporation Pvt Ltd at AIMA’s 15th National HRM Summit 2017.

D Shivakumar, Group Executive President – Corporate Strategy & Business Development, Aditya Birla Management Corporation Pvt Ltd. at AIMA’s 15th National HRM Summit.

When we reimagine HR, what do you think should HR stop doing?

I think HR is very important and should evolve with the times. I talk to a number of people across the industry, and I would say that in many organizations, HR is seen as a political unit. Why do people feel that? First HRs should rid themselves of politics. HR has a lot of confidential information, HR should not trade in that. The HR department should be staffed with people who can maintain high confidentiality. The biggest problem in every company is that people say HR people blabber, and hence they do not trust them. So the dividing line between a good performer who needs to be promoted and somebody who doesn’t need to be promoted etc. is becoming a problem.

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Functional Smartness Vs Business Smartness – Navi Radjou

Navi Radjou, Innovation and Leadership Thinker/Advisor (Silicon Valley), Author of Conscious Society (2018), Co-author of Frugal Innovation and From Smart To Wise sharing his insights on ‘Beyond Smartness: Leading Wisely in a Conscious Society’ at AIMA’s 15th National HRM Summit 2017. Excerpts –

Navi Radjou at AIMA’s 15th National HRM Summit

Assuming we are entering the age of disruption, that is going to happen and is already happening, it’s a given now. How are you going to deal with this disruption? I think there are two approaches, there is a smart approach and there is a wise approach. Of course, if I were standing at Silicon Valley, where I live, and ask these questions to HR leaders there, they will say of course we need to address this disruption smartly because it’s all about smartness in Silicon Valley. And it is true because in the Western societies and increasingly in developing countries like India, smartness, and particularly intelligence, sells well. We heard about marketing right? So anything smart packaged as a marketing slogan sells well, for example, smartphones, we will be wearing soon smart clothes, smart appliances at home, like smart fridges that talk to us. We also have smart homes and buildings now, and then everybody is obsessed now about building smart cities. And not only that, it goes even further because if you read Yuval Noah Harari’s book. It is about man’s attempt to become God. And his interpretation of God is the ultimate mind, the super smart, or as Aurobindo calls, the supermind. And what he’s saying is that essentially we are not smart enough and the rich people in the future will be able to use, like embed technology in their brain to augment intelligence, we call it augmented intelligence.

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India Ready for the Big Leap Forward – Lord Karan Bilimoria

Lord Karan Bilimoria, CBE DL, Chairman, Cobra Beer addressing AIMA’s Diamond Jubilee National Management Convention

Lord Karan Bilimoria, CBE DL, Chairman, Cobra Beer Partnership speaking about taking India to the greater heights, at AIMA’s Diamond Jubilee National Management Convention. Read Excerpts from his speech

Congratulations to AIMA on your Diamond Jubilee, I’ve just come down from London via Dehradun. My mother lives in Dehradun, 81 years old, and I went to see her. And I met with the commanding officer of the Second fifth Gurkha Rifles frontier force, my father’s battalion, which he commanded in the liberation of Bangladesh. Dehradun is where I first got to know Sunil Munjal, it was my father who introduced me to Sunil when they were both members of the board of the Doon School. And he said to me, you must meet this impressive young man, he’s really good. My father was a very good judge of character, and I’m now so proud that this impressive young man is a very good friend of mine, he’s now chairman of the board of Doon School.
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Reimagining India with Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog

India has become a leading country in the world, but it still has some way to go before it can consider itself a truly great nation. India needs to reimagine itself as a nation without poverty and shortages and as a nation of capability and prosperity. NITI Aayog has to play a pivotal role in shaping the transformative policies and improving policy outcomes.

Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog sharing key insights on the ‘ReImagining India’ at #AIMA‘s Diamond Jubilee National Management Convention (#NMC) 2017. Read excerpts –

Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog addressing AIMA’s Diamond Jubilee National Management Convention

Let me start off by complimenting ourselves, as Indians, for being in the midst of what I’ve always called India’s historically unique attempt at undertaking a triple transition simultaneously. I don’t see anywhere else in history or geography that there are other countries that have taken the social, political, and economic transitions simultaneously, these have always been sequential, and that’s something we’ve had to do because of what we were and what our independent leaders of our national movement decided. They simply decided that India could not afford to first take the economic transition where all the liberties would be closed and there would be no democracies and so on, and Mr Ambedkar ensured that you couldn’t undertake an economic transition without the social transition. And if you look at this huge achievement that we have had over the last 70 years, we very often tend to underestimate that. The inversion of the social pyramid in our country, where you’ve had a Dalit woman being the chief minister of the largest province in our country thrice, has been achieved practically and democratically without any bloodshed or violence. And states after states from Tamil Nadu to Bihar to UP we’ve seen that social transition happens over the last 70 years which for example cost millions of lives in the Soviet Union and China, and is doing so in Africa at the moment.

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Shaping the Future of Indian Cinema

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Film Director, Producer, Screenwriter sharing key insights on the ‘Future of Indian #Cinema’ at #AIMA‘s Diamond Jubilee National Management Convention (#NMC) 2017. Read excerpts –

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra Film Director, Producer, Screenwriter delivering a Keynote Address at #DiamondJubileeNMC

To understand any future let’s understand the past first. We got independence in 1947 and our early films, like the first five-year plan, had a lot of hope. It was about a nation coming together, a nation was born and there were a lot of dreams at that point in time because we were building a nation. We had films like “Naya daur, Saathi hath badhana, Ye desh hai veer javano ka ” and those were the kind of emotions but something started happening towards the end of the 1950s. For the first time we saw the main protagonist, and no gender bias here but mostly that time it was male-dominated kind of stories being told as the main protagonist, and for the first time we saw a hero being a black marketer in Devanand in Kalabazar. So here was the nation who had a problem with police coming into the neighborhood not even into their homes and we then accepted a hero who was actually a black marketer, a thief, Jaal all these movies. What happened? Was it the Bengal Drought? Was it the two wars with Pakistan, was it poverty, had we woken up from the dream of independence in free India and we understood what a momentous task lies in front of us after gaining the independence and then we lost the China war and movies were reflecting that. Every youngster wanted to have a stubble like Devdas and die as such. You know it was a doomsday kind of thing. “Jinhe naaz hai hind par wo kaha hai, Jalado jalado ye duniya” it became the iconic and the subconscious of the nation. The political system was failing; the first prime minister was dead, there were chaos, joblessness, long lines for everything. We didn’t have any ideology, neither capitalist nor communist, it was a mixed economy. We wanted to take the good of both the economies and also attracted the evil of both the systems as such and became expert at that, as the time would tell. So we invented escapist cinema and somewhere in the late 60s our hero, which is Shamikapoor, started dancing, he started that. So we accepted a new kind of man who now dances he is still dancing I don’t know why but maybe we still need that escapism. It always beats me. So if you notice, a lot of us would know that the hero before Shamikapor never danced. Dileep kumar, Devanand, Rajkapoor, Motilal, Ashok Kumar, K.L Sehgal the iconic ones, they never danced. We left it to the grace of the fairer sex. And in those even dances were very classical.

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Creating a Trillion Dollar Digital Economy – Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad on Digital India

Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Law and Justice; Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India addressing AIMA’s Diamond Jubilee National Management Convention (NMC) 2017

Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Law and Justice; Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India sharing his thoughts on Digitisation, #Digital Economy, and #Digitalindia at #AIMA‘s Diamond Jubilee National Management Convention (#NMC) 2017. Read excerpts –

Ladies and gentlemen, I have 20 minutes left, I’ll try to be as brief and as bullet points as possible. You know whenever you come with an Idea, certain hiccups are there. I remember when I was the minister in Vajpayee Government, the National Highway Program was started and Vajpayee was men of few words, sitting in a meeting and there was a lot of opposition “Jamin kaha se ayegi, Kashmir se Kanyakumari, Silchar se Surat 4 lane 6 lane highway kaise banega, kisan pareshan honge”. Vajpayee ji kept on listening and lastly uttered one word “Karna hai” that’s all. The Boss said enough is enough. About 10 months ago I had gone to Kanyakumari in a function. And I was told Kashmir to Kanyakumari 6 lane highway ends just adjacent to the area where the function was held… I said “Let me drive on this highway, I will not get time to drive all the way from Kashmir to Kanyakumari but let me have a feel. That if there is an idea, there is a commitment, results happen.

To speak about digitization today, when the computer came what was the objection? “Naukri chali jayegi computer aa gya” many of our own party people were also having the problem but today computer, leave aside killing jobs, became one of the biggest generators of jobs. Why I am speaking all this to you today is “1. Trust the potential of India’s talent, 2. Have faith in the innovative spirit of Indians, 3. Share the sheer optimism which young India is seeking to propel”. These three things I would like to highlight at the very outset.

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‘We are in the best of times’ – N Chandrasekaran addressing AIMA Award Ceremony

Mr N Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Sons addressing the JRD TATA award ceremony

It is a unique privilege and honor to share a few thoughts with all of you this evening. It has been a great privilege for me to receive the AIMA JRD Tata Corporate Leadership award for 2016. I want to thank the Jury for selecting me for this honor. It is special for me because it is named after JRD. Even in our group the highest award given to our group companies that excel at highest levels is named after JRD.

Today we are going to talk about leadership and JRD has exemplified leadership in multiple dimensions. One area that was close to his heart is excellence. His famous quote that everyone probably remembers, I quote “One must forever strive for excellence, or even perfection, in any task, however small, and never be satisfied with second best”. All of us who run businesses know how true this statement is. if you want to build world-class companies. And how hard it is to achieve this level of excellence and to survive competition and continue to succeed.

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Vice President of India, Shri Hamid Ansari addressing AIMA JRD Tata Award

Shri Hamid Ansari, the (then) Vice President of India, addressing AIMA – JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award ceremony.

Shri Hamid Ansari, Vice President of India addressing AIMA JRD Tata Award Ceremony

Shri Sunil Munjal, Shri Chandrashekhar, Shri Mohandas Pal, Shri Nikhil Swahney, Shri Sanjay Kirloskar, Miss Rekha Sethi, distinguished guests, ladies, and gentlemen. Some years back two management gurus had postulated that in a complex and dynamic global competitive environment adaptive capability is the key to survival and growth and that Indian businesses will find themselves on the road to rapid growth when they learn to think and act adaptively. The challenge before the Indian corporate sector today in the face of continuing low level of global growth and rapid changes in the technology of production and preferences of the end consumers is how to sustain their growth in times of recession that endangers protectionist regimes while competing in a fast evolving technological landscape.

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President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee Commemorating AIMA’s Diamond Jubilee Year

To celebrate its Diamond Jubilee Year, All India Management Association organized a special session with The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhavan on June 7, 2017.

Shri Pranab Mukherjee commemorating AIMA's Diamond Jubilee Celebrations

Shri Pranab Mukherjee addressing ‘Special Session to commemorate AIMA’s Diamond Jubilee Year’

It’s pleasure for me to be present amongst you this evening when we are celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of AIMA. You can be proud of sustaining a culture of excellence for six decades. The achievements of the last sixty years, I am sure shall motivate you to even greater heights in the years to come. When you began your journey in 1957, the country was entered into the phase of industrialization, because the major industrial policy thrust was given in 1956 industrial policy resolution. It was the launching of the second five year plan period and subsequently, you have seen how India progressed. And from a country when it began its independence 70 years ago and 10 years before you began your journey, it was one of the poorest countries in the world for more than half a century. From 1900 to 1950 the economy registered just below 1 percent annual average GDP growth. India was in deficit. At that juncture, your organization took a giant leap I must say, not in darkness but with definite aims and objectives that we must come out, fully exploit our potentials, particularly amongst our youth. Give them managerial tools, sharpen their skills and make them the best available many years to manage. It is not merely the management of material. It is also the management of the ethos, their culture and also to carry on the legacy of a heritage which is of 5000 years old civilization.

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Making India Easy & Simple – Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog at NLC2017

Mr Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog talks about how the current government’s reforms to make India Easy and Simple; at AIMA’s 3rd National Leadership Conclave 2017.

Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog sharing his thoughts on Government and Business: What Should be the New Equation? at #AIMANLC

It’s great pleasure to be here on this very fascinating subject of government and business. My belief is that the government’s job is to lay down the policy framework and the private sector’s job is to create wealth in society and if you look at India over the years, the government had itself made India very complicated, very complex and a very difficult place to do business because over the years we have added a lots of rules, regulations, procedures, paper work, acts, all of them. And these procedures and paper works have made it very difficult for the private sector to create wealth and therefore this particular government in the last two and half years has attempted to make things extremely easy and simple. They have scrapped 1198 laws. This is unparalleled, unheard in India’s history so a lot of laws have been scrapped. It has tried to make India easy and simple for the private sector to do business. For instance, the number of forms for import and exports was 11 and 9 which has been brought down to a mere 3. You can register a company in one day today. You can register startup in just about an hour and MSME in just 5 minutes today. So the entire focus of this government has been to make India easy and simple, cut down paper work, digitize everything and put everything online. And since most businesses are done in their state, the government’s view is that states become easy and simple and therefore we initiated the competition among states. We ranked states, we said we will name and shame states.States were ranked, a year before Gujarat came number one. But last year in the ease of doing business Gujarat was dethroned and Telangana and Andhra became number one. But the good part was that Jharkhand and Chattisgarh moved up. And they have done a lot of reforms. So similarly my view is that the government must create a huge sense of competition among the states and put it in public domain. And we are doing the same thing in education, in health, in water management from NITI AYOG on outcomes.

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Author Archives: Team AIMA

HR should stop doing politics – D Shivakumar

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Functional Smartness Vs Business Smartness – Navi Radjou

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India Ready for the Big Leap Forward – Lord Karan Bilimoria

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Reimagining India with Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog

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Shaping the Future of Indian Cinema

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Creating a Trillion Dollar Digital Economy – Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad on Digital India

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‘We are in the best of times’ – N Chandrasekaran addressing AIMA Award Ceremony

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Vice President of India, Shri Hamid Ansari addressing AIMA JRD Tata Award

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President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee Commemorating AIMA’s Diamond Jubilee Year

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Making India Easy & Simple – Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog at NLC2017

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