D-Shivakumar

In the session that took place at AIMA Young Leaders Retreat, D Shivakumar threw some light over the subject of managing self, team and business. The session started with one question directed on topic of trying to compare everything with money. Why people come to work is the first question leader should ask. People don’t come for money. Number one reason is does this company have meaning in what it does. So first Thing Company should start talking is about its focus. Why do we exist? Whom do we serve? What do we do? First is purpose. Second reason, believe it or not, is good colleagues. When people come from office and say wow I have good colleagues that would be a good culture, that’s why they come to work. Lot of people think that they would throw money and get good culture, no, that’s not the case. There’s an inverse relation between company with high salary and culture. Banks are the best example. Banks are cut-throat companies, because individual talent matters. And the third is, Progress. Whatever the way it is, in the evening they want to see improvement. They want their CV improved in the end. Now I will tell you the scary part. The current generation will not have the jobs till they are 40. Either their parents will be responsible or they will be so unskilled that nobody will pick them up. Unfortunately India doesn’t have the social security system. Your salary is the only route your family going and builds assets. So my submission to all of you is to tell them to think of career as a marathon, it’s a long time game. Don’t keep jumping for the next 2000 bucks. We are measuring ourselves on the assets and money earned. If you are good, money will follow you. If you have money it doesn’t mean you are good. Take this message to your teams, real value of money you make is after the age of 40. Funny way enough, all the guys are changing jobs, till 40. 40 to 50 is the prime time. You make 200-300% of your savings. Till 40, you are scraping through.
In answering one question about innovation in today’s world, he said, when we think of innovation, we think of adding something new to the world. That’s not necessary. Innovation can be in product, innovation can be in service, innovation can be in business model. Innovation can be in the way you do things. That’s what it is about. And a disciplined way gets you far more results than just brain storming and shooting from rear. There are two components of innovation. Everybody is seduced by the idea, but culture is equally important. Discipline, energy and focus are the pillars for a successful pitch for a leader. If you don’t have these things, you have to be absolute genius to be successful.

Sadhguru

In another session that took place at AIMA’s 41st National Management Convention, SadhguruJaggiVasudev, commonly known as Sadhguru, who is an Indian yogi, mystic, philanthropist and author of over 100 titles in 8 different languages, talked about “Importance of Managing the Interiority For One Who Needs To Manage A Company Or The World”. He founded the Isha Foundation, a non-profit organisation which offers yoga programs around the world.

The talk with Sadhguru started on the note where he laid stress on how obsessed people these days are with the economy. He added that everybody discusses economy these days. It is not some heavenly subject, it is just organising our survival process. So in trying to organise this, we are losing everything else in our life. Everybody is onto economy. World is engrossed in economy as if it is the greatest thing.

He said that always the focus should be individual human being, no mass production. Every individual is important as the other. This is why you bow down to what you consider god. Anyone thinks that this is more important than others is missing the fundamental meaning of life. Focusing on individual growth is most important. We don’t have to focus on social well-being. If all the human beings here are doing great, why you should bother about social well-being, it will naturally happen, it’s a consequence. If you nourish this human being with right things within himself, results will come. What sphere of life he will shine in is up to him and also the situations in which we exist. So the important thing is just to grow your body brain energy to the fullest potential. What you can do should always depend upon the requirement of the situation, not your fanciful idea. To create a society where individual human beings will blossom into their full potential, he needs a deeper commitment towards individual human being. Human being comes with a bottom line, not top line.

On being asked that what would be your advice on balance results with happiness and contentment? He replied that in many ways, success is most important thing in a life for a person. Every human experience comes within you, what happens in the world, will not happen 100% your way, doesn’t matter how good manager you are. It will happen to some extent your way, but will never happen 100%. But what happens within you must happen your way. If your body took instructions from you, you will keep it pleasant all the time. And if you want to be successful, your body and mind best when in pleasantness. In stress, you will not work at optimal level and a wrong message to next generation that success equals stress. He concluded the session by saying that important responsibility is that you have to send a message out to the world that success is a beautiful and wonderful thing not suffering.

Mr. D Shivakumar, Chairman and CEO – India Region, PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd.

AIMA conducts its annual flagship event – National Management Convention with an aim to address the prevalent challenges of corporate ecosphere in India, their repercussion on the business scenario and deciding the tactics to handle it efficiently in coming years. A topic of national importance is taken as a theme in the convention and is addressed by The Convention addresses a topical theme of national importance and is addressed by prominent speakers from all spheres of life. Its grandeur can be understood by the fact only that last year almost 800 delegates from Industry, government, media and academia attended NMC and it is rising exponentially. There were number of prominent speakers this at 41st NMC. Topic of concern this year was “Changing Times: Reinventing the India Story”, and speakers from different fields of the industry put their thoughts through interactive sessions.

One such profound insight was laid upon by Mr. D Shivakumar, Chairman and CEO – India Region, PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd. and former president of AIMA. In his session at NMC, he talked about reforms which should be undertaken when it comes to reinvent India for better. He said we have made progress and there is scope to achieve lot more in the coming years. He started his presentation with some facts. The people living under poverty line have come down to one-third, from its peak 70-80% to 33% in these years. Looking at the infrastructural growth now, ten folds growth has been seen in roads. Number of airports has reached to 125 and we now have 13 major sea ports in last 60 years. So it is clear from the numbers that we definitely have made progress in the infrastructure. Then he spoke about importance of women growth. Though literacy rate of women has risen from 9% to 74%, still involvement of woman in workforce needs to be worked on.

On the front of technological facts, aspired products of people have moved from owning bicycles to personal technology products like smart phones, tablets and much more. It is a mark of definite progress he said. Then he talked about these key reforms which should be undertaken for changing the face of progress in India. Firstly, there should be no small versus big ideology, ecosystem should be small and big working together. He further added that India is a scale country and we need to move forward from era of ‘jugaad’ to a thinking about brand, innovation and design to move up in the chain because then only it can contribute in reinventing India and products it has to offer. He also said that attitude should be changed. Mindset should be to put something back there as opposed to perennially complaining and moaning. What can I do to make a change that can make move forward? – This should be the point of ponder upon. Next point is about the lands. 90% of land is disputed and it should be reformed if we want anything to be done. Another thing is to invest in Teachers, if you want yield of high quality students. Focus should be on providing skills, not degrees along with emphasis on women. Last point on his presentation was of developing smart cities which involves lots of technology which will sure path to be taken for reinventing and changing times. He concluded by saying that if these little things are kept in mind, there is nothing which can stop in bringing a reinvented and desirable future.

The above article is an excerpt from the speech delivered by Mr. D Shivakumar, Chairman and CEO – India Region, PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd. at AIMA’s National Management Convention which was held in September 2014.

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Sangeeta Talwar, Former Managing Director NDDB

I believe, innovation is countering inertia of change, which we all find very difficult to undertake. Its certainly about confronting gravity, and severing the tethers of what ties us to tradition. It’s scaling the walls of doubt and turning them into windows of opportunity. You must have heard this morning. It’s about doing new & different things.  But it’s also about doing new and different things, differently! And, I think, doing a lot of new and different things, differently, there is a certain synergy that comes together and has thistransformative effect that innovation brings to organisations. As this book, ‘Orbitfuring Innovations’ has mentioned, it usually starts with the out of the box challenge. I think, Tanmay also mentioned it. ‘Tell me what the problem is’, and let’s look for that out of box idea, which is very clear definition of out of box challenge.

Innovation needs a lot of courage. You need to stand up to the change and you need to stand by the change. And I think that is a very critical aspect of innovation. If you don’t have the courage the stamina to stand by what is being created, it will fall by the way side. You must have seen a lot of passion and zeal, all of this morning and afternoon. That’s the call for innovation! The way it works is infectious and transcends the boundaries around you. Transcends the boundaries of reasons and metamorphosis all of them. It’s a drive of unfathomable Continue reading →