ramana wrote:In Us they have companies that hire them out ot the govt as consultants to ensure the talent is not lost. And moreover to ensure no loss to other side. I wonder why self preservation is so difficult for modern Indians to understand? Some disgruntled underling will whine to a reporter who thinks he has breaking news and publishes it to get his two seconds of fame.
Ramana, there is two aspects to leadership - perform & sustain.
In the perform role, a leader should lead to functional success (Eg successfully managing a project in civil scenario or winning a war in a military scenario). Indians see leaders only in this light.
What our Indians psyche completely misses is the sustain role - building a great organization with leaders at all levels. Very few Indian civil or military leaders actually do that.
The reason Sardar Patel, Sam Manekshaw or Ronnie Pereira are remembered is because they built institutions. Sam created independent leaders at junior, middle & higher levels who could lead us to victory at all levels.
Sidhoji Gujar & Kanhoji Angre build & led strong navies. However they didn’t build institutions. Hence that Navy crumbled to dust 37 years after his death.
We very rarely hear about Fakir Chand Kohli. He built TCS, led it initially & then passed it to successors. He created a self sustaining institution, that thrives even when the market is bad. It is still the market leader.
N R Narayanamurthy & his initial team started Infosys and everyone began worshipping them. Unfortunately, while they were successful in the perform role, they ignored the sustain role. They didn’t groom leaders at every level of the organization.
Unfortunately, “great leaders” are not immortal, nor can they work at full efficiency forever. When they step down, the high, middle & junior leadership, used to following orders from great leaders all their lives. This retards their ability to lead themselves. Their lack ability to independently function under circumstances that’ve invariably changed from the time elapsed since great leader’s time.
This is the reason why Infosys is in a poor shape today while TCS & Cognizant are going great. TCS & Cognizant face same business challenges as Infosys, but their junior, middle & higher management are more agile and unencumbered by great leader's baggage.
Cognizant, Datamatics, i-flex CEO's were all ex-TCS. Why? Because TCS is a leadership factory for itself & the industry.
Creating, idolizing & worshipping great leaders is a horrible flaw in the Indian Psyche. This phenomenon leads to our downfall in the long run despite initial successes.
The article doesn’t touch this issue, but if these honorable gentlemen had built a good organization, then the next level of leaders should have been ready.
They can always resign from their leadership roles on reaching retirement age, and be around as technical advisors.
If there is a need for these people to be still leading their functions, it is clear that the next generation of leaders is not ready. Or they’re stifling the next generation.
