Leadership – Multifarious dimensions and paradigms!

In business literature ‘leadership’ has always been an important topic considering that, it is what leadership envisions that the organization delivers. In recent times there have been many ways that ‘leadership’ has been looked at or defined, making the qualities or traits of a leader, both complex and a really long list.

 In ‘Your company’s history as a leadership tool’ by John T Seaman Jr& David Smith, the authors suggest that because shared history is central to group identity, past experiences can be used to unite and inspire people especially during challenging times. The leader is expected to have a sophisticated understanding of the past to take the organization into the future.I wonder if it is a contradictory argument, however, GautamMukunda proves with his research that ‘The best leaders tend to be outsiders who don’t have a great deal of experience’. His reference ‘outsiders’ and ‘experience’ refer to the organization. Many would suggest that leaders having a great visioning ability would be of great value and surely someone like Ramcharan would suggest that a grip on ‘execution’ would be really necessary not just useful.

The paradigm from which one views leadership characterizes the meaning of the term. From leading people, leading organizational thought, to leading a situation, there are many ways at looking at leadership. Taking control of the situation rather than letting the situation take control of you is one way of looking at leadership. VinayNadigauthor of the book ‘Leadership IS for everyone’ offers many tips and tools for situational leadership.

To prove the title of this article, I picked a few recent issues of the illustrious Harvard Business Review and looked for articles which had the expression ‘leadership’ or ‘leader’ in the title. Types of leaders, qualities of a leader, tools for leaders are the most common genre of articles, with ‘what is leadership?’ making an intermittent appearance.

Leadership Qualities

DanialGoleman’s 1998 article ‘What makes a leader?’ discussed that apart from other things, leaders need to have ‘emotional intelligence’, not surprising from DanialGoleman, who in his famous book uses the Sanskritword ‘samaskara’ which brings up another issue; whether leadership can be inherited with requisite brain wiring, this issue is good for another piece.

Steve Jobs was a leader who really pushed his people to their limits. His other ‘leadership’ qualities of Focus, simplify, take responsibility for end to end, Bend reality, engage face to face, combine the humanities with the sciences, and the famous stay hungry, stay foolish have all been elaborated by Walter Isaacson in his article ‘The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs’.

The title of one column by Reymond Edwin MabusJr in the HBR is ‘To lead, you must focus’, He describes the need for leaders to narrow focus the organizations unique strength and role (Vision – my understanding). ‘Focus’ is also the bedrock of Daniel Goleman’s article ‘the focused leader’; however he identifies oneself, others and the wider world as three buckets for focus.

A skills/situations matrix for a business leader would really be quite complex. ‘Strategic Leadership: the essential skills’ by Paul.J.H. Schoemaker, Steve Krupp, and Samantha Howland, identifies anticipate, Challenge, interpret, decide, align and learn as key strategic leadership skills.

Types of leaders

Leadership style is not a function of personality, it is a strategic choice is the belief that Daniel Goleman shares in his article ‘Leadership that gets results’ which classifies leadership styles based on the extant of each of the emotional intelligence competencies needed for the situation. The coercive style, authoritative style, affiliative style, democratic style, pacesetting style, and the coaching style are different styles identified by Goleman.

In a HBR blogpost from Dec 2013 Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries writes about the eight archetypes of leadership and discusses the strategist, change-catalyst, transactor (deal maker), builder, innovator, processor (efficiency!), coach, and communicator.Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries has also written about ‘Coaching the toxic leader’. This type of leader has ruined organizations and was difficult to identify or tame in the past, thankfully today’s organizations are easily able to identify such leaders more easily.

Nick Lovegrove and Mathew Thomas in ‘Triple –Strength leadership’ discuss leaders who are able move easily among business, government and social spheres. The authors are convinced that a leader who is able to bridge the chasm between these sectors is better suited to solve large scale problems which generally encompass all these sectors. ‘Blue Ocean leadership’ by W.Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, is not about values and qualities a good leader should have, it is about actions and activities leaders need to focus on in the particular organizational context.

Today organizations are faced with a great poverty of values. In India, a combination of the questionable undue focus on ‘market capitalization’ and the new social order of degrading morals and values, begs for ‘Authentic leadership’ more than anything else. While this was first popularised by a book by this title written by Bill George in 2003 and is the kind of leadership that is most needed, not much has been written about it in recent years, some buzz words just take a back seat even if they are towering concepts that need to be celebrated and spread every day. With the general battering ‘values’ are getting in society, authenticity is a difficult discussion. Beyond authentic leadership is ‘spiritual leadership’ which is a concept that is creating some buzz.

In NarendraModi’s famous Madison Square address he explicitly said that people repeatedly ask him for a grand vision for India and he confesses that having been a street tea vendor, he has only tasks to do and not any grand vision. This received great applause from the audience and received positive critical acclaim.

Leadership thankfully offers great diversity and offers great opportunity for creativity and being the ‘real’ oneself.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-opportunities/what-does-it-take-to-lead/article6806748.ece

Talk - Survival and Growth of Indian Retailers despite FDI

Strategies for Survival and Growth despite the entry of large foreign retailers

“Conventional retailers, especially those that are mid-sized, will be squeezed from all sides; from larger players with better economies of scale, from smaller players with more focused selection or a greater emphasis on convenience; from electronic retailers that have few physical assets but are rich in information, and from entertainment and education oriented players that offer a more vibrant consumer experience.”

Jagdish Sheth with Rajendra.S.Sisodia - “Changing Face of Retailing” Financial Times – series on Managing Marketing – Oct 19, 1998.

To survive and grow Indian retailers will need to be smart small players who will offer greater convenience, entertainment and interesting products.

The size of the retail market is forecasted to grow from rupees 23 lakh crores in 2011-12 to 47 lakh crores in 2016-17 according to an ASSOCHEM survey. We are a nation of shopkeepers with 11 shops for every 1000 people, 97% of the number of stores in the unorganized sector. Retailing has been growing at a hectic pace thanks to continuing urbanization, growing middle class, and macro-economic growth

We must first examine if it is possible to have a strategy for growth when large international retailers are capable of bringing in large investments in the form of foreign direct investments. In my view, even if FDI is allowed in multibrand retail, not all Indian retailers will shut their shops.

Going back to the very basics of strategy development, we need to look at the environment, the industry and the various firms in it, apart from the opportunity available in the market. When we examine the retail industry from the point of view of developing strategy, it is clear that for Indian firms cost leadership will be difficult, however, if they can differentiate and /or choose to focus, there are many opportunities. Differentiation strategy and Focus strategy are suitable in a situation where Indian retailers have to compete with very large firms who have already established global purchase and supply chains.

In India retailers can differentiate themselves in terms of the product range, service level or specific services, location and many such factors. With so many sub-cultures with very specific product needs and buying patterns, focus on niche segments is a very viable strategy in India.

Kenneth E. Stone, Professor of Economics, Iowa State University; Georgeanne Artz, Extension Program Specialist, Iowa State University, and Albert Myles, Extension Professor, Mississippi State University, in their 10 year study of the impact of Wal-Mart on smaller cities developed two primary conclusions.

“The entry of a new super center in a community can have dramatic implications for existing merchants. Two general rules-of-thumb summarize the economic impacts of a new super center on local merchants: Rule-of-thumb 1: Local merchants that sell merchandise different from the super center or other big box stores tend to fare well and may gain sales as the additional traffic generated by the big stores spills over into their stores. Rule-of-thumb 2 is not so pleasant: Local merchants that sell the same merchandise as the big stores will probably face a reduction in sales because of the difficulty in competing with major chains.” What this study indicates is that to succeed the merchandise strategy of Indian retailers needs to be different from the large chains.

 A couple of simple local examples may be useful. In Bangalore I find a unique format called ‘grandige angadi’ do you think large international retailers can compete with this format? There are stores like ‘subbamma stores’ in Gandhi bazar which cater to a niche target market and the turnover of this shop is only growing over the last 60 years.

Strategies for survival and growth will need to start by understanding the environment and competition very well. Retailing is changing and so is the customer, there is a great need to keep track of what is happening in the environment. For example traditional malls in the US are getting De-Malled and have to have other tenants like dentists, medical centres and clubs.  In India Smt Nirmala Sitaraman the commerce minister has issued many statements clarifying that the Government stand is not in favour of FDI in multi- brand retail for now. She has also indicated the need to regulate ownership of online retailers. Indian retailers will get some more time before we have WalMart and Carrefour all over the country. There is atleast 3-5 years to choose a strategy and work on it.

Indian retailers can get help from academics in understanding merchandise strategies, pricing, location and other components of the retail strategy of large international retailers. Based on customer requirements and competition Indian retailers will need to examine merchandising, marketing, customer service, operational efficiency, and human resources strategies. Indian retailer who accept the new reality and reinvent themselves will survive and the inefficient ones have to go. The way is through better customer service, personalized service, unique product assortment by identifying niches in the market, and most importantly improve efficiency in purchasing and managing inventory professionally.

 Finally, I do not wish to list specific survival and growth strategies for retailers as many paper presenters must have already done that. There are many opportunities in assortment planning, image development, ( one example is the Swadeshi products store in Jayanagar which does not stock MNC brands), value added services like cleaning and cutting vegetables or home delivery after 10pm, store operations including small things like cleanliness, and innovative pricing strategies. Human resources finance and management are other opportunity areas for improvement in traditional Indian retail stores. There are many tools available to traditional retailers for example jiffstores.com and kiranasales.com are Bangalore based initiatives worth looking to use the online platform without investing in it.

Many Indian retailers want to swim with the tide. They have built very visible front end retail and are hoping to be taken over by foreign companies. Building visibility and market capitalisation to make it easy to be taken over by FDI is also a strategy some larger Indian retail entrepreneurs are choosing.

Survival and growth is very much possible, however only those who have a strategy will survive.

Thank You for the opportunity.