ET AWARDS!

WHAT NEWDECADE FROM 2010 NEEDS & PROMISSES?
400 CEOs IN ?ET? AWARDS FESTIVAL 2008-09 LEARNT!
DR. G.BALAKRISHNAN, PhD

A gala awards function of Economic times in Hotel Trident at Mumbai. A Global CEO Consultant Ram Charan landed at Trident from New York. Said, ?create a 12 month agenda (while you may change the sequence but select the items that you want to spend more time on!); - Boards have a lot of power point presentations that throw a ?lot of data? at Directors(of companies). Instead have a 5 minute presentation on main points to be discussed and what is the bad news. Boards need to spend a lot of time on ?dialogue? because that will benefit the company most. Board members need to be individually evaluated. There are 3 questions to be asked to every member of the board ? what are the ?three things? in your mind that the board had done well? What are the ?three things? in your mind that the board should do next year, to be more effective? What is the output you aspire for??

He said while selecting a CEO, the board should ?look at the person whether he has continually increased his or her sphere of work and the band width? Can he handle complexity; can he sort out, sift out, and select properly what the key issues are, because at CEO level that is what is really important. Secondly, he has to be a ?profit & loss? manger. He should know how to make money i.e. able to convert every opportunity to money. Thirdly, ?can he build external and internal relationships?; and fourthly, ?Can he select right people (for right jobs)?.

Ramakrishnan of Bajaj Electricals wanted ?recipe? for a CEO?s failure, he said, ?Each individual has his god?s gift ? uniqueness- and the biggest failure happens at the time of CEO selections (rests with Board), since a CEO to a job is a ?critical input ? and in most failures that is the ?Key Reason?.
On Role of Promoter- CEO, mostly in FAMILY-LED-ENTERPRISES if he wants to scale up from middle to large scale, Charan said, ?to use his teams as ?multipliers? as he has only 24 hours at his disposal every day and that is what keep on multiplying the ?future of business???
Summing up his views, said, ?If you are a global company and you want use the Board effectively, Be Sure you have MORE members who can dissect the balance sheet. ?Adding further, ?Many Boards had run out of ?flexibility? and ?nobody? in Boards understands ?the entire systemic part of businesses?. For Global play, if a company wants to raise global capital , it needs global boards, global ?bench marks? and inclusion of board members understanding ?how the global financial system works? and on ? boards power? he said ? boards need to spend a lot of time on ?dialogue? because it will benefit the company the most?. Then he packed his bags to Vienna flight to catch up a Board meeting in Vienna. (Ends)