Learn Leadrship from India’s Retails Czar: Kishore Biyani

Born into a small trading family, India’s retail czar, Kishore Biyani, replaced conventional wisdom with “guts and instincts” to create Future Group, a $1 billion company that includes Pantaloon Retail, a department store group; Big Bazaar, the company’s name for hypermarkets; Food Bazaar supermarkets, and Central Mall, a more upscale aggregation of merchandise. Known for his insights into Indian consumer behavior, Biyani also represents an enigma to the country’s emerging retail players, both domestic and foreign. He offers some glimpses into what makes him tick in his recent biography titled, It Happened in India: The Story of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Central and the Great Indian Consumer, co-authored with Dipayan Baishya. The book has sold some 100,000 copies, more than any other business book published in India so far. In an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton, Biyani, who has often been called “the Sam Walton of India,” talked about leadership, the Indian retail market and why he would never consider collaborating with Wal-Mart, among other topics. Excerpts from the interview follow.

India Knowledge@Wharton: What does leadership mean to you?

Biyani: In the last six months, I have read many articles on leadership and met a couple of experts on that subject. But I still could not find an answer to what, exactly, leadership means.

There are two types of leadership. The first is all about thought leadership, which is original thought, believing in it and making things happen based on those thoughts. The second type is skills leadership, which refers to doing things consistently and in your own style.

India Knowledge@Wharton: What part of leadership is inborn and what can be developed?

Biyani:For me, leadership is all about thought leadership, not skills leadership.Skills leadership can be developed even after the age of 24 or 25, but thought leadership cannot be developed after a certain age.

India Knowledge@Wharton: How do you define thought leadership?

Biyani: Thought leadership is about building scenarios and making them happen. I believe everybody is a victim of systemic thinking and has their own mental syntax. First things come first, and everything else is a reflection of where you started on that first thing. If you change that syntax, things change. If you have a business school orientation, your syntax of thinking will be in a particular direction. I am a businessman and entrepreneur, so my syntax of thinking will be in a different direction. Each has a unique method of sequencing to arrive at answers.

One would have to change everything to look at things differently. That is a very difficult thing to do as we have our own mental maps. We are not trained to change mental models. Business schools also have not been trained to do that. Business schools work on creating efficiencies, creating productivity and managing consistency. But life is not like that. Life is chaotic.

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India Knowledge@Wharton: How have you developed leadership in your organization?

Biyani: We have developed a very different style of leadership. We run a seamless organization. We don’t have structures; it is a non-hierarchical organization that works with people coming together to do things.

It is also a very design-driven organization. We believe the structure has to be broken up to change; the design has to be altered to change things. A design-driven organization has flexibility and maneuverability. It is an amorphous organization that can be given any shape and any direction anytime.

India Knowledge@Wharton: Can you give an example of how that works?

Biyani: We can chop and change anything we do, anytime. Nothing is constant for us. Nothing is constant here. We believe in destroying what we have created.

India Knowledge@Wharton: In your book, you have described three types of entrepreneurs. You say your father and uncles were “preservers” and you call yourself a “creator” and a “destroyer.”

Biyani: Most people are trained to be preservers. It is great to be a preserver. But for us, whoever has to create has to destroy. Without destroying, you cannot create anything new.

That is also the law of nature. Look at the seasons. Everything gets destroyed to create something new. But unfortunately, business does not take any cues from nature. None of the business schools takes anything from nature. One cannot go against the flow of nature. In our group, we don’t follow business principles. We follow the principles of nature.

One of the biggest principles we follow, as I have said in the book, is to go with the flow. We never do anything against the flow of nature. And when you follow the principles of nature, ideas will get destroyed and recreated.

If you look at nature, human beings have not changed over a period of so many years. Love, hate and all the other emotions are still the same. But we all complicate things. We create segments, psychographics and other indices. It is a simple world, but we break it up and start looking at it through lenses that are very different. You will find all the answers in nature.

Continue here India Knowledge Wharton.

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A Leaders Paradigm – Leading to Serve and Grow

Leadership is about interacting with the people as distinct from making use of machines and other resources. Everything connected with and concerning the people in parts or as a whole, is the leaders main business

In an organization quest for creating optimum capability and maximum performance, leadership plays the most important role. It is the power engine that pulls everyone through the rough and tough to the organization goal. The quality of leadership is critical to its performance.

Leadership is about interacting with the people as distinct from making use of machines and other resources. Everything and anything connected with and concerning the people in parts or as a whole, is the leader’s main business.

People are his domain. He connects and combines the head and heart at work in the most appropriate and balanced manner. It is not to suggest that a leader does not deal with the material wherewithal required for the performance. He makes use of those through the people by enabling them to utilise the machines, material and money in the most effective manner. As people are central to an organisation’s performance, a leader is its linchpin. There can be no leader, at any level, without followers or a team. Leadership cannot be practised in isolation. It is not a solo performance.

Whatever be his vision and concept; howsoever brilliant and innovative may be his plans; those can be turned into performance only through his people. A leader realises and proves his worth through the willing efforts of his team.

A leader does not lead by virtue of his appointment. In fact, a leader can not be appointed by authority. While an individual may be placed as a leader, he has to establish his competency and credibility among his followers before he can expect them to follow him. The leader-led relationship is developed as a result of mutual interaction and remains the followers’ choice. It is they who gauge the ability of an individual to lead them and decide whether or not they are willing to follow him. Therefore, a leader has to make himself worth following to his followers by coming up to their expectations.

What are those expectations from the leader? The answer would serve to crystallise the concept and serve as a guideline to the aspiring leaders.

Expectations
The followers would expect the leader to be professionally competent and have the acumen to determine their goal (cause, purpose, vision, objective). Having done that, find the best way to its accomplishment as also fulfil their individual and collective aspirations (direction, planning, guidance, growth). Thereafter they would expect him to lead them on that path (execution, motivation, action, trouble-shooting, achievement of goals) while always being in the forefront (example, inspiration).

In every sphere, he would be expected to follow a high standard of ethical behaviour based on integrity. A leader is instinctively evaluated in these expectations by his followers or team members, the beholders. Consequently, he would be held in their esteem accordingly.

It is only logical that an individual who aspires to be a leader should be aware of these expectations and develop his leadership accordingly. In brief, a leader explores the way; finds the way; shows the way; and goes the way; – leading from the front, all the way.

Leader’s portrait
In the light of these expectations, we may draw the portrait of a leader as a power engine in front; a visionary who can see far ahead into the future through the thick fog of surroundings, time and uncertainty; an explorer of possibilities; a guide who leads from the front; a motivator, facilitator, simplifier, catalyst and mentor.
He acts as a force multiplier creating synergy and skillful utilisation of resources. Overall, he adds value to the team performance through his leadership acumen. This portrayal highlights that a leader leads to serve. He serves the organisation and his team members by providing quality leadership keeping their interests uppermost. A high quality organisation culture propagates this definition and expects every leader, irrespective of whom he leads, to measure up to its spirit.

Why to be a leader?
During one seminar on leadership, a young participant raised a fundamental question. She wanted to know as to why should she aspire to become a leader which meant doing a lot for the team members and expect least rewards for herself. She would rather be a member where the leader would be responsible to motivate her, plan her work, do her trouble-shooting, help her grow and also get her the rewards.

The question related to the very fundamental of leadership development and its practice. It should be posed by every aspiring and practising leader to himself and get the right orientation towards leadership. A leader has the potential and the zeal to lead which he develops in two closely integrated plans in his quest for self-realisation. In one, he serves his organisation through adding value to performance of his team. In the other, he strives to help his team members towards their growth, realisation of their potential and self-fulfilment. He can transform ordinary people into champion performers.

Driving factor
This spirit of service and zeal to lead gets manifested as a passion like that of a mountaineer setting out to climb a peak; a diver to explore the deep ocean-bed; or those doing selfless social service for the cause of needy social segments. The ardour creates the aspirations and a surge in an individual to develop his potential of leadership as a perpetual process of learning and serving.

Leadership has to be a fire within an individual that drives and motivates him to don the mantle of a leader and sustain it. He strives to lead for his self-fulfilment and not for any extraneous reward. A leader measures his success by the joy and contentment that he derives from his interaction and accomplishment with his team. Every phase and milestone covered in his journey gives him the satisfaction of self-fulfilment.
While making others grow, a leader also has the satisfaction of growing himself. Leadership is a life-long pursuit of learning, service and growth along the path of self-realisation. He leads to serve and grow.

Article written by : By Maj Gen Virinder Uberoy on Deccan Herald

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