Life & Leadership

Leadership Refresh

  One of the more troublesome challenges of Leadership is - how do you renew and refresh your Leadership style? 

In the first place, it takes a long time, almost a lifetime, to get your leadership style in place. Renewing or refreshing it is as counter-intuitive as it is difficult. Most of us take a long time & effort combined with learning to develop our Leadership abilities - even contemplating a change is quite daunting.

I just went through a Refresher where I spent time with myself, did some introspection and did some rust cleaning of my own toolkit. This was at www.isabs.org . Did a week long program on Human Process Labs - December 15 - 20th at Agra, city of the Taj Mahal.

It was an amazing week, discovered a lot about myself.

My biggest insight this week was that true learning occurs when feedback forces a fundamental shift in the way I viewed myself. And boy, the process is bloody painful !

My biggest discovery was that my behaviors were intertwined with many aspects of me that I was unaware of. Till I understood that, I would not be able to move on and change my behavior, including leadership behavior.

It was fun !!

And just as I log off, here is wishing you all, a merry Christmas & a very happy new year.

Global Slowdown - Making sense & Implications

The current slowdown, recession, meltdown or whatever else you call it, is getting into its main act as it begins to play out in Main Street, especially in India & China. And contrary to prevailing media opinion, we have barely seen the first act of the 3-act play out of this.

Act 2 likely to see a severe implosion of the real estate sector - driven by falling demand, consumer mistrust of intrinsic value & distress selling by people who have "invested" in realty & are now seeing pink slips. Credit may ease out due to government intervention, but this time the issue is about intrinsic demand.

At the risk of sounding like a doomsday Cassandra, I foresee corporate employment will fall & the job market will shrink. At worst, it could even lead to social uprisings. 

Apart from Structural Economic reasons, there is another logic why India is likely to see a lot of over reactions - the current & older generation of leaders in India have never seen a slowdown that is so sustained & across all industries.

Summary - Doom & Gloom, consumer demand plummets, job losses, credit squeeze, realty implosion ...

Phew ... Now that I have given so much doom, lets talk about Act 3, thats when recovery begins.

Act 3 - Asia is lagging in the impact its seeing of the global crisis & while its still reeling under its impact there will be PE  / Hedge funds & other FIs who will see the crisis blowing over in US & Europe. The early birds will swoop down for picking the bargain deals & suddenly the crisis will boom about just as suddenly into another boom. So whats the dark lining of this silver cloud?

Most of us will be so shell shocked & gun-shy by now that we will see the recovery with cynicism & disbelief. My guess is that we should see the upturn by end Q2 of 2009 or early Q3.

Till then, keep sanity close by & prepare for the peak of the crisis.

Good Luck