In the words of Indra Nooyi

Source: http://www.mensxp.com/work-life/business-mantras/3072-leadership-style-of-indra-nooyi.html

I  do not want to sound like a male chauvinist pig but the reality is that women are just not given enough space to move about in the corporate world, in fact not even elbow room.

So, in this male dominated world, for a woman to find her own space and leave behind all men and to reach the very top requires a very high degree of tenacity.  Which our Indra has in ample measures. And, an Indian to boot!

Participation

The posts she holds besides being the Chairperson and the CEO of Pepsico, a very American institution read like something out a story book. She holds a membership in  the Foundation board of the World Economic forum. International Rescue Committee also her name in its roll. The Board of Trustees of Eisenhower fellowships is an organization where she is a member. What is noteworthy is that she is on the board of Lincoln Center for the Performing arts. That in deed shows her caliber in being not just a person steeped in corporate culture but as someone who is equally good at life's good things like arts.

Handling Power

Wall street journal and the Forbes magazine have both  named her as one of the most powerful women in business in the world. Time magazine went one step ahead and put her in the top place as number one influential woman in the world.   Hard figures reveal that her leadership has caused Pepsico to achieve double the sales after she took over in 2000.

Strength of Conviction

Indra believes in competence. Unless you are an expert in your chosen field, you will get nowhere. You will be known only if you become an expert.  In anything, take a decision weighing everything for and against it. Once you have decided, never waver from it. You should send out the message that you are courageous and confident enough to say what is believed to be right by you.

Outstanding Communication Skills

The way you communicate carries a lot of weight. In fact, your communication skills will be in the forefront of your leadership qualities. Indra is all for surrounding herself with mentors. She believes in listening to the mentors' advice and suggestions and incorporates the goods points in what she does.  She is not the one to veer away even a little from her moral compass. You must have strength to hold to what you know to be morally right, no matter what.

Take Care of your Employees

It is not enough to plan development assignments and make arrangements to implement them. Strategic building of skills and talent is necessary. An enterprising mindset is called for in this. Succession has to be taken into account at every stage. The experience as necessitated by the particular post needs to be in place. The plan for succession has to include the process as to how it should be done. Once the experience and skill are identified, the people most suitable for the assignment are to be entrusted with the task.

"Creating an organisation with a soul"

Vineet Nayar in an article "An invitation to dance" in the Corporate Dossier, The Economic Times,  dated  February 4, 2004. 

I read this article and wish to quote some of his valuable thoughts on this topic:

He says thus:

"The height of Everest is not in meters but in your mind. It is for you to determine whether its too high or too low to climb. The day you decide Everest is not too high, you will climb it. When we decide to allay our fears and overcome the critic with us that day we truly start dancing.

An invitation to dance is what we all wait for."

Disclosing his experience on the task of building COMNET -- creating an organisation with a soul, he and the team learnt the hard way. They had to forget and unlearn everything and question everything he claims. "It is only when we give ourselves permission to innovate, imagine and experience that we can develop the soul of an organisation."

His six simple ways to start a dance are as follows:

1. Be passionate: He quotes German philosopher George Hegel, "Nothing great has ever been accomplished without passion." He adds to this quote stating: there is no beginning or end -- only infinite passion.

2. Imaging and believe in oneself: Imagine beyond the obvious. Self belief turns imagination into reality.

3. Have a regular objective: Thinking through clearly and focusing on a singular objective is the most important ingredient of success. To achieve clarity of thought, it is essential to step out of your shoes and be a ruthless self critic.

4. Create a momentum: Often efforts fail, not because of wrong direction but because of lesser applied force, or what he calls lack of momentum. The tougher the challenge the more the momentum, change the direction every time you face a wall.

5. Dare to change: Change can happen only through observation and introspection. Dare to change without the fear of failure.

6. Be transparent : "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." said Oscar Wilde. Trust can only be created through transparency.

He concludes by saying, "an invitation to dance is not about doing things right, but believing that its your turn to dance. The danger in life is not false hope, but no hope or low hope."

Source: Vineet Nayaar,  An invitation to dance, The Economic Times, Corporate Dossire, February 4, 2012, p. 2

Enlightened Business Leaders

Enlightened business leaders transcend personal limitation to serve basic needs of business and shareholders and shift more towards better distribution of wealth, making their business a force for good. The basic issue is never about the creative power of business. It is about distributive justice based on integrity towards a fair share to share holders and all share holders where no one is exploited to satisfy the other 

1. This requires an individual to be more integrated business- being with human beings It demands freedom form an I-me-my and mine syndrome and going beyond realities to sensitivity towards certain interdependent, shared spaces and values.

2. Professionals and leaders circle of influence increases to cover others in larger dimension of time and number -- at what point does one become trans-personal so that really caring about self is also about others . One rise up to efficiency, capacity, problem solving and such other abilities . But there is a growing realization that a leadership and bandwidth is stretching further . The focus is on maturation of temperament rather than core abilities . While Jim Collins puts humility on top of leadership profiles, other suggest orders of learning (Peter Senge) and "Knowledge - creating" (Ikujiro Nonaka) organisation. Generally revenues and profits are taken for granted -- they are "just means" . Recognizing this power of business, people have growing concerns and new aspirations related to environment and society.

3. The architecture of business is constantly under suspicion . For a long time, whether or not that was the initial intent of business, it is designed to consider capital as an all important factor ans so share holder is King or King maker. It has taken some time for a shared understanding that suppliers, contractors , dealers , employees are also people--and equal in many respect to those who contribute to capital. An enterprise is not created, it is actually co-created by all making their respective forms of contribution. In total it is "co-creating sustainable value." So ownership and governance for business have to be such that wealth generated is not for so few that a handful of the richest in the world (corporate leaders) have personal assets more than the GDP of tens of nation while 5 billion people are struggling for livelihoods.

Source: TOI 17th December, 2011, p 14

Quote

"The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas of enthusiasm." ...Thomas J Watson

Fun Quotient -- display and enhance

Atul Saxena, Head HR CHD Developers Ltd, says,"the management has to ensure that employees get what they want . Its not always about money. It has to be a good blend of fun, a stress free work environment, compensation, working hours, rewards and most importantly employees being a part of a common organisational growth." "Happiness Quotient Task force"-- introduced in CHD developer charts out a plan for employee bonding and encourages strong internal communication between them:

• has an event calender;
• celebration of various festivals, employees birthday , sports day, health camps.

A Matter of Trust

Dennis Reina and Michelle Reina (Reina Trust Building Insitute )  says:

If employees don' trust leadership , organisation pay the price in the form of low engagement, high turnover and cost, loss of creativity and innovation. 20 years research indicate that most leaders think breach of trust must b sever or even scandalous; eg., Rupert Murdoch New corporation. To those leaders we say "think again". Little branches of trust over time are a big deal. Ultimately, employees pull back with holding their full energy and talent.

Why people do not trust leaders:

• you with hold trust in others;
• you ask much , yet fail to acknowledge effort;
• you behave badly;
• you don't admit your mistakes; you spin the truth;you duck people and performance issues;
• you don walk you talk

Finally a common mistake leaders make is to assume that their position alone make them worthy's of others trust.

Nothing could be further form the truth. It is only through behavior this leaders can build trust.

Romance in office

Richard Branson founder of Virgin Group says:

• bring romance back to office; avoid designing policy to conceal relationship of people; openness will prove to be win win;
• two people who have fallen in love should not report to one another;
• no matter how discreet and sensible the pair might be, too close a working relationship will invite problem;
• words of wisdom, "they should act like married couple around the office -- no outward displays of affection."
• couples should not use corporate email systems to send private messages;
• do not prohibit office romance, it would be far better to prepare some come sense guidelines that will help couples to cope with relationships that will inevitably arise.

A great company behaves something liake an extended family-- cheering succcess, finding the upside of mistakes, and getting together periodically to reconnect.

Employees falling in love is all part of the adventure and should be celebrated.

Source: Mint 7, February, 2012 p 6

Organisation with innovative HR practices

Infotech Enterprises with 9200 associates spread across 30 global locations; set up 2 decades back, this company works on "Global delivery and collaboration engineering" model to satisfy customers, service providers on product development, life cycle suport process, netork and content engineering. This company won recognision for its best HR practices, at the Asia Practice HRM Congress held on 2011.(As said by Mr B Ashok Reddy , President , Global HR and Corporate Affairs )

The company's unique HR practicess regarding recruitment:

• providing opportunities to its associates internally;
• robust mechanism for developing leaders within;
• they apply to internal job opportunities through career advancement path(CAP)
• Ratio of external hires to internal growth to manager position is 30:70;

On Infotech's employee welfare programme:

• associate's to continuously build their knowledge, skills and competencies while at work;
• special educational leave is provided for 15 days a year;
• Reimbursement fee for skill enhancement programme;
• reward programme on enhancing knowledge that act as an additional motivator;

Development initiative:

• Their culture encourages interaction with seniour managment through an open door policy;
• Internal feedback mechanism called "expressions", which helps log requests and queries of the associates online in an efficient manner and the time taken to respond gets monitored regularly;
•  they have built an unique programme of employee engagement "Infotouch"
• development imitative to suit our associates requirements across different responsibility levels, the company's growth plans and help associates chart out their growth with our growth;

Gender equality and diversity initiative:

• named as"Spoorthi"
• have different ways to support if women is career oriented;
• award best women performers;
• equal opportunity employer 
• employed based on ability;

Also encourages physically challenged people to work shoulder to shoulder with others.

Own internal virtual library "Kwench".

Infotech is an all encompassing model that is designed to engage mind, body and soul of our associates The expansion of the acronym is :

I - internal communication and branding;

N - new adventure;

F - fun@work;

O - outperform;

T - talent development;

O - Opportunity (career growth)

U - Unique work progress;

C - connect with managers;

H - health and well being.

Source: The Hindu, opportunities, Feb 8, 2012, p 4