"Leadership is not magnetic
personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making
friends and influencing people", that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a
person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a
higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal
limitations." — Peter F. Drucker
In one of the recent leadership interview
podcasts conducted by Richard Rierson, the Founder & Host of the
prestigious ‘Dose of Leadership Podcast’ asked me a question – why the hunger
for leadership and guru status is more among Indians. It is true that Indians
crave for international attention and recognition and they want to stand out
from other management and leadership gurus globally. There are more Indians
awardees in the Thinkers50 globally and there is a significant number of
Indians working in prestigious business schools globally. For instance, Nitin
Nohria is the dean of Harvard Business School and Deepak Jain is the Dean of
INSEAD to name a few. It indicates the leadership abilities of Indians in the area
of management. However, when we observe closely most Indians excelled in alien
land rather than in Indian land. It is strange that not even a single Indian
university is in the list of top 100 universities in the world. Hence, it is
time to ponder and look at why Indians don’t excel in India but excel greatly
overseas and Indian universities don’t stand out globally. Is the growth of
Indians abroad due to the international ambience, qualitative contribution, opportunities
or networking? Is non-recognition in Indian land due to the lack of
opportunities or ambience or politicization in India? The answer may be a combination of all these factors.
We rarely had the opportunity to prove
ourselves in the past except in a few areas especially in science and
technology. Thanks to rapid growth in technology as the things are thrown open
and people have easy access to international information and updates. They are
easily connected with others unlike the past. They collaborate with others to
avail the opportunities internationally.
Thinkers50
– 2013 Awards
I am excited to know the results of
Thinkers50 2013 where Clayton Christensen has been ranked as the number one
management thinker followed by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne holding their
ranks of 2011. There are some new
thinkers who made their entry into the list including Sheryl Sandberg. The
Thinkers50 Awards are like the Oscars of Management and are synonymous with
Nobel prizes as there is no Nobel Prize for the area of Management. These
awards are the most prestigious as every management thinker considers them a
great honor to bag these awards.
Selection
Criteria
Thinkers50 has 10 established criteria
by which thinkers are evaluated. 1 - 5 of the criteria are based on how the
thinker has performed over the last two years (since the last ranking). 1.
Relevance of ideas; 2. Rigour of research; 3. Presentation of ideas; 4.
Accessibility/Dissemination of ideas; 5. International outlook. Criteria 6 - 10
are evaluated based on the thinker's performance over the long term (the last
20 years): 6. Originality of ideas; 7. Impact of ideas; 8. Practicality of
ideas; 9. Business sense; 10. Power to inspire.
Indians
Appetite for Management
The 7 Indians awarded in Thinkers50 -
2013 are Vijay Govindarajan, Pankaj Ghemawat, Nirmalya Kumar, Nitin Nohria,
Subir Chowdhury, Anil Gupta and Rakesh Khurana. It is obvious that there is a growing
appetite among Indian management thinkers to excel as global management gurus
through their research and contributions.
When you look at Vijay Govindarajan who is popularly called VG globally,
he is specialized in innovation. His
three box approach written along with Chris Trimble is very popular and
published in Harvard Business Review as “The CEO’s Role in Business Model
Reinvention” urging forward-looking CEOs to manage reinvention with a
“three-box approach”.
Most of the top business schools in
the world have faculty members from Indian origin. It shows the strength of
Indians and their acceptance globally in the area of management. There is a
huge demand for Indian management faculty members globally who are blend of
industry, research, teaching, training and consultancy background. The day is
not far away where we will find Indians leading in top positions globally in
all spheres thus bringing glory to India and Indians. It is time for Indian management
thinkers living in India who aspire to stand out internationally to work harder
by contributing quality of research and network with other global thinkers to
be listed in Thinkers50 2015. I wish
them good luck!
Life is
great!
Professor M.S.Rao, India
Founder of MSR
Leadership Consultants India
Listed
in Marquis Who's Who in the World in 2013
