I was sipping a cup of hot chocolate in a winter January morning at a guesthouse in Park Street, Kolkata. Suddenly there were noises of series of crackers being heard exploding. What's going on? I inquired the receptionist. He replied, Sir it's 23rd January and the people are celebrating the birthday of Netaji Subhash Bose. It is almost 60 years now that this charismatic leader is lost without any trace but still Netaji is revered in the parallel of other great Indian Leaders including Mahatma Gandhi. Netaji left India to join hand with Japanese force to liberate India from British Raj. There are volumes of certain undisclosed chapters now being opened by the Indian Government to what really happened with the charismatic leader? Was he killed in an air crash? Or he survived and then what? Invictus is a great movie to watch which gives the real appreciation of Nelson Mandela and how he turned South Africa as a Rainbow country. If some one asks what is the height of humility? It's probably the way Mandela after 27 years of solitary confinement in the Roben Island, he forgave and reconciled with the people who send him to the confinement. He made the downfall of apartheid government through the language of peace and harmony. The traits have defined the very different course of chart for the two icons with one common goal and that was to liberate the nation from the control of colonialist rulers.Leadership and management styles
Leadership is a concept which with its fluidity has the vision-centric, all inspiring ability to engage all the constituents while empowering them
Masihul Huq Chowdhury
PART-1
I was sipping a cup of hot chocolate in a winter January morning at a guesthouse in Park Street, Kolkata. Suddenly there were noises of series of crackers being heard exploding. Whats going on? I inquired the receptionist. He replied, Sir its 23rd January and the people are celebrating the birthday of Netaji Subhash Bose. It is almost 60 years now that this charismatic leader is lost without any trace but still Netaji is revered in the parallel of other great Indian Leaders including Mahatma Gandhi. Netaji left India to join hand with Japanese force to liberate India from British Raj. There are volumes of certain undisclosed chapters now being opened by the Indian Government to what really happened with the charismatic leader? Was he killed in an air crash? Or he survived and then what? Invictus is a great movie to watch which gives the real appreciation of Nelson Mandela and how he turned South Africa as a Rainbow country. If some one asks what is the height of humility? Its probably the way Mandela after 27 years of solitary confinement in the Roben Island, he forgave and reconciled with the people who send him to the confinement. He made the downfall of apartheid government through the language of peace and harmony. The traits have defined the very different course of chart for the two icons with one common goal and that was to liberate the nation from the control of colonialist rulers.
The leadership style of Late Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore is a grammar book for the leaders in any corporate. From a resource starved country to be among the list of countries with highest GDP is because of the leadership style of this great leader. Singapore has become the most competitive nation in this globe. He once said, After trying out a number of ways to reduce inequalities and failing, I was gradually forced to conclude that the decisive factors were the people, their natural abilities, education and training. Knowledge and the possession of technology were vital for the creation of wealth.
Leadership is a concept which with its fluidity has the vision-centric, all inspiring ability to engage all the constituents while empowering them. . A Leader is a person who is well conversant about the organisation, knows ins and outs, so that they appreciate and empathise with followers. On top of being a positive influence on the people, they set the environment or culture where people become self motivated, inspired, think big and never say die again.
Management and Leadership complement each other, but they are separate roles. A leader inspires, motivates and encourages people to achieve visionary goals. A manager, on the other hand, deals with the actual operation of a business.
Typical managerial tasks include:
ensuring products and services reach clients in the way they expect - a manager needs a good understanding of customer service
evaluating business operations and all legal requirements
ensuring all health and safety measures are met
planning budgets and arranging suitable training plan and the budget
A manager/leader in number of instances fail due to the following reasons to bring in the unison in the team being led ultimately putting the organisation at dire risk. Among those, the most common mistakes made include
poor communication - leads to misunderstandings and errors
reluctance to delegate - leads to resentment and inefficiencies
favouritism among staff - leads to resentment.
Meritocracy, encouraging the team to perform at its peak with optimum of input is what a manager should be looking at for the overall achievement of the goals in order to derive the vision. Take care of the best and be fair to the rest is yet a simple but strong piece of guidance tool. A manager needs to create an enabling environment where the team is encouraged to take risk and responsibility towards delivery of goals. Objectives must be set at the beginning of the year which commensurate with the job description of that individual with respect to the team objective. Performance appraisal needs to be objective and against standardised parameters which should be communicated properly. A great team or individual is destined to fail if the manager fails to lead the team properly.
Sir Alex Ferguson is a glaring example who made one of the most indomitable soccer team out of very mediocre Manchester United. Under his leadership, ManU qualified 21 finals and won 19 in his entire tenure. How many times this team has made to English Premier Finals after Alex Ferguson left this English team? Once he said, I had to lift players expectations. They should never give in. I said that to them all the time: If you give in once, youll give in twice. And the work ethic and energy I had seemed to spread throughout the club.
A strategic plan is a document used to communicate with the people of the organisation the vision and how it relates to the goals, the actions needed to achieve those goals and all of the other critical elements developed during the planning exercise. Strategic planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organizations direction in response to a changing environment. It is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. Effective strategic planning articulates not only where an organization is going and the actions needed to make progress, but also how it will know if it is successful. If summarised the three great minds of the contemporary management Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Andy Grove on strategy
Gates, Grove, and Jobss Keys to Success:
1. Look Forward, Reason Back
2. Make Big Bets, Without Betting the Company
3. Build Platforms and EcosystemsNot Just Products
4. Exploit Leverage and PowerPlay Judo and Sumo
5. Shape the Organization around Your Personal Anchor
Bill Gates was able to envision a world in which there was a computer on every desk at a time when personal computers didnt exist. But he also realized that the way to capitalize on that future was to focus his energies on controlling software, not hardware. Microsoft was born and become a household item making his vision of personal computer at the desk of everyone.
Andy Grove foresaw the eventual break up of the vertically integrated computer industry, and was able to specialize in creating the core component of computingthe microprocessor. And then he championed that silicon part with the famous Intel Inside marketing campaign. The notion that you could brand a product that no one had ever seen and that no one understood what it did was brilliant, That changed the entire structure of the semiconductor industry forever.
To be continued
The writer, a banker by profession has worked both in local and overseas market with various foreign and local banks in different positions
