Underplaying ourselves

It's quite often when we say about best practices it’s either

a) Japanese when it comes to quality

b) Americans when it people practices

But more often than not I have felt us as Indians as managers could do a better job of man management if a little bit of free reign is given. We often are proud of the fact that Indira Nooyi and Shantanu Narayen and Sanjay jha are CEO's of top organizations.

But when Mr. Ravikant retired from Tata Motors we had to wait for Carl-peter Forester to take over and adding a global perspective which baffles me. With due respect to Mr. Forester and his achievements are we trying to say we do not have adequate talented individuals when warren buffet looks for his successors in India we in India are wondering if Arun Sarin will replace Ratan Tata.

Why are we painting a picture ourselves deficit of talent when the world is looking out to India for talents?

I basically believe we have some of the best man management skills because you look at indian kid the roles it has to play right from school are

I) Diligent Student

ii) Multi talented Individual

The weight of expectations is very high, and these roles keep growing to a stage of an adult where he has to juggle multiple roles simultaneously and most of them succeed.

I believe the reasons why Indians appear less People oriented compared to Americans because

i) We have never enjoyed work or life It has always been cut throat

ii) The fear of failure

iii) The burden of expectations

iv) We always measure performance by the outcome and not the effort

v) We are never convinced and tend to be pessimistic

vi) Very low gestation time for an Individual to settle.

It is not easy to remove these hurdles overnight and will take years but what we need to understand is that by following Japanese styles of Pokayoke or American methods is not going to pull us up because we vary from them it is time we accepted the change and created a system for our fellow Individuals to flourish and help Indian Organizations to grow

Cheers!!

Arvind!