LEVERAGING THE FUTURE FOR CORPORATE RENAISSANCE
ERUDITION 2005
10th National Convention of Faculty of Commerce & Business, Delhi School of Economics
Venue: Hotel Le Meridien, New Delhi
Date: 27th October 2005

Opening & Keynote address:

The second day, organized by MHROD (Master of Human Resource & Organisational Development), started with Professor Jawahar Lal, Head & Dean, Faculty of Commerce & Business extending a warm and hearty welcome to the distinguished guests, Mr. Raghupati Singhania, Vice Chairman & Managing Director, J K Industries and Mr. Soumya Banerjee, Managing Director, Sapient Corporation.

Address of Mr. Raghupati Singhania

“Renaissance”, the radical transition, revival of the Indian corporate sector.

Indian corporate sector has responded really well in the liberalization era but a lot still needs to be done.
We should go global in both our mission & vision by looking at our internal strengths, market reforms & infrastructure.We should not let India develop into a cheap sourcing ground only but must strive to become the drivers of global corporate change.It is important for corporates to focus on R&D; so that the R&D; budget can be increased from 1% of turnover to atleast 3-4% of turnover.Development of in-house technology should be encouraged.The recent buzzword in the economy is corporate governance, maximizing stakeholders value.
Re-emphasizing the need of competitiveness as an essential pre-requisite for ensuring success, he stressed on encouraging innovation, flexibility in product design, development and customer satisfaction.

Address of Mr. Soumya Banerjee

“Developing an effective leadership design”

The challenge in making the corporate renaissance happen is by developing the leadership skills. 3 keys for this purpose are
Mindset
Culture
Credibility
Enablers for the three are
Mindset- widening the lens of every person in the organisation helping them prepare for a better future.
Culture- A culture of alignment & not agreement is required. A culture of agreement is actually a culture of individuals without accountability.
Credibility- Walk the talk.
Empower yourself & your team to achieve a future which is beyond status quo.


Session 1

Session chaired by Mr. Vijay Batra, Vice President, Think Inc.

Mr. Vijay Batra, during his address and presentation, emphasized on the fact that the business world will face increasing confusion and changes in times to come. Quoting from Canon’s business philosophy, he said that self-motivation, self-control and self- awareness were the key to the future success.
Mr. Batra gave a 5-fold Mantra to successful business and growth:
Learn or blame
Look at things as puzzles or problems
Live by the “and” vs “or” philosophy
Make something your strength or a nuisance
Live by choice or chance

Following Mr. Batra’s discussion was a talk by Mr. Shyam Vishwanathan on Talent Management- the next dimension of strategic HR. Talking about three management clusters, he said that there are 4 fundamental capacities of people- to learn, to think, to relate to other people and to act. The first 3 capacities, according to him, have no role to play if the 4th capacity is not present in abundant measure. He also discussed a 4-level Capability Maturity Model. Lastly, he stressed on the fact that building great places to work is the key to retaining talent in your organization.

The last speaker of the session was Mr. Amit Aggarwal from Genpact. Speaking on Generating Employment Opportunities, he revealed that 1 IT job creates 12 other jobs along the road. He stressed on the need for knowledge of English language, basic computer skills and some amount of workplace ethics awareness. He strongly recommended a re-engineering of the Indian Education system so as to be able to meet the entry level job market requirements.

Session 2

The session titled ‘OD-Connecting Organization Vision to Corporate Strategy” was chaired by Mr. G. P. Rao, VP-HR, JK Industries.

The first speaker of the session was Mr. Alok Bhattacharjee, GM-HR, Shriram Pistons & Rings. He discussed a live case study with the audience illustrating how through OD initiatives, his organization reduced turnover ratio significantly and also increased its profitability.

Mr. Chandresh Dhebar, Co-Founder & Chairman of HR Advisory Services pointed out the qualities of a Visionary and successful organization and talked about the 9P Model for making an organization successful. The 9 Ps he talked about included people, professionalism, pride, performance, process, passion, productivity and practicable implementation of strategies and ideas. But all this must be done within the rules keeping ethical behavior in consideration.

Speaking on career development to meet organizational and individual goals, Mr. Mukundan Raghunathan, Founder & CEO of Pepper Square, stressed on aligning individual goals with organizational goals. He also shed light on the challenges of client vs market expectations, fixed ideas vs changing environment and assertiveness vs adaptability.

Session 3

This session was chaired by Professor N K Chadha, Department of Psychology, University of Delhi.
It saw discussions on “Innovative Approaches to HR”.

The post lunch discussion was kicked of by a question, “If talent is the most important asset in an organization, why isn’t HR the most important function?”, asked by Mr. Rajan Kalia, VP-HR, Max New York Life Insurance. He drove across the idea of managing Human Resource as a strategic asset and quantifying Human Resources in organizations in order to assess the contributions of HR to firm’s bottomline. He also shared the PWC’s model of calculating ROI of HR.

Mr. A Sudhakar, VP-HR, Dabur, spoke of innovative practices adopted in his organization. The session also saw Mr. H.K. Sharan, Ex-Head HR , Tata Steels and Ms. Rosita Rabindra of NIIT taking the dias and sharing their experiences with the audience.

Valedictory Session

The Guest of Honour, Dr. N.P. Singh, a management consultant, found the day’s sessions extremely stimulating and enlightening. Recognizing the importance of HR, Dr. Singh talked about the gradual evolution of HR as a strategic management function and said that HR would continue to enjoy even greater importance in times to come. He was of the view that integrating the HR function within the organization eventually leads to organizational development.