CEO SPECIAL ............................. Leaders should take blame as well as credit

Leaders should take blame as well as credit

THE FIRST THING IS YOU NEED TO HAVE IS A TREMENDOUS URGE AND ASPIRATION TO BE A LEADER. IT IS ALSO IMPORTANT TO LEAVE A GOOD LEGACY BEHIND

Sushobhan Dasgupta has been the MD of Johnson & Johnson Medical India for the last two years, a journey he describes as a roller-coaster ride amid a slowing economy and regulatory issues among other things. In challenging times, a leader must have a clear vision, well-defined strategies and must walk the talk, says Dasgupta in an interview to HT.

Edited excerpts.

How do you define a leader?

We have to have a very immaculate, convincing, sharp and focused vision, which will appeal to everybody in that particular area of responsibility he or she is in for the overall business. Secondly, there has to be clear-defined strategies, which should be able to reach that vision. And thirdly, what the leader is doing to really get the followers to achieve that vision. In that comes people’s development, recruitment, resourcing, expertise and technicalities among others. If you don’t walk the talk, you will not be able to achieve the strategy and the vision.

When you talk about vision, strategies, walking the talk — all leadership qualities, can it be learnt?

Absolutely. I have learnt my leadership. I would say that most people are not born leaders. You acquire it. First thing you need to have is the urge to be a leader, to dream to be a leader. I think that is important. In school, my aspiration was to become the class monitor, the captain of the school cricket, football and hockey teams. Some areas I failed, some I succeeded. So I think the first thing is you need to have a tremendous urge and aspiration to be a leader. It is also important to leave a good legacy behind.

How do you create leaders?

We practice succession planning on a regular basis. We practice this concept of “ready now, ready later, ready future”. So when we say “ready now”, it means a person who is ready to take over between 0-1 year from another person. “Ready later” is a person who is ready to take over between 1-3 years and “ready future” is a person who can take over between 3-5 years and then comes emerging leaders, which is beyond 5 years. One thing we look at is consistency in delivery under the same conditions or different model of dynamics. At Johnson & Johnson , people lose their jobs not because they do not meet their targets but when they do something wrong or immoral or unethical.

A lot of times leaders are blamed for someone else’s mistake. How critical is role of a leader here?

If you are a leader of a team, you cannot shun responsibility. You have to take accountability of the wins as well as the losses. You are not a leader because leadership is a trait. Also, a leader has to ensure that a sufficient piece of the person’s individuality of executing things is not hampered. Leaders should take the blame as well as take the credit and share it with the team.

If you look at the Indian market, we are having a slowdown. There have been regulatory hurdles for your sector. So what have been the challenges as a leader in the last few years?

I have just completed 2 years in this position and it has been a roller-coaster ride. When I came back from Australia, my biggest challenge at that time was India as an organisation and destination of healthcare was shifting away from the minds of our global leaders.

There were so many challenges about the overall economy, regulations, labelling issues, clinical trial problems... My biggest challenge was being able to keep this team motivated, not lose people, make them clearly understand that they should be focused in their vision of serving more and more patients in this country and I wanted the global leaders to understand that this is a temporary phase.

In this uncertain world, how does the leader plan for the future?

There was always an eightyear strategic planning, which was done every year by every organisation. Now we have a three-year strategic planning. We do both external as well as internal research. I work almost 15-16 days outside my office. I meet up with every stakeholder. In the last two months we have formed an action learning team, of 40-45 people from different strata of the organisation. We engaged them over the last two months to come out with distinctive things that will help us win in the next three years.

How does a leader manage a work-life balance?

To me work-life could be 12 hours of work and 12 hours of life. A work-life balance is very important for that employee be it a he or a she and the immediate family members need to be extremely supportive.

Your one-line leadership mantra…

Develop people who are better than you.

HT 141016