How CEOs hone their listening skills
Krishna
Kumar didn't know a word of Japanese when Johnson & Johnson
posted him to Japan in 2002, but he was determined to make a
contribution from the start. Though he knew little about the Japanese
market, he would speak up at every meeting he attended, believing his
India experience might add value to the proceedings. This strategy
only earned him a cold shoulder from his colleagues.
In fact, when he eventually learnt Japanese, Kumar found out they referred to him as a Eigo Baka, which translates into "Englishspeaking idiot." "In Japan, guys who speak well are not considered the smartest," says Kumar. "In their culture, you have to listen carefully, understand and then speak. My three years in Japan really taught me the importance of listening."
Now the vice-chairman and managing director of Philips India, Kumar puts these hard-won lessons into practice. For one thing, he visits a different sales territory every month, where he has lengthy meets with the field staff to hear their ideas on how the company might increase sales.
Some salesmen are more articulate than others, but Kumar tries to pay them all equal attention. "You have to control your own listening biases and pick up signals in different frequencies. It's easy to fall into the trap of listening only to some and disregarding others because they don't express themselves well," he says.
Listening to the field staff is important, but there's nothing like the rush of interacting directly with customers. Philips' operations is divided into 18 business categories within the healthcare, lighting and consumer durables sectors and Kumar has asked to be kept informed when any of his business heads go visit customers, whether they be doctors in hospitals who buy Philips healthcare equipment or households, where the company's kitchen range is being tested.
Quite often, he asks to be taken along. "I do it less for ongoing businesses, but in any category where we are making a strong bet, I like to be present for the interaction. Most of our products are designed for our local market, so this feedback is critical," says Kumar.
Are Indian CEOs naturally good at listening or does it take a trip to Japan to convince them of the benefits of lending an ear? Harsh Goenka believes Indians are brought up to be good listeners, since they per se 'listen' and do not talk back to their parents and teachers.
"I remained a listener even after I started my career since I was inducted into the business young and learnt from older colleagues. Then, I started attending management programmes every month, which was about listening. Today, when I meet people socially, I listen more than I talk," he says.
As chairman of the RPG Group, Goenka doesn't meet customers, but he does meet fund managers regularly, dropping into their offices with prior notice. And he meets his own executives, where he describes the conversation as 95 per cent listening.
"I never spare a chance to engage with my people. I make it a point to meet not only my direct reports, but all high flyers and key managers. The purpose of these meetings is to understand how the business is going. When I talk, it's usually to motivate them in what they are doing or suggest a course correction, which is 5 per cent of the conversation," he says.
For CEOs, listening to customers, employees or investors is always an opportunity to gain insights that might lead to successful innovations in the future. That's why it's important to structure these as free-flowing conversations, instead of negotiations where the other person presents complaints for the CEO to solve.
Shishir Joshipura, managing director of SKF India, believes one simple way to achieve this is to meet the other person on their home ground. "Meeting people in their own workplace creates context. The quality of the conversation is much better there," he says.
Joshipura recalls visiting a small highway shop stocking SKF bearings near Patna, where the place was cleaned up to a shine in honour of his visit. But to his surprise, there were no SKF bearings on display. Though other unbranded bearings were stocked on the shelves, SKF bearings were locked in a cupboard.
"The owner explained that he offered our products only to those who he knew to be credit worthy. He didn't want to display them for the benefit of those who bought cheaper unbranded bearings because their credit worthiness was in question," says Joshipura, who later used this insight to restructure SKF's distribution channel to reduce the retailer's credit risk.
In fact, when he eventually learnt Japanese, Kumar found out they referred to him as a Eigo Baka, which translates into "Englishspeaking idiot." "In Japan, guys who speak well are not considered the smartest," says Kumar. "In their culture, you have to listen carefully, understand and then speak. My three years in Japan really taught me the importance of listening."
Now the vice-chairman and managing director of Philips India, Kumar puts these hard-won lessons into practice. For one thing, he visits a different sales territory every month, where he has lengthy meets with the field staff to hear their ideas on how the company might increase sales.
Some salesmen are more articulate than others, but Kumar tries to pay them all equal attention. "You have to control your own listening biases and pick up signals in different frequencies. It's easy to fall into the trap of listening only to some and disregarding others because they don't express themselves well," he says.
Listening to the field staff is important, but there's nothing like the rush of interacting directly with customers. Philips' operations is divided into 18 business categories within the healthcare, lighting and consumer durables sectors and Kumar has asked to be kept informed when any of his business heads go visit customers, whether they be doctors in hospitals who buy Philips healthcare equipment or households, where the company's kitchen range is being tested.
Quite often, he asks to be taken along. "I do it less for ongoing businesses, but in any category where we are making a strong bet, I like to be present for the interaction. Most of our products are designed for our local market, so this feedback is critical," says Kumar.
Are Indian CEOs naturally good at listening or does it take a trip to Japan to convince them of the benefits of lending an ear? Harsh Goenka believes Indians are brought up to be good listeners, since they per se 'listen' and do not talk back to their parents and teachers.
"I remained a listener even after I started my career since I was inducted into the business young and learnt from older colleagues. Then, I started attending management programmes every month, which was about listening. Today, when I meet people socially, I listen more than I talk," he says.
As chairman of the RPG Group, Goenka doesn't meet customers, but he does meet fund managers regularly, dropping into their offices with prior notice. And he meets his own executives, where he describes the conversation as 95 per cent listening.
"I never spare a chance to engage with my people. I make it a point to meet not only my direct reports, but all high flyers and key managers. The purpose of these meetings is to understand how the business is going. When I talk, it's usually to motivate them in what they are doing or suggest a course correction, which is 5 per cent of the conversation," he says.
For CEOs, listening to customers, employees or investors is always an opportunity to gain insights that might lead to successful innovations in the future. That's why it's important to structure these as free-flowing conversations, instead of negotiations where the other person presents complaints for the CEO to solve.
Shishir Joshipura, managing director of SKF India, believes one simple way to achieve this is to meet the other person on their home ground. "Meeting people in their own workplace creates context. The quality of the conversation is much better there," he says.
Joshipura recalls visiting a small highway shop stocking SKF bearings near Patna, where the place was cleaned up to a shine in honour of his visit. But to his surprise, there were no SKF bearings on display. Though other unbranded bearings were stocked on the shelves, SKF bearings were locked in a cupboard.
"The owner explained that he offered our products only to those who he knew to be credit worthy. He didn't want to display them for the benefit of those who bought cheaper unbranded bearings because their credit worthiness was in question," says Joshipura, who later used this insight to restructure SKF's distribution channel to reduce the retailer's credit risk.
A
quality conversation with a single customer often leads to CEOs
taking strategic decisions. Ambareesh Murty, former India country
manager of eBay India and founder of Pepperfry occasionally
accompanies his delivery team to customer's houses and the feedback
received has helped the furniture e-tailer prune and alter its
portfolio. For example, 'weathered' furniture once had a special
place in Pepperfry's portfolio, but the company eventually dropped
the range based on customer feedback.
Murty
recalls picking up the phone and calling one customer from Chennai
who had registered a complaint: "She was a well educated lady
who kept saying that the furniture was old. That's when we realised
that many customers did not understand that weathered furniture is
supposed to look old. The market wasn't ready for the
concept."
Listening is generally seen as essential skill for CEOs and most corporate executives get better at it as they progress in their careers. Much also depends on inherent personality of the CEO and the culture of the company.
Aruna Jayanthi is the CEO of consulting and information technology major Capgemini India, whose egalitarian culture — combined with Jayanthi's own easygoing personality — ensures that even junior executives are not shy of coming up to talk to their chief.
"People talk to me in the lift, in the corridor, at social functions. It's important to listen to them all, but you also need to put it in context. The negative stuff you sometimes need to discount," she says.
One-on-one conversations are always rewarding, but given the size of operations and the large number of stakeholders, they are a luxury for most CEOs. What corporates need is a system that captures the customer or employee's voice in an authentic way and feeds it back to the CEO and his team. Fortunately, technology has now enabled organisations to create such listening posts.
SKF, for one, has a system by which customers and employees can feed in complaints or suggestions on-line and the company commits to take action on these within a week, failing which the issue escalates to CXO-level.
Capgemini has its own crowd sourcing platform and Microsoft uses its own product, Yammer, to engage employees in discussions. The sessions are called Yam-a-thons and Microsoft India managing director Karan Bajwa is usually the one who hosts the discussions. "We have used them to great effect in getting ideas from our employees," he says.
Twitter is generally viewed as a tool for outreach, but it can be equally effective as a device for listening. It's now part of the listening DNA of the Mahindra Group, with chairman Anand Mahindra emerging as India Inc's numero uno tweeter, with over 15 lakh followers.
The tweets received by the chief from customers are picked up by Mahindra's business heads for action where required. Executive director Pawan Goenka has 8,000 followers of his own, and uses Twitter to invite feedback on issues like whether we need a paband bharat abhiyan (punctual India movement) as much as a swacch bharat abhiyan (clean India movement), a topic on which he received a large number of responses.
"The best thing about Twitter is that it is a public forum, which means there is some discipline in the postings. And there's the advantage that it is instantaneous and the posts are restricted to 140 characters," he says.
And finally, in the ever-changing global business environment, corporates have a need to listen to larger conversations on where the industries they serve are going. Some rely on forums organised by industry associations but others have gone ahead and created their own knowledge forums where they bring together academics, consultants, manufacturers and financiers to talk about the future.
Tyre maker Michelin of France, for one, has long been organising a global forum for the transportation sector. Closer home, SKF India has a knowledge forum for renewable energy, where equipment manufacturers for the wind and solar energy sector come together to discuss their issues — while SKF executives listen.
"People expect us to hard-sell ourselves at these forums because we bear the expenses. But we use this as an opportunity to understand issues from our customer's perspectives and figure how we can best help," says Joshipura.
Listening is generally seen as essential skill for CEOs and most corporate executives get better at it as they progress in their careers. Much also depends on inherent personality of the CEO and the culture of the company.
Aruna Jayanthi is the CEO of consulting and information technology major Capgemini India, whose egalitarian culture — combined with Jayanthi's own easygoing personality — ensures that even junior executives are not shy of coming up to talk to their chief.
"People talk to me in the lift, in the corridor, at social functions. It's important to listen to them all, but you also need to put it in context. The negative stuff you sometimes need to discount," she says.
One-on-one conversations are always rewarding, but given the size of operations and the large number of stakeholders, they are a luxury for most CEOs. What corporates need is a system that captures the customer or employee's voice in an authentic way and feeds it back to the CEO and his team. Fortunately, technology has now enabled organisations to create such listening posts.
SKF, for one, has a system by which customers and employees can feed in complaints or suggestions on-line and the company commits to take action on these within a week, failing which the issue escalates to CXO-level.
Capgemini has its own crowd sourcing platform and Microsoft uses its own product, Yammer, to engage employees in discussions. The sessions are called Yam-a-thons and Microsoft India managing director Karan Bajwa is usually the one who hosts the discussions. "We have used them to great effect in getting ideas from our employees," he says.
Twitter is generally viewed as a tool for outreach, but it can be equally effective as a device for listening. It's now part of the listening DNA of the Mahindra Group, with chairman Anand Mahindra emerging as India Inc's numero uno tweeter, with over 15 lakh followers.
The tweets received by the chief from customers are picked up by Mahindra's business heads for action where required. Executive director Pawan Goenka has 8,000 followers of his own, and uses Twitter to invite feedback on issues like whether we need a paband bharat abhiyan (punctual India movement) as much as a swacch bharat abhiyan (clean India movement), a topic on which he received a large number of responses.
"The best thing about Twitter is that it is a public forum, which means there is some discipline in the postings. And there's the advantage that it is instantaneous and the posts are restricted to 140 characters," he says.
And finally, in the ever-changing global business environment, corporates have a need to listen to larger conversations on where the industries they serve are going. Some rely on forums organised by industry associations but others have gone ahead and created their own knowledge forums where they bring together academics, consultants, manufacturers and financiers to talk about the future.
Tyre maker Michelin of France, for one, has long been organising a global forum for the transportation sector. Closer home, SKF India has a knowledge forum for renewable energy, where equipment manufacturers for the wind and solar energy sector come together to discuss their issues — while SKF executives listen.
"People expect us to hard-sell ourselves at these forums because we bear the expenses. But we use this as an opportunity to understand issues from our customer's perspectives and figure how we can best help," says Joshipura.
Five
points to ponder
1. Be patient: Not everybody can explain a problem in bullet points.
2. Keep meetings small: Too many people translate to too many voices. You can't listen to all.
3. Ask questions: Keep your questions to the point. Challenge assumptions.
4. Keep quiet: Follow an 80/20 rule. In a meeting, speak for only 20 per cent of the time.
5. Be respectful: Don't pull rank. Demonstrate that everybody's views matter.
1. Be patient: Not everybody can explain a problem in bullet points.
2. Keep meetings small: Too many people translate to too many voices. You can't listen to all.
3. Ask questions: Keep your questions to the point. Challenge assumptions.
4. Keep quiet: Follow an 80/20 rule. In a meeting, speak for only 20 per cent of the time.
5. Be respectful: Don't pull rank. Demonstrate that everybody's views matter.
By
Dibeyendu Ganguly, ETCD 5 Dec, 2014
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