"Aspire for the role, not the position"
THE
TRICK LIES IN INSPIRING PEOPLE ABOUT THE ROLE THAT YOU ARE PLAYING
IN THE ORGANISATION GONE ARE THE DAYS OF YEARLY PLANS. NOW WE ARE
LIVING FROM QUARTER TO QUARTER. THAT IS NOT A GREAT WAY TO OPERATE
JOSEPH
GEORGE believes in being a practitioner and running a company like a
professional cooperative where employees are groomed as
stakeholders. He tells HT, among other things, that leadership
should be not only be learnt but also practised. Excerpts from the
interview:
How
do you define a leader?
Anyone
who is an inspiration across functions and levels; I think good
leaders see beyond the immediate reporting line. Secondly, in
advertising I believe you have to be a practitioner. When people
down the line and across functions see that you are interested in
and able to do it then they aspire for the right thing. It is not
aspiring for the position, but aspiring for the role. When you
aspire for a position, I am not very sure, once you get that
designation, how long it will last. I think the trick lies in
inspiring people about the role that you are playing.
Can
leadership be learnt?
Leadership
is always learnt. Nobody comes out a leader from day one. Overtime,
you try and figure out how you deal with the situation; how you deal
with the problems and opportunities, and over time you get a hang of
what’s right and what’s not. Leadership is a skill and like
skills, can be and should be acquired and it should be a constant
learning process.
As
a leader, how do you identify and groom future leaders?
From
my perspective, a leader would have done his job if he can get as
many people in the company to believe that they are stakeholders of
the company. Grooming comes from that. In fact, I want to lead this
company like a professional futurefacing cooperative. If everyone
thinks and behaves like a responsible stakeholder, you will then
figure out who has more skill in the game, who believes that if I do
this, my company will do better. That’s the trick.
So,
how do you get more employees to become stakeholders of the company?
Belief
in the product philosophy is key. Number two is how you behave with
others —clients and vendors. Also, in agency business there is a
lot of attrition. You need to realise that at any given point of
time, 30% of your staff are less than one year old. You have young
blood and you get new ideas and different perspectives. They can
play a disproportionate role in influencing the culture of the
organisation as opposed to a top-down culture strategy. You have to
learn their culture. This is the way you make people believe as
stakeholders.
With
so much attrition, how challenging is it to build an team to fight
it out in the market?
That
(attrition) is the unfortunate reality of the industry we are in. I
think two areas advertising agencies used to pride themselves have
slowly waned over time. One is that we were seen as the coolest
profession. That is not the case anymore. Secondly, I think as an
industry, we have failed each other in the way we have managed to
get remunerated. This has a direct impact on the ability to pay and
therefore retain people. Therefore the constant endeavour is to make
people feel that they are stake
holders.
Overall
due to the macro environment, last few years have been very
difficult. What have been your key challenges?
I
took over as CEO in January 2011. In the last few years, there has
been a double whammy, there is sluggishness and there is
unpredictability. Gone area the days of five and three year plans.
Now we are living from quarter to quarter. That isi not a great way
to operate. That’s one of the things that India Inc is looking
forward to — some bit of predictability, so that you can plan and
invest. Advertising is a dependent industry. When clients do well,
we, most probably, do well and vice-versa. When times are tough,
clients tend to work with the best. If you can actually be the best,
you can benefit a lot in times such asa these.
Should
a leader always be held responsible for mistakes of team members?
This
is a people industry, we don’t deal with machines. We all make
mistakes. That is part of life. An idea can go wrong. We have never
pulled up a person for an error in judgement. I don’t think any
agency would do that. If every idea was a winner, we would have been
sitting on a gold mine. We are absolutely comfortable with people
making errors, as long as we know what went wrong and wew don’t do
it again.
Make
every employee of your company believe he is a stakeholder.
- Nachiket Kelkar HT141204
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