The only thing that is certain in life is change.” This is one adage I have come to strongly associate with my own life. It started early, as a child growing up in a middle class Bengali family that moved around every two or three years. As a result, I shifted schools seven times before heading to a boarding school in the hills. Twenty three years of work life has seen me move 10 jobs and half a dozen cities in India and abroad.
There has been much debate about the rationale behind joint ventures and how they can open up new markets, distribution networks, supply chains and manufacturing capacity for organisations. However, not much attention is paid to what it takes to sustain an enduring JV relationship. As Harbir Singh of Wharton Business School notes, companies tend to be cavalier about alliances, regarding them as being ‘no big deal’. As the old Turkish proverb goes, however, ‘No road is long with good company’. So, the key issue here is, what exactly makes for ‘good company’ in a joint venture context?
Twenty five years ago, as a new entrant in the Industry, me and my peers were quite in awe of the senior managers and directors of the company. To us, they were powerful people, not easily accessible and wielded that invisible arm of authority which we revered and often feared. Power flowed from authority and work got done through directions down the chain of command. Hierarchical management structures were the order of the day and there was a clear demarcation between the thought leaders who gave directions and followers who executed them in an organisation. That was the era of “Command and Control” leadership.
A significant part of management writing has been focused on Leadership and its attributes. Not much has been said about “Non-Leaders” or in other words the vast majority of employees in an organisation who do not play a leadership role. The success or otherwise of an organisation is as much dependent on the quality of its leadership as it is on the quality of its “Employeeship”. This article turns the focus on the employees in non-leadership roles; the forces affecting employees in an organisation and what it takes to deliver high quality ‘employeeship’.
The ultimate goal of most organisations is the creation of sustained longterm shareholder value. For global corporations, this is about stakeholder value: the combined interests of shareholders, consumers, customers and the environment, in markets where the company does business. When it comes to creating shareholder value, most corporations depend heavily on the CEO and the CFO. If the value creation journey were an airline flight, these two roles would be the pilot and co-pilot. While there is no guarantee of success, a strong CEO-CFO partnership most often provides a catalyst for business success.
