The predictable aftermath of Mumbai Terror Tragedy 26/11 is on now. Shivraj Patil, has resigned as home minister in India's central government. Few more will follow. We are so relieved to see the back of these people that we forget that a resignation is hardly a punishment for a serious dereliction of duty. Facts on the Mumbai Tragedy have been collaboratively collected on wikipedia. One should read these facts to learn how the 'failures' have taken place. Should not one prosecute the people responsible for criminal negligence of duty? Should we not seriously implement leader's accountability?

I am referring to the crisis that has been named and renamed -sub-prime credit (crisis) -CDO (whatever that means) blowout -it is only an asset market crisis -liquidity crisis -unwinding of yen carry trade (whatever that means) -bailouts -solvency crisis -financial market seizure -slow down -regulatory (crisis) -globalization (crisis) -capitalism (death of) -bailouts & nationalization (how wise Indians have been!) -liquidity (just that..throw money at that) -Wisdom of Indian regulatory authorities, Indian babus, and Indian politicians (Do you know that the governments preempt all credit needs just to waste a lot of money? How will pump priming be funded? Who will pump prime? China for sure. India? Russia? Brazil?) The drama is still unfolding...if you are a CEO or a big stakeholder in a company you would have experienced occasional headaches. What should one do? If you are an investor?....well this piece not on passive investors. 1. Stop watching CNBC or such biz news channels. Read your business papers in the evening or ask someone to summarize news for you. 2. A DIY (Do it yourself): Get news from internet (say google news) stick to facts and forget opinions. Bigger the man, bigger the discount on the opinion. 3. If you are thinking of cost cutting (you should) just do more than cutting ad spends, expense accounts, motivational training programs, removing toilet papers (virtues of Indian-ness). Go beyond low hanging fruit, otherwise you might just keep hanging there. 4. If you have not done it before -get down to building leadership skills in yourself and your team. Get down to business process improvements. Both can be done on relatively low budget. Some people would walk out since they can not stomach such things. But you would not want ineffective leaders and bad processes to continue. Would you? (they are very costly) 5. Take a good strategic look at your business. Hopefully, CASH is real for you and your team. If not, do whatever it takes to make it visible, as real as actually counting money and paying up. You know the rest. 6. Get real -this is going to last for a long time. Long enough for you to re-invent yourself. Long enough to be doing something today and tomorrow about customer satisfaction and your market offerings. 7. There is no better time than today. You would save headache by doing above. You would be doing some really good work after a long long time. That would give you some secret satisfaction. Time to show that off will come. Cheers. Be cheeky. Hemant

Here is an excellent article for our troubled times...


Column : The purpose-driven company - The Financial Express

The conventional view is that, in hard times, business leaders have a responsibility to keep their eyes firmly on the bottom line, protecting workers’ jobs and shareholders’ investment. To do this, business leaders often focus on cutting costs since it is difficult to raise prices in times when consumers are especially price conscious. An auto manufacturer may use lower quality inputs, a consulting firm may staff fewer resources for a client, or a consumer goods manufacturer may cut back on quality checks. Alternately, or sometimes in parallel, businesses will try to raise prices through hidden fees


Do read the complete article. Vikram Akula, who runs SKS Microfinance, writes about his approach and experience. One would expect that a microfinance company would cave in to market pressures when the big and the 'best' (till yesterday) have fallen.

My take is that a leader must ask and answer this question: "what are we there in this business for?" He must stick it out. That is tough but if done consistently across the organization and also across it's partners, employees, vendors and customers it is possible emerge as much stronger entity.

At Learning Leadership, our workouts aim to  integrate these principles into Leader's Agenda.

Hemant