Excellence Thru' Globally-Oriented Leadership (2006)

Excellence Thru’ Global Leadership
Dr. Basudeb Sen
(www.senland.com)


This paper advances the proposition that the pursuit of sustained excellence in performance (results or impact) in modern day world forces individuals and organizations on to a path (or an ambition) of global leadership. Global leadership does not appear to be attainable overnight or within a short period of time. Again, it is generally over a long period of time that an entity strives to improve its performance, attain excellence and sustain excellence. The operating environment of an entity operates changes over time often in unanticipated ways and sometimes in a dramatic manner. Scientific and technological advancement and breakthroughs have at certain points of time radically altered operating environments, living styles, demand patterns and the structure of economic activities. Similar has been the impact of demographic changes that take a long time to show up in perceptible manner in the population/ demographic statistics. The pattern of exchange of goods and services among different countries takes time to change even after protracted negotiations conclude specific bilateral, regional and multi-lateral trade agreements. But the trend towards greater economic and trade relations among nations produces major impact from which it is becoming increasingly difficult to insulate even the smallest of entities in the World. The natural environment (global climate and temperature, distribution and timing of rainfalls, the quality of drinking water, the state of the forests and the movement of people and other living beings) also changes in imperceptible ways over a long time before suddenly the accumulated changes make their impact felt in significant measure on different aspects of human life (like health, food availability, communication, and etc.).

2. Virtually no entity can remain unaffected for long from these technological, economic, social, demographic and natural environments because of the global nature of these changes and the widely spread impact of these changes. To achieve excellence in performance, the leadership of an entity needs to visualize/ anticipate these changes and their probable impact and generate (and be ready with the plans for implementing alternative) options to make the best use of the environment changes for survival and growth. From a leadership point of view, even surviving certain crises/ threats arising from the adverse external forces may constitute an excellent performance. Sometimes, however, the environmental trends and their probable fallout are anticipated and options are readied for exploiting the opportunities for achieving excellence in growth in sales, market share and profitability. Ensuring organizational flexibility and readiness to meet the challenges of the future can constitute excellent performance on the part of corporate leadership. This journey necessarily involves a progressive upgrade of the leadership to enable it to ensure that the organization’s mission, vision, goals, strategies, structures, systems, practices, resources, skills, cultures and mindsets are and remain relevant and appropriate to the emerging global environment. The quest for excellence is thus a journey towards or in global leadership.

Definitions & Illustrations

3. Before a discussion on the proposition per se, it is necessary to define the terms and illustrate them. In the absence of such a specific glossary of terms for this paper, there is a higher degree of miscommunication risk. This is all the more so in view of the varying meaning and connotation of terms used in different discussions on the subject of leadership. In this paper, leadership will either mean the position/ role/ activity of a leader / leaders. So, sometimes we may refer to the act of leading as leadership and sometimes to the leader as leadership. A leader is an entity that leads certain other entities in a field. A field is a set of connected or unconnected activities in which one or more entities may be engaged in.

4. An entity may be an individual or a group of connected individuals. Examples of entity are I (as a person), a family, a club, a business firm, a cricket team, an orchestra, organizations of various types, a trade union, a chamber of commerce/ industry, a religious order or community, a political party, a section / department of an organization, a legislative body, a Government, a cabinet of ministers, a nation, an army or a police force, an international organization like the UN or the WTO or the World Bank, a terrorist organization, a smuggling mafia, a non-governmental non-commercial social service agency, a municipality, a co-operative and a cultural association. Clearly, different entities operate or are engaged in different sets of activities and therefore are in different fields. Many entities may be operating in the same field. For example, there are many firms manufacturing biscuits, many clubs playing cricket, many religious bodies engaged in preaching and community worship, many groups of ministers or bureaucracies administering governance (though in different countries), many political parties engaged in the business of politics and competing for access to use of power, many service sector firms providing telecommunication facilities.

5. Each entity has a leader or leadership. In the case of an individual man/ woman/ child, he/she himself/ herself is a leader in his own field of activity of studying or working as an employee or as a singing. This is sometimes referred to self-leadership. A person as an entity may also be a leader of a group of students in the field of pure studying or he may be leader of the students’ association engaged in the field of protecting and advancing students’ common interest. While one entity may be leader in different fields, another entity may not be a leader in any field. Those who are not leaders are competing or allied followers.

6. An entity may be part of a bigger or larger entity. A person may be part of a family. This person may be a leader in a field of activity but not the leader of the family. Often, father is the head or leader of the family. But in many situations the wife or a particular child may lead the family. In many families, there is joint leadership: no single individual leads. And, it is possible that different members of a family provide leadership in different fields in which the family operates. The father may lead the field of educational and career building activity while the mother may take up the leadership in the area of shopping and health affairs. The incidence of joint / distributed leadership may be observed in large commercial organizations, clubs, societies and governments.

7. At this stage, it may be worthwhile to distinguish between formal leadership and real leadership. While a person may think that he is the leader in the field of his own affairs, his friends may actually be leading him. A father may be the formal leader of a family, but the real leader may be one of the children gifted with greater intellectual, communication and inter-personal skills. The chairman may be the formal leader of the company while the real leader may be one of the directors who is intellectually stronger and more capable than others or a coterie of self-serving directors. This paper is primarily concerned with the real leaders rather than the formal leaders (i.e. assumes that the real leaders are part of the formal leadership).


8. It is also necessary to distinguish leadership within an entity and leadership in the field of an entity. When we say that company xyz is the leader in its field, we are talking about the company being the leader in field of producing/ selling some product/ service. But when we talk about the leader of its company as an entity, we are talking about that component/ part of the company that leads all other components in the company. This important distinction is to be kept in mind while evaluating the proposition being advanced in this paper. The board of a company may be the leadership within the company as an entity. At the same time, this company itself may enjoy the leadership in the field of its operations i.e. leading an entire industry. While the leadership within is generally one, even if not compact and coordinated, there may be competing leadership companies in a single field. In many fields, one may observe one or more leaders with significant market shares with a large number of small players with varying but much lower market shares. These latter firms may be called followers or start-ups, though a follower, particularly a start-up may be an emerging leader. A few years ago, ICICI Bank was recognized as a start-up commercial bank that later emerged as a leading bank with substantial impact on the banking industry practices/ policies.

9. Performance of a leader or leadership is judged in terms of (a) the impact the leadership within an entity makes on the realization of the mission, vision, goals, objectives and strategies of the entity by its operation in the chosen field / fields and (b) the impact the leadership within an entity makes on all fields including the field of its operations by establishing the entity’s leadership in the field/ fields of its operation. For example, the leadership within the entity called Microsoft (Bill Gates and others) made an impact on its own business growth and profits as well as on return to its shareholders – the goals that would have driven the Microsoft to operate in its chosen fields. At the same time, by establishing its leadership in its chosen field in terms of innovation, market share and customer reach, Microsoft also made an impact on the entire information technology industry. Or, take the example at home: ITC Ltd. Not only delivered sustained improvement in its financial performance in the last decade, but also has made an impact on the way agricultural commodities are procured from farm gates and also the way consumer products, and agricultural inputs reach rural customers by combining its resources of information technology, research on consumer tastes and preferences and bio-technology, retail marketing and distribution and brand building. Or, take the example of new generation private sector banks like ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and UTI Bank that not only achieved significant market share within a small period of time but also established their leadership in using modern information technology applications and marketing of products forcing larger public sector banks to follow them.

10. Finally, one has to consider the focus and order of leadership. Leadership of an entity may be localized, globally oriented or global order depending primarily on (a) the perspective/ approach to standards and practices with which its leadership within operates and (b) the scale of impact it makes or seeks to make on its chosen field of operation and other fields. The leadership that benchmarks its management practices, corporate governance and operational standards to its geographically local competitors is essentially a localized order leadership. The biscuit manufacturer that caters to consumers within a small geographical locality is most likely to be a localized order leadership within, despite its high local market share. The leadership that aims at standards and practices better than those that prevail in its local environment is a globally oriented leadership. Contrast the contest among the leaders like Britannia and Parle and the new entrant ITC with the localized biscuit brands. Similarly, the leadership that has already established / seeks to establish it leading position in an extended market beyond its local environment is also at a globally oriented leadership level. It is necessary to point out at this stage that all globally oriented leadership may not be of the same order. There is a continuum of globally oriented leadership scale along which a leadership can upgrade itself over time at varying pace. It is for the purpose of simplicity that anything between localized leadership and global leadership is referred to as one category called globally oriented leadership.

11. The leadership that benchmarks its standards and practices to the best in the World and possibly also seeks to establish/ retain its leading position in terms of market share in the whole world is a global level leadership. It is better to note that a relatively small firm operating largely in the local environment may have a globally oriented leadership. Firms like TCS and Wipro were until a decade ago small firms in their fields but were emerging global leaders. Similarly, Infosys or Bharat Forge took very little time to become a leading global player. One would have observed how ICICI Bank, UTI Bank and HDFC Bank began their innings with globally oriented leaderships and excelled in their performance to emerge as competitive leading players in India banking. Even consider the impact of leadership of the Indian Railways on its financials as well as on the focus on passenger comfort and convenience in the recent period, though it is too early to make a real assessment. The way the Indian Postal Services or the parts of the Ordinance factories have responded to the market forces after economic liberalization in the 1990s points to the global orientation of their leaderships. Turnaround leaderships are almost always globally oriented leadership. Consider the case of Japan and Germany after the World War, IBM, Citibank Group, etc. Even in India, many private sector industrial companies that were on the verge of permanent sickness due to the change of the market place after economic liberalization were fortunate to have globally oriented leadership that brought about real turnarounds. Some of these companies are today well entrenched in the global market.


Elaboration of Proposition

12. As an entity moves from localized leadership to higher order, it essentially seeks to improve its performance. Further, as it moves to global leadership, it sets itself an ambition to attain excellence and sustain excellence. Thus, the path to excellence is a path to higher order leadership. The path to sustained excellence is the path to maintain and enhance global leadership. It is not however guaranteed that an entity on the path of higher order leadership will attain excellence or an entity that has attained global leadership will retain its leadership position, given the dynamics of competition in the field. All the above (and what has been mentioned in the initial paragraph of this paper) is only a proposition. The theoretical and empirical foundations of the proposition need to be examined. In this paper, however, no attempt is made at scientific empiricism that demands lot of data on companies at various levels and their performance over time. This paper does not also seek to formulate a theory from which the proposition of the paper can be deduced or inferred. What is attempted here is no more than an elaboration of the proposition that can only serve as a prelude to subjecting the proposition to tests of theoretical and empirical soundness.

13. For an entity that is not a leader in the field there are three options: align with the existing leadership in the field, or challenge it, or live so long as the competitors including the leaders allow. For an entity that is already a leader, there is generally some entity or another already in the field or a new entrant to the field somewhere in the world who is trying to put up better performance over other existing players in the field. Mere pursuit of excellence therefore cannot not guarantee that excellence will be attained and/ or sustained. Of course, the journey towards excellence is facilitated by the associated journey towards globally oriented or global leadership. But there is often a competition among entities with globally oriented and global leadership. Also, global leaders of yesterday may become complacent and falter, even fail to sustain its commitment to retain its global lead. This dynamics causes the standards of global leadership to change. Thus, today’s global leader may fall behind and new global leaders may emerge in different fields. Why did Enron fail? Why could Enron retain/ establish its leadership in the field of power generation, distribution and power/ power derivatives trading? It did not really have commitment to sustain global leadership practices. Why did Citibank or Motorola remain in the reckoning for global leadership despite disasters afflicting them? It was the commitment to global leadership. How did ICICI survive when the development bank model of the 1950-1985 became obsolete and uncompetitive? Because ICICI had a committed globally oriented leadership that had an alert, effectively utilized corporate mind capable of transforming the ruins and potentials of ICICI into a vigorous universal commercial bank with leadership position in Indian banking. Global leadership position in a field once attained may be lost and regained provided the global leadership (quality) within remains in tact.

14. But how does the movement from localized leadership to globally oriented leadership takes place? It may be useful to construct some examples. Consider the field of residential housing development in different States of India. There are players of different sizes and hues. Some use the most modern equipment and systems. Some operate in different cities in India, while others restrict their operations to a State or even a small locality. Consider the smallest entity in the field. He has limited financial resource raising capability but contacts that help acquire land/ old houses to construct four-storied residential apartment buildings in the locality in which he lives and operates. He depends on local subcontractors for supply of materials, equipment and masonry/ carpentry/ electrical/ plumbing other skilled/ unskilled labour. He also commissions part-time services of a locally resident civil engineer as architect cum design engineer. The same is true of the legal services he needs to enter into contracts. He himself acts as the knowledge base of all operations and construction including the safety requirements, though his knowledge is extremely limited and poor to say the least. What does he deliver other than poorly designed apartments, unsafe electrical wirings, shabby quality doors/ windows, low height stairs, inadequate and inconvenient space for common utilities and narrow passages. It is like creating another slum for middle class/ lower middle class families. He makes a huge profit and wishes to expand his business. He has two options: be a localized leader and continue generating same quality flats with the same systems and vendors or become globally oriented, expose himself to the activity of players outside his locality who are building better designed and better quality flats for decent living. The latter option implies a better organization of activities, employment of more professionally competent engineers, more quality conscious carpenters, masons and plumbers. This would mean benchmarking to standards and practices that are better than those adopted by his competing builder-developers in the locality. Only a vision of providing better quality residential flats and a decent surrounding for the households occupying the flats can motivate the builder-developer to upgrade his leadership. This may involve a higher cost for him, but in the long run better reputation, higher price realization and greater demand for his services. This may in turn force other builders to adopt better standards and practices. He may or may not do business outside his locality but he would have made an impact in his field by forcing other local players to adopt better standards. Moreover, even within his own locality he can carve out a niche market offering services for renovation of flats and buildings to higher quality levels. His methods of identifying individual flat-owning customer’s renovation needs, planning, design, procurement, labour deployment, organization structuring, execution, monitoring, quality control and delivery scheduling would be far superior to the competing run of the mill builder developers. This is how pursuit of excellence is related to moving up the order of leadership from localized to global orientation. But why does this particular builder developer upgrade to a higher order leadership while others in similar position do not do so? Before this issue is discussed, more examples are in order for proper elaboration of the proposition of the paper.

15. An individual is first a leader of himself so far as his own personal decisions are concerned. Many individuals are self-leaders, while others are followers. Different students of equal merit and examination results take different approach to their education and career choices when they leave the college. Most fall in the bandwagon: study computer applications or engineering or medicine or accountancy. Some do not. They look for information on specialized careers. Some join courses in event management, TV programming, animation, pharmacy, biotechnology, Chinese language, acting, photography, painting, etc. Some just join the family business with college education as a subsidiary activity. Yet, some others do multiple things at the same time: study commerce, join an accounting firm as a low paid assistant and assist NGOs as volunteers so that they acquire diversified skills. This is providing globally oriented (self) leadership to one’s own life at an early stage. They want to establish their leadership in niche fields that they feel will make the best use of their talents. Why do some adolescents take such decisions is an issue to which one can revert back later?

16. Consider the case of Sourav Ganguly, the former Indian cricket captain. He had first established himself as a lead batsman and later as a Captain. He could have operated in the single field as batsman. But as he took the opportunity of playing as a skipper, he operated in a different field – one of captainship. He wanted to establish himself as a leading captain. And, he did that not merely as the most successful captain of Indian cricket but also a captain of a different variety: one who is aggressive in approach to deal with aggressive captains of opponent teams, to establish an active role for skipper in team selection and coach selection, to work on a strategy that makes the team less dependent on the batting performance of the few top batsmen, to support the younger rising star, etc. He would have known that leadership as batsman and as captain cannot continue for long. Yet in the process he has acquired considerable exposure that has built into him the capability to deal with politics in cricket, to enable him to move to different operating fields as lead selector or commentator or coach in future. Developing capabilities for leadership in newer fields and retreat from fields where leadership is under attack from juniors is itself an example of globally oriented leadership traits. The reality may not be as simple as it is narrated above. But the cricket career of Ganguly does indicate a departure from the run of the mill, lead cricketers of India. He has ensured that lead batsmen or bowlers will never again get a chance to captain Indian cricket team merely on the strength of their capability only as batsman or bowler or all-rounder. He needs to show the characteristic of a general who leads from the front not only in the game of cricket but also on the selection of the coach and the players for the series and each match. The days of meek, docile captains keeping a distance from other players are over.

17. Who was the leader in the epic Mahabharata? There were so many leaders. Arjuna was the lead archer, warrior and commander. There were many other such leaders. Some were older like Dronacharyya and Bheesma. But many were in comparable age group like Karna and Duryodhana. Yudhisthira, Bheema, Satyaki, Salya etc were also lead warriors and commanders. Not all the leaders were globally oriented leaders. The entire Kaurava leaders were localized leaders in the sense that they were contesting the Pandavas only in the field of monarchy they both inherited from their forefathers. King Dhritarastra, himself a capable leader in his younger days, was only the formal leader and not the real leader. Yudhistira had the objective of establishing himself as the leader of dharma rather than as a King of subjects or an elder brother or as a commander of army. But what does one place Krishna? He had established himself as a great warrior at a young age, yet in Mahabharata he was seldom seen to fight and when he did fight to win, he fought reluctantly and as a last resort. In Mahabharata, Krishna was establishing himself as a leader in a different field. He was a global leader in that field – the field of sharing love and wisdom, reducing tension, extending care and peace-making diplomacy. There were many other leaders who could have tried to excel in this field. In terms of age, experience and warrior skills, Bheesma or Drona could have taken up this role. So could both Yudhisthira and Karna. And, Dhrirastra himself could have brokered peace. But they were not global leaders in this particular field but in different fields. Krishna alone was a global leader in different fields including the field in which he mostly operated in Mahabharata. And, he performed much better than the modern day United Nation Secretary General or Mahatma Gandhi. He averted conflicts among/ with warring sides many times with his sweet nature, words of wisdom and diplomacy. With the same qualities, he remained in the midst of a war without fighting for any side and guided the war that had become inevitable to eradicate the era of conflict between Kauravas and Pandavas. And, his words of wisdom that he uttered to Arjuna during the war remain the most treasured treaties on human life in the history of civilization. This is global leadership par excellence.

18. From epic to modern day world again. But before one reverts to business/ corporate world, one needs to make a short tour of some more fields outside as well. Who is the global leader in Science and Technology? India is certainly not the leader. The leadership in this broad field lies in the West starting with USA. But 200 years ago, the leadership position was occupied by the United Kingdom. In robotics, Japan is among the top leaders. In science, US’s leadership may be soon threatened by China and India, given the latter two countries’ large and growing scientific and engineering manpower. But do India and China reflect a progressively higher order of leadership to compete with the west in the next two decades? Does India and China really have globally oriented leadership within to aim for leadership in the field? What is the scenario in the field of Athletics? The leadership of US, Russia, China and a few other countries may continue for some more time. Even as the US starts worrying about the impending contest for leadership by China and India in the field of Science and technology, India’s leadership within does not seem to be moving up the order of globally oriented leadership in these fields. In hockey India lost her leadership long time back and in football (soccer) the position was never glorious (India had improved her performance to lead Asian countries some decades ago and slipped since then). In contrast to the above, India lifted its position to global leadership and continued to be among the leaders during the last 15 years. Indian cricket leadership within has been globally oriented and established her rights in the ICC thanks to Mr. Dalmia, now disposed off the President’s chair of BCCI. The cricket is the most popular game in India now. A comparative analysis of the formal leadership of different sports/ games fields in India could be rewarding but this paper does not seek to venture into that.

19. Consider filmmaking industry. India produces the largest number of films in different languages and probably in a single language. It commands a leadership position in this field. Examine the attributes of the leadership of Indian film industry and identify its globally oriented characteristics in terms of risk-taking, global viewer ship, technology imports and interaction with and copying from film industry leadership abroad. The global orientation of Indian top newspapers, stock exchanges, and television channels has come about within a much short span of time. But is India, despite being the largest democracy, anywhere near global leadership in the performance of Governance and civil administration or justice administration? On the other hand, in terms of performance, India ranks among the top in the field of corruption. Yet, the leadership has been successful in passing the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act and the Right To Information Act. Is the political leadership in India globally oriented? What explains all this? Consider also the trade union leadership. Globally oriented leadership anywhere would not demand protection but would face threats to survival and growth in the same as leaderships in other areas would do. Terrorism and striking at the roots of existence of organizations whose performance would determine the employees’ ultimate fate in the organization are clearly counterproductive strategies. The evolution of a concept similar to labour is the primary challenge trade union leaderships must address first before they talk of trade union rights in the 21st century organizations. The labour-capital-management exploitation organizational perspective is relevant to organizations that are now virtually extinct. Is it possible to have globally oriented trade union leaderships that would deliver excellent performance to (which) labour?

Corporate Leadership

20. It is time to move to corporate leadership now. The discussions in the previous paragraphs, however, are equally relevant to the corporate leadership discussions. But a few more definition of terms at this stage would be required. Corporations are hierarchical in organizational structure with almost always a single person at the top. The leader at the top is almost always the center of interest for study. This is natural as people like heroes and stories about heroes. Indeed, some great top corporate chiefs achieved such amazingly great transformation in their organizations during their tenure of being at the helm that they deserve to be worshipped as heroes. But even those transformations involved the creation of a vibrant structure of coordinated leadership structure all down the line. A single person at the top did make a difference but no person, however, great can sustain a process of transformation without placing leaders at various crucial functions and levels of the organization. Even just below the top, a team of leaders supporting the leaders at the top. Thus, organizations have what one may term as leadership structure.

21. The existence of leadership structure does not necessarily mean a command and control structure or a bureaucratic structure or a functional structure. Leadership structure in most corporations is now flatter and represents largely a multi-layer network of both functional/ strategic teams and also task/ project/ assignment-oriented collegial teams whose membership changes over time. Even within each team the leadership role shifts from one member to another. It is more like the cricket teams in which sometimes the captain is in the lead and sometimes the coach and at times the junior most batsman or bowler. The process in which this multi-point, multi leader teams function in a network of teams is difficult to comprehend and may cause difficulties to the company. Witness the Ganguly-Chappel controversy in Indian cricket!

22. How the leadership structure functions depends on the leadership culture. And, leadership structure and leadership culture may or may not be impacted time to time by leadership struggle that involves fair/ unfair/ overt/covert competition among leaders in lower leadership positions within the formal leadership structure to acquire higher leadership positions in future, and by leadership breeding that reflects an organization’s culture to identify, acquire, develop, support and encourage emerging leaders at various levels. Both leadership struggle and leadership breeding are essential for a corporate leadership to sustain continued supply of quality personnel for its leadership positions at various levels in the leadership structure. Yet, these two processes or elements of the leadership culture may sometimes be working in a counter productive manner. A culture of leadership struggle helps throw up the best available future leaders, but it may also encourage bitter fights and unfair games that may hurt the organization’s interests. Leadership fights at one level may lead some individual leader or group of leaders to sabotage the leadership breeding process and frustrate emerging leaders in their incubation at various levels. Similarly, leadership breeding may generate impulses for undesirable leadership fights because of mismatch between available formal leadership positions at various levels and the generation of potential leaders generated by breeding. The output of leadership breeding needs systematic absorption through creation of adequate challenges internally or outside the organization. The ability of leadership and its structure in a company to continuously upgrade the quality of its globally orientation depends on how these processes work out and are managed.

23. Can leadership be sourced from the market? Market for leadership (including for potential future top-level leaders) play an important part in the sustainability of journey through the continuum of globally oriented leadership to global leadership. Leadership is certainly about assessing the future global environment and targeting opportunities, setting vision, mission, goals, objectives and benchmarks, formulating and implementing relevant strategies, structures, systems and practices. But this is also about responding to the global market for leadership. Clearly, leadership breeding can mean breeding for the organization as well as the market. But it also means opportunities for acquisition and effective absorption of leaders at various levels from the market. Not all organizations are equally prepared to exploit the opportunities in the leadership market. Real good globally oriented leaders tend to flow where the challenges attract them. Some organizations with complete reliance on internally bred leaders or seniority of leaders as a basis for deployment in formal leadership positions may lose out, while completed dependence on the market for top formal leadership positions may find difficult to sustain globally oriented leadership. In a situation of growing opportunities for challenges emerging for the businesses to expand and diversify, the market for globally oriented leadership becomes vibrant. Retaining leadership talent becomes a major issue.

24. Excellence has no upper bound. The size of the market, rather the size and diversity of the fields in which an entity seeks to operate and limit its vision to, determines the order of global orientation of its leadership. Greater the external space (products, inputs, geographical markets, technology and innovation, the underlying risk factors, etc) that the leadership considers relevant as its domain of environment, the higher is likely to be its challenge to sustain excellence and higher is the order of global orientation required of its leadership. An empirical validation of the above is not possible without detailed knowledge of the actual state of affairs in different companies over time. But questions may still be raised about broad categories of companies in India. Do most largely family owned businesses believe in Leadership Structure and Leadership breeding? Isn’t the top family leadership very careful about nipping any leadership struggle in the bud? How then do they encourage competition in the movement up the leadership hierarchy? And, when the family leadership divides at the top (as it started in the case of Reliance Industries a few years ago), what happens to the leadership structure and culture before the division get sorted out? The professionally managed, widely held with very little promoter group shareholding in the private sector may not have the exactly same issues to deal with. But many of the large professionally managed and widely held large companies diversifying and expanding very fast has to broaden its leadership structure. How exactly do they do this? Does the market for leadership talents help in acquisition? And, do those who set up subsidiaries or plants abroad assimilate foreign talents in the leadership structures?
How do the public sector respond given that seniority is the overriding factor in movement towards the top and the selection at the top is dictated by an owners whose choices are, to say the least, arbitrary though always rationalized? In listed companies, major investor- shareholders keep a close watch on the companies they invest and have shown an increasing tendency to take up important issues with company managements. Though the investors are outside the entity of a company, they become part of the organization when situations so warrant and contribute as part of leadership within to force changes that would bring better performance. The market for corporate control provides for globally oriented/ global leadership in search of organizations that need them. In family managed businesses the families take active interest and except when inter-family conflicts arise the leadership within is always under pressure to deliver performance. But in the public sector, the major shareholder’s representatives have little to lose by intervening in any manner they like. Doesn’t the talk of MOUs with ministries and autonomy of public sector management point to a limit on the extent to which public sector leaderships can upgrade to higher orders of globally oriented leadership except by chance?

A Summing Up

25. To sum up, this paper advances a proposition that is almost like a tautology and therefore whose proof is not necessary. The paper raises various issues connected to the performance of leadership of organizations insofar as such performance has any relationship with the global orientation/ exposure of the organization or its leadership quality. The paper points to the need for looking beyond the top leader into the leadership structure and leadership culture. It also emphasizes on the dynamics within the leadership structure and culture over time and the interaction with the market for leadership talent. Equally importantly, it seeks to view the relationship between global orientation of leadership and its performance as a generic issue across all type of entities from individuals to families, from NGOs to Clubs, from Universities to Governments, from sports bodies to multilateral, international organizations, from service industry commercial enterprises to large corporations with diversified businesses across products and countries/ regions. The paper seeks to elicit and interpret the experiences of the readers in the framework in which it discusses about global leadership.
@ Paper presented at GHlobal Leadership Conference in 2006 at Kolkata