Inspired Leaders: Putting Drucker inspired ideas into action
Dinesh C Paliwal
![Dinesh C Paliwal]()
Dinesh C Paliwal
Partner at KKR; Director Nestle; Chairman Marelli; Chairman Koki; Board of Trustee Miami University
I just finished my panel at ‘A Day of Drucker’ hosted by Peter Drucker Institute – “Inspired Leaders: Putting Drucker inspired ideas into action”
I started with Value based Culture – Teamwork, Collaboration, Transparency, Risk taking and Accountability. When I joined as CEO of Harman in 2007, we lacked many of these elements due to a silo mentality in the organization. With the tone from the top, we did a literal re-boot of the organization and instilled new culture to bring excitement and belief in the tired and lossmaking organization. A few years later, hard work paid off in a big way with very significant economic value creation. As a result, Harman also became a factory for top talent and it contributed four public company CEOs to take Harman playbook to other companies.
We talked about Strategy vs. Execution. Most of us at some point in our career have hired top consultants to help us define our strategy. If you look back and ask, how may consultants have turned into successful CEOs? Very Few! I have always believed for a sustainable success, strategy is 5% and execution accounts for 95%. Culture of execution with clear accountability can do magic. We all have heard, culture eats strategy for lunch everyday!
Courage and Risk taking are equally important. We can argue that courage cannot be taught but risk taking can. Mind it, history has always been written by highly motivated and risk taking people not by the most talented strategic people who lack courage.
Speed and Rapid Decision-making can be a huge competitive advantage! Most organizations lose best people who need direction and quick decisions from the top of the organization. Beauty of rapid decision-making is that even if you made a wrong decision, you can quickly correct it with another quick decision!
I have always believed and exercised Drucker’s message, “Growth that adds volume without improving productivity or economic gain is fat. Growth that diminishes productivity or economics is cancer.”
We closed the session with customer centricity and importance of people. I truly believe, CEOs have not one but two balance sheets – financial and people. Capital is easily accessible but access to talent is becoming harder. Without good people no amount of financial strength will do any good. Take care of good people and keep pruning the organization just like a good gardener regularly takes out weeds to give space and oxygen for other plants to bloom.
Group CFO @ Smartenergy | Venture Capital, Board memberships, Lecturer University St. Gallen HSG
3yFollowing those advices looks so easy and it pays off immediately. I wonder why many managers don’t follow it heart fully … maybe worth another article. Thanks Dinesh!
Greater China, Japan, Korea, Australia, SE Asia
3yCannot agree more.
Technology Executive | Leader | Board Member
3yDinesh- you put into practice all these ideas at Harman! I learnt a lot from you. So when are you starting your next gig ?