Abhijit Bhaduri

Day: October 13, 2007

  • You Made Us Proud

    You Made Us Proud

    On the flight from Frankfurt to Amsterdam’s Schipol airport, I am seated next to Mr B Muthuraman, the Managing Director of Tata Steel. It is a company he has worked with since 1966 after completing his B Tech from IIT-Madras. I lean across the aisle and introduce myself then tell him that the deal involving Corus Steel’s takeover by Tata Steel has made every Indian proud. The diminutive Muthu smiles in acknowledgment before disappearing into the crowded Schipol airport. He has ambitious plans for Tata Steel. He was recently quoted in Business Week magazine as saying that he is “aiming to be a 20 million-ton company by 2010 and 35 million-ton company by 2015.” Tata Steel currently makes 7 tons of steel a year, and this includes Singapore’s NatSteel and its China plant. By [2015], they’ll be among the top five steel companies in the world in size. Good luck to people like Muthu who make us walk with a swagger. Schipol Airport has a casino, a museum (the Rijksmuseum) that gave me a glimpse of Van Gogh’s sketches of the lion. The airport has its own mortuary – so that you can fly through Schipol dead or alive and has of late been in the news for being a place where couples are getting getting married. No question of missing the flight to the honeymoon destination – just get the pilot as the best man at the wedding.In Amsterdam you are more likely to be run over by speeding cyclists than with a one of those fancy bikes. Public transport is a plenty but if you are not a gawking tourist you want to have at least one bicycle of your own. The canals garland the city like a giant windshield wiper swishing from side to side. It is hip to have your own houseboat in the canal though the stench sometimes is truly overpowering. On weekends – IF the weather is good, you can see loads of cyclists doing a leisurely trip along the canal with a loaf of bread, some cheese and a bottle of wine stuck prominently in a basket tagged in front of the bike.

    The Dutch are fairly liberal people when it comes to things adult. The cafes serve cannabis in small quantities for all those who have the appetite for it. The tourists are equally stunned to see the openness with which the red light district rubs shoulders with the rest of the commercial district. The Anne Frank Museum attracts visitors in large numbers as do the painters – Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Bol.

    What did I like most about this city? Hmmm… I loved the cobbled streets and the lush green parks – my favorite was the Vondel Park. You see families coming there jogging, on bikes, pets in tow and children dutifully following their parents. The leaves were just falling off in preparation for the winter months. What did I not like about Amsterdam? The weather. It was cold and damp for the better part of the week. The Sun made a guest appearance like a Bollywood star in an art movie – brief but impactful and left us wanting more.

  • Coach Coach Hota Hai

    Coach Coach Hota Hai

    Dalai LamaI am currently reading Sun After Dark by Pico Iyer. He writes about the Dalai Lama who is considered to be the spiritual Coach to a nation and to many world leaders. He says though the Dalai Lama is “increasingly famous as a speaker, his real gift, you see as soon as you begin talking to him, is for listening.” That ability to listen makes him a true Coach. The world leaders listen to him because he in turn is a world leader who listens.

    Organizations want to see their managers become one, each employee wants to become one and the parents want to be one to their kids. While one half of the world is looking for an effective Coach, the other half is trying to reach that sweet spot and proclaim themselves as experts while the fog is still thick. Every HR professional is not the de-facto Coach of the organization. They ought to be – but in all likelihood they are not equipped to be. One test is to ask the person to differentiate between the role of a Mentor and that of a Coach. Some organizations use the term Mentor and Coach interchangeably. No wonder they say if you don’t know where you are going, you can’t get lost.

    So all those who believed that you were the first Mentors to walk the earth, sorry, the prize goes to Odyssesus. According to Greek mythology Odysseus entrusted his son Telemachus to guide the young man into adulthood in the absence of his father. A Coach is different from a Mentor. While Coaching is task related, Mentoring is about life itself. The role of a Mentor is to link up all the roles of the mentee – as an employee, as a parent, as a spouse, a sibling etc and then identify the patterns of dysfunctional behavior that the individual displays. A Mentor guides you through the journey of life. The reward is learning and insights for both. The Mentor is best selected by the individual himself or herself rather than assigned by the organization. So when organizations launch a “Be Mentor to a Young Mind” campaign, they need to leave the choice of the Mentor to the “Young Mind”.

    The Coach needs to be able to diagnose various group processes that are happening in the organization and craft their interventions accordingly. The measure of success of a Coach is to finally make a difference to the functioning of the individual and the organization. The executive Coach when successful will impact the performance of the executive. While the Human Resources folks will hand over the 360 degree reports and other state secrets to the Coach to get a headstart in identifying areas of development, the main deliverable for the Coach should be to help the individual learn new processes. There is always the danger that the Coach becomes yet another manager in the organization because of the power this relationship has. So periodically remind them that the football Coach teaches new techniques, based on the insights they have about the psychological makeup of the players they coach. Their job is not to take the ball during a tough moment and score the goal themselves, no matter how tempting that is.