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Globalisation is a major challenge: Kumar Birla

BS Corporate Bureau in Mumbai

AV Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla said on Thursday that globalisation is the most powerful and defining current underlying a multiplicity of challenges.

"We must recognise that not all countries benefit uniformly from globalisation. The benefits tend to percolate to the advantaged and to those with the right education and training," he said.

Birla was speaking on the opening day of a three-day conference of the National HRD Network, a pioneering institution in the field of human resources development, in Mumbai.

On the key challenges facing Indian CEOs, Birla said: "The leadership skills of a CEO should strike much deeper than the business-related issues. The unstructured role of the CEOs should be expanded and the ratio between a CEO's focus on business-related and other issues should be reversed."

Leadership succession, getting everyone in the organisation on the same wave-length, setting values and living by them, and the ability to manage the existing talent and high potential people in the organization are the other key challenges that the CEO needs to address, Birla added.

Amongst the other eminent speakers at the seminar were Scott Bayman, president & CEO, GE India, and Jerry Rao, chairman, Mphasis BFL group. They all emphasised on the potential and the need to unwind the complexities of human capital.

Expressing concern at the slow growth rate of the manufacturing sector, Rao referred to the service sector as the silver lining.

"We have the raw material, and the challenge now is to take it to the next level of excellence," he said.

He emphasised that India has great strengths in the area of human capital.

However, there is a need to systematically invest in the quick development of this potential resource.

"Excellence and development are not accidental. They have to be planned for major competitive advantage," he added.

Bayman, speaking on the outlook of the Indian economy, said that though the long-term outlook appeared to be positive, there was a need to speed up reforms.

"India is out of the list of top ten FDI (foreign direct investment) destinations. FDI in China is twenty times that in India. Radical new generation reforms and political will is required to jump-start the growth process. The advantage that India has is the availability of young educated hungry-to-succeed human capital who need to be given an opportunity," he said.

The Indian business system has moved a long way from being promoter-driven to shareholder-driven.

The seminar, today, highlighted the current need towards focusing on other stakeholders of the business - the human resource.

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