Jamshedpur : XLRI Leadership Series, a student body of the PGDM (GM) of XLRI � Xavier School of Management hosted the first ever �X-TEND 2014� – Leadership Conclave. Organised in association with the Centre of Global Management and Responsible Leadership (CGMRL), X-TEND 2014 is the flagship event of XLRI Leadership Series.
As strong believers of experiential learning, the students of PGDM (GM) at XLRI brought together academicians and industrialists from diverse backgrounds to discuss about �Designing Future-ready Organizations�.
The panel comprised of eminent industry leaders such as such as Arup Datta- technical director, KPMG, Ritesh Ghosal- head-brand marketing ,Tata Teleservices, Sujitha Karnad- group hr, Mahindra & Mahindra, Fr Oswald Marcarenhas- JRD Tata Chair in Business Ethics at XLRI among others along with the moderator Dr Jitendra Singh- Chairperson, International Relations, XLRI.
E. Abraham, Director, XLRI inaugurated the event by speaking few lines on the conclave theme. He explained the importance of external environment by taking an example of studying the pond to understand a frog and put forth an analogy that to understand an organisation one needs to understand the external environment to make the organisations future ready.
The discussion began with an enthusiastic opening by Dr. J. Singh mentioning �Being good today would not guarantee success for tomorrow. Organisation should evolve with the changes happening in the external environment�. Quoting Jack Welch, a renowned leader of General Electric (GE), Dr. Singh emphasized that the rate of internal changes in the organization should at least be in pace or exceed the rate of changes happening externally.
Once the floor was opened for discussion, Ghosal said �I don�t have a recipe for future organizations but I have a quest for the same�. He said it is important to sync the value proposition of the consumer with that of the organization. He insisted the need for having real-time or near real-time listening mechanisms for customers and create a learning organization.
In continuation with this, Karnad shared her expertise by giving the HR perspective. She said “Focus on the workforce. It must be increasingly global, have generational diversity and should be a contributing part of large teams.” Ms. Karnad also acknowledged the rise in entrepreneurship and disruptive innovations by start-up. She also insisted the HR fraternity should be empowered to create a platform to groom entrepreneurship in the organization.
Oswald Marcarenhas shared his views at the conclave from an academician�s perspective. Fr Oswald said, when organisations talk about future they should have the next 5 to 10 years time period in mind.
Future of the organisation depends on its structure, levers and the challenges and on how well the organisation is designed today – �Designing changes anything and everything about the product�. Finally Fr Oswald said that to be ready for the future, organisations should be �Creative, Innovative, Imaginative and Intuitive�.
