Ravi Chaturvedi, President, North-East Asia, P&G, Addresses JBIMS Students

Ravi Chaturvedi, President, North-East Asia, P&G, Addresses JBIMS Students

JBIMS-Mumbai hosted one of its most illustrious alumni, Mr. Ravi Chaturvedi, on campus for a session on 'Leadership that Transcends Cultures: Knowledge-Based Leadership Vs. Hierarchy-Based Leadership'. Mr. Chaturvedi, an alumnus of the Batch of 1983

is the President, North-East Asia, Procter & Gamble, and has experience in leadership positions across many geographies, and is currently based out of Japan.

Mr. Chaturvedi started off with the importance that leadership plays especially in today's corporate world. His articulation of some of his experiences at P&G and how P&G grooms leaders made it very easy for the audience to understand his points. Stressing on the fact that managers and leaders who can be successful anywhere in the world are the need of the hour, he said that his experiences across borders have taught him that there are more commonalities than differences between people. An appreciation of these commonalities is what makes leaders successful and also helps them groom leadership and retain it.

As he went on, he displayed a pyramid that showed the characteristics of globally capable managers. These, he said, are functional mastery, proactive and knowledge-based leadership and global communication. According to him, these skills make successful leaders and also are the foundation stones of the knowledge-based leadership that was the centre of discussion. Stressing on global communication, he said that it is not just the ability to speak a language but communicate with people of varied cultures. For example, he stated that 'hai' in Japanese means both 'yes' and 'I understand' and this is where the skill and tact of the leader shows.

By this time, he had the audience enthralled and then went on to the next part which was titled 'My Beliefs'. He said that as a practice whenever he takes charge of an office, he lets these beliefs be known to all his colleagues, which is a critical part of his leadership style, since it tells people what kind of a leader he is, which makes it easier for them to work together to create synergies. He started off with stressing on the point that innovation is an outcome and it thrives when people have fun and fulfillment through work, and that knowledge-based leadership as opposed to hierarchy-based leadership is the key to achieving this. An important belief, which he said, should be practiced is focusing on outcomes and rewarding results.

The next belief that he put forth was that change is opportunity saying that leading change, learning to be comfortable with uncertainty, challenging paradigms and breaking down myths and important qualities that global leaders should posses. Conflicts are a part of leadership and he acknowledged this fact. However, he said that in the end people might agree to disagree but the crucial thing is to commit to a line of decision.

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Contributed by -
The Corporate Relations Committee,
Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.

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