Dr Marshall Goldsmith, one of the top CEO
coaches of the world and the author of several bestsellers on leadership was in
India recently to deliver a speech for the National HRD Network’s silver
jubilee. Addressing the CXOs he made a point that despite cultural differences
across countries, the CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies have a lot in
common. Amongst such common characteristics, he mentioned Western education as
an important feature even if they went to school in India. He also said that a
future CEO should have five things that were not required in the past: global
thinking, cross-cultural appreciation, tech-savvy, building partnerships and
shared leadership. Though he was candid about the egoistic and other problems
of leaders, his insistence on Western education seemed as his quick aid for
global thinking, one of his five leadership ingredients.
To interpret Dr Goldsmith’s comments in a
perspective, it could be that he views Western education as a surrogate for
some of the important attributes of the Western (the US, for simplicity) educational
system. These could relate to a graded educational experience that emphasizes
logic, openness, boldness, expressiveness and experimentation, and benefits
from superior laboratory and other facilities. These contrast with the Asian (Indian,
for simplicity) educational experience that supports tradition, caution,
deference and conformity, and suffers from constraints of campus
infrastructure. Western educational system focuses on expressive, at times even
overwhelming, competitiveness in everyday life as opposed to the Indian
educational system that emphasizes competitiveness more in examination routines,
and accommodation in day to day routines. Western culture promotes
inter-personal independence of the individual with dependence on one’s head
while oriental culture promotes interpersonal dependence of the individual with
dependence on one’s heart.
Flood and trickle
American education continues to be the first
choice for higher education for Indian students and parents, whether they have a
strong materialistic mind or a strong nationalistic heart. As a result, the
number of Indian students applying for US student visas has been growing
exponentially. While 90,000 students went to US in 2012-13, 113,000 students
went in 2013-14, registering an increase of 26 percent. In 2014-15, a further
40 percent increase to 158,200 is forecast as per current trends. Only, China
sends more students to US. Together, China and India contribute to nearly 50
percent of US student visas. The question, however, is whether the students
prefer the US educational system for higher education for the sheer educational
experience for global leadership or to pursue an American dream of a career in
a superior ecosystem. While both could be viable reasons, probably not many are
so futuristic as to pursue American education as a global leadership
qualification.
For the few who have become the CEOs or CXOs
of multi-billion multinational corporations such as Indira Nooyi (Pepsico), Satya
Nadella (Microsoft), Harish Manwani (Unilever), Ajay Banga (Mastercard), Anshu
Jain (Deutsche Bank), Shantanu Narayen (adobe), Ivan Menezes (Diageo), Rakesh
Kapoor (Benckiser), Vikram Pandit (Citi), Sundar Pichai (Google), Nikesh Arora
of SoftBank and Ajit Jain (Berkshire Hathaway), the reason is not necessarily the Western education as
several had higher education in India too. Various others have occupied
leadership positions in Indian multinationals without any Western degrees. While Bloomberg commented that Indian cultural
ethos of empathy, humility, patience, emotional bonding and passion for growth
as a reason for Indians becoming CEOs in global MNCs, it is also clear that out
of the flood of Indians seeking US higher education only a trickle makes it to
the top. This leads us to wonder on the validity of Dr Goldsmith’s prescription
of Western education is an essential prerequisite for future global leaders. In
likely fact of the future, there could, on the other hand, be a dramatic shift
in favor of Asian education and experience.
Asian resurgence 2030
According to a report by
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) published in July 2014, India will be the third
largest economy in the world by 2030. According to rankings of the top
economies of the world, India would leap seven steps to become a USD 15
trillion economy by 2030, next only to US at USD 38.5 trillion and China (at
the top) at USD 53.8 trillion. In fact, the five BRICS countries (Brazil,
Russia, India, China and South Africa) would have an economic scale of over USD
85 trillion by 2030, far exceeding the scale of the five developed economies of
USA, Japan, Germany, UK and France together at only USD 66 trillion. Clearly,
the emerging economies of today would be the dominant economies of tomorrow in terms
of workforce and population, economic scale, diversity of research and
manufacturing and market potential.
Today’s drawbacks of the BRICS economies should not be viewed to
conclude that the emerging economies would always be dependent economies.
Today’s challenges of the emerging economies
in terms of deficient urban and rural infrastructure, underdeveloped
transportation services, inadequate power and energy, rather uncontrolled
population, poor healthcare and sanitation, and so many other shortfalls would
be great opportunities of tomorrow, calling for massive investment in
infrastructure development and economic growth. A qualifying requirement for
this transformation would be the importance attached to organic technological
innovation. India’s Mars mission (Mangalyaan) that has successfully placed
India’s satellite in the orbit of Mars in the very first attempt at a cost
lower than the cost of a Hollywood blockbuster movie (a point eloquently made
by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Madison Square, New York address)
illustrates that Indian engineering and scientific talent can achieve
technological self-reliance even in the most sophisticated fields, with a
structured mission and progressive leadership. Indian Scientific Research
Organization (ISRO), a Government of India body has certainly shown the way for
a techno-savvy India.
Factors and markets
Eventually, global economic development would
seek a global equilibrium, driven by differential factor advantages and
differential market sizes. Like water
flows from a higher plane to a lower plane and heat transfers from a higher
temperature heat sink to a lower temperature heat sink, technologies and
finances would flow to economies where they can be best utilized. Global developmental
equilibrium would need to happen, even if it were to take years and decades. In
this process, leadership is a critical driver of how to access and deploy
resources, be it finance, people and machines, or naturally occurring resources
like oil, gas, water, wind, minerals, metals and any other element. Leadership
is also a critical ingredient of understanding various local markets,
developing customized products and services and integrating with local consumer
needs. If these are the imperatives, leadership must understand local factor
endowments and local market needs, and explore how multi-national resources can
be networked to synergize each local economy.
It goes to the credit of global Fast Moving
Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies that they ventured into underdeveloped markets
decades ago despite several challenges and uncertainties and in the process
secured a place in such countries that is on par with indigenous companies. As
the underdeveloped economies moved on to become developing economies a few
years ago, and now emerging economies with potential to become fully developed
over the next two decades, the pioneering FMCG companies have discovered that
their venturesome strategies fueled sustainable global growth for them.
Companies like Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Proctor & Gamble, Gillette, GSK
Consumer, Microsoft, Pepsi, CocaCola, Henkel and Reckitt Benckiser come to
mind. In other fields as well, companies such as Suzuki, GE, Siemens, ABB,
Nokia, Philips, Cummins and Alstom have taken early roots. All such successful
companies viewed India as an important market and supply source but some like
Unilever have seen India as a select leadership talent source for their global
needs.
A new bilateral paradigm
As India and China match the five developed
economies by value less than 15 years from now, global corporations must
develop a significantly different paradigm for nurturing global leaders. The
conventional models that local leaders must be Western educated to have global
acceptance (typical Goldsmith’s type prescription) or that expat leaders must
spend a few years each in several emerging countries (typical global automobile industry’s practice) would
be found wanting when India and China (as well as other emerging market
economies) race at full economic throttle. Fundamentally, future global leaders
would be developed with specific collaborating countries in mind. Such
combinations could be US and India or US and China, Japan and India or Korea
and India, UK and India or UK and China, India and China or India and Brazil, and
so on. The Western origin person who would have graduate education of the West
would be immersed in post-graduate education of the East while the Eastern
origin person who would have graduate education of the East would be immersed
in post-graduate education of the West.
Put differently, the new global leader would
not rest content with viewing education as imparting only professional
knowledge or leading to a different employment opportunity. Education would be
seen as an immersive cultural experience of a different nation with a style of
pedagogy and a community of co-learners and co-executors unique to that national
culture. As much as an Indian student with US employment aspiration would like
a US higher education so must a US student with the aspiration of becoming an
India-centric leader should take to Indian higher education. Ahead of this
paradigm being a part of mainstream general education, executive education
could be the right vehicle to develop the new generation of focused global
leaders. Executives should be encouraged to take up fulltime residential higher
education courses in diverse emerging market countries on sabbatical depending
on the global growth orientation of the companies. For the new bilateral global
bilateral education paradigm to be effective, educational institutions in India
and China (and other emerging nations) must elevate their campus ecosystems,
learning communities and curricula to integrate the best of locally embedded
and intrinsic culture, knowledge and practice with globally applicable professional
knowledge, tools and techniques.
Posted by Dr CB Rao on October 4, 2014
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