Who Should Be Your Future Leader…

We live in a time of multiple vicissitudes and business exigencies.

- Rajesh Nair

The best drafted down plans are laid to waste in spite of the best risk mitigation measures and the most clinical of economic forecasts. At a recent entrepreneurship conference, a famous venture capital financier said, ‘I am yet to really believe in the structures and the complicated analysis that are presented by young businessmen. Frankly, I have never seen any five-year plan really take off! ‘It still does not excuse us from building business strategies because direction is still important. So is there an elusive panacea or a framework that will solve all your business issues? Sorry, I have not come across any in the last two decades in business. But what can weather the storm is the right people at the helm. People who have the courage to change course, adapt quickly to the tailwinds and find direction aligning with the headwinds.

So what does that really leave for the business heads do? To recruit the right people! This is of course easier said than done. We have continually started looking at this function as ‘non critical’ and ‘outsourcable’, and this leads to a difficult trend. The emergence of the new band of professionals called ‘placement consultants’ truly signify the flavour of senior management thought that recruitment is best left to experts outside the firm, who are widely networked and are likely to know where to find skills and talent. Some of it is true, some of the placement consultant, one had interacted with give you that confidence and also have the right experience to guide you in the same. But that does not absolve us from thinking more and spending more time for this important activity.