Making CEOs

Countries passing through phases of development, growth and economic upscaling, face a complex situation of talent shortage. They partly solve their problems by allowing import of talent (temporarily or in a phased manner), and solve the rest of the problem through various forms of expansion of their domestic talent pool.

If we narrow down this subject to the leadership positions, and particularly the C-suite, this problem changes shape. And if we further narrow down to the position of the CEO (the General Manager of the earlier times), we all know where we are heading for some compromise here or there.

We all know what a 'Basic CEO' should be – a well rounded up generalist of sorts who has a mix of skills, capabilities & experience to say the minimum. That's like Vanilla ice-cream. But when we ask for the 'toppings' it starts getting complicated.

Let's imagine the persona of some of the following CEOs:

- Managing a global multibillion-$ multi-national corporation

- Managing a large family-board managed organization

- Managing a business in a country with acute forex shortage

- Managing an International Airline or Telecom company

- Managing businesses various kinds of businesses in the 10-100 million $ band.

You obviously see the difference, right ?

The last category is like most of the area under the bell curve. That’s where most of the formally structured businesses in an economy would lie, leaving aside the mom-n-pops, startups, larger midcaps and largecaps. These businesses would be scattered across all sectors and sub-sectors. They would be facing most of the challenges that a small-to-mid size business would face. Therefore, they have to be led by caring, careful and capable Leaders. Leaders who are aware, and agile. Leaders who learn to grow themselves as the grow their businesses.

Today’s CEOs need to be aware of Boardroom & operational expectations around ESG, AI, Disruptive Tech, Digital Transformation, Data Science and other rapidly evolving subjects. While their core education and experience around Finance, Ops, HR, Marketing, Sales etc shall always remain extremely valid and important, its these New Knowledge and New Skillset and New Capabilities that the New CEO positions will be required to fill in.

India and Bharat has a tall task on this. There is an acute shortage of Top-tier Leadership across sectors. The country is fast entering New Sectors (Semi-conductors, Space, Defence …. ). The Management institutions are not structured to produce the volumes or the quality. Much of Leadership-spotting and relevant education should start from mid-to-high school (like Sports), while the country romps through its growth.

Tier-2 and Tiier-3 aspirants should not in left behind in this consideration. These aspirants are not 100% English-speaking metro city-dwellers. In the absence of quality counselling, they might have done their MBAs from non-descript institutions. MBAs alone go to assure nothing. Its time for Corporate India to wake up and create Leaders for tomorrow’s ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’.