Attitude determines Altitude

In corporate life (or indeed in any part of life - social or corporate) a high degree of importance is normally attributed to technical skills - whether its in technology, finance or administration. Whilst, the need for technical skills should not be underestimated, life over a period of time, often needs overcoming obstacles that will surely come up due to lack of resources or competition from others working in your field. Changes are inevitable over a period of time and the resilience to overcome the odds, the patience to wait for things to get better and for people or markets to be ready is a key ingredient for success. Many businesses are successful because they stayed the course in bad times and reaped the benefits of the good times or waited it out until a market matured.

R. Gopalkrishnan, Director Tata Sons, is one of those management professionals who has always focused on soft skills, HR, EQ and on "Effectiveness vs Efficiency". Effectiveness is always long-term and long lasting and efficiency (alone) is often short term. In his book "The Case of the Bonsai Manager" he explains in great detail, these aspects of human endeavour. Using facts from the plant and animal world he explains various management concepts, stressing on the soft skills of managers and working with people to build great teams and organizations.

In a recent article in Businessworld, "Its A Matter of Attitude" he reiterates this view of attitude, real world learning and a balance of technical and human skills being the cornerstone of success. Students should be humbled by the knowledge they acquire at B-school, not become cocky or arrogant about it. He says, "In cooperation with the Centre for Creative Leadership, the Tata Management Training Centre (TMTC) undertook research on what kinds of lessons leaders in India usually learn and how they learn them. The research paper suggests that leaders learn from three ‘worlds’ in which they participate — their ‘Inner World’ (self awareness, confidence, life goals), ‘World of Getting Things Done’ (operational skills, leadership, technical aspects) and the ‘World of People’ (managing subordinates, team play)

Read all about this in this recent article http://www.businessworld.in/index.php/Columns/Its-A-Matter-Of-Attitude.html