Ranjan Banerjee: A leader is a person who can influence the people to act in a positive direction

“A Leader is a person who can influence the people to act in a positive direction and serves the people they are given to lead,” says Mr. Ranjan Banerjee with whom we got the opportunity of speaking recently about what motivated him to join SPJMR, why he thinks Deans and Directors should also teach in Institutes, leadership, How teachers role is evolving and why good Branding doesn’t always mean good Business.

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote”]Leader believes in his follower and get the good things done from them[/pb_blockquote]

When I came back to India I had gone back to my old consulting company and I was very happy about running it and teaching in multiple institutes, both in India and other countries. I had a brief conversation with my wife that if I ever get a chance to shape an Indian institute in a leadership role then I might think about it, this talk was in the year 2011 and then I forgot about the topic and continued with my work. A recruiter from Korn ferry that was my batchmate told me, they are looking for a Dean at SPJMR, So, when I came here I realized that there are a lot of positives about this institute and I liked the value foundation. This was a place where something can be built. I was interviewed by Mr. Srikant Datar from Howard School and he asked me what do you think about management study in India? And I was very critical and at the end of the conversation he said: “look you seem to have a lot of ideas instead of complaining about it, why don’t you get on board and try to change it”. And that itself was a good challenge for me and I said let just stop sitting on the sideline and complaining and do something and the institute was the right challenge.

I think the challenge, the opportunity, the thrill of being a Dean is very exciting as you have multiple stakeholders in very different context, so you have your student, you have your staff, and you have your faculty who are used to a lot of freedom, you have board members and you have industry and to carry all of them along requires a certain approach of leadership and I think that is the essential part. I went to a very reputed engineering school and MBA college, in both the cases I met the head of the institute only on two occasions first on the inauguration and then at the convocation, so the connect of the head of the institute with the student is very important so I strongly believe that the Deans and Directors should also teach. If you have interaction in the classroom then the student will have the courage to speak to you outside the classroom and Some of these small one to one conversations outside the classroom can shape students’ careers.

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote”]The connect of the head of the institute with the student is very important so I strongly believe that the Deans and Directors should also teach.[/pb_blockquote]

The future is going to be better for the best teachers because anything that is factual information can be derived from the internet, but anything that involves interpretation & thinking requires the questioning and the guidance of a skilled teacher. The teacher’s job is to enable, to question and to facilitate curiosity, to create an environment. So if you see what is the proposition of course work and about teaching the subject which will be about stimulating the curiosity, and that is an important part of the teacher’s job and. Teaching has moved from one-way communication to a far more two-way type. So in the future, the student will learn the core points by themselves but the essential part of solving questions, interpretation and sharing the experience will be done by the teachers.I don’t think that you need a position to lead. a leader is a person who can influence the people to act in a positive direction. You could be a student in a group of students but if you are able to raise the consciousness in the group, then you are a leader. There was a student at SPJIMR College who called an initiate to make the campus plastic-free. He got a small group of students together, now the campus is plastic-free. That student is a leader. He didn’t have a position now how do you do this, there are 2-3 thing, you must make people care about the same things, have the shared vision or a shared direction or creating a shared direction. The second thing is that the leaders don’t do the real work 99% of the work is done by other people. So, the job of the leader is to enable other people, creating an enabling environment. So, I say leadership is co-creating a shared direction, campaigning that direction and enabling people so leadership is a service. In a very deep level leadership is about serving the people you are given to lead. Leadership which is earned through behavior is more valuable than leadership through position.

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote”]Teaching has moved from one-way communication to a far more two-way type.[/pb_blockquote]

Most leaders who get into large positions are never fully prepared for the job. They learn on the job, the intention must be right to carry the people along with you, and the learning is the process. Learnability, humility, the ability to listen, the ability to be a passionate person and demonstrate the value you want the organization to have to communicate, are the qualities of leadership. But fundamentally leadership is a journey and not destination, you don’t become a leader when you become a CEO, you become a leader after what you do when you become a CEO. The ability not to take too much credit and give credit to people down the line and realize that whatever we do today need not make you successful tomorrow.

There are still charismatic leaders, you still have people who are followed by a huge amount of people, maybe leadership is far more visible by social media nowadays but I think that the single biggest thing is that if you look at business leadership it comes from the environment. Today, the environment is far more unpredictable, the young employee is far less willing to take orders, they expect more autonomy. So, I think that the style of leadership is far more collaborated, far more inclusive, technology is changing very fast. Leadership through hierarchy, compliance, command, and control which may have worked at some time is becoming much more inclined. If it was Command-Order-Predict is becoming Align-Co-create-Empower.

You become a leader when you take responsibility for other people’s success. the idea that you get happiness and success by helping other people succeed. Hence leadership to me is essentially not individualistic it is about taking responsibility, Every parent is a leader as they take responsibility for their children and second is that leadership is about refusing to be victim, refusing to complain, its taking things on yourself and taking the responsibility aspect.

If a business is creating value for its consumers over a period of time through its product and services then branding helps to capture that value and retain the memorability of the product/ service which it creates. People may have a business brand or product brand. So, Lux is a product brand, Unilever is a corporate brand. In the case of services sometimes the corporate brand and the product brand are not distinguished like the American Express credit cards so there are a set of attributes.

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote”]Leadership to me is essentially not individualistic it is about taking responsibility[/pb_blockquote]

The brand name captures the value that the consumer has created around the brand through purchase, communication, and experience, and the brand, if it is going to be strong and successful has to consistently communicate and deliver the value over a period of time. This is branding. Not all brands which are well perceived are fundamentally solid businesses, a very good example is the Kingfisher Airlines. It had the consumer experience, they were happy with it but the airline was not making money, it was a bad business when it was built.  Now the brand to be sustainable the business must also be strong. Brand is one of the elements that capture the value of a business, it’s only one element which differs from the business. You need solid business and brand is an element of a solid business, if you have brands that capture different attributes of its product, for example, HUL has multiple brands that are doing great business, so altogether they as a co-operate brand is doing well. Branding is only one element of the business model. In a corporate brand, the business and the brand are strongly linked.

There is a difference between managing a brand and a business as the brand is a part of the business. The brand will often grow on the resources of the large business. For Example, the brand manager may not have a separate financial account for the particular brand, He /She will have a financial department in the organization that will provide the services needed for the brand and the brand manager is managing a portion of the business with the support of the business and the brand manager is often managing a part of the business.

A Brand leader needs to have a business perspective but he is the leader of a sub-business. A company with a single brand, the brand leader is on the sales and marketing part and he does not control the operation part or the manufacturing part of it. So it depends on the way the organization is structured.

Brands don’t purely grow from communication. A brand exists in the mind of a consumer and the sum total of all my experience with that product or service. So, if you are building a brand through communication and if your product and communication don’t deliver the value that you are talking about then the brand doesn’t get successfully build. The consumer will look at it at the point of its experience. We are slowly moving from mass media to digital media, Brand managers need to adapt to the fact that it is no longer all about a 10-sec advertisement on T.V. It is about multiple media, multiple conversations, it is about consumer engagement. Time is the most important part of brand building, a minimum of 2-3 yrs depending on the usage of the customer.

[pb_blockquote component_description=”Blockquote”]Brands don’t purely grow from communication. A brand exists in the mind of a consumer and the sum total of all my experience with that product or service.[/pb_blockquote]