Virtual Fireside Chat with Sri. S. Sandilya of Eicher Group

We at Multicoreware Inc had the opportunity have Sri. S. Sandilya among us and it was sort of a virtual fireside chat.

Background of Sri. S. Sandilya(for the curious ones), in fact Google doesn’t do justice and if you search for S. Sandilya — His involvement spans across multiple decades, multiple organisations and multiple initiatives, while he remains the Non-Executive Chairman of Eicher Group and a few other organizations even now at the age of 72.

Here are the pearls or nuggets that are summarized in bullets as these are applicable to any person, any age, any organization, any field — in a sense what we had is a shower of wisdom pearls that emanated positivity. Key take away is everything happens for a reason and the reason can only be positive, if you approach with an open mind. Whatever happens has happened, only thing you need to look at is to learn from it and think/act on what next!

Note: One Liners throughout this post, Sri. S. Sandilya phrased it as ‘Wise-Cracks’ but if you were to read them, there is so much depth in each of those one liners. Each question could become a book by itself.

Managing to straddle various functions and roles across a career of over 5 decades and specifically four decades in Eicher Group

• Eicher Group — Stands for Culture, Values and no-nonsense approach to business. Eicher group imbued in him the attitude to learn. Something few companies do consciously, many companies can learn from and adapt.

Attitude to learn

• Positive Attitude to Learn — Every day, every opportunity you get while you are awake, learn.
• Openness to learn from anyone, anywhere in the system — Something we don’t do consciously — there is nothing that says we can only learn from experts or we can only learn from accomplished souls.
• Continuous learning in life — Life comes to a standstill when we stop learning.

How to handle demotivation?

• Always have an open mind. Human beings always have fear of the unknown. Fear is the downward spiral that we should consciously avoid.
• Exposure of ignorance is better than exposure of stupidity. Being vulnerable and asking for help is shunned by many but if you get out of your comfort zone and ask for help, ignorance is really bliss.

Recalibration of Vision

• We should grow and grow profitably — that should be the key principle when you are re-evaluating vision of a business and it should be done from time to time or whenever situation demands.
• When do you run the business and when do you close the business — something that is very situational and contextual. Do scenario planning in an unbiased manner and weigh the pros and cons before taking any decisions.

Managing talent/people

• If motivated, if challenged and given room to grow inline with their aspiration(both individually and professionally). This applies to any type of business, be it traditional or internet age organizations.

“Pay attention to have retention, if not you will have tension.” The heart of any company is the people.

Managing Change — Peaks and Valleys

Life is full of ups and downs, peaks and valleys, highs and lows — be it from a personal perspective or a professional organization perspective. These apply to anyone and any entity.

• They are to be expected at every point of time.
• Never get tense when you are going downward — Never get elated when you are going upward. Being emotional is the cause for us to react one way or the other and hence the peaks and valleys of life.
• Life is constantly in flux and that is its basic nature. There are no two ways about it.
• Mantra — Scenario planning — following marketing and business trends is key at every crossroad of change, growth etc. Rather than being stuck in what seems like a problem and fearing the unknown, when you do scenario planning, you will uncover more than one solution and you pick what you think is the best solution to progress forward.
• Managing Change — Key to managing change is in the word ‘CHANGE’. Look at the first and last letter of ChangE — C- Chief, E-Executive. The Chief Executive(CEO) is there in the start of the process, middle of the process and end of the process. He is responsible, he is the catalyst. Be the change you want to see — Leadership by walking the talk.

Innovation

• It is a continuous process — be it in business processes, product or anything related to the business.
• Kaizen — Continuous Improvement. This is something that has been a foundational rule or principle in all of Sri. S, Sandilya’s ventures. All of us have heard of Kaizen at some point of time or the other in life.
• What is Innovation? Innovation is Applied Creativity
• Encourage Innovation, encourage taking risks in trying new things. Unless you go beyond your comfort zone, you will only survive. If you want to thrive, you need to Innovate.
• There will be cynics in every new experiment you want to try, make the cynic part of the design process and at the end of that experiment journey, he would make a complete turn-around. Innovation doesn’t only help the company but also the people especially the cynics.

“IN NO VA TION — In No Way Shun Innovation”

• Give people the freedom, enable them and they will innovate for growth.

Mentoring

• From experience he said — each Board Member of a company should mentor 1 or 2 from the leadership team
• Mentor is not one who gives answers, but shows the mirror. Ultimately the mentee has to stand on two feet ‘ Law of Two Feet’. He should listen but make his own decisions.
• Don’t have a common mentor for an entire team — that usually doesn’t and hasn’t work from experience.
• All human beings have blind spots. Mentor asks the questions, helps mentee acknowledge blind spots. Mentee should be open to learn, be open to change.
• Mentor-Mentee relationship is one build on trust.

What advice would you give to your younger self if you could go back in time?

• Whatever happens, happens. Go with the flow and change course if it needs to change.
• Choose based on what you think will be good for you and company. Again, here the stress was on Scenario planning.
• Ability to manage stress — don’t brood over spilt milk, think what can you do next. We tend to be stuck in the past which only increases your agony over what happened. BUT we should consciously acknowledge that something happened and move on to make things better.
• Don’t try to think you are master of things. When you think you know it all, you stop learning. No one has ever learned everything in one life.

When making changes — context being Sri. S. Sandilya has managed multiple business units, taken different roles, changed loss-making units into profitable ones

• Always change is individual and change is constant
• You can’t satisfy the world(or people), follow your conscience, do what is right! People may discourage you from taking risks, making changes because of the fear of unknown or fear of having to move out of one’s comfort zone.
• What opportunities do you see, what changes can you identify? When you encounter a prospective business opportunity — it boils down to what do you see beyond what is apparent in front of you. Do you see with the right team, right processes and never give up attitude you can change things. If you have the belief that nothing is unsolvable, then take the bull by the horn. Also, constantly evaluate your vision, so you are not stuck to your commitment from an emotional angle.
• Analyse what prompted the need for change, do scenario planning on what would pan out based on the business or situation you want to be in. Based on that, act upon it.
• Analyse what drives the change — look at options, identify the best option, don’t do it alone, do it as a team — collective collaboration is key to success when making changes

“It’s a venture, don’t make it an adventure for the thrill of it.”

We went way beyond the intended time for this virtual chat and we were willing to go on for more time, but for the other tasks we had for the company. I hope we have more opportunity to learn from this visionary who leads by example, learnt from everyone and continues to teach us through his learning.

We still have many many questions. If you have any yourself, please share in comments and we shall try to find the next opportunity to talk to him.

If this was useful in some way, please share.