Robin urges firms to grow leaders to remain competitive

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

Leadership guru Robin Sharma yesterday identified two major issues for Sri Lankan businesses in the current context as being the war for talent and the struggle to build a company that is highly profitable in a competitive global marketplace.

Brought down to Sri Lanka by the combined efforts of CIMA Sri Lanka and MAS Holdings, the world-renowned speaker addressed an audience of over 700 CEOs and senior executives at the Cinnamon Grand yesterday where he shared key thoughts and practices on leadership to drive industries to action.

Having worked with some of the best businesses in the world, including IBM, Nike and General Electric, Sharma understood that within the past two years, there has been a great opportunity for businesses in Sri Lanka and he stated that when helping many businesses build a great company, issues like how to build a team of high producers, how to build a team which loves and embraces change and how to build a highly profitable company are just a few of the vital questions that crop up.

“I know that here in Sri Lanka, there are two major issues  - number one is the war for talent; so I shared how the best companies in the world attract and retain A performers. Number two, how do you build a company that is highly profitable in such a competitive global market place? I think that’s one of the things for Sri Lankan companies now that they are moving on to the world stage, how do they do that?,” he questioned.

He revealed that ultimately it’s a message of leadership, where every employee shifts from being any form of a victim to taking responsibility for results and showing leadership.

Delving into the topic of showing leadership without a title, the theme of the workshop he conducted yesterday, Sharma explained that the idea of saying you can’t have an impact without a title is an obsolete model.

The old model of leadership was that only CEOs and vice presidents can make decisions, have an impact and build relationships.

Although leadership is very universal, it is very simple but it’s not easy when it comes down to the execution, he cautioned.

“What I am saying now is that everyone can see themselves as CEO of their own job and the starting point is to stop making excuses. Remember that if don’t understand people, you don’t understand business, so build relationships and related to that is that the job of the leader is to build up other leaders. Also, create more value and give customers 10 times the value that they pay for,” he summarised.

On the issue of the war for talent, the leadership guru pointed out that if an organisation hires average people, it will have an average company. He also encouraged the creation of the kind of culture where people love coming to work and criticized companies in this regard, stating that very few companies work on their culture.

“People also love working for companies where they are not only doing their work, but where they are also being developed; people want to grow through their work. People want to be a part of a mission; everybody wants to be a part of a cause so companies can focus on some sort of meaningful cause to people that excites them. Another thing is get rid of the C players because it’s unfair for the A players in the company to be surrounded by a bunch of C players who are also getting paid to do the job,” Sharma advised.

Sharing thoughts on building up the next generation of leaders, Sharma encouraged all managers to spend time growing other leaders, critiquing that there are so many managers busy being busy instead of focusing on the few things that matter.

The job of any manager or any executive is to leave a trail of managers around them so the best companies spend time mentoring, training and coaching new leaders and he felt that the number one competitive advantage for companies could have is by growing leaders faster than the competition.