Leadership philosophy at Nokia India – Interview with Bimal Rath
Nokia India set up shop in the country in 1995 and has gone from strength to strength ever since. It currently employs about 10,000 people spread across manufacturing, R&D and sales, and in addition has significant presence through their sister company Nokia Siemens Network as well. Nokia India’s maturity and growth are defined by their leadership position in the market, being selected the most trusted brand two years in a row and that they are seen as one of India's top 5 marketing companies (the last two as per Economic Times).
Bimal Rath- Head of HR – India, Nokia Pte has a professional experience of over 20 years spanning various HR areas. At the Finnish mobile maker, he has led HR for Nokia India and APAC over the last couple of years supporting the business in its explosive growth phase, moving the organization from less than 500 people to over 10,000 people spanning across manufacturing, R&D and sales and shared services. The role has been critical in building a high performance organization in a competitive scenario. His current assignment focuses on running India HR, setting up a global shared services center for Nokia and leading a global project on Asian/ Executive talent development.
Nokia India prides itself on developing leaders internally and it is in this context SHRM India caught up with Rath and asked him to share his thoughts on developing a robust leadership program internally:
Why the need for a good leadership program within the company?
I would firstly not really call it a program, rather a philosophy; since a program seems to indicate a onetime effort and activity. Nokia globally believes that we have a unique set of values and culture and need to groom leaders in line with that. Like any other corporation, we understand the need for leadership development as a key to our sustainable success. We have the concept of the "True Nokia leader" and our efforts in leadership are in line with that philosophy. This is a global framework and basically works like a Nokia wide guide for managers.
Is leadership development in Nokia for all areas of business (finance, mktg, sales, HR) or is it specifically for business?
Leadership development covers all levels of people and all functions. Again, if I may explain, leadership development entails many different efforts in providing inputs/ learning at different levels of management. The way we have looked at it is almost like a ladder. People right at the start of their career need to go through the early rungs to then be able to go through the latter/higher rungs of leadership development efforts.
How do you identify which personnel are to be included for leadership development - What are the parameters on which potential leaders are evaluated?
At the start (say young managers), pretty much everyone goes through initial managerial training and coaching. There are no filters at this stage and no biases of functions, gender and so on. In fact the first few rungs are almost mandatory to go through and include the True Nokia leader understanding, a very strong grooming in values and ways of working of the company and functional skills based on the requirement of the individual and company. As we go higher, the selection happens purely on merit--i.e. performance and potential. However, having said that, we think that every manager and employee in the company is a leader and while some selective high potential employees may be provided separate inputs, it does not take away from inputs to other managers.
What should be the content of a good leadership program? Does any part of the leadership program prepare future leaders to deal with unfamiliar business situations?
We base our programs on managing the self, then teams and then businesses. And different levels of leadership inputs go from first line managers to manager of managers to functional managers and then to business and strategic leadership. Inputs at each level differs but in general, as you go higher, the reflective element increases, as well as a focus on larger issues like environment, society, and the corporation’s interplay with those elements. The shift as you go higher is on people and business management, rather than functional excellence, as well as on more complex issues of interplays between internal (to the company) and external elements, say industry innovation, larger, macro economic and social trends etc. Also, a consistent focus on values is always there, i.e. how do you do things as a leader and what is the impact on others around, the business and the environment? What is, I guess, important to appreciate, that leadership is a journey for an individual and people will grow at different paces through this journey.
What values do you specifically look for within tomorrow's leaders and what are the values that you look to inculcate within them?
This is a complex one. There are of course the four core values which Nokia defines and we do look for them. More importantly, we do look for coherence in the person's own values and the Nokia values, as well as how the values are displayed by the leader. How does he or she role model them, and how do they propagate the values? This is not something you can really 'teach'. The display and playing out of values can be observed, discussed, and perhaps some apparent behaviour corrected to be in line but ultimately the values for any leader are a reflection of their unique self and the attempt should be to understand these (both by the individual as well as the organisation) in the relevant context--in this case, Nokia. The key is also to be able to get leaders to reflect on how they would display the values in times of conflict particularly, what decisions would they make at the crossroads when a value related issue is involved. That is what defines the character of the leader as well as the organisation at large.
Who is the owner of the leadership process within the company - is it HR specifically or is it a combined responsibility of top management?
HR facilitates and designs the leadership process, but the senior leaders are personally involved and take accountability for the development and delivery of these programs.
Are leadership programs driven entirely by Nokia India or do you involve external organisations to conduct the same - if so why?
As mentioned, the framework we use is a global framework, and we use internationally selected vendors as well as local ones. The design is mostly in-house and is very unique to Nokia. We do not however have expertise and/or bandwidth to deliver every element of the design and therefore use external experts as partners. The programs involve many elements - classroom training, action learning projects by cross functional teams, on job projects, external visits and individual/ team coaching. Each element is delivered (by internal or external experts/ facilitators) in a manner that then collectively should make sense and enhance learning and application.
How are the leadership programs at Nokia India responding/evolving to the challenges faced by Nokia in the current business environment?
Our company is going through a transformation journey, moving from devices to a solutions company. In addition, we are trying to bring about a much more consumer centric mindset across employees and managers in the company. You would therefore see that the case studies and examples in our programs would reflect that much more stress on services kind of company experiences. The kind of facilitators and experts we get now to deliver elements of programs are also changing with that focus. We are trying to learn from companies which are very different from the organizations that we were trying to learn from earlier. Having said that, it is an evolution process and we keep refining our design, content and methodology to keep pace with what future challenges our leaders would face.
When it finally comes to transitioning, is the process private or public? Do candidates know what the criteria of selecting tomorrow’s leaders were?
Yes, as mentioned, the True Nokia Leader criteria are public and all leaders are expected to know this. There are of course competencies linked to this at each level and each leader has access to this competency set as well as a facilitated process of being able to discuss gaps and how to bridge those. Each individual leader has a development plan in line with their competence as well as aspirations, and the company tries to be as transparent and facilitative as possible to make this a reality for the individual and the organisation.
Finally, when do you get talent from outside? Have you had situations where you have not found someone inside in spite of your robust leadership development practices?
Yes, we have had times when we have had to hire senior people from outside. These have been due to two or three reasons. Firstly, when the company has been at a growth or transition curve where in spite of all the leaders within, you just require someone completely different in terms of competence and skill sets or with a very different experience levels. This happens more often in our industry which tends to be more dynamic compared to other industries. This leads to a business cycle changing more quickly than even our best leaders' learning curves. Secondly, we have had instances, where purely due to growth (which we have experienced enough), the candidates available have been fewer than the positions, and we have had to go out. And thirdly, even if we have a desired candidate, sometimes the candidate’s own aspirations are different at a given point of time. For example, many of our leaders have chosen to have a career outside of India in a Nokia global setting, which is great for Nokia as one entity. It is, however, not always easy for Nokia India to manage when you are grooming them for a particular position.
Bimal Rath was interview by Akshay Manwani, a freelance sports and HR writer.
