Like A Boss: BSE’s Ashish Chauhan on the best place to prepare for leadership, his management mantra and more

Where is the best place to prepare for leadership: at business school or on the job?

While a business school can groom you and will equip you with essential skills to face the real world, learning on the job will enable you to learn from your own mistakes and build confidence in you to take up new challenges that come your way. Learning from the trenches - trying - failing - trying again - understand the limitations of situations - never give up - is what I call learning from ‘school of hard knocks.’ It is not structured learning. However it helps you grow. The importance of structured and formal learning cannot be denied. However, the learning from life is important too.

Describe your management style.

For me, leadership requires being humble and being a part of the team - ready to take team along, together take chances, keep everyone on the same page. Delegate a lot.

Provide complete clarity on the rules, regulations, authority and responsibility at each level especially on routine matters so that everyone is empowered to take decisions.

Our teams are agile teams. They are able to think through many aspects and adopt to the changing situation fast.

Are tough decisions best taken by one person or collectively?

Decisions are of many types. Routine decisions need to be taken at the field level within the given rules, regulations, processes and producers. For each activity or a decision that needs to be taken more than a few times, we need to make frameworks so that the person implementing is able to do it easily with authority and responsibility.

At each level in the organisation, there are clear frameworks defined to ensure authority is going hand in hand with responsibility. Exception handling gets pushed up the hierarchy and at each level in the hierarchy, we have authority available.

Only exceptional situations come to the management committee which is made up of functional heads of the organization which takes strategic decisions.

In case of crisis, all hands work together and there is not hierarchy.

A single person decision making may work in very specific situations. However, decisions taken in consultation and collaboration with speed and trust in each of the team member get better execution.

Do you want to be liked, feared or respected?

There is much more to leadership - it is humility, energy, sincerity, hard work, resourcefulness, execution, problem solving, trust, honesty, consistency and fairness in the way you deal with things.

Ability to pick long-term signals and trends in the din of tremendous noise and getting the entire team to also accept the vision is an ability I respect.

Ability to evolve yourself and the business keeps the organisation running better in the fast changing world.

Creating a vision, implementing that and at the same time running the current framework takes lot of energy.

Admiration, fear, respect, etc are outcome of many of the traits the leader displays at different times. He/ she may also evoke different feelings in different groups.

What does your support team look like?

At BSE, the Management committee consists of the functional leaders. They are able to take routine decisions on their own. Each of them have more than 25 years experience in their respective fields and have been connected to markets for as many years. They are amongst the best professionals in the business.

Any cross functional activity is proposed by any initiator and discussed amongst every one jointly. The collaboration therefore befomes easy once all of us discuss and agree to a forward path.

A business outside of stock market or a business leader that you draw inspiration from?

I continue to get inspired by many many businesses outside my current business of stock markets. I have worked in many many areas of business and industry that has given me a perspective to appreciate strategies, execution and achievements in many unrelated businesses. I also take inspiration from things happening around us in day to day life.

I do take inspiration from many business, political, social, religious leaders etc. I also take inspiration from my current and past seniors, colleagues, stories we read or see in media etc.

It is a constant unending stream of wonderment at being able to see and appreciate so many leaders and individuals - each of whom are striving under different circumstances to do best for their organisations and themselves.

Which management book has influenced you the most?

I do read a lot in many many subjects including finance, markets, risk management, science, maths, religion, philosophy, management, history, sports, social issues, future, technology of any type, international geo politics and many more areas.

Largely, non fiction.

On management, ‘Execution - The discipline of getting things done’ by Ram Charan and Lawrence Bossidy still continues to be one of the best books I read.

Do you socialise with your team outside of work?

I do socialise with team out slide of work with a clear understanding that I wouldn’t want to be a burden on the personal time of my colleagues. We do have family meetings on important social occasion and we also visit each other informally. Most of us in the leadership have known each other now for over a decade and in the case of some of my colleagues, for over 25- 30 years. An informal bond gets built over time. We also get involved in each other’s personal lives during time of stress for a family as and when needed.

What would your key management advice be?

The modern business and society are changing very rapidly. It is important to have an ability in any business team to analyze all the changes that are taking place and create an agile organisation that is able to identify long term trends, change its directions, work simultaneously in multiple areas and leverage all the possibilities that the evolving technology, demographic, geo political as well as social situations have to offer. In essence, practice of modern management is very tough ride. It will become even tougher. Organisations that can predict future better and align themselves to new evolving realities may have better chances of success.

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