Corporate India’s culture is a bit servile. That acts against spirit of innovation

Kanishka Sinha, managing partner, Stillwater Consulting.

Kanishka Sinha is a managing partner at Stillwater Consulting, which specializes in the areas of leadership development and executive coaching. He was earlier a professor of communication and ethics at the Indian School of Business (ISB).

In an interview, Sinha talks to Moneycontrol about the importance of innovation and original thinking, learning from different global leadership styles, the baggage of humility and lack of corporate opinion in the Indian context. Excerpts:

Indian corporate leaders are now receiving a lot of attention from the West with a whole host of American companies appointing people of Indian-origin as CEOs. But within India, we still follow a very conservative leadership style in most corporate houses. Even many of the start-ups are difficult places to work in, due to the eccentric styles of the founders. So, is it that Indian leaders changes their leadership stripes when they move abroad?

Not just India, but Thailand, Malaysia, and some other countries including China have similar sort of corporate leadership styles. So, I would call this an Asian culture of working than an Indian style.

The Asian culture of working is typically hierarchical and hardworking, with comparatively less freedom or free time. Europe is different in the sense that employees are less likely to get disturbed by the management on weekends, you have the freedom to wind up before 6 pm and do not have to wait till the boss goes home. Europe has employee welfare, a more socialistic approach and respect for free time like in France. The US culture has a mix of both in the sense that there is freedom but people also work very hard and put in long hours in a traditional capitalist style.

Even within India, the leadership approach varies in different industries, depending on the kind of people and their backgrounds. At HUL, BCG or McKinsey, where premier B-school folks go, they have a flat hierarchy, they are happy to call the CEOs by their first name. There is no sir or mister attached. But that kind of a flat hierarchy would change in businesses where profitability can be increased by sales executives or delivery personnel working exhaustingly long hours. In some of the bigger multinational firms, employees are not berated in public in the same way. In fact, in some of those firms there is not enough useful direct feedback because they fear employee demotivation or even attrition. In summary, Indian work culture is similar to Asia and the leadership style depends on the nature of the industry.

Why are leadership styles so decidedly different across continents? Is it so tough for Indian corporate leaders to adopt the best global best practices?

Work in America is more on the creative side. If you take Apple or Facebook or Google, people are constantly working on new, disruptive ideas. They are seen as artists. They will not stay and will not hesitate to go work somewhere else if things don’t suit them. Work not done in those places comes home to India or China. Vast majority of Indian companies are doing work at a cheaper rate than international firms. A lot of the grunt low-level work is done by the Indian companies, who don’t create much new. We tend to take a success story from somewhere else and do it cheaper. Here it’s more about the cost differential. There is so much competition that if someone is not willing to do the work, there are many others who are waiting in line.

Until we produce ground-breaking products that require intellectual work, we may not have requirements for disruptive, creative people. It’s also about where we are stand as an ecosystem.

Our jobs offer little creativity. There seems to be no time to step back, innovate and improve the processes, so that we can offer differentiated services.

The big disparity of income, results in a unique rat race. In Europe, even if you are not employed, you still get your food or have a TV in your house, etc., whereas in India, you see that the migrants end up walking hundreds of kilometres back to their home states when they lose their jobs. It’s the same for countries like Bangladesh. Our jobs offer little creativity. There seems to be no time to step back, innovate and improve the processes, so that we can offer differentiated services. Unless we create that, we will still continue to depend on the price differential model.

What qualities are required for Indian leaders to succeed during this pandemic stage? Corporate leaders seem to understand the value of empathetic leadership now. Or do they?

That’s a good question. I think it’s about generating a bit of fun at work. Right now, everything looks a bit like life and death. Working late night at 3 am, you feel that if you lose this client that would be the end of it. Can we look to have a more cheerful way of working? It’s unlikely that the work will reduce, but at least the pressure can be eased. Bring in some humour into daily operations.

It’s also good to have a ‘vision conversation’ with employees at the beginning of the year. Checking what is it that they want to achieve during the year from a health point of view, family point of view, etc. Can they be allowed to catch up over dinner with their family at least two days of the week, with their phones switched off? Can they leave office early on a Friday afternoon to go to the gym? Employees will appreciate all this in a big way. In our culture I think many of us have internalized a belief that if we don’t get a promotion this year, we are a failure.

As a leadership coach, what leadership practices have most captured your attention as far Indian bosses are concerned?

Indian leaders value coaching and mentoring. They are comfortable sharing their own wisdom and experiences, being the father figure, women leaders often like to find younger women to mentor. Sometimes, some of the bosses even give personal advice. In Europe that would be seen as interference or even disrespectful. Asking personal questions is seen as insensitive. In the US you see fewer people looking for a mentor. You are more likely to decide what’s best for you. So, there’s more independent thinking and very little mollycoddling. Here in India people find it hard to make decisions because you are looking to someone for guidance. This happens more at the middle level. They don’t make enough decisions on their own.

Work-life balance is better in Europe but I can’t see that happening in India in the foreseeable future. In fact, it could get worse. Start-ups, IPOs, ESOPs, new opportunities to create wealth, sudden acceleration in the cash-in culture and the desire to retire early will make people work harder. I don’t see bosses doing anything that’s going to change that.

What we really miss is the culture of innovation. It’s like 'I won’t give you something amazing but I’ll get it to you immediately’. Everyone is so eager to please the client. It’s a slightly servile culture. There is no push back, on clients or bosses.

We do not have so many Nobel Prize winners per capita like Israel. If we could shift the needle on those numbers, that would really be something.

In India you hear about the CEO of a firm or a movie star being talked about like he’s so big yet so humble. There is a desire to allocate this label of humility. No one goes around saying Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos is so humble. What matters is that they are innovative and have a point of view. Here, no public or corporate figures can give political statements, and if they do, then they will lose their credibility, sponsors, etc. There is pressure to conform and that’s true of our organisations as well. I don’t really like it. A famous person may have gold-plated bathtubs at home but would still want to say that he or she is humble. Which corporate leader makes impactful statements against political leadership here?

In America, public and corporate figures are much more comfortable sharing their political and controversial views in public. Our corporate leaders would be fearful of speaking their minds. Somewhere, I feel this might be having an effect on our inventive spirit. Many of our start-ups are implementing business models that originated elsewhere.

Indian-origin CEOs are doing very well in the US. There seems to be something that is clicking for them.

It’s excellent that we have 1.3 billion people and many of them want to be engineers! We are hardworking, driven to succeed, find solutions through jugaad, English-speaking and have the ability to think around corners to survive complexities. It’s like you are used to lifting 100kg here and over there in the US you are asked to lift 20kg. You feel like a superman over there, after being bred here in difficult circumstances. While I was growing up here in India, in a class of 50, I was in the 25^th spot in studies. But the moment I moved to the UK, I became a topper in every subject. That said, we do not have so many Nobel Prize winners per capita like Israel. If we could shift the needle on those numbers, that would really be something.