LEADERSHIP ANALYSIS ASSIGNMENT

My interviewee is a veteran in the field of Pharmaceutical Industry for the last 25 years.
Mr Ramesh Kulkarni, a colleague of my father, has risen through the ranks and
completed a full circle in his domain, from starting out as an associate to eventually
becoming the Business Head of manufacturing and marketing.

For the purpose of this study, I had a discussion with Mr Ramesh on understanding his
leadership style. In addition to that, I also interacted with his close aides, who work with
him, to help me understand their perspective on his effectiveness as a leader.

Summary of my interaction with the Leader:

Mr Ramesh functions by setting up the agreeable targets and meeting them

consistently, through proactively solving the problems. As a leader, he strongly believes
in delegation and empowering the leaders below to take decisions, while ensuring all
applicable processes and procedures are followed. His experience has made him
realize that rewards and recognition can help to achieve excellence and enhance
competence in the team. He also focuses strongly in tabulating governance and
strategic direction checks periodically. In close quarters with his work, he believes
customer centricity and accountability towards results helps build strong team and
sustainable organization. In his words, the USP of his leadership style is that he takes
ownership of development of his team through providing them exposure in the form of
special assignments, coaching and mentoring, and providing opportunities to participate
and present in leadership meetings and also set stretchable goals and achieve them.

In his opinion, this leadership style has emerged from years of observation of the pitfalls
of his other colleagues’ styles. That has helped him nurture his attitude and style over
the years. As an example, he mentioned that while he was the unit head of a
manufacturing unit, 5 years ago, his unit had performed exceeding well in the given
quarter, achieving a never before witnessed growth. However, the efforts were not duly
appreciated which lead to a bump in the morale of the staff of that unit. Hence, having
realized the importance of recognition, he has introduced a series of recognition titles
that is specific to his team. He often hosts an informal awards night, inspired by his
favourite show “The Office”, with the team which is looked forward to by all his
subordinates. He sincerely believes that his leadership style has helped him in the
formation of a very high performing and committed team. The attrition rate has
considerably declined manpower productivity is very high. Excellence has become a
way of life. There is a high motivation and confidence in the team.

However, it hasn’t always been this easy. When he had gotten promoted to his existing
role, it took almost 6 months to establish ground rules and convince the existing
veterans in the team to adopt his approach. Infact, even before he could start actual
implementation of newer methods, there was a sense of discomfort among the team
with respect to rumors on an increase in work load etc. To tackle this, he adopted an
approach to set an example. Everything he wanted the team to embrace, he would
demonstrate by doing it himself. Seeing their leader’s work style, it automatically passed
on the team.

Summary of my interaction with the Associates:

Upon interaction with a few members from Mr Ramesh’s team, the consensus was that
his leadership style has helped each one of them to accomplish in their task. His style of
setting clear targets and making sure that the project goals are aligned as per
everyone's view makes the people feel involved. In addition to that, they have a deep
admiration for the culture that he has set up within the team, which is extremely
transparent and open. The team had a spectacular past year because of soaring
through multiple US FDA audits. And all of them are very proud of the fact that they
were able to work collectively under the guidance of their leader, and at the same time
were given enough responsibility and accountability for their work, as a result of which
the sense of ownership enhanced and led to a victorious performance. One of the
members, Mr Sayyed narrated that a project on which he had once worked alongside
Mr Ramesh was to be presented to the Management Committee of the company. Mr
Sayyed was thrilled to have been treated like an equal and given the opportunity to
present it alongside Mr Ramesh. Infact, this opportunity also contributed in helping him
attain promotion the very same year. Another member, Mr Naren Kumar was deeply
satisfied with the involvement his leader takes in his career development.

However, an underlying issue that wasn’t expressed very openly was that given Mr
Ramesh’s workaholic attitude, he sometimes becomes inflexible about completion of
projects on time which puts a lot of added pressure and has sometimes resulted in the
compromise of the quality of work.

Analysis:

In the course of my hour long interview each with Mr Ramesh and his team, I was able
to get plenty of insights into his style of working, his personality and most importantly his
leadership capabilities. His leadership thesis is based on the motto of pursuing
excellence in everything he does. His ability to motivate his team and instill confidence
in them by actions and not merely words is a valuable lesson. He genuinely strives to
make his associates work with him and not for him, which was illustrated in the example
cited by Mr Sayyed. And this is the quality that I personally seek in a leader. I was also
inspired by the efforts put in by him to recognize the efforts of his team after his own
personal experience. Mr Ramesh truly sets the path to distribute responsibility and
accountability amongst the associates which has generated quantifiable results.

However, there are certain issues that I believe may crop up in this model of leadership,
which must be tackled. Since Mr Ramesh was able to make the work really efficient,
automatically top leadership focus and interactions with such teams will reduce, and
though consistent and excellent results are achieved, they will start being taken for
granted. Secondly, a lot of recognition that was mentioned revolved within intra team,
which was mainly to improve the morale of the team. However, in a closed knit
environment like this, if there is an absence of recognition from top leadership, then it
will gradually start affecting the members. I also feel that the environment created by Mr
Ramesh is made to suit his leadership style, and is not the perfect amalgamation of his
and his associates’ style. In a case like this, the moment there is a change in the
leadership, the associates will suffer because there is no constancy in the culture. Also,
not a lot of associates mentioned about the openness to approach him. The once who
did mention it eventually climbed the success ladder, which could imply that Mr Ramesh
may not necessarily seek out to his subordinates, however, if one is proactive to
approach him, he will be open to understanding them.

To sum up, Mr Ramesh definitely exhibits some of the excellent qualities that a leader
must possess and once can imbibe the same suiting the respective work environment
and personal work style.