The Musk-Alexander syndrome
Leaders like Elon Musk defy the normative leadership framework. They have strong critics, but also build institutions. How do we decode their success?
K Ramkumar
Founder and CEO
Leadership Centre
K. Ramkumar is the founder and CEO of Leadership Centre, an institution dedicated to building world-class thought and practice in the domain of leadership consulting, research and development.
He is a retired executive director of ICICI Bank and retired president of ICICI Foundation. He has completed his Post Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management from Madras School of Social Work in 1984. He joined the Board of Directors with effect from February 1, 2009.
Prior to joining ICICI Bank in 2001, Ramkumar served companies such as Hindustan Aeronautics, Brookebond Lipton India Limited (now Hindustan Unilever Limited) and ICI India Ltd. His work in these companies has mainly been in the areas of Human Resources Management and Manufacturing.
While at ICICI Bank, he was passionately devoted to Leadership Development, Succession Management, building a supply chain for the Bank’s human resources requirements, leveraging technology to innovate, and driving operational excellence for world class service quality.
Institute for Finance, Banking & Insurance and ICICI Manipal Academy for Banking & Insurance were conceived and nurtured by him. The partnership Initiatives with SEBI – National Institute for securities management and with NIIT - the NIIT University, were also nurtured by him. He led the CSR project of ICICI Foundation on skilling youth and promoting livelihood. This is done under the ICICI Academy for Skills, which has 21 centers offering 13 skills to 25,000 youth per year.
He writes extensively on a range of topics on his blog www.theotherview.in. He invites you all to be active contributing members of this blog.
My contributions
14 articles written
Lessons in crisis leadership from four stories of survival
These leaders defied life-and-death crises. Their stories offer a beacon for business leaders on how to steer their teams out of this pandemic-induced crisis
Suspending labour laws means paving a road to nowhere
Far from bringing in new business, the wholescale suspension of labour laws by some states poses a real danger of unleashing mistrust among factory workers. For the move is fair neither to workers nor to employers
Going beyond the blame game on attrition
There are a complex set of reasons why people leave organisations. Blaming it on your HR department is the easy way out. The smarter way is to understand the root causes and work as a leadership team to fix it
#metoo: It is time for CEOs to lead the way
Women will believe they will get justice when they see leaders champion a harassment-free workplace. For that, a compliance mechanism alone is not enough. Leaders must initiate open conversations that define the norms for a safe workplace
The unfolding Infosys leadership paradox
We rarely get a live case study to engage with and test a proposition. The unfolding Infosys saga offers us a ready-made case to test my last week’s essay, ‘The leadership paradox’
The leadership paradox
It is impossible to achieve one’s leadership ambition or leverage diverse resources without pooling power. And power pooling cannot be achieved without negotiation—or power trading and trade-offs
Putting psychometrics in perspective
Psychometrics, when used to create awareness and insights about a person’s orientations, is valuable for their development. However, when it is used for assessment it can make selection unreliable
A new lens on leadership
Your leadership calls, and how you interpret opportunities and threats, are influenced by your lenses, which are unique and personal to you
Nurturing high performers: Trial by fire
In this extract from chapter 6 of his book, ‘Leveraging Human Capital’, K Ramkumar talks about how challenge, testing, competitiveness and hard confrontation are important attributes of nurturing champions