Leadership is a way of life in the Army and the same holds good equally for the corporate sector, according to Col. S. Krishnan, General Manager (Administration and Security), Sterlite Industries (India) Pvt Ltd, Tuticorin.
The core value of the Army is exemplified by the willingness to make supreme sacrifice in terms of allegiance to the Constitution and the country and epitomised through honourable deeds and the corporate world, though aims at profit, seeks to exemplify the approach in terms of a set of core values enunciated in their respective mission statements, he said while delivering the inaugural address of the Business Line Club of the Department of Management Studies (DMS), Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, here recently.
Addressing on ‘Defence practices for corporate world' he said attributes such as loyalty, duty, respect, honour, integrity, selflessness and personal courage mark the glory of the Army. He said that he found no reason to believe that these attributes need to be different in the corporate world in achieving success.
The challenge is to achieve the goal with least amount of resources. A leader leads from the front. Assuming responsibility for failure if any and accepting the consequences is a hall mark of leadership, he added.
Lessons
Speaking on the lessons to be learnt from defence practices, he said that to be successful, one needs to be accessible and available at the ground level besides being enthusiastic and ever optimistic.
But at the same time, one should also be capable of taking tough decisions that may not always be pleasing but warranted in the larger interest of the organisation.
The job details should not be neglected and one should be aware of them while executing the tasks.
Further, while taking decisions one may be confronted with a number of doubts over the success and failure and the way forward would be to analyse the information and assess the probability of success, given the strength and weaknesses and act with guts. “Leadership is an art and accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible,” he added.
Dr B. Rajasekaran, Professor and Head, DMS, Mr M. Jegadesh Kumar, Regional Manager (Circulation), The Hindu, Tirunelveli, and Dr S. Madhavan, Assistant Professor, DMS, were present.