TEDxKanke, has been organizing a Webinar Series titled ‘The Rise of a New World’ which started on May 2. The speaker of the event on June 6 was GK Pillai, Director and Advisor, Walchandnagar Industries Limited while the talk was titled Leadership challenges and behavior in the midst of disruptive scenarios. The session was moderated by TEDx Kanke Curator Rajeev Gupta.
The series is slated to have speakers from the fields of technology, innovation, leadership, creativity and art and culture of national and international acclaim. The sessions are being streamed live on the facebook page fb.me/tedxkanke20.
Pillai said that leaders have to be ready to break barriers and without a goal it is very difficult to push and motivate people towards a larger objective, “Covid is affecting all of the aspects of human life like relations, finances, economy and travel. I will not talk about the disruption due to Covid because we have reached a saturation point with the information on it. Regardless of the disturbances, there are two ideas that are essential for a leader to succeed – bend the rules and have one goal in sight. When leaders accept challenges at the top, it passes down to other members who are motivated to step up. Leaders have to be ready to break barriers.”
“In uncertain times, it is essential for a leader to have one goal. In our case, the goal was to lower number of deaths. The next most important thing is economic revival. We saw a different goal in USA where the President focused on economy over the number of deaths. In a situation like this, political thinking should be let gone as this is time for national thinking. Stability on economy is important and there is need for a uniform agreement amongst all the stakeholders in the country. We will now have to plan with a proper timeframe for coming out of this crisis, but showing unity is vital even when the average lifestyle has changed,” he added.
“Changing the mindset of a company is also essential. When I started at HEC it did not have a lot of money so having a different thought process was vital. This thought process is required to achieve the goal- making the company profitable in my case. We invited the wives of our employees and persuaded them to push their spouses to work harder and enhance the work culture at the company which led to things as simple as boosting attendance,” said the speaker.
“Technology is the only driver that can take us out of this grave scenario. We have seen how technology enabled people to work and operate virtually. Industry 4.0 will take a push and automation will become more important across organizations. In hindsight, we can see the country becoming stronger with regards to automation and technology. Before Covid, larger states like Maharashtra and Karnataka welcomed migrant labourers which boosted their economy. This pandemic has changed this dynamic and there is an opportunity for home states to provide crucial job opportunities to labourers. If jobs and skills are made available in home states like Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha, local regions will become more self-sufficient and also keep the people home. Agriculture and agricultural products will improve in the states as we have experienced during the crisis,” said Pillai.
The organizing team for the series includes Kanishka Poddar, Kanika Malhotra, Kailash Manjhi, Pravin Rajgadhia, Bijendra Sharma, Rashmi Saha, Priti Gupta and Santosh Sharma.