Thursday, November 20, 2008

Mr. Kiran Karnik, former Nasscom President and CEO Discovery

It’s was a  pleasure to have Mr Kiran Karnik, a renowned personality in the Indian IT industry at ZCBI. His educational background includes an Honours degree in Physics from Bombay University, followed by post-graduation from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has served as President Nasscom , worked with Indian central and state governments , served as managing director at Discovery networks in India from 1995-2001 . He worked for over 20yrs in Indian space research organization (ISRO), served  Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC), worked with the United Nations in New York and Vienna,  done a  consulting assignment for UNESCO in Afghanistan, and has also been a consultant for WHO, The World Bank, UN Institute for Disarmament Research and Ford Foundation.  

I was awed at the speech and  personality of Mr. Kiran Karnik, a very charismatic, energetic person stealing the attention of the audiences .  He took us through a recap on the subprime crisis  and gave us a valuable insight as to what managers and leaders should do in this constantly changing and uncertain environment. His speech included two important concepts which are imprinted in my mind. First, is the Chaos theory in which he describes how an initial small change may have a huge impact at the end. Second is a very psychological effect called the ripple effect, which is clearly evident in today’s financial turmoil. He talked about how different disciplines impinge on each other and the importance of the need to be interconnected cross disciplinary rather than being cocooned in one discipline. The way Mr. Karnik spoke about the distinct areas of difference between Managers and Leaders is incredible. He says managers typically look at the resources and optimization of those resources. Leadership on the other hand looks at how differently these resources can be used, how to change the constraints and get more of these resources. Leaders distinctively change the rules of the game and the business model itself. Leaders are visionaries and innovators. They do not compete with anybody and don’t outrun but they sure outsmart others in the game.

We all imbibed a lot from this experience. We all were flabbergasted and amazingly hooked on to his eloquence and his phenomenal knowledge. Overall, Mr. Karnik’s speech was an unparalleled delight.