User:Professor gautam mohanty/sandbox

Leadership in a dynamic environment

Prof Gautam Mohanty Recipient of Rashtriya Gaurav Award Founder B’School Forum Charitable Trust

In India most people, including corporate leaders believe that they have a direct connection with God. Undoubtedly God will have to be on our side if India has to “do it” and I don’t make light of that. But in addition to god let us recognize that there is no such thing as “India can do it”. What after all is India? India is a bunch of people. It is the people in this room. So when we say organizations or countries must change, we must also remember that organizations and environments do not change. It is people who change organizations, environments and countries. At the end of the day, unless people in this room exercise leadership for themselves and make a determined effort to actually change something, the theme of this purpose will never be realized. We cannot wait for the Government to improve the environment so that change can happen. If you keep postponing and waiting for someone else to do something before the change occurs it is very unlikely that we will ever genuinely realize our ambitions. So what is it about leadership that has been the quest of so many people for centuries? On one hand it is very complicated topic and on another it is plain and simple. People have always thought of it as a pure metal. Maybe there is this one characteristic which will allow us to unlock the mystery of leadership which is known by different names – integrity, vision and charisma. My own view is that leadership is not a pure metal. It is an alloy which is composed of many different elements. I am going to talk of the one crucial element which to my mind is the most integral to leadership and that is ambition. Ambition is an interesting word. Without ambition no conquests are made, no lands discovered and no business created. Indeed, it is the root of all achievement. Yet, we feel ambivalent about ambition. We think of it as dangerous and essential. Because people who have too much of it sometimes misuse it and therefore we disapprove of it. Yet, if someone misuse has too little of it, we dismiss them because they aren’t really great leaders. We sense that ambition is combustible. It is this energy within us which can bring us immortal glory or destroy us forever depending on how we use it. Simply put in some sense ambition is what makes us go. It is the spirit of success, of striving for something worth achieving. Precisely, ambition is at the root of all great leaders. It is the dream to do something more and to make the world a better place. Courtesy: www.bschoolforum.org