Bennett Coleman : Defining Leadership For The Future
What Leadership Means to BCCL
Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL) firmly believes that a leader should be able to “CARE.” CARE being Capacity, Aspiration, Reciprocity, and Engagement.
Capacity relates to the leader’s ability to effectively combine business alignment, emotional resilience, learning agility, and mental capacity in the surrounding work environment. Aspiration is the magnitude to which the leader aims at achieving recognition and influence personally and on behalf of the organisation. Reciprocity is required for collaborating with co-workers to meet mutually beneficial goals and to work seamlessly as a team. Engagement revolves around the organisation’s liabilities towards its employees to nurture their interests, which are normally carried out by the leader.
In addition to the above attributes, BCCL is of the opinion that a leader should reflect the core ideas and organizational values, which will inspire and ignite the entire enterprise.
Threats to Leadership in Media
Technological breakthroughs have given rise to Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) in the media industry. Being India’s largest media conglomerate, BCCL finds itself in the eye of the storm as it witnesses the far-reaching penetration of digital technologies. The transformation of the different limbs of media – Print, TV, Radio – has been so rapid in the current scenario that leadership desperately calls for agility.
New players like Google, Facebook, and Netflix, which make use of state-of-the-art technology, offer stiff competition to traditional media houses. They have the upper hand of establishing a modern business framework that is in line with the digital environment. As a result, they have gradually expanded and fortified their standing in the market. On the other hand, conventional businesses are faced with the challenge of restructuring, unlearning, and relearning everything, that was considered “tried-and-tested.” The reshaping of the existing revenue models from advertiser-funded to subscription-led revenue paradigm is not helping their case either.
The Threat of Choice
Another visible threat in the industry is the availability of choices and options, which demands the adoption of customer-centricity. Hence, enterprises are under enormous pressure to provide personalized, convenient, and value for money products and services. However, able leadership can accept this threat as a challenge and revolutionize it into an opportunity.
In this regard, the biggest asset for BCCL is the multi-generational workforce that can adapt to these sectoral changes. The organization’s ability to engage clients in positive and purposeful interactions, while also helping them by offering scalable customization. BCCL aims at combining business, people, and technology to create new roles and acquire fresh talent to take on key responsibilities.
A Digital Talent Strategy Framework
However, the transition towards the digital environment shall take a significant amount of re-engineering in the existing organizational structure and business model to accommodate the various modifications. The company hopes to start with formulating a digital strategy and following up with the introduction of the digital talent strategy framework. The leader is expected to take command of recruitment and retention of talent. The factoring in of diversity of thought, industry, and gender will also play a crucial role in acquiring new talent. Once the skills and processes are redesigned, key performance indicators will have to be defined to measure the impact of these adaptations. Further, rigid hierarchies will receive a makeover, making room for a networked organization. In a nutshell, BCCL plans on dealing with challenges by introducing agile leadership based on research, data, and innovation to integrate the media industry.
Leadership Across Generations
BCCL believes in nurturing bold and authentic leaders of tomorrow, who can handle the prevailing conditions while also factoring the trends in technological advancements. The company understands that in order to emerge as a leader, an individual or an organization will have to learn, adapt, and leverage technology to stay relevant. At the same time, BCCL also recognizes hiring industry leaders and refining their skills. About 30% of EC members have worked with BCCL for over 15 years, while 30% have been associated with BCCL for less than 3 years. As a result, BCCL maintains an ideal blend of building and buying leaders.
Game of Disruption
In the current situation, technological disruption will make or break the future of any company in the field of media. Acknowledging this trend, BCCL follows the philosophy: “You must be a disruptor before you get disrupted.”
BCCL recognizes that market and industrial changes are inevitable. Thus, leaders are encouraged to shed the responsibility of being a change manager and assume charge of being a change enabler. Further, technology is facilitating the networking of leader dispersion across North, West, and South, which allows every nodal entity to contribute as a team.
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Innovative Customer-Centric Digital Leadership
With effective leadership and management, cutting-edge technologies can be utilized as opportunities to capitalize on market trends. Businesses can recast their agenda and align it with strategies based on intensive research data. Accordingly, business priorities will also be realigned and redistributed.
VUCA will lead the drive for innovations and business value creation. Leaders will have to create value rather than enabling or developing pre-existing values. Servant Leadership will be the new normal, which will inspire accountability in decision-making activities.
BCCL is ready to take the leap to break away from the normal and hopes to inculcate a culture of innovation amongst its leaders and employees. Through this festival of ideas and innovation, the company envisions an environment that is more:
- Agile at handling challenges and allows for bouncing a variety of ideas to generate solutions
- Diverse in terms of offering exposure and learning experiences that allow for breaking the shackles of rigidity
- Comfortable for employees so that the surroundings can kindle creativity arising out of catalyzed freedom
- Nurturing to ideas and solutions, which leaders can identify, capture, develop, and implement to take the company to new horizons
An agile mindset that is capable of innovation and customization defines the leadership of the future.