We learned that for a leader to build a committed team, he has to
- Have a clear, elevating goal
- Emphasize common interest and values
- Encourage and facilitate social interaction
- Keep people informed about group activities and achievements
- Increase incentives for mutual cooperation
- Have a results driven structure
- Maintain standards of excellence
- Provide external support and recognition
- Preach & practice Principled leadership
- Creating High-Achieving Learning & Innovative Environments
The environment of most organizations is becoming increasingly dynamic and competitive. Competition is becoming more intense, customer expectations are rising, there is less time available to develop and market new products and services, and they become obsolete sooner. To succeed in this turbulent environment, organizations need to have leaders at every level who are oriented toward learning and continuous improvement. We learned that these leaders should be able to act as agents for learning & change
We learned that leaders do a number of things to create conditions favourable to learning and innovation.
- Create an appreciation for flexibility and learning.
- Encourage system thinking
- Use learning’s from past failures
- Encourage and facilitate learning by individuals and teams
- Encourage experimentation
- Facilitate diffusion of learning in the organization
- Reward learning and innovation
-
Leading and Managing Change
We learned that leading change is one of the most important and difficult leadership challenges. In the new economy, the leader should be capable enough to manage change.
We learned that to implement change, the leader should:
- Take his subordinates into confidence
- Inform them about the implications of the change in the context of business
- Address their fears about the change
- Gain confidence that he is acting in their best interest
As a concluding remark, we can say the leader is the provider of Knowledge, Ethics & Sustainability to his team, as the meaning of the following.
Asato ma Satgamaya
Tamaso ma Jyotirgamaya
Mrutyor ma Amrutam Gamaya
References
- Contemporary Issues in Leadership. Boulder, CO. Westview Press, pp. 42-60
- Organizational Behavior, Fred Luthans.
- May-June 1990, What Business Leaders Really Do. Harvard Business Review, pp. 103-111.
-
JARVIS, C,
- Leadership in Organisations, Gary Yukl
- Built to Last, Collins & Porraz
Annexure
About the company:
Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) is the world leader in the design, manufacturing, and marketing of high-performance analog, mixed-signal, and digital signal processing (DSP) integrated circuits (ICs) used in signal-processing applications.
The company has its headquarters near Boston, Massachusetts (USA). Its manufacturing facilities are located in Massachusetts, California, North Carolina, Ireland, the Philippines, and Taiwan. The company employs approximately 8,200 people worldwide, with annual revenue of more than US $2 billion.
Analog Devices started its India Product Development Center (IPDC) in Bangalore in 1995. Its focus is on digital signal processing (DSP), both DSP IC Design and DSP software development. Analog Devices was recently named the fastest growing DSP supplier in the world. DSP products developed at IPDC constitute a significant portion of Analog Devices' DSP revenue and profits. IPDC is involved in some of the most challenging technologies today, such as high-speed DSP design, SOC, VOIP and RTOS.
Details of the interviewees:
- Top Management:
Name : Karthik.S
Educational qualification : Ph.D. and M.S. from University of Texas, Austin.
~14 years industry experience
Designation : Managing Director, Analog Devices (India)
Reports to : Gerry McGuire, GM, Analog Devices Inc, USA
Former assignments:
(a) CAD development manager, Intel USA.
(b) Senior Engineering Manager, National Semiconductors, Bangalore.
- Middle Management
Name : Sudershan V.
Educational Qualifications : M.E. from IISc, Bangalore
~14 years industry experience
Designation : Design Manager, DSP products developments
Reports to : Dr. S. Karthik
Former assignments:
(a) Project Leader, Texas Instruments (India), Bangalore.
(b) Design Manager, Analog Devices Inc, USA
- Junior Management
Name : Saj Kapoor
Educational qualification : M.Tech. (IIT-Delhi)
~11.5 years industry experience
Designation : Project Manager in DSP products development
Reports to : Sudershan V
Former assignments:
(a) Design engineer, Texas Instruments (India)
Interview Transcript of Mr. Karthik S. (MD, Analog Devices)
Q. Tell us something about your background, education and experience?
I completed my graduation (Bachelors In Electronics in 1984 from IISC), then I went to US for PHD, worked for 3 and half years at Intel, then I completed my PHD in 1995. I then came back to India & joined National Semiconductors, where I was one of the first employees where I helped in setting up the organization. I joined ADI as design manager in 1999 & I was designated as MD around 6 months ago (Start of 2003).
Q. How did education help you, the US education & Indian education?
Education in the first place gives you confidence & this is the most important thing. Its not the information content, it’s the process that makes the difference. In institutions you build up your confidence. One can know everything, but without self-confidence, you can’t do anything. Education from school, college, gave me confidence. During my PHD I took up a problem & found a unique solution, which gave me confidence about myself. I did my PHD in VLSI simulation – test. Education also gives you the analytical skills, I did it in a very small area but I feel PHD is about problem solving. You take management or any course, you study lot of things, when you go as a practitioner into the field, the 2 years of work is not going to apply there, but the analytical skills that you gain in the 2 years is what you use. All of education helps in acquiring 3 things:
- Self-confidence
- Ability to collect information
- Analytical skills
Even if you are thrown into a new area, with a good educational background, you will be able to collect the relevant info, filter out the info, abstract it out, on top of that, there is the analytical skills. This is what education helps you build.
Q. What is the job profile of an MD? What skills do you require as a Manager?
My chief job is to run this organization, which is of about 100 people, both day to day as well as providing a vision for the organization.
So we are essentially a product development center for our parent company, which is in the US, 1.7 billion USD, it is my charter to increase our scope of activities, we not just believe in numbers and quantity, but in quality. We want to do complete product development from India. It’s a highly technical job, state of the art industry; even there we want to add quality, not quantity. There are different levels of jobs that you can do, we want to add value to our parent company. We don’t want to be a chip design factory where 10000 people are working & doing a low-end job. We want to provide the highest value to our company.
Q. Compared to the US what is the quality of the people here?
It’s as good as or even better.
Q. Are you trying to develop any new & innovative product without ant guidance from the US?
Yes, the point is that we are developing products. We have 3 different product families in the DSP group. The mantra for us is innovation. Of the 3 product families worldwide, we are responsible for one, which is known as SHARK. We are supposed to provide the innovation component for the product, you cant always expect guidance from the US, when we started we got some guidance, but now we are self sufficient for doing design & self sufficient for doing innovation. We interact with the US groups, bounce off ideas,
consult, we don’t know the market as well as them, but in technology, we consider ourselves experts. Markets & technology have to come together, you have a great product, and product is nothing but to understand the market, understand technology & synthesize it. That synthesis will happen through interaction, I am not saying that we will do everything, but as far as technology is concerned, we are self-sufficient.
Q. Do you have any competing companies from India?
We are selling to the global market, globally TI is one of our competitors, & they also have Indian operations & to a certain extent you can say Motorola is also our competitor.
Q. Have you had any formal management education?
I had some orientation from IIMB faculty, Tirunarayana, marketing – it was a half day program - you get the basic knowledge. But nothing that I can call formal.
Q. So you learnt on your own?
Yes, you get to learn while on the job.
Q. It must be lonely at the top. How do you manage your relationships with your subordinates?
I think this is a very relevant question, I have been relating to it for the past few years, if you are in a company & you are a senior manager, you wont have many peers. When I was a design manager, there was one more design manager. When I became MD there was no other MD, but how do you deal with this, I have been facing this fro the past 3-4 years, for me also it’s a new problem, the way I dealt with it is, relate to everyone, don’t always think of yourself as a senior manager, & be in a shell, think of yourself as an employee, just like everyone else, & in my personal opinion, you are no different, an MD
is just another job, simple, another role, I have been a manager, I was a design manager, & now I am an MD, there is no big difference, in terms of who you are and how you relate to others, so the way I deal with it , is to relate to everyone & be able to reach a point where anybody can approach you & talk to you & you can approach anyone & talk to him, both ways is important.
Because if you put yourself in a shell, you will have a hesitation to talk to anyone, so basically avoid that shell, I have seen a lot of managers do that, its not unique or anything, so the way you get out of this is, remove your feeling of I am in a big position kind of thing. You are doing a job, just like an entry-level engineer who joined the company does his job, all are equals, & you relate to them.
Q. So your role in this company is as good as any other employee?
Exactly, I’ll give you an example, all are given cups, & I wash my own cup as everyone else does, I am not saying it’s a great thing, its how it should be, & this is what you learn from Americans, they don’t have a fixed car park for their CEO, for example, in our company the CEO does not have a specified car park, he parks wherever he gets space,
Some of these things you learn from American companies, they have done it very well.
These are some of the good things & hopefully these will spread. In some companies they don’t even have closed offices, they just have cubicles, even for their CEO’s, for example Intel. It gives a kind of feeling that everybody id equal, except for the role that you play,
Q. So you had to deal with this consciously?
Yes, but once you set the pattern, it’s easy. Then there is no issue, you don’t feel lonely at all, you have so many people, For me, I was this way, when I came into this company, I came in as a design manager, I didn’t have any other equivalent as there was no other department manager as there was only one department, I did feel it & it was a new company for me, I didn’t know anybody, so for me it was a double thing, but how I dealt
with it was talk to everybody, now I feel I know everyone, & this is not an issue at all to me.
Q. What kind of changes did you have to make in your leadership style, when you shifted from US to India? Did your team in the US have only Americans or there were other nationalities also?
It was a mixed team, Indians, Americans, etc.One thing that I felt that in India you have too much of HR issues, which I never had to deal with in the US, was it because it was a big company, everything was set, or was it because, there, people are motivated because in their system a job is important to them, there people were always on a certain level of employee motivation, everybody would do their job, just to increase there levels of performance you have to do something, I’ll give you an example, if you take motivation in a scale of 1 –100 , there it was always above 80 % , the 80 – 100 was variable , you have to play with it, they are already operating at 80, if you have to make it 100, you do something, you have to talk to him, perk him up & all that.
In India the difference is a lot, so as a manager there is a lot to deal with. One reason is financial, in us when you start to work you are already in debt, you bought a house, so you need a monthly salary, so nobody can afford to lose their job, the security is also not there, you could be fired the next day, at the whim of the manager or anybody else, you could be fired if you are not performing, so because of job insecurity, 80 % motivation is always there, its only whether he is putting that 20 % extra is the main thing, here, first of all we have not heard of many performance layoffs and all that. Reasons maybe that the process is difficult. On top it, somebody’s need for money, is I feel, my personal opinion, I feel In India people can say, to hell with you, I don’t want to work here, I’ll take up another job or be idle for some time, take a job which will pay lower. They can do all that financially they are not so burdened. This is always what I have felt; I have been dealing with these issues for the last 8 years now. And attrition & motivation is one of my biggest issues. So somehow I felt that the problem with attrition is directly relates to motivation
& things like that. Here I have had to deal with attrition & motivation and HR, all these I club under HR, we have a HR dept, but at the end of the day, HR is done by the line managers. Dealing with employees day in and day out, so every manager is a HR manager. The HR we have is more of giving a process & more like that, they come in only when we need them. They are more of a HR partner, HR is a little bit decentralized, right form hiring onwards, all the way through,
So coming back I would say, the aspect there was more like this is the job, work was everything. Never had to worry about motivating my team. Because that was not a big issue. Whereas here I felt attrition, motivation, these are big issues, also another thing is that here people are very concerned about what they do, engineers particularly. Job content is very important, job satisfaction is very important. These are the biggest things for them particularly the young engineers, whereas when the same engineers move there, they no longer are worried about it so much, they do a good job, am not saying that they don’t do a good job. But once they get the money, they are more worried about what I’ll do in the weekend, what will I buy, where will I go. Sometimes that’s good. So you have something else, the other theory is that, because we don’t have anything else to do we keep discussing only about the job. With our friends, he says I did this, he says oh I didn’t do this, he comes back on Monday, he is worried, whereas there, people talk about other things, they buy this gadget, or they went to this vacation to some great place, they drove n went, when you meet somebody, its all about what vacation you had, with all this what happens is that at work you are not always thinking about work. Work content is important, but how do you get satisfied, I can say my work is very interesting, but it is all relative, its like salary, your salary, can you get satisfied in an absolute fashion, the very next day somebody tells you his salary, even if its 10 Rs more you feel bad, it’s a very relative thing, so one can say, we need to provide best job content, there is always somebody who can say, hey my job content is better than yours, n this person feels oh that how come he is given a very good job, it could be a phase, it could be a phase of a job. Every job in my opinion has a mundane aspect to it, has a creative aspect of it. It depends on how you figure it out. Some people, given the same job, try to go into the
creative aspect & play with it. Some people just look at the mundane aspect & do only that. That’s number 1. Number 2 is timing, there Is a phase in which you do all the creative design part, then once you have designed, its like writing a software, once you have done the design it just writing the code, that phase is the execution routine thing. So you have these 2 components. & Maybe when you are discussing with your friend, you are into this mundane aspect & he is into the creative aspect.
Whatever it is, all said & done, satisfaction is a very relative thing. There is no absolute in it. Whatever may be the reason, this is one of the big differences that I saw & I had to focus more on this side of it.
Q. What types of consistent specific references for leader behaviors are present across cultures?
When you say leader, I feel the difference between a leader & a manager, what is the difference, manager is worried about the how, leader is worried about where. If you want to go from one place to another place, the leader is worried about where to go, he is not at that point worried how to go, that’s where the visionary part of it comes into picture. For example if you were doing work, the leader would be worried about what to do, not how to do it.
The manager is more worried about how to do. It may be the same person. Management is one aspect. If you have a job, it will have leadership content & management content. As a manager you are concerned about how to do it, what are the best practices for doing it. Its more process oriented, one is looking at doing it right, that’s the management part, and doing the right thing is the leadership part.
In my opinion, the consistent thing is having a vision, a leader whether in US or in India, whether anywhere. I think having that vision aspect, where do you want to go, where do you want to go 5 years from now, where do you want your group to go, where do you want your organization to go, I think having that vision, I can relate it to my job at Intel
where I was a leader of a group, so I had a vision of how we would test at Intel. I was leading a group of testing their processors. & We were doing new things, we were challenged by this statement, lets change the way we do test, lets change the way we do things. So my point is we had a vision of how it should be done & we were going towards that, without that vision I couldn’t have been a great leader. So I think one common aspect is having a vision & taking the people along with you, that’s another thing with leadership & these two are consistent across all cultures. You have to have a vision of where you want to go.
& Somehow you have to make sure that you take the team in the same path. They are also convinced, they are also motivated about it & they work towards the same goal.
Q. In a rapidly changing technological scene, how do you reposition yourself & your company quickly?
Whenever we do something, we always evaluate it with the market, like we started a product few years back again this is not only my contribution here, I worked with the us marketing team. We started off with a product definition the marketing folks & the design team here, suddenly we found out that there is a competing product with a different kind of part, then we checked with the market, the requirements were very different from what we started off. So we had to adapt, we had to change. We could not continue like that. so we have this process within the company where we evaluate the market scenario at every stage in a product. I am saying this only in the product development perspective; maybe you are going beyond that. But sometimes its not just the technology, it could just be that the market might change. There could be some dynamics in the market, which could change it towards something else. The root cause might be that some other new technology came. But what we do is suppose we have a product development period of 2 years, at every stage of the process we check the market conditions, we have different phases, we call it the phased product development. At every phase we evaluate & say, are we in the right track? In that project what happened is that probably at 1/4th the phase, we figured out that we are not in the right direction. So we just retargeted the same product, the product was the same, the technology was the same. But we had to repackage it for a different customer requirement, for a different suite. To be more competitive in terms of the market, we have to give the base features & the features that the customer wanted. There were assumptions we took 6 months back that went wrong or kind of changed, so we had to retarget the whole product development. I am telling this from a product development perspective.
Q. At that time your team must be going through a bad phase.
Yes, how we deal with it is, at the end of the day, the whole team understands that we are here because of our customers. Business is the underlying factor. If all of us understand that we are here to satisfy the needs of our customers in term of this product space, that’s why this business exists & our job exists because of this. I am a big believer in this, this is the fundamental equation. We are not here to solve some big creativity problems or whatever. We are here for a business need & when that changes, we need to adapt to it, at the end of the day, that product sales gets transformed into out monthly sales. That’s the bottom line.
How we do it is, we keep communicating with our team members, they are in sync with that. We do complete product development, so it’s easy for the team to identify with the product. They know exactly what is the revenue for this product, what’s the gross margin, etc. they know the big customers, the characteristics of the market, so we are always in sync. Some of our people were doing jobs, which were no longer needed, it was little bit difficult. We had to reassign the jobs, its like they know their position in the companies’ business & they know that if they do well, he company does well.
Q. Do you make any conscious efforts to make them aware?
Oh sure, we associate ourselves with a product. We keep communicating with the team about the products, where they fit, where exactly it goes & all. There is this interesting story: there are two people who are tightening screws, somebody came & asked them what are you doing, one of them says I am tightening the screw, the other said I am building an airplane. Two different perspectives right, that’s what we want our team members to do, instead of saying I am writing this code, we want them to feel they are building something, we don’t want them to have a narrow vision, we want hem to have a broad vision. & when you get that overall perspective, then it is much easier when business changes happen.
Q. How do you deal with situations where you have to retrench staff, even though they might be competent?
I didn’t have this opportunity & hope not to have it, but how they handle it in the US is, there is a basic understanding that it is nothing personal against anyone, it’s a business need, that’s the basic way how it works in the US. & also there is nothing bad that you got laid off, you could be laid of for a business reason, you may be the greatest chip designer, but the company no longer manufactures those chips. They have moved on.
It is one of the biggest cultural differences that I have seen, in India we take everything personally, there things are not taken personally, its business, its not that the manager is your enemy & he is entrenching you. He has a job to do; he knows that it is unpleasant. It’s a business need & he has to do it. So you have to accept it & go.
Q. Competent employees is one thing but if in a team you have someone whom is not performing well, how do you handle it?
Again here we have not had such a situation, but when you have to deal with it, the way we do it is first give them a chance, there is an annual performance review, & if we think that the person is not doing well we can do it more frequently, if you feel a person is going in the wrong path, its better that you correct him soon rather than wait for the annual process. The person may be competent but he might have understood the goals properly. It might just be a communication problem, so it’s always to correct the problem as early as possible. & you need to give the person a chance to correct themselves. Sometimes there might be a real performance issue; in that case a skill may have to be acquired, so we give them the chance to acquire it. So what we do is give the employee every chance. & only if nothing works, we resort to the last stage.
And again the way you deal with it is that it is a business, everybody has to contribute, & if you are not contributing, it is unfair to the others who are contributing.
Q. What basis do you use while delegating responsibilities? Do you consider your subordinates’ visions while doing so? How do you align the goals of your subordinates in line with the company’s vision?
I will give you a statement that our chairman made & that serves as a guideline for us, he said “at Analog Devices, we view business as a human process, the ultimate goal of which is to satisfy the needs & aspirations of the people associated with the firm”.
People have aspirations & then there are the business goals & you have to try to balance it. I am not saying that you drop the business goals for those aspirations, but it is not right to drop the aspirations & my belief & it is something I have practiced is that if you are creative, you will be able to find a match. For example, I have done this also, people come to me & say I want to do this kind of work, I say just hold on, & we have found the right opportunity, brought him. This balancing is not easy, we had to do some adjustments, transferring his work & all. But as a manager you have to do this balancing consciously, the best way to motivate your team members is that you meet their aspirations, & when that is met, there is no HR problem, there is no motivation problem, the person is self motivated.
Q. How do you motivate & nurture your subordinates to take up bigger responsibilities? Most of the staff is technical suppose a subordinate, like an entry-level engineer, he has to take up the next role, a project leader. Do you ask their opinion of whether they want to do it of whether they want to continue with their technical work?
The way we do it is, I feel we don’t have dearth of individual contributors. We are a highly technical company, we need people with lot of depth. We also need people who can supervise technically & mentor & guide some engineers, so we need both. So there is no problem in one person coming to me & saying that I don’t want to manage or lead a team.
Somebody may say, I want to focus more on technology, I don’t want to take a technical lead position, so we don’t have a problem with that, we don’t want to force coz typically if you see the tech lead positions are small, so if a few of them want to be an individual contributor, specialize in this area, that’s good for us because in the product development business, again as I said, you don’t need large teams, but you need small teams focused who have the depth.
So we need specialists who have done things before, so we encourage. Typically in the Indian framework people want to be technical, so we don’t have this prob. We do find people who want to lead, the majority is this, but there are people , few of them who want to focus & we encourage that. Our problem is the other way , to motivate some of them to lead.
There is also a society issue, society thinks that leading 10 people is prestigious. There is problem that due to societal pressure, people who are not capable want to lead. That is a problem. & when you find it out its difficult, when we find out, we try to equip them, we give them access to management courses, and at some point of time if they are not able to do that, there are some people who might be better off technically than managerially. So we bring them back. Nothing is irreversible in a private company, so that is good. May be costly little bit, but you have to look at the overall good.
Q. What is your personal vision? How do you handle conflicts between your personal vision & the company’s vision?
My personal goal is, I believe in talent in India, technical & managerial. My goal is to have an operation where we develop products for the global market & when I say develop, I include marketing also. Total, run the whole business from India. You can say Infosys has done that, but I am not talking about services industry at all. I am looking at products. We have very few companies, my goal is to have a product company from India, which looks at the global market, & when I say global I include India. So looking at the global market, trying to understand the market conditions, & trying to develop products. I believe we have the technological base & also the managerial & marketing capabilities. For whatever reason we have not done that, it probably needs lots of guts. Money yes, but I think the big companies, Wipro, Infosys & all have the money. It just needs the drive & guts, it’s a big gamble.
So that’s my dream. A company headquartered in India, developing products for the global market.
ADI for me partially fulfills that, in the technical front, we have it, AD’s goal is also to have more complete product development in India. In few years we will have business groups here.
You talked about the conflict, I look at it this way, instead of a conflict , I look at it as what all is overlapping there, I try to get much. Could be some conflict, headquartered in India is not there, I am still headquartered in the us, but my point is that I look at the overlap and see that everything is a stage for you, at this stage this is my long term goal, I need to be there. There are lots of things I can learn at this stage, product development, lots of marketing issues, these companies are very good in innovation, analog devices is not a manufacturing giant, we in fact outsource some of our manufacturing. Our strength is in product innovation & there is a lot of thing for me to learn from here. These days manufacturing is outsourced, to cheaper manufacturing places, like Taiwan & China, I feel the key component is innovation & understanding the process of innovation, understanding how they are doing it, people can have innovative ideas, but taking an innovative idea, taking it into the market, & making money, when I say innovation, everybody can be innovative, I can file 3 patents. The trick is using the innovation, make a product, & make money out of it. I think there is tremendous learning for me out of this place. I look at it as, how much of it can I overlap there, how much of it I can learn & go on.
Q. Do you have any issues with the ownership of the company? Analog devices is a US company at the end.
Instead of looking into all that, I look at it this way, a company gives you a job, gives you an opportunity to learn, for me I have an opportunity to learn. For me I have an opportunity to learn, people are like this, you are working for a foreign company & all. Now reverse the situation & think of it, here is a foreign company, I am not talking about only Analog devices, I am talking about all these multinationals, they are pumping money into India, at the end of the day, what are they generating, qualified Indian engineers, lot of these engineers came fresh from college & five years down the line they are qualified IC designers. So we always look at multinationals who suck the blood & send it across, but look at It this way, thanks to them, ok it’s a win-win situation, nobody is doing anything for charity, there are not pumping in money for charity, they are not interested in the social good & all that, but we always have to look at it as a win-win situation, so thanks to them I feel our technology base have improved & maybe in the future 5 years from now, or even today, there are lot of entrepreneurs, who have gone out of these multinational companies & set up their new companies . 5 years from now, 10 years from now, this number can only increase. So you can still say, these people spawned technology in India, which led to a lot of Indian companies & Indian entrepreneurship. So I look at it that way. Again nobody would do anything for charity, we are not doing anything for charity. We are getting something out of it, we are paid & thanks to our creativity, technical abilities, these multinational companies are also gaining, so it’s like , they are winning from us , we are winning from them, so it’s a win- win relationship.
Look at stock options; here all employees have stocks, so who is the owner, who is the employee. So we are the owners, so it’s my stock, if I work, my net worth goes up. So companies understand that options are one of the best ways to hold people. You want the company to be successful. So my personal goal is to have an Indian product development company.
Interview Transcript of Mr. Sudarshan V. (Design Manager, Analog Devices)
Q. Tell us something about your background, education and experience?
I am an electronics engineer, and started as a software developer. Wanted to work in a design department. Once I applied to Texas instruments. Then there was no vacancy. But when they needed one, they informed me and I was selected. Initially training was in US for an year. In India there was no facilities at that time. In 1994 Analog Devices was in search of an MD. I figured it that, if they are making an office in India they will need design engineers. So I applied. Thus I was one of the initial employees of Analog in India. One year they trained me in US. Then we set up this Product development centre in India. This is not a design department. From scratch we start and we develop complete product.
Q. What is the job profile of a Design Manager?
Basically to give a direction to my department which is a design department. Fundamentally you should have technical expertise. But people management skills and communications skills also matter. You should be able to guide and coach the juniors. The product managers who report to me are basically responsible for the design job. They are capable enough to lead the teams. I generally help them to develop the juniors who are new to the industry and particularly design. Also coordinating with the counterparts in IUS is also my responsibility. Strictly speaking lesser the technical content.
Q. What skills do you require as a Design Manager? How far do you use your technical/managerial abilities?
You should be able to relate to everything your department does. You do not have to solve each problem. But understanding is essential. Most of the jobs are managerial in nature, as a department head. The only sad thing is that I am not able to concentrate on design jobs, which I really enjoy.
Q. What criteria do you use for team selection and work assignment? Do you prefer teamwork to individual brilliance?
It depends. Depends is the answer for 50% questions in US. But here I really mean it. Every Project has its complexities. Some Jobs need certain specific skills. Even if teamwork is of utmost importance, sometimes we have to compromise for some specific skills. Our projects generally take about 9-18 months. So we have to make some compromises. Top priority is for organizational objectives.
Q. How do you recognize and nurture talent in your division?
We are basically a design organization. There are two kinds of employees. Some are too much inclined to pure technical kind of things. Some into general stuff. We got a good blend of both. So it is easy to balance. Once an employee shows his basic inclination we try to develop by giving proper training so that he may be able to nurture his talent.
Q. How do you check attrition? Do you approach high performing individuals working for your competitors to work for you? If yes, then how do you go about it?
Our founder wanted to make an employee less organization when he started ADI. So he started with stock options. He may be one of the first to start this 70s. However may be because of that we are not facing the attrition problem at all. Our company is sitting on a huge cash reserve. The stability of the company is also very good. We think any techie will be inclined to take a job with us given a chance.
Q. What is your role in compensation and reward allocation vis-à-vis HRD? How do you allocate discretionary rewards? What is the impact of such rewards on the team members and how do you manage the discrepancies in compensation?
Generally here in ADI the rewards vary with your performance. You know basically we are a cost center. So according to our parent company’s profits we get a share and we distribute to our employees keeping performance in mind. The differential is generally 5-15%. Also if there is any gap in expected and perceived performance, we try to help that employee by communicating at proper time. Equity is the fundamental principle. For same performance, we want to have same returns, otherwise attrition across the groups will be the result.
Q. If you find your boss/peer/subordinate being involved in some unethical practice (e.g. treason regarding designs), how will you react to the situation?
In our organization, we just cannot think someone doing that and escape easily. We stand for something we believe. Anybody do that kind of thing will receive nothing but marching orders.
Q. What are the kinds of projects that your company is taking and what is your role in the choice of work? What kind of projects/work would you like the company to take up?
We develop products from scratch. A total product development department, any techie can dream of. So we generally get interesting projects. Anyway creation is an interesting and non-monotonous job. We enjoy our work and that is our basic reason for success.
Q. How do you react to upcoming technologies, which can affect your business?
We generally are aware of the market trends and we are trendsetters. Try to innovate and develop as best as possible so that we are much ahead of the competition.
Q. What is your personal vision? Do you consider your subordinates’ visions while assigning them responsibilities?
My vision is to do this same job sitting in a developed India where exchange rates are in our favor. Also I dream of developing, producing & marketing a product for a company
which is an Indian one.
Interview Transcript of Mr. Saj Kapoor (Project Manager, Analog Devices)
Q. Tell us something about your background, education and experience?
I have done my B.E. from Kerala University and my M.Tech from IIT Delhi. Then I worked in Texas Instruments for 3 years before shifting to Analog Devices. Since then, I have been here for the last 8 years.
Q. What is the job profile of a Project Manager?
My main work is in the design side of product development. We manufacture and market chips for Signal Processing applications. I am responsible for one product design. I have to hold teleconferencing with other functions of the organization especially the marketing team, which is based in US. The organization follows the functional based organization model where each function has an equal say in the decision-making.
Q. What skills do you require as a Project Manager? How far do you use your technical/managerial abilities?
I am mainly concerned with the technical angle of the problem. So a project manager should be very experienced technically and forward looking. He must be able to find weak spots on the development side. He should know what the critical thing is. He is concerned with the efficiency of the project and so should be clear about what can go wrong with the project. He must be always cautious. Sometimes I have to show issues as bigger than they really are as the engineers may think that we can take it later and neglect it. A project manager must be able to anticipate the problem and prioritize accordingly. He should sensitize all the issues. Another main work is staffing the people on the right work. Different people are good at different things and they have different aspirations. So it always better if a guy is given a work he prefers. So I have to look into that also.
Q. What criteria do you use for team selection and work assignment? Do you prefer teamwork to individual brilliance?
We have a big engineering resource. We have a say in the selection of the team but it is not that I get to select each and every person. I choose a few people and the rest are allocated by the senior management. There is a negotiation procedure and we can ask for some special persons to be there in our project. But it is not always possible to get every person you want. In the case of new hires we have a choice. Every guy has a supervisor. He looks after his personal goals and ambitions. The project manager has to negotiate with him about that person. So the mentor can look into the project that whether that fits into the individual’s profile and his goals. But sometimes, organizational priority comes into play. We have set limits and so we need the person at any cost. So we tell him that the project is time-critical. He is then given a choice in his next project.
When we select teams technical brilliance is the main criteria. But some amount of teamwork must also be there though that is generally not a problem. He should not be hesitant to ask people. He should also not play politics. There are only rare cases where teamwork becomes a problem, approximately with 10% of the people. There are basically two kinds of people having technical caliber. First are those who are result oriented. They take up the responsibility and deliver according to the time schedule. They are the efficient ones. The other are the think-tanks. They have innovation, great ideas but do not have great result orientation. We need a mixture of both 75% and 25%.
Q. Who decides the projects your team handles and what is your role in the decision? In your opinion, what attributes does the decision-maker consider while assigning your team a particular project? What kind of projects/work would you like to take up?
The managing director (MD) and the design department talks to the marketing people in the United States. If there any many project then we can choose where we have expertise. We have know-how to finish the project in six months but sometimes it does not turn up that way. In choosing the project sometimes we have a choice, sometimes not. Diplomacy plays it part here.
Q. How do you recognize and nurture talent in your team?
We have separate quotas for recruitment at different levels. We go to the IITs and RECs. we have an exhaustive selection procedure which consists of both analytical test and a technical test. Then we have 2-3 rounds of interview to judge that the person fits well into the organization. The depth of knowledge about the subject plays the main part.
To nurture talent we have mentoring program. A senior is attached to each junior and initially he acts as assistant for them. So initially project efficiency goes down but later he has to be a part of the company. So this is essential part of the process. We also put him with other experts so that he comes to know more about different fields. Then they put him into a segment work. We make sure he gets technically challenged and there is scope for innovation. The problem should be aligned with business. If he fails we have to see his aspiration levels. There can be different ways for this. Either his expectation level was different or he wants to do a particular job which we are not able to give him. We hive him a time-line that next project would be one his likes.
Q. How do you resolve conflicts (if any) between your team members?
There are basically two kinds of conflicts. First are the purely ideological ones, in which two people have different ways of thinking. In this case we call for a wider consultation and a meeting is called up. This exposes details of options X and Y. sometimes consensus emerges, considering a majority decision. Experts are brought in the meeting and talks are held. Brainstorming sessions do help. But if the persons still have a divided opinion, then the project manager decided what is to be done. He has to tell with conviction that this is the way to go about it. The meeting reduces the risk of the conflict once a majority decision is found. We can always do a post-mortem at the end of the project as to why that conflict arose and what could have been a better way to solve it, looking at the experience. But the meeting gives a feeling to the persons that there point was given due consideration.
The second kind of conflict is the personality based conflict. It may be either due to senior-junior conflict or some personal issue between two people. This has to be settled in an amicable manner. This is a long term problem rather than a short term one. One thing we can make sure is that the persons are assigned to different projects.
Q. How do you motivate your subordinates?
The main thing which motivates many people is fast promotions. We laud the main achievers. Some who are exceptional are lauded publicly. Token amounts are also given as bonuses. For the underachievers, those who have met the requirements but need improvement, we have to see why it is there. It may be due to lack of technical knowledge. If that is the case we have to see how come he landed up here. Sometimes this may be due to lack of motivation. For this we need to talk to him. We need to make sure everyone is motivated in the beginning. Generally people are motivated if you give them challenges. But some people want a special kind of work only then he is motivated. Sometimes we can make minor modifications in a project. Lot of maneuverability is there within the project. Recruitment is the key thing, so that these kinds of mis-matches do not happen. But it is not easy to judge flexibility. We can check technical ability but the human issues are difficult to comprehend. I always have a look at my recruits as to how they are doing and try to find where I went wrong if he doesn’t work well. This is more of an artwork. To see if he is a go-getter or not, is very difficult to judge.
Q. What is your personal vision?
There are lots of revisions happening in the industry. Sometimes the project gets delayed as the people involved did not anticipate it correctly and this costs the company a lot. I would like to find a bulletproof design methodology, so that the delays are minimum. What really matters is what the customer wants .As an engineering community, we only get to know this through third party sources. I would like to be involved in this and anticipate what customer wants and then design accordingly. I have to be hooked up with the right people and concentrate more.