Professionals Can Wait...!!

'A little less than two years after it brought in professionals from outside the family to head the editorial and business wings of the company, Kasturi & Sons Limited (KSL), the publishers of The Hindu daily, carried out drastic changes on Monday in the leadership structure by bringing in family members at the helm of affairs and easing out the editor and the company's CEO.

The KSL board of directors appointed N Ravi as the editor-in-chief of The Hindu, replacingSiddharth Varadarajan, who took over from N Ram in January last year. N Ram will now be the chairman of the board, and Malini Parthasarathy, who left the paper as its executive editor in 2011 and now heads The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, is back as The Hindu editor.

Monday's board meeting also decided to abolish the post of CEO, which was held by Arun Anant since it was created around the last revamp. Anant's new role is yet to be defined.

In what appears a sharp indictment of Varadarajan and Anant, a statement signed by N Ram (who had brought in these two), said: "The decision to make deep-going changes was made chiefly on the ground that there were recurrent violations and defiance of the framework of the institution's longstanding values on the business side, and recurrent violations and defiance of 'Living Our Values', the mandatory Code of Editorial Values applicable to The Hindu." He added that the effort was to restore employee morale, good industrial relations, and the trust of the newspaper's readers.

Varadarajan, who was redesignated as the contributing editor and senior columnist, has submitted his resignation. Asked about alleged violations of policy under his stewardship, he told TOI, "If indeed policies or editorial values were flouted, the solution would have been to get another professional editor. The fact that the owners have come back into editorial itself provides the answer to your question."

He added, "Of course, there were occasional instances of editorialising that slipped in, just as they did when Mr Ram or Mr Ravi edited The Hindu earlier. But I fear this is merely an excuse to reverse the earlier decision to professionalise the newspaper."

Asked if the board was unhappy with his periodic absence from the newspaper's headquarters, Chennai, he said, "As editor, the lion's share of my time was spent in Chennai, where I put in 12-hour days; except for two brief holidays in Kerala and Sri Lanka, any travel was almost exclusively linked to my job as editor of a national paper which has more than a dozen editions. Even then, there was not a single Chennai edition front page that I did not personally decide on, even when I was out of the country."

When contacted, Arun Anant declined to comment on the development.

Ravi, the current editor-in-chief, had resigned as the paper's editor in July 2011, along with other family members Malini Parthasarathy and Nirmala Lakshman, who was the joint editor, after Ram insisted on "separation of ownership from management on the editorial as well as the business side." Varadarajan took over as editor on January 10, 2012 after Ram, who held the post for eight years. That marked the conclusion of a series of debates within the family since 2009, starting with the appointment of N Balaji as the managing director of Kasturi & Sons.

On April 20, 2011, about three months before his exit, Ravi, in a bitter letter to The Hindu employees, said Ram and some of the directors at the meeting of the board two days earlier had sought to remove him and appoint Siddharth Varadarajan. He called it a "shocking display of bad faith that has left me deeply anguished" and that they were entering "the second, and what might turn out to be a prolonged, phase of conflict and turbulence in the institution."

(Source: Hindu reinstates family members at helm of affairs, The Times of India, Oct. 22, 2013)

The New Generation Army

Violent clash between the Army soldiers and officers at Merrut cannot be ignored as an one-off incident. Neither should it be read as an impending mutiny. But definitely the times are changing and Indian army seems to be a ‘generation’ behind!

The Incident

The incident happened during a inter-company boxing match. One version says that a solider tried his best but lost a friendly boxing match. One of the officers confronts him after the match, publicly ridicules him and thrashes him. The soldier does not take the insult lying down and retaliates. A prolonged physical clash ensues between soldiers and officers. The ugly incident leaves army red-faced and embarrassed.

As expected a committee has been set-up to inquire into the incident. And in all possibility the erring soldiers and officers will be reprimanded and punished. But will that really put an end to what seems to be a systemic issue brewing inside the organization. 

This is not the first ofsuch incident in recent times. In the last two years this is the fourth suchincident where soldiers have given back a fist for a fist. Although the top brass of the Army have come down heavily against such errants and have handed them exemplary punishments, the question is will that suffice. The repetition of such incidents, nevertheless, indicate that the problem may be lying elsewhere. 

Gen Y Soldiers

Gen Y is populating the Indian Army, like many other organizations in big numbers. If reports are to be believed then the new age soldiers are not only better educated but also more aspirational. This also confirms research literature on Gen Y. A more educated, aspirational and high on self-esteem Gen Y soldier may be expecting more respect from their officers.

In fact research literature indicates that Gen Y employees do not accept authority by the virtue of organizational hierarchy. They accept authority by example and for a limited time-frame. In other words, the superior gets respect not for his position but for the exemplary performance that he/she puts forth. The respect lasts as long as the such behaviour of the superior lasts. In the coming years, as more Gen Yers will enter the Indian Army, managing this new generation soldiers will be a challenge.

Structure and Leadership

Officers and soldiers are not only differentiated by rank but also by class within the organization. A clear class system seems to be prevail within the organization and treatment is not equal for the soldiers. A highly hierarchical structure ensures that soldiers at the bottom of the pyramid are only supposed to listen and follow. The power is highly centralized at the top. 

Culture

A rigid culture of command and control is highlight of the army. The same has been followed since the British Raj and this is perhaps one of the very few institutions that has been untouched by changes in past 65 odd years of Indian independence.

Control Systems

Carrot and stick in the all practical sense, the latter being used in both letter and spirit for managing the soldiers, as is evident from the recent incidents.

Such organizational structure, culture and control systems seem totally incompatible with the new generation inducts in the Indian Army. Organizations all over the world are experiencing the phenomena of multi-generations at work. The increasing tension between Gen X bosses and Gen Y employees is not only the problem of the Army but of many organizations around the world. The organizations that are able to recognize the fact are trying to decipher Gen Y and in the process trying to find out newer and better ways to manage and engage them. The others are blissfully unaware and completely in dark.

A seminal work highlighting the need to change the organizational design of the Indian Army was recently done as a Manekshaw Paper titled ‘Staff System in the Indian Army, Time for Change’ by P.K. Mallick, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi (2011), and published by Knowledge World, KW Publishers Pvt Ltd, New Delhi. (article link).

There are enough indicators to show that the Indian army's ability to attract quality officers has declined sharply following the globalization of the Indian economy. Another seminal paper titled ‘The Indian Army Officers’ Crisis’ by Indian journalist and scholar, Dinesh Kumar, in the an issue of the academic journal, South Asia (vol. 33, no. 3, December 2010) is a must read to know the shrinking talent pool for the Indian Army. (article link)

Perhaps it’s time for Army to recognize the new generation at work and re-design a new internally strong  and united army.