GE Session On Leadership - Roshan Thiran - EYLN Malaysia

Leadership Session by Roshan Thiran : General Electric Malaysia :

It was definately the best session that you can start a conference on Entrepreneurship with. I mean without the essence of leadership, entrepreneurship of any form, would be without a soul, leadership drives every organisation, small, medium, huge, gigantic, start ups, MNCs, you name it and leadership is to the core of its success story. Roshan Thiran has been working in GE for a long time now, and he remphasised the importance of Expertising in Everything, according to him, a Leader cannot be a specialist, he has to be the guy who drives the marketing, finance, hr , it , etc functions in an organisation, and a good leader can only be made if he expertises in everything that he puts hand into !!.. he gave personal examples of how he turned around the aircraft reparing business of GE Malaysia and was then head of the team to solve the y2K bug ,inspite of having no experience in IT !!!

Leaders do change organisations and people, but the essence according to Roshan was to Change Yourself First... he gave one of the best examples of Jack Welch : How Leaders never stop Learning and Changing themselves....

Jack Welch had almost a year left for retirement, and he was never considered to be IT savvy at all, he hated the internet and computers and thats why at that point of time, GE didnt have any big time investments in IT. One day he saw his wife buying something on the internet, and he was thrilled, as the product arrived a day after to his house, all of a sudden he had the brainwave of learning everything about IT and the internet and wanted to transform GE to be very efficient in IT. Lot of people told him that it was just his last year of retirement and he could have left it to his successor to solve this problem, but Jack Welch put the onus on himself and at that age, learnt everything about IT and internet and now GE has a lot of investments in IT related areas.

This is a testimony of a true leader and how leaders first change themselves, always keep learning and then take active part in transforming others and their own organisations !!..

Roshan also spoke about the importance of thinking and business acumen as a very importance characteristic of a leader, a lea\der should be able to know the market and scan the environment before taking important descisions. Also the thought process and communication pattern is very very important in leadership... a leader should be the one who thinks clearly, who can crystallize his thoughts and dosent COMPLICATE things, lots of leaders use Authority to get their work done, but the real leader is the one who can INFLUENCE his colleagues and subordinates.

All of the above is so true, there were so many young budding entrepreneurs in the plen, and a short and clear lession on leadership would go a long way for them to lead their own organisations!!

So it begins !!

HIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Everyone...

Welll really really sorry for the ddeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllaaaayyyyyy (delay :) ) in posting my xp, as after you read the next posts which will flow, you will know i had No Time to log in and blog... but ya, i wrote down everything i wanted to write.. .. its my last night in Singapore !!!!

So, Flashback time... lets go to 7th of May 2007 - 1st day of EYLN Conference !!

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Good Morning : Well, its strange to get up at a place you have never been before, all alone, and when you know no one out there, apart from a few people! (read 1), but it was a good morning, the weather was so so better, it was raining, and i was watching the rains in another part of the world, and it looked quited beautiful, cos i hav already said the view from my room was breathtaking with small mountains, greenary all around, the unverisity UKM looked more like a holiday destination then a university, so clean, quiet,
serene, I would love to study here anyday !!.. anyways, so i was a little
apprehensive of the start, and had no idea what the next 3 days had in store
for me.

Meeting the Facis Again: Well picture this : 11 Individuals, from 6
different nationalities, teaming up to deliver a conference on
entrepreneurship!! If someone told you the world is now about
Globalisation, and AIESEC was a platform where youth from different parts
of the world can come together and work as a team... it was so true in this
case, I had been to an International conference before and seen people from 90 different countries work, discuss, have fun together, but this was my first hand expereince of working with such wonderful people!.. So down to earth and so mature were all of us, each of us had different backgrounds, in terms
of everything!!... the initial jitters and uneasyness was over is minutes and now we all felt like pals who have met after a loooong time and chilling together and brainstorming the conference and its flow... its an amazing feeling discussing world cricket with an Australian - Jeff, we discussed how badly india played and how unlucky we were, and the secrets of success of Australian Cricket, how they follow and take the game!!... more on facis and our discussions will be written later!!... but.. all in all.. it is a great great team..

Opening Plen: Well, was waiting for this since 2 days now, finally the conference begins!!... it was so good to be back at an AIESEC Conference, but this time, all the delegates were Not AIESECers, there were maximum Non - Aiesecers in the plen, so that made the job more challenging as they didnt know how we work, and didnt share the same wavelenght. It started with a round of introductions from all facis, and it was nice to hear the applause for the only Indian to come there only for the conference (me ofcourse:) ), total delegates were 150 and max from Malaysian universities, some from Hong Kong, Singapore etc. the Plen venue was also amazing, it was one of their lecture cum seminar halls, but wow it was better than any auditorium in kolkata !!...


Well this is just the start... watch out for more posts on the whole conference and then - Amazing and Unique Singapore !!

Cheers

Nikunj