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Anirban Banerjee

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Anirban Banerjee

Service Delivery Manager

Ericsson Global Services India Pvt Ltd

Important lesson learned

My experience has taught me the importance of relationships in a professional arena.Many a trying circumstances in delivery management goes out of control everyday despite the most astutely drafted contracts, agreements and scope documents. While it is important that the agreements be honoured, it is impossible for any business delivery to be successful without both parties agreeing to walk the extra mile.That can happen only when relationships are built up. That is the very essence of any successful delivery mechanism. This is particularly true, in case of virtual environments spanning across the globe. Building relationships in such remote and multi cultural environments is the key to make such mechanisms work and transfer the strengths of one geographic area into another. A global delivery organization survives on its ability to replicate its best practices of one region into another. This involves considerable amount of customization, and at the root of it lies the relationships.

Brief description about me

I am a Telecommunication Engineer from Nagpur University and an Executive Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management from Indian Institute of Management, Indore. I have eleven years of work experience in the Telecommunication and ICT industries. Currently I am employed with Ericsson Global Services, India. I have been working with this group for about three years now. Prior to this, I have worked with Alcatel-Lucent, Reliance Communication, Siemens etc. I have lived my professional life when Telecommunication in India grew from its nascent stage to a behemoth and then falling apart and now moving towards consolidation. This coincidence of living almost one full natural industry cycle of boom, recession, consolidation has taught me and my contemporaries a lot.It has made us see and get involved into, how organizations actively do business re engineering and bring innovations to their products and processes to remain competitive in times of difficulty and consolidation.

My achievements

I am proud of my capability to adapt to changing organizational demands in a fast paced dynamic environment. I have been able to adopt to new roles at least four times in my career with reasonable degree of success. I have migrated from Sales to Project Management to Technical Delivery to Contract Management in my career so far.I would want to see various other aspects of organization in the coming decade. I have seen, that many people who claim to be experts in their domains live their professional lives with their perceptions akin to that of the proverbial group of blind men who tried to see an elephant. I want to develop a 360 degree view of the organization and would want to eventually have a role in process design and improvement where I have to find a way to influence all four layers of the balance scorecard.

Ensuring success

I am dealing with this issue in a few steps..

1. Try and keep myself updated by getting the necessary certifications/trainings required in my domain (e.g. PMP, ITIL V3 etc.
2.Try to read/listen as much as possible about the industry trends.
3. Actively engage in unlearning procedure. This is the most important part. On weekends I deliberately try to defocus from immediate problems in my workplace and try to look at the broader aspects of profession and life as a whole. It is difficult, particularly so, when the work pressure is too high. But it is an essential element to be successful in the longer run.Because otherwise we always live in the present and live our professional lives in a series of everyday incidences, like the blind men, and don't see the elephant. Seeing the whole elephant is a two step procedure..a) open your eyes..b) walk a few paces away from the elephant. It is that simple!

My family background

I was born to two academics who are now retired from their four decade long careers as University Professors. My father obtained his Ph.D Degree in English Literature from Birk-beck College, University of London and taught at various Government Colleges, finally retiring from North Bengal University. My Mother spent her entire life with the University of Calcutta earning a Ph.D degree first and then teaching there for her entire professional life.
My wife is an M.Sc, M.Phil and B.Ed all from University of Calcutta, and currently teaches at the Calcutta International School. We have a five year old son whose company is immensely enjoyed by all these people.

Thoughts on Education system of our country

Education system in India has a few distinct problems, for it suffers from a conflict of purpose which the incredible diversity of this country throws up to it. On one hand if we talk of primary education, it is far from adequate. Immediate expansion in this front is required. But finding quality teachers for so many schools is a problem. Secondly if we talk about secondary and Higher secondary education, then the state boards and the central boards have a distinct bridge to gap between themselves. While I can understand political compulsions of governments to put stress to vernacular medium, and also sometimes bend syllabuses for political ideologies, for science stream, the syllabus for classes 9 to 12 should be uniform all across India.Thirdly, for college education a disproportionate skewness is observed for technical and professional qualifications for job security. But for proportionate growth other streams should also be given priority and political interference is to be reduced

Influenced by

I have been influenced primarily by my immediate relatives at home, my parents, my family. This is obvious, but a man's immediate family has a perceivable impact on him and his personality. I am fortunate that I have an understanding and supportive family. In the ideological front I am influenced by a few stalwarts. They are Shaw, Russel, Tagore, Chaplin and Ray.I am most impressed and influenced by two aspects of human behavior. One is sense of humor the other is the art of storytelling.The five greats whose name I have mentioned, have filled my world and my mind and yet I feel that every time I read an article or watch a movie of theirs I learn something new or see some thing new that I missed the last time. I can grow up everyday throughout my life in their works.

Qualities needed to become a successful leader

One must have
1. Compassion
2. Sensitive to others feeling
3. Thought Leadership
4. Flexible in the short run but Rigid in terms of final goal
5. Positive and Inspiring
6. 360 Degree perception

My strongest skill

1. Adaptibility
2. Flexibility
3. Customer Relationship Management

Couple of years from now

In a couple of years from now I would want to be into process design and improvement in the professional front.

My role model

In the professional life, Steve Jobs. Because of his incredible appetite for innovation.

Important decision

1. To get myself an MBA
2. To try new work streams in the industry

Degree that I recommend

1. PMP
2. ITIL V3
3. CIMA

Initiative to develop a country

Indian Professionals can
1. Teach poor children
2. Bring in thier professionalism to the use of social development; a whole new arena is opening up now called social entrepreneurship
3. Replicate their learnings in the industry to spearhead rural development programs
4. Put forward bright ideas to the Government.
5.Use social network to build platforms for garnering support on important socio economic issues.