point
The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

March - 2006 - issue > Leadership

Inside a Leaders Cabin, called mind

Harish Revanna
Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Harish Revanna
He talks about the need for transformational leadership. Tells you why leadership is influence without control. Takes you on a lonely-ride of leaders. Shows you the blue-sky and marks the virgin territory. Welcome to the world of Sharad Sharma.

There is an aura surrounding Sharad Sharma. The general manager of Symantec India Corp is managing the newlywed oddest-couple of technology: Veritas is a storage software firm, while Symantec is into security software. While he has spent the last 18 years managing different companies, his career is peppered with stints of transformational leadership. In Sharma's parlance, transformational leadership is the process of reinventing from strategic cost arbitrage model to the competitive cost arbitrage-which is how the Symantec India development center has evolved. (See the table)

Recently, his talks at the Nasscom Leadership Summit at Mumbai, India gave audience a dual feeling of leaders in a startup versus leaders in multinational. And the entrepreneurial crowd had loads to cheer. “Leaders of both have influence without control,” he said.“ In a startup your influence is outside the company, as you are still a new entrant and the market doesn’t know you. So you are often busy influencing your clients and partners, without controlling anyone. But in a big company there is a gravity existing within the company and one needs to exert influence in areas where you don’t have control.” According to Sharma, that kind of influence comes partly because of the person who you are and largely for the force of your ideas.

Summits, town hall meetings, forums, community activities and discussions are places where Sharma sees himself through outsiders’ eyes. “Those places provides an external perspective of myself and my company,” he says. Perspectives are notable aphorisms in Sharma’s theory of leadership. “A role of a creative leader is to create an environment where everybody has an outsider perspective and a thorough understanding of what is happening inside. By helping people see the gap between their current assumptions and new reality, one creates a process of adaptive change,” he tells.

This change is built around a cause and passion and is sustainable because it’s pull based. It also allows people to find their own pathways to the final goal. “This adaptability is critical to success in our dynamic world today. You can’t chart a straight line path to your destination in iceberg infested waters,” he says.


Share on Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Share on facebook