Kaushal Veluri of Citrix cheers on the Royal Challengers
By siliconindia   |   Saturday, 18 April 2009, 20:41 IST
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Kaushal Veluri of Citrix cheers on the Royal Challengers
The real Bangalorean, Kaushal Veluri, who is the Marketing Director - India Subcontinent of Citrix Systems keeps his fingers crossed for the Bangalore Royal Challengers and hopes that these underdogs will hit the final IPL trophy. 1) Which of the eight teams do you think will win the IPL 2 Series and why do you think so? I'm a Bangalore guy so would obviously like Bangalore Royal Challengers to win! I hope this year they will have a much better performance and being underdogs will go on to win this edition! 2) Can you kindly narrate an anecdote or some interesting personal experience that highlights your association with cricket? Once while playing in school days, I was fielding at the boundary. The batsman hooked and the ball was high in the air. I had to run backwards and then slipped dramatically with legs spread all over the field. Everyone had a hearty laugh but then I had caught a fabulous catch. So it all ended well. 3) At the organizational level, do you think Cricket helps connect with people in informal way and cut-across teams/divisions? At the organisation level cricket definitely helps to connect people. Cricket is a passion in the country and it is one sport that unites all. On the cricket field, it doesn’t matter who the boss is and who the employee is; it’s all about the game and performing to the best of your potential. At the same time it helps to connect people across the various divisions – finance, marketing, sales, R&D – all forget who they are and they become one company. It also helps identify traits like leadership, competitiveness and most important team spirit amongst the players. 4) Who is your favourite player and why do you admire him? Any management lessons you would like to draw and build an analogy? Without doubt, it has to be Sachin Tendulkar. At an age where his contemporaries are hanging up their gloves, he is still honing his craft and getter better with age. His focus on the game, his ability to bounce back from a bad form, his hunger for constant learning, his team spirit, his mentoring habit and his humility are traits that all managers in all organisations should possess or cultivate. As a manager you need to focus on your end result, whether it is sales numbers or cost saving or delivering good marketing activities for sales lead generation. The manager needs to have the ability to learn from a bad quarter or a bad event and motivate the team and guide the team to come back up ad do better the next time. Managers must learn constantly – not just from the market and customers but also from their peers and sometimes from their employees as well. No manager is an island, managers have to work with various cross functional teams and employees with differing strengths and weaknesses. It's a manager's job to cultivate good team spirit and for that first and foremost the manager needs to be a team person. Finally its by mentoring and making your employees successful that you, as a manager, can become successful. In short we need Sachin Tendulkar as managers in our organisations!!

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