It is 2050... ‘A History of corporate governance in india’ is released. The milestone that changed the way company boards performed was the inclusion of women on boards from 2015! Sublime vision or ridiculous dream?Can MVS’s Gauri and her friends make the chapter on Women Directors a celebratory tale rather than a cautionary one? Here are a few thoughts to get started.... Let us look at companies first. They fall in two categories: Those that used the nudge by the law as a trigger for affirmative action (no “checkbox” approach). They searched for women in senior management positions: independent, with integrity and one who could add value. And no prior board experience (how could they, given the situation we have in India of social disincentives to rise to the top?)... so, Vittal Morro’s cry that a “director is a director” is unrealistic. If all boards had to do to become gender diverse was to select from a pool of “experienced” women, why did we need a law? In Gauri’s vehement insistence that companies (and the country) must invest in women, there is food for thought, and action… The chairman can play a pivotal role in making the new director feel a part of the team by ensuring she has a sense of history and context, that she is heard even if she sounds tentative in the first few meetings, and nudge the CEO and his leadership team to pro-actively familiarise her with the industry and business. All with a mentoring attitude rather than a patronising one! The company has to ensure that a wide range of incentives are in place to get more women in senior positions, for it is incentives, more than law, that will make the sustainable difference. Ms Milligan of Mercer (source: FT) says that women who have taken to working part-time have to be “highly-managed” back into full-time positions. Then you have the checkbox companies... I heard of one company, promoter-owned/managed, where, before the first meeting, the new woman director asked to meet the executive directors/founders, to understand their expectations and share hers. And one of them said, without making eye contact: “What is the big deal? There is a law, we got your name, so here you are. Now let’s get on…”!So, Shirish’s view (BW issue dated 18 May 2015) that women need to invest in self-evolution and courage holds good here. In the example above, she needs to ensure she understands the company, business and industry, gets trained independently on the roles and obligations (and rights), is assertive at meetings and forms a healthy bond with the NEDs or IDs so she is not isolated. If she does not overcome the “confidence gap”, there is no happy ending. As someone put it at a training seminar, be the one with “something to say” rather than “saying something!”Women are resourceful, determined and pragmatic when it comes to protecting family/children’s interests — where they are stakeholders and custodians as well. Those very skills can be applied to her role as a custodian of stakeholder interests on the board.Experienced women directors need to do their bit too…. For example, help create informal networks or Buddy Clubs of aspirants to boards and become willing mentors.For aspirants: Create a LinkedIn profile with your achievements and ambitions. Search firms/HR heads of companies use this medium. Hang out on virtual networks not at bars to build your own buddy clubs (which, says Manika’s colleague is essential for entry) . It’s also a more professional way of putting your CV out there!Do not assume, as Achala does in the case, that boards want non-assertive people. If you get a whiff of that, don’t join the board or if it’s too late, give it some time and if things don’t go well and your views don’t get taken seriously, plan an exit. Also, do not make the mistake of assuming, as some of the women in the case do, that men are willing to join iffy company boards while women shrink from it…And finally, Gauri’s move to meet with other women to identify directors for Vulcan and her idea of introducing Firdoz, a known quantity from her personal network, to Vittal Morro is just the thing the doctor ordered… The writer is Hema Hattangady, serial entrepreneur, coaches young entrepreneurs, independent director and thought leader. She co-owned Conzerv Systems growing it from family firm to Indian MNC until she sold to Schneider Electric in 2009(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 18-05-2015)
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Despite commitment by corporates to the advancement of women’s careers, these initiatives are at best described as slow if not stalled. This is evident in the discussions at Morro Vulcan Steel (MVS), and in their desperate hunt for ‘board ready’ women. Clearly, it is not just an issue of gender diversity. While many organisations have had management commitment to women’s development programmes, results unfortunately do not reflect adequate numbers at senior to top management levels. On Chairman Morro’s insistence MVS had done its bit too. However, as Gauri points out, social conditioning via gender roles (alluding to the ‘hot phulka’) keeps the talent pipeline leaky. Additionally, there are deep-seated beliefs in organisations about the staying power of women that make senior managers wonder, “Is this a dependable asset?” This brings to the fore the reality that organisations are indeed reflections of the societies they are embedded in. Again, it is not about just providing women-friendly infrastructure and policies. Shirish throws up an interesting perspective — that of self-limiting behaviours of women — where she presents herself first in relation to someone else, and only next as a professional. I tend to agree here, for women do want to perform all their different roles well. Most often, conflicts arise when their sub-identities of being a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a career woman operate simultaneously clamouring for her time and attention. Organisational policy makers must take cognizance of this: by giving her latitude to choose her place of work, her work timings, and her ramp-off time so that she can orchestrate her myriad role playing to satisfaction. And yet, seamlessly integrate her aspirations into mainstream career paths so that she does not have to trade one role for the other. This is well articulated by Shirish when he says, “…allow our women to grow in the direction of their choice, give them opportunities to grow into strong individuals”.What ensues in the all-women meeting is another reality: board memberships are in actuality buddy clubs where favours are traded by men to join each other’s boards. Women are outsiders, aren’t they? Men get mentors and coaches far easily than women do, and while ethics and governance are central elements of board roles, it is the camaraderie that counts. These positions are fraught with danger (do women want to go to jail?), and the buddy club members have each other’s back. That is why the few women on boards are entrusted with CSR initiatives. Will women be happy with just that or want to be on boards where they can influence decisions? On the other hand, do women think of board positions as a necessity? Unfortunately many do not. As seen in the discussion, women tend to reject anything that has no personal meaning for them or that which is likely to upset their delicate work-life balance such as need for long hours to surmount the learning curve as board member of an unfamiliar industry. It is true that bystanders cannot change the system; hence, women must accept board positions as a logical sequence in their career trajectory. If not, initiatives to get women on boards will reduce to merely meeting a reservation target. This is not healthy, for the true need to get women on boards is to take advantage of the diverse perspective they can bring to board deliberations, different approaches to problem solving, and risk management. While this is indeed the diversity argument, the positive correlation found between boards with women and economic outcomes of companies compels action.Nevertheless, the issue remains there are not enough board-ready women. Fewer exist in executive management, and even fewer are able to make the transition from management to governance. Two questions then arise: Is there a lack of investment in women by organisations? And, what do women need to do to get board-ready portfolios? Women must consciously design their careers by reaching out to mentors, evaluate relevance of their contributions and develop a honed awareness of all aspects of business and its governance. This will work best when women make efforts early on in their careers ably supplemented by organisational initiatives that can make them board-ready. The writer has over 30 years of varied industry experience in technology and leadership roles. Most recently was Head of HR of Tech Mahindra and is on Advisory Boards of technology startups(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 18-05-2015)
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I pick a few key underlying issues in this discussion between the group of women in this case study. These issues seem to reflect the mindset of companies and also the mindset of women around boards, directors and women directors — all of which are key to the subject matter of women on boards.How directors are appointed and what criteria seem to be applied when it comes to selecting women directors. These women experience an underlying bias or different criteria for them versus men candidates. Corporate governance being the primary role of the board and aspects like CSR being considered ‘not critical’ hence women relegated to them. Again an underlying bias. Let me deal with the second issue first as it provides a context for the first issue.The Role: Boards are not only meant for corporate governance, their role is beyond. Boards are trustees for all key stakeholders and are beyond shareholders. Hence there needs to be a visible shift in the purpose of the corporate entity to build stakeholder value while creating value for the shareholder(s).As corporate governance is becoming more challenging, companies do need boards to manage effective corporate governance easily while also guiding and reviewing strategy and value creation for all key stakeholders.Specific elements of the role of an effective board are: to establish policies, to make significant and strategic decisions, and to oversee the organisation’s activity.The Mix: Board composition and quality of directors is a big, if not the biggest, factor that enables boards to be effective. Boards needs to have a diverse mix of skills and experience, that way they can think widely and innovatively to deal effectively with varied challenges. While what form and level of diversity is appropriate is based an organisation’s circumstances, what is clear is that boards should assemble a group of directors that together comprise a range of skills and experience that will best assist the organisation achieving its goals. More and more boards are assembling wide ranging backgrounds to create genuine diversity — academicians, not for profit, artists, customer group representatives apart from business leaders.The Selection: Being a good board director is not everyone’s cup of tea. So who is a good board director candidate?Someone with prior board experience? That cannot be the criteria. If applied, this criterion can make boards lose access to a vibrant and valid candidate pool of senior executive leadership ready to join and refresh the pool of directors. Women senior leaders are an integral part of this pool.However, board directors do need to bring a breadth of knowledge, skills along with attitude and personal characteristics. Some of it is contextual to the company’s business and strategy while much of it is about being a capable director leader.When we, at Amrop, search for board directors, there is a detailed criteria developed, which is designed to recognise right senior leaders inside and outside boards. For example, knowledge of business risk relevant to the board role can be with executive experience: in risk management; insurance negotiations; people, product and property safety; and the related delineation of risk. Similarly, to evaluate the grasp of governance, we use criteria of senior executive role in organisations that are noted for their standing in corporate governance. So, it goes without saying that if driven in a structured and well-intentioned manner, there are enough ‘board ready’ women leaders.Reservation and Mediocrity, Elegant Worry: Will quotas put limits and will men-oriented boards stop at ‘one woman’ quota? I do not think so. Companies with right orientation on building boards will seek good directors irrespective of gender quota. Will quota promote mediocrity? This assumes that we already do not have mediocre boards and mediocre board members. So, issue of mediocrity at this stage is a larger one. In my work on boards in India, a few home truths have surfaced:There are enough average-to-below -average male directors. Over 80 per cent of boards do not focus on building a quality board and hence quality of directors. Most think of board directors as buddies, trophies or a combination. The writer is the founding and Managing Partner at Amrop India(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 01-06-2015)
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Shirish Patnaik, CFO at Morro’s Vulcan Steel, rocked in his chair, back and forth. Before him lay three CVs and across him sat Morro Retail’s VP Marketing Madhavi Lal and VP Finance Harish Vaidya. As he searched for words to say, in walked Gauri Rao (Head MR, Morro Corporate) and Atal Vaid, the COO, Morro Vulcan Steels (MVS).Gauri (with her characteristic gurgling laughter): What happened, Shirish? You have called your army out?The Morro teams were quite familiar with each other, thanks to ex-chairman Vittal Morro’s management-by-rotation approach. Shirish (shaking his head): Boss has given me a tough job. MVS needs to have a lady director on its board and this appointment has to happen in 10 days. And we have been trying for the last seven months! Today he sent me these two CVs and...! Atal: To jaldi hire karo? Why are you traumatised?Shirish: (as others laugh) Until now we have met four prospects. Boss is not happy... Good people, but he says look for more.Gauri: But I don’t think there is a choice. There is, if anything, penalty for non-compliance. Shirish: Penalties for non compliance? Where are the board-ready women? Did you allow them to be built up to the board level? Damn it! I am having a bad time keeping the entry level software girls in their jobs! They have pressures at home, with in-laws, with husbands... no nanny or nanny absconding, or nanny unwell...they have no backup! And this is 2015 — India Shining. Where are you going to find women directors if you did not start developing them in 1960?Harish: If we had publicly shamed families that silenced their female foetuses, seriousness would have set in early. Truth is we do not have board-ready women. It is a fact. We have at best 200-600 such women, not 9,000 to go around. Because the glass ceiling is a reality. How many women grow beyond Level 2 at Morro? Eight? Nine? And forgive me, four out of these were dragged up to Level 1 because Chairman Morro said we must look like a gender diverse company! Talent has to develop consciously to attain board readiness. Gauri: No comments on that. But seriously, I think having good people matters and they can be men or women and both. But to say....Madhavi: I see it differently. The presence of women on boards does have an impact on other board members and the company. Even the way we strategise will have a balance. For example, today with the presence of women in Parliament, uncouth, insensitive talk (for example) that is common across all men groups has come to be challenged by women like Smriti Irani, Jaya Bachchan...gradually the quality of the interactions will change, and even the larger community will evolve.Gauri: That’s very nice, but rising to the level of the board requires a certain combination of skills — we can call it assets made up of education, experience and a track record of performance. And our country has made very little investment in these! Shirish: Why are you taking this to the level of the country?Gauri: Think Shirish. Your mother is a gynaecologist from the 1960s, yes? What became of her? She stopped working at her father’s maternity home to look after her family. Because running off on emergency visits was inconvenient when the phulkas needed to be hot. Please don’t get me wrong. As a country, we continue to hang on to the ‘wonderful woman, can smock and knit and crochet model’; either we as a society are unwilling or unable to grow, or it is top down: the country does not want to grow, so society does not grow. So, even if parents educated their daughters, it remained on the CV and was never allowed real expression. This is what I mean by investment. As a nation, you have to have a desire to grow your women. To enable them to evolve. But we don’t have that fire! On one hand, you want gender diversity and women in the boardrooms, on the other, you have politicians who, instead of raising the nation’s standards, talk about women’s bodies, about controlling women/girls... where is the synergy? Come on, our organisations still need to build internal infrastructure that is gender friendly, or rather, that is NOT gender unfriendly, build capabilities to co-opt women in decision making. And without this, how are you building women for board-level strategy? We are a backward nation. Face it.Madhavi: So, it is as much the responsibility of individual organisations as the country’s to raise the level of women. Not just by setting up schools, but by creating an environment for women workers where they can also be wives and mothers. You need to see that, feel that in your environment. It is not enough to have diaper changing rooms in airports — those cater to the tourists and their expectations — but to find a damn solution for women workers with children, to have creches close to the workplace and caregivers who are fit, healthy, honest and dependable and who are on a contract with the company. Create home care for our elderly parents and in-laws so that we can go to work without pain!Harish: These are not easy; they have barely been able to begin talking about cleanliness...Gauri: And cleanliness is beginning to work, isn’t it? We can complain all we want. The point is commitment. My master used to say, make a pure sankalpa and it will work. That purity of intention is not there. The passion is not there. The desire is not there. The will is not there. Because there is nothing in it for you....Madhavi: Harish, to speak organisation language, these are the investments that result in women staying on at work, growing, adding experience, wanting to assume challenges, to evolve, to try harder, to excel... Today, it is a damp squib and I am not even talking about social conditioning that needs to be addressed at a different level. I agree with Gauri. What is having women on boards going to do? You still have TV serials that show women as suffering, helpless, Christmas trees. There is a whole industry thriving on it! Do you know the size of the Indian media and entertainment industry — in 2013 it clocked $15.7 billion? Where the norm is woman as homemaker, woman as subservient, woman as child-maker, woman as mindless and intelligence-free... this is the model that is preferred, because this is non-threatening. It is controllable. Whereas, even in a TV soap, you did not try and present a woman who strives to excel! The aspect of woman as needing self-expression is suppressed. You look at any woman who is actualised and you will see she is also a successful mother and wife. Somewhere this model is not desired. Somewhere she is threatening. Now, you want her to pole-vault from the pits to the boardroom. Where is the horsepower? If she is not built, she will not board.Shirish: Ha ha, nice! Yes, I see that we have not invested in her, hence she has no capital to bring to the table. I buy that. So, I ask, why are organisations not investing in her? One argument is that there prevails a section that prefers to see her as the subservient, non-thinking, helpless person. But a significant community should exist that believes in investing in her so that she builds her capital. So far, very good... Where I remain confused is that she herself does not seem to want that asset. Or let’s say, her self-opinion, however powerful, arises from the fountainhead of ‘I am a mother, I am a homemaker, I have to get home, children are waiting, mother-in-law will be annoyed, maid will come, water will go, nephew has naming ceremony, my husband needs dinner by....’ You hear this right at the interviews. You see this in the way they dress — the traditional thingy, the marital status, sindoor, bangles...I have nothing against all these, but these are not helping me see your workplace drive! She presents always in relation to someone else or something else. But never as ‘I’ the professional.Gauri: You evaluate based on these?Shirish: No baba.... I am sharing perceptions... understand that I want to help. And this is not just me. Other colleagues have been confused too. Please understand, as men in a world where we can be crucified for patriarchal perceptions, we steer clear of judgement. Yet when we have to think organisation, we have to ask, ‘Is this a dependable asset?’ At the entry stage, there is nothing to tell me who is going to last the marathon. Do I know where the investment is going? Educated women are aplenty. Plenty! They all excel at academics and are brilliant. At the time of the interview, all that is bio-data-specific intelligence; untapped, unused, unknown, un-tempered. If I put this intelligence to work, it will produce an explosion of greatness. But will she, in turn, allow herself to be tested by work? Employers struggle with this. When I work, I test work, and work tests me. Does this candidate carry a promise of tensility? When work begins to test her, will she find solutions and last it out or will she crumble? And almost always, she crumbles to the subtle pressures of social mores and false diktats. Staying power is what a board needs and is a function of your will to tackle the system with conviction. I mean this. I know our social system is pathetic... but change can come only with courage. And only victims can change the predatory system. Not the bystanders.Madhavi: Wow. Two completely different standpoints and viewpoints. Gauri says companies should invest and Shirish says women need to invest in self-evolution and courage to rewrite social norms. In the midst of this, women have not accumulated any directorial capital. I think we are not ready for lady board members owing to this sluggish human resource economy of ours!Gauri: I disagree. We had and have the essential wherewithal. That we did not put it to good use, that we did not nurture our women, that we did not pay them well enough (so that it became a barrier to leaving a job), that we did not counsel them, that we did not encourage them, that we did not create flexibility for them in the workplace when we could have, that we only saw them as speedbreakers and never as dormant assets — these need to change now. I do feel the ball lies in our courts as organisations. Twenty years ago, we did a token Save the Girl Child thing. So girls didn’t get killed, some states made education free at school. Great. Then? Ok, so, some also went ahead and did their MBA. Then? Education alone is not enough. Her periphery needs emancipation much more! A mother may will herself to educate her daughter but she struggles with it when her daughter has to work late....Atal: That has nothing to do with education or emancipation. It is to do with an unsafe male population...! When my daughter has to travel to Patiala for a state-level basketball match, my wife and I are close to a nervous breakdown! But our older daughter in Singapore lives alone. Because that is a country where the law works unconditionally. This is really at the heart of everything. But yes, I see that these come in the way of building professional experience.Gauri: Correct! So many of our girls back away from working late if there is a need and I now do not even have a script for them. Even if I offer office cars to drop them, they decline. So, we need to find perfectly tenable solutions for ladies who have to work late; to legislate remuneration and training policies for women. To legislate maternity leave, legislate care-giving leave... create options for them to use the stay-at-home time to develop skills that will be valuable later. Companies send millions off to parent company as dividend; parent companies need to have a stake in our social growth. So, I say pull back a small percentage and apply that to finding solutions that will help us grow stronger women managers, to counsel families, to turn the social soil a bit so that women who have to take on international postings, or travel outside their home city, are able to do so with peace. Directorships can come later. Madhavi: I see what you mean now. We saved a life but we could not sustain that life meaningfully. ‘Save A Girl Child’ saved an abortion, but we are not able to save India’s daughters, sadly. What we saved in the swing, we lost in the roundabout... Yes some law was enacted but we lack the spirit to implement them. So, why this kolavari? Why do you want women on boards? Shirish: Yeah... we should instead take on a better challenge in women-resource building. We should take 5-10 years more, allow our women to grow in the direction of their choice, give them opportunities to grow into strong individuals. Yeah, maybe we really do not have women who are prepared for Boards yet. Atal: I won’t speculate there... but a thought here: a Board needs the capital of knowledge to generate decisions, strategies and so on. Knowledge is education plus experience as one of you has pointed and yes also tensile strength. Mere education is not knowledge. When that education is put to test in a work situation, it catalyses into knowledge..And knowledge comes from both failures and successes. This is what Boards need... not just educated women...Gauri: Attaboy, Atal! Shirish, good luck with those CVs. Hope Vinayak finds his lady directors, but I have a plan. I am going to talk to some of my lady friends and see what they say about Board positions. I am sure they have been approached by many... (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 18-05-2015)
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There is an ecosystem geared towards negative selection that excludes women. The job criteria are fashioned out in such a way that only men will make it to the shortlist,” said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman and managing director of Bangalore-based Biocon, India’s largest biotech firm, in June 2014. I would venture to add that the Indian corporate sector has fashioned not only job criteria but also the everyday work environment to favour men. This is why we find that, while women form a healthy 50 per cent of the graduating class, their representation in the workforce keeps dropping as we go up the ranks. According to Gender Diversity Benchmark 2011, India has the lowest national female labour force, and the worst leaking pipeline for women is in junior-to-middle level positions.Interestingly, we also have proof that wherever a conducive work environment was provided, women have risen to the top and proven themselves. Take the banking sector, for instance. ICICI Bank (Chanda Kochhar ) and Axis Bank (Shikha Sharma), among the largest in the private sector, are led by women. A clutch of foreign bank subsidiaries, like J.P. Morgan (Kalpana Morparia) and Morgan Stanley (Aisha De Sequeira), have women at the top. SBI, India’s largest public sector bank, has a woman CEO, Arundhati Bhattacharya, and so do smaller ones like Bank of India (Vijayalakshmi R. Iyer). This is even more surprising as this is an India-specific phenomenon — women are few and far between in the executive ranks of global banks, and certainly none occupying the corner office. Among the 10 biggest banks by assets in the US, not one has a woman CEO!How did we in India buck the trend only in banking? To a great extent, credit for this needs to go to one institution — ICICI, and its forward thinking chairmen: Suresh Nadkarni, Narayanan Vaghul and K.V. Kamath. Women form 30 per cent of the workforce entering ICICI. The company has nurtured, mentored and handheld its woman executives such as Kochhar, Morparia, Sharma, Renuka Ramnath, and many more, who all then went on to become globally acknowledged leaders. Kochhar has talked about how when she was head of Infrastructure Financing at ICICI, had an infant son and was struggling with work-life balance, K.V. Kamath let her take a six-month break from her job! Morparia, a law graduate who was very comfortably perched in the legal team of ICICI, was encouraged by Kamath to take up a core banking role in Treasury, and the rest, as they say, is history! Believe it or not, ICICI has produced seven of the top 14 women finance professionals in the country! If one organisation with a welcoming work culture for women could produce such a stupendous result, then just imagine where Indian women would be when every public company starts moving in this direction! This is exactly what the Indian government is trying to achieve with its new law requiring public companies to have at least one woman on the board. Any woman on the board, whether she is there because of her professional track record, or because of her proximity to the owners, will still see things from the women’s point of view. She will weigh in when the company grapples with issues affecting women — like maternity benefits, work-from-home flexibility, safety, sexual harassment, etc. The more competent ones will go further, and want the company to take affirmative action to promote and retain women. Given that the stakes are so high, it is imperative that Corporate India gets its act together and implements the law in letter and spirit, sooner rather than later. If done well, the exercise could unearth many successful women who may not necessarily have stuck to the corporate ladder, and therefore may not be on the usual suspect list. What is critical is that industry associations such as the Ficci, Nasscom, CII, etc., should come forward to actively help identify, encourage and empanel competent professional women as Board candidates. From my experience in dealing with leadership talent in India, I am certain that the issue is not one of paucity of women leaders. What is required is a concerted effort by industry to find and encourage women to come on board. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 18-05-2015)
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In a way, it is a blessing in disguise that the deadline has pushed Shirish and his colleagues to debate. Without deadlines, it’s usually business as usual!Is this concern about a shortage of women representation a universal phenomenon? A quick check reveals some interesting facts: In the UK, the boards of 100 listed large companies have at least one woman director in each of them. Several companies in the US, Canada, France, Russia and Denmark have a higher representation of women on the board. Germany has legislated that companies achieve a gender diversity as high as 30 per cent by 2016. In Mexico and Greece, about 45 per cent of women are employed, though only 20 per cent are in senior management. The numbers are more encouraging in Latin America and Asia-Pacific. Clearly, one of the strongest forces in this century will be women’s empowerment around the world. Does this mean that we need to actively pursue a ‘business unusual’ mindset in addressing the larger issue of women’s career in business? In every discussion on career development of women, a question often asked is whether the investment is enduring. To many, the investment is an article of faith; not a deep commitment to create an environment where gender diversity can thrive. Misperceptions and stereotypes sabotaged a woman’s career. One can, therefore, understand the strong sentiments expressed by Gauri and Madhavi.The silver lining is that there is a gradual change in the corporate outlook. It is in the organisations’ enlightened self-interest to advance women’s careers. With the advent of the IT industry, we see a change on the supply side. An increasing number of women are pursuing professional studies. And women represent about 40 per cent of students in professional colleges. Companies are offering flexibility in terms of metro posting and innovative HR support systems are being provided to minimise the hassles women face. Belief systems among CEOs are also transforming. As more women engage themselves in start-ups, lead companies, governments and civil society organisations, we will see a more just world. All these positive changes have not yet produced a robust leadership pipeline for senior managers, with the exception of a few enlightened ones in financial services and banking industry, consulting and FMCG. Instead, companies seem to be more successful in developing women at junior and middle levels. Irrespective of social strata, today’s young women want to better the quality of their lives. They however don’t want patronage. They want a level playing field. Parents are keen to watch their young daughters compete and do well in a male-dominated society. Successful ones are looked up to as role models. The spirit of free enterprise has been liberated. So will social mores and attitudes.Whereas ten years ago, husband’s careers used to take precedence, today their partner’s potential is being appraised. Husbands are encouraging their wives to advance their careers if they are more meritorious. They are willing to take a secondary role in the family sans any guilt or stigma. And wives feel less stressed or guilty because of the family support they can count on.Here are some deeper questions for women professionals: Do women have a sense of purpose, direction and aspiration to break the glass ceiling and become future-ready leaders? Do they strive hard for a seat on the board of companies that they serve now or in the future? Do they display a strong need to network and influence the course of business? What are the key blockers and enablers at an individual level? What is the career path they wish to choose?CEOs and mentors can help them make choices that develop their careers, build networks of support in a virtual world, take smarter risks and view competition in a more positive way. ‘Shadowing’ experienced women board members can accelerate their preparedness. Serving as an advisory board member is a good training ground. Executive coaches can help in addressing their development needs. And, why not promote Gauri or Madhavi to the board? They appear to ‘take on the system’, show ‘tensile strength’, and are evolved and experienced. On-board one of them as an executive director and continue to search for an independent director from the market. The writer is an independent director, strategic HR consultant and a CEO coach. He retired from the Unilever group as HR Director(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 18-05-2015)
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Between the NSE and the BSE, India has about 2,000 listed companies. Since directors can hold multiple board memberships, we can safely assume that the real demand for women directors is no more than 1,200-1,500 qualified women directors. Do we not have them? Wrong, we certainly have them. Yet, almost half of these companies have had an all-male board. On 1 April, about 250 companies appointed women directors, mostly family members, probably defeating the purpose for which this compliance norm was set by the government. What does this mean? That most boards, being male-dominated for years, have ignored a key parameter that could add to board capability — that of diversity through gender diversity. In this wake, quota for women directors is a welcome idea. May be initially it could be scorned, even by women, but in my view it is a positive as it puts women in board rooms and there will be spinoffs of this in the medium term. This will create opportunities for women looking for board membership as they can aim higher. This could be one of the turning points in women empowerment. Why has the government had to step in to bring this quota? Because companies were not doing it on their own. A key reason for this has been the role of the Nomination Committee and the process it adopts for selection of new directors. Research by Amrop’s Board Practice indicates that most nomination committees tend to seek friends and known people as their choices. Most boards have a ‘clubby’ approach. A thorough and unbiased search based process is not a commonly used method. Whenever we have conducted a search for women directors, the results have been very good, as there is a significant pool of capable and women directors with the right fit. However, due to lack of transparency in the recruitment process for board positions, this pool is not visible to many boards. Companies have to guard against appointing family members. That defeats the intent of the law. Market regulator Sebi may have to build a further screen on this to ensure the intent of this law is enforced, and realised. Until now, we talked about non-executive women directors. When we come to executive women directors, the story is worse. They are genuinely fewer in number. The onus for this lies on corporates and their talent management framework. Focusing on the talent management framework and holding it accountable for producing a pipeline of women leaders should be the process that needs to be adopted if we are serious about developing women. Women leaders’ pipeline can be built by giving them challenging and visible roles in companies, creating policies and facilities that make it comfortable for women to work at changing phases of their lives. Several leading women have talked about someone mentoring them in their journey — training women on directorships. These are only a few such ideas to building this pipeline. To an extent, I agree with Gauri that women equally need to seek these visible and challenging roles. They need to be visible and plan their careers. They need to network more. More important, there is a need for multiple strong women networking forums. We know that most male appointments to the Board are a function of their networks.Women need to appreciate that in order to be Board-ready, they can pursue a systematic approach. One crucial way to develop leadership skills as a precursor to Board appointments or as a ‘training ground’ to test their fitness for Board appointments is building a portfolio of experience and exposure in public forums/institutions, directorships of not-for-profit organisations, and networking with board members. Being accomplished is only one factor.Corporates, the government and women themselves have to come together and make conscious and concentrated efforts to run this marathon of women in boardrooms. There is enough research that has placed great value is building a demographically diverse workforce, where gender diversity is key. That a diverse workforce equals superior business performance. Take this to boards: a gender diverse boardroom will lead to more effective board performance. We have to conclude that ‘Diversity in boardroom is a business imperative’. The writer is the founding and Managing Partner at Amrop India(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 18-05-2015)
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Move away from situational inconsistencies and avoid the promise-performance gap, writes Vineet Kapoor
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