Global Leader Insights: Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO

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Insights from Global Leaders: Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO – Bharti Airtel

14 Aug 2020
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As part of the leadership series, we had yet another inspiring leader, Mr Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO Bharti Airtel join us on Thursday. SOIL has had the pleasure of working on several projects with Airtel. Mr Vittal’s career graph is something that most management students would dream of, starting as a management trainee in HUL and then growing through positions by successfully implementing various projects and strategies. He then joined Airtel for a brief stint where he redefined their operations and changed the marketing strategy to enable Airtel to cater to the mass market. Mr Sachdev, while giving the students a brief introduction of Mr Vittal’s career and achievements, lauded his quality of staying positive and calm even during times of extreme crisis and competition. This quality is especially significant for leaders today to handle disruptions. The session then proceeded with a series of questions through which Mr Vittal imparted us with insights from his experience in corporate leadership.

Mr Vittal stated that his happiest moments were linked with the success of Airtel, recollecting how Airtel grew through the most crucial moments of disruption, competition, and crisis. He says moments of success of his company and employees bring joy to him. He derives his happiness from his employees when ordinary people achieve extraordinary things. Highlighting the strategy GPS (Go green, deliver promises, solving problems), he explained how following it allows him and the company to work at maximum efficiency and deliver value to customers.

Change is an integral part of any profession. People tend to talk only about how one needs to skill up for a new profile or change in industry/domain. Mr Vittal stressed upon the importance of unlearning during changes and took us through his experience of unlearning when he changed his industry from FMCG to Telecom. HUL was run by its marketing team, but, Telecom was a contrast to it. He suggested that the whole point of an organization from an individual’s perspective should be about discovering, improving, and trying to become the best version of oneself.

Competition and crisis are part and parcel of any business. Airtel, in the words of Mr. Vittal, is a child of competitiveness. To come out of any crisis, any organization or individual should have the qualities of tenacity, resistance, and importantly the purpose. The basic definition of crisis includes both danger and opportunity, and the job of the leadership team is to look for opportunities. He gave us an example of how Airtel approached the crisis of COVID-19 and market disruptions. It was about business continuity, recovery, and re-tooling (working on areas of improvement, trimming, and innovation to make the business more efficient) He feels three things are essential during such times, which are purpose, inputs, and customer value. The key to Airtel’s success is Mr Vittal’s focus more on inputs rather than worrying about output. Every crisis teaches you things which you usually would not have noticed, but if these learnings get implemented, the businesses are sure to grow.

Becoming a successful leader would involve possessing and developing certain qualities. The first and most important quality is curiosity, which, in his opinion, is the mother of all innovations. Second, learning to see the big picture, anticipating, and connecting the dots. Third, Humility, a leader should have the ability to immediately accept their mistakes and apologize to the concerned employees, which have proved to improve harmony and relationships in any organization. Lastly, handling paradoxes while making decisions – for a leader, decision making is routine and it more often involves handling paradoxical situations like short-term v/s long term gains, revenue growth v/s profitability, etc. and according to Mr. Vittal choosing one among them would be a false choice as in most cases both options tend to be significant to the organization and the leader should be able to manage them giving the required priority. He concluded with the comments that the current crisis requires leaders with the vigorous resolve, vision, ability to create a flattened hierarchy where ideas can flow, and motivation wouldn’t be an issue urging the management students and aspiring leaders to work on these lines.

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Gopal Vittal – In his role as MD & CEO of the country’s largest privately integrated telecom operator he is responsible for defining and delivering the business strategy and providing overall leadership for Airtel’s India & South Asia operations.

Under his leadership, Airtel has won multiple awards across Corporate Governance, Treasury, Sustainability and Innovation. Airtel has been recognized as the second most valuable brand in the country by Brand Equity.
Gopal is an alumnus of Madras Christian College and has completed his MBA from IIM Calcutta.

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About the Webinar Series: SOIL Founder & Chairman, Sh. Anil Sachdev gets into insightful conversations with Global Leaders every Thursday, 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM (IST). Every session will focus on:

– Insights from global leaders on how to become the best version of yourself
– How to leverage your unique talents and strengths to contribute your best to society & your work

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