Dr. Nagendra Palle, fondly known as Nagi, is a distinguished leader with over two decades of global experience in the automotive industry. He currently serves as the Director of Sovereign Solutions Pte Ltd., based in Singapore. From January 2013 to March 2018, Nagi was at the helm of Mahindra First Choice Wheels Ltd (MFCWL) as its CEO, steering the company through a transformative phase in India’s rapidly evolving used car industry.

Before his impactful tenure at MFCWL, Nagi worked with OPENLANE in Redwood City, California—one of the premier online wholesale marketplaces in the United States, facilitating the sale of over 300,000 cars annually. His rich career spans various automotive domains, including R&D, business planning, strategy, finance, mergers & acquisitions, and online vehicle retailing/auctioning, in globally renowned organizations like Ford Motor Company, Visteon Automotive Systems, A.T. Kearney, and Accenture LLP.

He earned his B.Tech from IIT Madras, followed by an M.S. in Applied Mechanics from the Colorado School of Mines, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Adding to his stellar credentials, he also holds an MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with distinction, specializing in Finance and Strategy.

Nagi’s thought leadership is reflected in his contributions as a speaker at prestigious platforms like The Economist, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His accomplishments include two U.S. patents, participation on Accenture’s exclusive Management Consulting Advisory Panel, and winning A.T. Kearney’s Great Client Work Award.

He has also served on award committees for the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. and has been recognized for his expertise in both the corporate and academic worlds.

• In this episode Dr. Nagi Palle talks about Entrepreneurship and Leadership outside bigger Corporations and how a new mindset is required for surviving in a globally competitive world of startups. In this world one needs to be entrepreneurial rather than follow a corporate mindset. Models such as TQM, widely applied in the larger companies, are hardly known or used in the startup world.
• While management models in themselves are not necessarily useless, their applicability in a wider range of contexts may be limited. So, the same set of rules that apply to a 5-billion-dollar automotive company cannot bureaucratically be applied to a startup which is just starting to earn revenue.
• Another critical is a lesson learnt from Silicon Valley startups- no one spends on training. The employee is expected to come in with adequate knowledge to start being efficient from day one, without handholding. These and other efficiency parameters are discussed by Dr. Nagi Palle in the episode.

Run time – 00:44:07

Birendra Kumar Tiwari is the Director-in-Charge of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), Bokaro Steel Plant. He has a highly process-oriented mindset. During his tenure as Executive Director (Works) at Bokaro Steel Plant, he brought safety and quality to the forefront of all operations and services. His leadership was instrumental in de-bottlenecking crude steel production constraints, resulting in record production levels across all units. Significant strides were made in new units like SMS (New) and CRM-III, with quantum jumps in output.

As Executive Director (Collieries), he successfully operationalized the Tasra coal mines and charted a strategic roadmap for securing long-term supplies of indigenous coking and power coal, leading to a 20% increase in the supply of coking coal to SAIL plants.

Earlier, as Chief General Manager (Coke Ovens and By-Product Plant), he used safety and housekeeping as critical management systems to improve production, quality, and work culture and drive sustainable growth. Under his guidance, production targets were consistently met, and the performance of the shops saw a remarkable turnaround.

In today’s episode, I’ll be gaining his insights on the significance of process excellence in the Indian public sector environment.

• In this episode, B. K. Tiwari talks about Process Excellence in PSUs. He discusses internal assessment frameworks and continual dip-sticking in a dynamic environment to assess current capability and future competitiveness.
• Indian PSUs such as SAIL have evolved from the era of a protected economy to an era of global competition and have managed to survive. This speaks to its capability in transformation and modernization through process excellence and sixty years of resident knowledge.
• SAIL has also been using TQM for the last two decades or more to increase employee engagement and customer satisfaction. The business excellence wing in each and every plant brings in the necessary interventions aimed at continuous improvement.

Run time – 00:44:01

K Ramkumar is the founder of the Kautilya Leadership Centre, which focuses on developing leadership by making individuals aware of their personal leadership resources. Unlike traditional skill-based approaches, this personalized model emphasizes that leadership is an inherent resource in everyone.

Ramkumar retired as Executive Director of ICICI Bank, having served on the boards of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and ICICI Ventures. Prior to his 15-year tenure at ICICI, he worked at Hindustan Aeronautics, Unilever, and ICI.

He is passionate about leadership development and played a key role in making ICICI Group a recognized leadership factory. Ram co-founded the ICICI Manipal Academy, which has trained 12,000 young leaders, and the ICICI Academy for Skills, which now operates in 23 locations, skilling 35,000 youth annually. He is also the author of the book Leveraging Human Capital: A Practitioner’s Perspective.

• In this episode, K Ramkumar talks about Appreciative Inquiry as a Lever to Maximize Strengths. The core idea is that development is possible only if you focus on strengths. Most coaches get it wrong when they try to overcome weaknesses. Ramkumar offers the example of the cricket team under Saurav Ganguly, where each team member’s strengths were developed. It would be a disaster if Rahul Dravid was asked to play like Sehwag. Instead, the team focused on individual strengths and together they made a formidable line-up.
• Great organizations focus on investing in human capital. Most organizations, on the other hand, believe that investing in financial capital or technology is the correct option. Using the example of the leadership team from his former organization, Ramkumar discusses how they invested in leadership and leadership qualities in their organization. He recalled how even younger team members were asked to attend board meetings, where they were not allowed to vote but were given the opportunity to learn.
• Ramkumar talks about Abraham Maslow’s Theory of self-actualisation, where every person tries to become the best version of herself or himself. If a person believes that their current version is the best version of themselves, then they are not coachable. But otherwise, every person can be shown ways to discover and improve on their strengths. This discovery process should uncover requirements relevant for the future since current capabilities alone may not be enough. Thereafter, it could indeed be a rigorous process to achieve that target.

Run time – 01:02:46