Great Lakes Institute of Management organises Thought Leadership session

The Great Lakes Institute of Management recently organised a ‘Thought Leadership’ session. Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai founded in 2004 by Padma Shri Awardee Dr. Bala V Balachandran is one of the premier B-schools in India. Great Lakes has, within a short span of 15 years emerged as a top-ranked business school. Great Lakes has 50+ full time faculty and 150+ visiting faculty including over 25+ international faculty from top global schools like Yale, Kellogg, Stanford, and Harvard.

Mr. Shiv Shivakumar, currently Group Executive President at Aditya Birla Group and former Chairman & CEO for PepsiCo India addressed the graduating class of the Institute of Management in a virtual session organised by the institute. He addressed the audience and spoke about the seven frequently faced career dilemmas. He provided his perspective based on the experience and observations over the years.

During the session, Shivakumar touched upon some pertinent questions that every professional stumbles upon at some point in their careers. He shared insights about the career dilemmas that are faced by the young graduates at this point of time.

During the session, Shivakumar spoke about the importance of money in one’s career, industries which are good for the future, skill sets required for the future, how difficult it is to start something of your own, managing your career and colleagues, duration that you should be in a job and most important of all who will take care of your career?

From talking about the industries to choose and the skills sets to have, Shivakumar explained the students about the importance of managing their careers and highlighted the ways to excel in various stages of one’s professional life.

While talking about key concerns of the audience, he advised students on various fundamental topics like the growth, measuring success and adding value to your own brand. The industry veteran also emphasised on the significance of maintaining a healthy mental and physical condition and mentioned about allowing your values to drive your decisions.

He further elaborated upon the fact how money is not the most important variable and always joins a company where the culture is good and learning is strong. He divided the industries into legacy industries and future-oriented industries. He suggested that being digitally fluent will help a person in securing jobs quickly in the future. He stressed on the fact that people skills are the need of the hour and one must possess end-to-end digital skills to be able to look at a business end-to-end. Business models have been disrupted completely and digital skills will help a person sustain and thrive in the future. He also suggested that one must spend at least three-five years in a company and changing jobs frequently will not give you experience.

He also spoke about how difficult it was to start something on one’s own and emphasised that without knowing the key fundamentals of a business it is unlikely one will succeed on their own. It is always good to understand the levers of a business and then think of an idea which resonates with the customers and should solve a genuine problem of the society. He then went on to add that, never consider friends and peers as competitors. One should strive to compete with themselves and that’s when you will win and have a charisma. The most important aspect he highlighted was hard work. He summed it up with a golden saying that, ‘Hard work has never killed anybody irrespective of what stage your career is in’.

Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai founded in 2004 by Padma Shri Awardee Dr. Bala V Balachandran is one of the premier B-schools in India. Great Lakes has, within a short span of 15 years emerged as a top-ranked business school. Great Lakes has 50+ full time faculty and 150+ visiting faculty including over 25+ international faculty from top global schools like Yale, Kellogg, Stanford, and Harvard.