'Indian CEOs adapt better to change'

NEW DELHI: Professor Shoji Shiba, guruof breakthrough management, is the man behind transformation of Japanese autogiant Toyota. He brought in a breakthrough among Hungarians from quality tomarket economy. He adores Bill Gates for creating a paranoid situation in hisorganisation -- that Microsoft will be bankrupt in two years unless it evolvesconstantly and brings in innovative products and ideas.Meet 72-yearold Sloan School of Management professor Shiba, member of International Academyof Quality and Deming prize winner for individuals. President Kalam saw in Shibaa reincarnation of Vikram Sarabai when they chatted.Now in India aspart of a CII mission, he has created a learning community among half-a-dozenIndian manufacturing firms -- Sona Koyo, Technova, TVS Motors, Bricks India,UCAL, SRF -- to diffuse breakthrough management. In layman terms, to make CEOssee the invisible, create markets and products where there are none, andpractice innovation management.Shiba says firms which have succeededin practising the breakthrough concept include Toyota, Teradyne, Bose and Honda.He said many Japanese firms, including Mitsubishi, failed as they didn''t gobeyond quality of products."India is in a transition stage frombeing an outsourcing and design hub to emerge as a destination for innovativeproducts for consumption within and outside the country," says Shiba, impressedwith Indian CEOs, who are more adaptive to transformation than the average US,Japanese, Chinese or a Korean chief executive. "Indian CEOs are open-minded,active and have strong motivation levels and no arrogance."Whilemaking presentations on breakthrough at CII''s meet with the country''s top 100CEOs at Jaipur, Shiba noted that 70% of CEOs took notes and majority were not infolded hands position or had their hand on their head. "This is a clear signalthat Indian CEOs are different from Japanese or Chinese," saysShiba.While Indian managers are good at process-thinking, Shiba saysthe biggest drawback is they are not paranoid in their approach to survive. Thecreator of fish-bowl principle has given a message to corporate India that theonly way to become a fish is to get into the bowl.