Why Indian Family Businesses are Seeking Mentors from Outside
“I have a bright CEO but he is spoiling my organisational culture. What should I do?”
“My father is very dominating and tends to blindly rely on some executives. How do I make him see my point of view?”
“How should I approach negotiations?”
“How do I manage independent directors?”
“Should I go to Davos at all? Will it help me? How do I network?”
These are some questions that family-led business leaders in India, mostly from the next generation, are grappling with and seeking answers to from their mentors. “Increasingly, and especially over the last three to five years, Indian family business leaders are seeking outside mentors as they are becoming aware of the challenges ahead. Be it those relating to communication, consensus, ownership, transfer of ownership, retirement, succession or even building leadership,” says Kavil Ramachandran, Executive Director, Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise at the Indian School of Business (ISB), who is usually mentoring half-a-dozen such business honchos at any point in time.