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Thought Leader: Padmakumar Nair on Leadership Challenges of the 21st Century

Padmakumar Nair, Senior Lecturer, Organizations, Strategy & International Management at the University of Texas at Dallas recently spoke with David Creelman on leadership challenges in the global economy.

DC: Tell us a little bit about your background because it is an unusual one.

PN: I was born in India and I studied in the Netherlands. After finishing my Ph.D. in nanotechnology, I worked in Denmark for a few years and then I went back to the Netherlands and started working for Shell Research in Amsterdam. That was the time I really started thinking things were different between my day-to-day solid-state physics or chemistry topics and the real people management and organizational strategy work. I found it very interesting because the engineering science thinking is, if I can use the word, more rational--you are only using your brain. When you start talking about organizations and people management you are also using your heart. So, I think I am enjoying using both my brain and my heart at the same time.

DC: So you have roots in India, worked in the European Union, and now you are in the US. What is your connection to Japan?

PN: I worked in Japan for about seven years before moving to the US. I am also a visiting professor at the biggest business school in China, the University of Wuhan, which is a federal university.

DC: I think that means you have a unique international perspective on leadership. What are the major leadership challenges?

PN: In my model there are seven leadership challenges in the 21st century and you would wonder why seven, it could be six, or it could eight. Well, I have been thinking about these things over the last six to seven years and now we have a list of seven and I am going to talk to you every one of them, one by one.

One: Building and sustaining trust.

I think trust is a very important feeling. It has always been important; look at history, maybe today or 100 years ago or a few thousand years ago trust was always important. But I think building and sustaining trust has become even more important and even more difficult at this time. And you can see the average CEO compensation in the US is about 500 times the lowest paid worker, that ratio. For example, in Canada it's only 20 times and in Japan it's only 11 times and unfortunately that's going up in Japan. I will tell a little bit about the Gini index. An Italian economist named Gini has come up with this index and this is an indication of wealth distribution. If the Gini index is 100, one person has all the wealth and rest are all poor with no money at all. And if the Gini index is near 0, then the wealth is equally distributed. And if you look at the number the wealth distribution is very uneven. What is this telling us, as far as trust is concerned? Think about an organization where you know that this is the kind of pay structure and the organization's leaders every day are coming and trying to encourage you and trying to preach the importance of achieving superordinate higher level goals as an organization and you are thinking. I am making $40,000 or $50,000 and the person who is preaching is making $3 or $4 million and the question is, can we really instill trust in this kind of an environment?

DC: I see. Some commentators have said that in the 50's and 60's the top management would actually live in more or less the same communities as the workers. They would see them at the grocery store. Now we are ending up in a much more stratified society where the leaders will be leading quite different lives than the average employee. It becomes a real disconnect at a social level, not just in terms of the paycheck that we are bringing home.

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David Creelman is CEO of Creelman Research and a well-known writer, research and speaker on critical issues in human capital management. David´s previous work includes Chief of Content and Research for HR.com, in addition to working as a management consultant in Canada and Malaysia, most notably with the Hay Group.

David holds an MBA from the University of Western Ontario and has also taught Rewards and Performance Measures at the University of Malaya executive MBA program. David´s clients include think tanks, consultants, academics and organizations from around the globe. His current focus, in collaboration with Dave Ulrich, is on what organizations should report about human capital intangibles to the financial markets (see www.rbl.net "What the Fortune 50 Tells Wall Street").

David Creelman can be reached by email at creelmanresearch[at]gmail.com

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Thought Leaders - October 12, 2006