"Meet the CEO" Programme
Rajshree Pathy, Chairperson and Managing Director, Rajshree Group of Companies (left), interacting with students of the business school of Kumaraguru College of Technology at the "Meet the CEO" programme in Coimbatore recently. Money, environment, attitude, growth, fun and training, are the major factors that motivated employees to perform and remain loyal to any organisation. This was the combined opinion of the four chief executive officers who had come together at the interaction meet “Meet the CEOs” organised by the KCT Business School of the Kumaraguru College of Technology.The panel comprising M. Manickam, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Sakthi Sugars Limited, Rajshree Pathy, Chairman and Managing Director, Rajshree Group of Companies, V. Venkateswaran, General Manager, Ammarun Foundries, and Arjun Ganesan, Chief Executive Officer, GV Media Entertainment Limited, Chennai, enlightened the business school students in a free wheeling tete-e-tete.
Elaborating further on the topic of motivation, Mr. Venkateswaran said that in addition to the above factors, encouraging people from within the company to bring in more people and promoting one’s own rather than bringing in people from outside for higher posts also helped as great motivators. Ms. Pathy felt that the days of feudalism in the workplace was long gone. “It is freedom that an employee looks for in a workplace. There has to be chemistry between the employee and the organisation.”
According to Mr. Manickam it was “allowing people to do their job”. But, the best motivation any organisation could give a good employee was “identifying the bad hands and knocking them off. When you remove the weeds, the system will run smoothly. Give a clean space for a performer to work in the absence of spokes”. While the interaction touched upon various issues relating to business, it also gave the students an honest opinion of what an employer expects out of an employee and how an employee should perform.
According to Mr. Ganesan, the youngest CEO around, entrepreneurship simply meant doing things away from the ordinary. “Even though it is important to make money, it is not important to have money to start a business. What is important is to put together a good business plan. Then, find a venture capitalist to fund you. An entrepreneur need not be the CEO of his company; he should be able to make his team realise his vision”
According to him a good entrepreneur need not be the smartest person. He should surround himself with smarter people with greater intellect to take the venture forward. Students were given tips on how to face interviews, about maintaining an environment-friendly workplace, the importance of being innovative and so on. They were urged to become experts in their chosen field of interest. “One cannot be an expert in five different fields. If he is an expert in a single field, that experience and expertise will help him try out related ventures with ease,” the CEOs concluded.
