Ken Blanchard shares leadership mantras with ISB students

Ken Blanchard delivered a keynote address on leadership to corporate head honchos and management students at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad on Thursday.

The world-renowned author and management expert spoke on 'Leading at a Higher Level - Results and People' and left the audience with enough morsel to chew on.

In his lively interactive style, Blanchard kept the audience engaged on issues around leadership.

He said much depended on having the right kind of leadership. "You got to start with a clear vision and values and turn the pyramid upside down so that your people can use their brains."

The second most important thing was "to treat your people right". Blanchard said in any organization, employees are top priority. "Take care of them, train them, empower them and then those people will go out of their way to take care of your number two customers which is the people who buy your products and use your services - your official customers."

And, Blanchard said, that if employees treated the official customers properly then these customers will come back to the company (for its goods and services) which in turn will take care of the company's third important customer - the owners - the people who have made financial investments into the company.

Blanchard, arguably one of the most influential leadership experts in the world is respected for his groundbreaking work in the field of leadership and management. He went on to give his opinion on profits.

"Profit is the applause or the by-product you get from creating a motivating environment for your people so they will take care of your customer.... and thereby you will kill the competition."

He said it is very important to talk to employees about their careers and help them accomplish their goals.

In a similar vein, Blanchard elaborated on performance standards. Creativity and initiative cannot be measured. "If you want your people to be creative then tell them I need two suggestions every month on how we can perform better and if you do that you get a high creativity score," he said.