‘Provide autonomy and develop consensus’

The Corporate Executive Board (CEB) is the world’s largest business advisory platform that is used by 20,000 CXOs across 5,000+ global companies. It has developed a huge repository of business insights and strategies targeted at CXOs. Through this series, DNA and CEB attempt to delve into the minds of top executives from India to try and understand what makes them and their companies tick. 
DNA met up with Praveen Rawal, country head, India, Steelcase. Praveen was involved in supporting the expansion of the ESPN Star Sports network before moving to Steelcase five years ago.

What can you tell us about Steelcase?
Steelcase Inc is the global leader in the office furniture industry and helps people work better by providing workplace knowledge, products and services.

How would you describe your company’s approach in these hard times?
We have been cautiously hiring, to keep up with our objectives of making Steelcase a pan-India brand and reaching out more to our clients and designers. The onus is on attracting the best. We try and create a collaborative environment and encourage our employees to learn and keep developing themselves. Thankfully, our attrition levels are low and local level leadership is driven by positivism and an exploratory attitude to changing the way people work.

What is your approach to building leadership in your company?
I believe that providing autonomy and developing consensus at work is a must, as is building creative instincts and challenging people to think out of the box. Positive energy must flow throughout the organisation and this can only happen if leaders are empowered and armed with the requisite skills to succeed. Trust in people and their innate abilities drive our empowering exercises.

How did Steelcase India tackle the recession?
It helped us that our global leadership was committed to the Asia-Pacific region. We continued to invest in our people and kept on with our training and development. We refocused on studying the market, which helped us enormously in getting a realistic view of the market and understanding which side of the pyramid the drop was the maximum. We concentrated on identifying customer needs and requirements and identified areas where we could add value instead of just ‘pure play selling’ approaches.

How do you typically tackle management issues on your plate?
Firstly, understand the problem in its entirety and understand the macro and micro issues involved. Then, develop consensus where needed.

What are the most common management mistakes you see peers making?
Rapid leadership changes in our industry, less or reduced focus on development and training of the workforce and short-term pricing strategies — more ‘rescue missions’ rather than long-term brand views. A cardinal mistake during cost cutting measures is to strip features off products to cut costs. The product and the brand image take a huge beating and this, often, cannot be reversed.

What did you do differently in the recession?
There was a need to be cost effective since market conditions forced prices to drop to their lowest levels. India, as an outsourcing location has had the maximum pressure on pricing to keep its distinct cost advantage intact. We defined our niche segments better and focused on “Must Wins” based on our products’ ergonomic strengths. Going the extra mile in understanding our customer needs and staying closely connected helped us in identifying and getting the ‘right offering’ out to the customers.

What are your biggest achievements and priorities for the future?
A most satisfying achievement for us has been the ability to keep our employees engaged and satisfied during these turbulent times through the use of right HR practices and by continuing to invest in training and development. Our vision is to take Steelcase to amongst the Top 2 brands in India over the next 3-4 years in the industry’s performance segment. The opportunity in India is huge. The key to success will be to leverage our expertise and knowledge to benefit our customers.