Alum ‘81 and COO of Accenture India visits GMP: Ms Rekha Menon on Success, Leadership, Core values and more

It is tough to be a CXO in today’s interconnected world. You have to be ultra careful in each decision you take and that makes the job much more difficult. The solution is to define your core values and be true to them whatever you do. This was only one of the personal insights shared by Ms Rekha Menon, COO of Accenture India and an XLRI alumnus, while she was talking to the current students of General Management Program(GMP) at XLRI, Jamshedpur.

Ms Rekha Menon, the gold medalist from 1981 batch of XLRI, graduated at the time when women were seldom seen outside their homes after 6 pm and the top recruiters of those times refused to hire women for business management functions. How she got successful by fighting such a discriminating system and still managing to retain her core values was an insightful learning for the current students, especially the numerous female students of XLRI.

The audience was particularly enriched by Ms Menon’s ideas on leadership qualities needed for a top leader in today’s corporate environment. She said – “Since the industry is changing at a phenomenal pace, ambidexterity and adaptive capacity of a leader is absolutely essential today.” She also cited “ability to learn from the crucible and challenging events in one’s life” as one of the differentiating factors between great leaders and the rest. However the most fundamental and defining quality of all is one’s integrity and a set of other core values which one needn’t “wear on the sleeve” but withhold supremely in all one’s actions.

This last quality is especially relevant in today’s context when in addition to imparting quality management education; it is increasingly becoming important for Bschools to teach about the value systems. And that’s exactly what got reinforced by Ms Menon today. “Look at the mirror hard”, “Think what you will be remembered for” were some of the expressions which threw the budding managers in introspection.

 

 

In the ensuing question and answer session, the students also sought Ms Menon’s insights increasingly relevant areas of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, scarcity of successful entrepreneurial ventures in India and the threat to Indian IT industry from China and Latin American countries.

Ms Rekha Menon is an XLRI alumnus, and the gold medalist from 1981 batch. Starting her career on the shopfloor of Eicher Goodearth, and then moving to Ashok Leyland, she has also served as the General Manager (Human Resources) with Aditi Technologies. She co-founded of India's first CRM company, Talisma, in 2000, before joining Accenture in 2004. During her tenure, Accenture India has shown a multi-fold growth from a 3000-people company to now more than 57,000-strong company (and the largest Accenture operation globally).