Karl Slym - People Don't Hold Back in India
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Image: Amit Verma
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Karl Slym
Age: 49
Designation: Managing Director, General Motors, India
Past Career: Started at Toyota as a senior manager, moved to GM in 1995 and has held various roles across geographies like director of manufacturing in Gliwice, Poland. He then went to GM in the US and Canada and later became head of quality, APAC-Seoul
Future Strategy: To exceed customers’ expectations
Interests: Music, Bollywood, cricket and traveling
I came here four years ago from South Korea. In my old job, I was in charge of quality for the APAC [Asia Pacific] region, which included India and that meant a visit for the first time [to India] during that job. However, when we visit on business, it is very different from living in the place. We go from airport, hotel, factory, and that’s it. Whereas, it is very different when you are living here.
Four years ago is when I first arrived with my household goods and my wife and started living here. Both my wife and I have said that India is the most difficult country to get used to. There are some things you fight and you don’t accept when you get here.
For example, just getting something fixed in the house. ‘What time will you be here? I will be there at 10 a.m.’ So then I wait till 10 a.m. Then we realise 10 could be 4 o’clock, four days later as opposed to 10 a.m. on that day. We waste so much time waiting for people and that is very frustrating. Eventually, you stop believing that if someone says 10, it does mean 10, and you arrange it around when it can really happen so you can enjoy the rest of your life. That’s one small example of things you decide to work around.
Normally, it takes two to three weeks to set up our house and start living a normal life. But here it took probably two months before our setup became okay.
However, the opposite end of that is, this would be the most difficult country to leave now.
We do immerse ourselves. We have one house in the world and that’s in India. We don’t have my wife going to her hometown every six months.
My wife has 32 sarees and she used to get help to drape them, but now she can do it on her own. This is me being the Bollywood king [shows a photo of himself dancing in a kurta]. We like Bollywood movies and music. That is important. If you do that in a country, then you are not looking for your next trip out. You are viewing your life here and it’s not like ‘I’ve got this much time before my next trip to my hometown’. I’ve not been to England, which is my home country, for two and a half years.
We don’t have cooks or anything like that. That’s one thing we didn’t embrace. We’ve been married 27 years, we don’t have kids and we’ve never had anybody in our house. The thought of having somebody in the house doing something we normally did for 27 years... we couldn’t get our head around why we would want to do that.
On the working side, everyone’s got their own business in India whether it’s selling chole baturas or aloo tikkas on the side of the road or something else.
If you can tap into this entrepreneurial spirit to improve your business, then that’s great. It is what we call kaizen or continuous improvement. I heard about it and witnessed it as a visitor, but now we’re able to harness that for the benefit of all of us.
I knew I had a very good enthusiastic team. Our Bangalore engineers turned the GM Europe piece [Chevrolet Beat] into a fuel-efficient car that’s suitable for India. They are so motivated and excited about doing those kinds of things for India.
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