Leadership Awards- The Forbes India Way

In many ways, we are throwing convention out of the window. Will it work? Not sure yet, but here's how we worked it out.

Cuckoo Paul
Updated: Oct 1, 2012 01:08:56 AM UTC

There's a buzz at the Forbes India offices this week as we head into the second edition of our Leadership Awards. Invitations are being sent, phones being worked and loose ends tied up. Much of the excitement is because this time around, we are trying something completely different for the awards evening. In many ways, we are throwing convention out of the window. Will it work? Not sure yet, but here's how we worked it out.

Firstly, there will be no chief guest. When we started planning the event a few months ago, our guiding thought was our theme, ‘Seeing What's Next.' The Forbes India Leadership awards are all about recognising transformational leaders; we figured the one common feature of most such leaders is that they are able to see what's coming, and react to it, ahead of everyone else. The event too, should therefore be inspired, not by the past, but by what is yet to come. We figured that doing away with wearisome speeches, especially those of the political kind, was one good way of breaking with the past.

Very soon our colleagues, at CNBC-TV18's events team, who have presented several award shows and are helping us put together this one, warmed up to the idea of breaking shibboleths. We began working on a format. How about, if we had no stage, no formal speaking area, was one thought. If the speaker can move about and mix with the audience. How can we make the audience a part of the show, not just spectators. In the real world, opinions are instant and transmitted to everyone else immediately through social media. Shouldn’t then, the audience, be able to have its say? The events team suggested giving everyone a tablet device, so they could comment, like, dislike or ask the speakers questions. We began working on a dedicated tablet app that allowed us to do all of this.

One senior editor asked, If there are to be no long speeches, why should that rule apply only to the chief guest? Attention spans are getting short, and we are talking of the future when they will in all probability reach goldfish levels. So, how about giving every speaker a time limit? Someone decided to really rock the boat, and suggested three minutes!

But is three minutes enough? The response was, is 140 characters too short? If so many of us can adapt to condensing our thoughts to tweets, a sharp time limit should work too. But would our distinguished speakers, the who's who of corporate India agree with this? And more importantly, will they be able to put across their points of view so briefly?

With much self-doubt, we thought it prudent to discuss the idea with a few wise men. We reached out to two Friends of Forbes India. Our awards jury chairman KV Kamath and Adil Zainulbhai, chairman McKinsey India, who have over the past few years been very valuable sounding boards for our often whacky, ideas. To our surprise, we got a very enthusiastic response from both of them. Mr Kamath, a veteran of hundreds of awards functions, thought it was a great gauntlet to throw at the speakers. It would stir things up, and make everyone think hard, he said. Mr Zainulbhai went a step further, and suggested we have someone ring a great big gong when time was up!

Suitably charged, we went ahead and decided to go the whole hog, and break some more rules while we were at it. The next idea was to have one common provocative question for all the speakers. We needed something that was futuristic and forced people to think. That went boom, bang, pow! Peter Griffin, our Life and social media editor, has had a long stint in advertising. He is someone we turn to, usually while closing our edition every fortnight, when we need one-liners that pack power and sound great. Peter doodled for a while, as is his wont on such occasions, and suggested a question that is sharp and yet open to a hundred interpretations: “What's the one big thing that will change everything for everyone in this room, that no one knows about yet?”

There was unanimity in the team that this would work. All that remained was the minor matter of convincing our speakers to go with this. Happy to report, that they've all very sportingly agreed to take up the challenge.

Our illustrious speakers (all revving up now for their presentations) are: • Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman Aditya Birla group.
• Adil Zainulbhai, MD, McKinsey & Co,India.
• N Chandrasekharan, CEO, TCS.
• William Bissell, managing director, Fabindia.
• Lakshmi Narayanan, vice chairman and ex-CEO of Cognizant.
• Nitin Paranjpe, CEO and Managing Director, Hindustan Unilever Ltd.
• Karl Slym, CEO, Tata Motors
• Akhil Gupta, chairman, Blackstone India.

Each one of these will present their view of the big shift in three minutes. The awards will be presented on Friday, September 28 at the Trident, Nariman Point in Mumbai. Over the next few days, we will make sure that you, dear reader, are part of this action. We will bring you regular updates on the event. It will be telecast on CNBC-TV18 and we will also be tweeting live using @forbes_india

Do write in to tell us what you think will be the ‘Big thing that will change everything for all of us in the future, that we don't know about yet.'

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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