I’m Kanchana TK, Director General at the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India, and this is how I Lead from Within
Kanchana is the Director General of the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India, and is focusing her attention on improving accessibility of healthcare in India. With more than two decades of experience in healthcare related industries, she is also a passionate advocate for gender equality at the workplace. This is her story, and how she leads from within…
My Professional Journey
The one thing that makes me different from most other people is that I don’t believe in linear growth. It’s not like I joined a company, spent 25 years, consistently climbed the ladder and reached a certain level in my career. I took a few chances in my life but there was a pattern to it. I have a combination of skills, which I believed would take me further in life. I was in the hotel industry when it was a sunrise industry. That has been the base of who I am today thanks to my job with Taj Hotels, which gave me huge exposure with some very senior people. But largely, I want to talk about my defining moments in insurance and in advocacy.
I moved to the insurance industry when it was a young industry, and from there to health insurance, which was again very new at the time. Pharmacy advocacy in India is in its infancy and I have now moved into this field. Overall, I have moved into careers, which have offered me new opportunities, which I love. Those have been my positive experiences. I have been in industries that are sunrise or new, where you are able to be far more liberated and creative, and therefore, leave behind a strong legacy. The other positive thing that I have learnt early on is that whether you’re selling insurance, consulting with clients, or in policy, trust is the most important aspect of it all. I have also realized that in policy, the impact of your actions is not quick. It is a very slow and long drawn out process but one that has the potential to create larger impact.
As I have grown older, both in age and in my career, I have realized that most roles are about making long-term impact, and not short-term changes. I also understand that we need to have more and more long-term strategic inputs into our businesses and into our policies. This realization is what gives me a calmer and longer term vision to deal with frustrations.
My Superpowers
My super powers are my courage and resilience. Courage is key because often in a leadership position you need the courage to say it like it is, whether to your board, your stakeholders, your employees, and even your family sometimes. These are very important as a leader. The second superpower for me is my resilience. I’ve had personal setbacks, but each time, I’ve said, ‘Okay, it happened, let me deal with it, and let me move on.’
My Motivation
I am very lucky to have a family background of individuals that were highly erudite. I grew up in a family where, even in the 1940s, all my aunts were college educated. We all read the newspaper at our breakfast tables, and discussed politics and economics. I was privileged also because there was no difference between my aunts or uncles or any one of us – we were all intellectually stimulated equally and equal opportunities were provided to all of us.
A big source of my motivation was my mother, who was extremely career focused. She was a senior officer in a Bank. In those days, she was a gold medalist in Economics. Seeing my mother at a very early stage lead teams of only men was a huge inspiration for me. The other lesson that I learned pretty early, mainly because I saw the way my mother ran the house, was that financial independence is very important. Whether it is your own business, your consulting practice, or you are doing part-time work, whatever it is, financial independence really puts the woman on an equal footing with men both at work and at home. I also saw that my mother was earning a higher income than my dad. We never had issues where it was thought that he needed to earn more as he was the man of the house. Essentially, I come from a family which empowered women. Those are the things that inspired me.
My Role Models
There are many in the corporate world – Indra Nooyi who has done well for herself, and Sheryl Sandberg who has done extremely well in the tech world. There is Emma Walmsley, who has broken barriers by becoming Glaxo Smith Kline’s global CEO. But, somehow I feel that women who have made it in the corporate world sometimes have it easier as they have a certain amount of structure to support them. I really admire those women who come from the a grass-roots level and break barriers. I look at women in politics like Angela Merkel – for me she’s a huge role model – and Theresa May. These are people dealing with tough political and economic crises – those are my role models.
On Dealing with Gender Biases
Gender biases are very deep rooted, and surface because of many things, especially social structures and cultural biases. We’ve only recently started adopting a few policies at the workplace for women. Till today, a large number of women in India are not working women. We must also understand that most men in leadership positions come from backgrounds where women may not have been working. These are deep-rooted biases which may not even be conscious. The world today has become very sanitized but unconscious biases do creep up, whether in a tendency to interrupt or speak over a woman, or sometimes in being overpowering with her.
In today’s gender skewed world, we need to strive for just one thing – excellence and professionalism. As we do that, the world will move to a place that is balanced. I strive for balanced leadership, for all genders, where everybody is given an equal opportunity or platform to shine. I strongly advocate for every woman to be a catalyst for this change. That is the only way to ensure gender parity happens sooner rather than later.
My Core Values
At work I would say three things. Integrity is important. I think high integrity means a lot of things – it means the courage to be open about failures, to be open about what went wrong. This leads me to my second value, which is transparency. I think they go with each other. But, I think leaders are often afraid of talking about failures, talking about changes at the workplace. Transparency is important because if you do not have that you will not end up having trust with your stakeholders, whether those are your shareholders or employees. The third thing I would say is empathy. As leaders, we have to drive results. But in order to drive results, you have to drive people. While results are important, people need guidance as well, and that’s where empathy is necessary. Empathy is a huge part of my value system. I like understanding how a person is feeling, and what he or she is aspiring towards.
On Dealing with Fear
I do have a fear of failure. I am paranoid about success – that is my weakness. The way I have dealt with this is to pause and course-correct. One of the biggest strengths for a leader is to not panic. The minute you panic there are too many personal biases that surface, which then could impact the course you take.
On Identifying the Right Sponsor/Mentor
I have had a few mentors in my life but missed having a sponsor and I had to find my own way. The one thing that I would say for women who are looking for a mentor is that the mentor needs to see in you a talent, a spark, so that the mentor feels that you can make it. A mentor has to believe the person has the talent and the aspiration. I would say, please look for connection with somebody who has faith in you. Sponsors are very hard to get and a mentor could become your sponsor. A sponsor could be somebody who you just met on the flight. Somebody who has just seen your brief and you realize you connect with each other.
Women have to network – it is easy to lose sight of the fact that networking is hugely important in today’s world. As I grow older, I believe less in hierarchy, and more in peer-to-peer learning. For peer-to-peer learning to happen, women need to network and collaborate. Men network because they can go for a drink, they can have beer on a Sunday afternoon, they can go for a football match or a round of golf. Women tend to go back to their families, and not focus their energies on networking, and that needs to change, so we can create the right opportunities for advancing our career goals.
