Mr. Sandeep Chaudhry, the CEO of AON Consulting, India and chair of the Emerging Markets Council, addressed students of IIM Indore as a part of its annual business conclave, Colloquium, on Sunday. He led the discussion by stressing on the importance of personal evolution along with building your professional competencies and highlighted how having a life outside that of your work is necessary. He also gave insights into the secrets of business success and told students that an organization must establish the Why of its mission before anything else. The enthusiastic students made the discussion very interactive and Mr. Sandeep was quizzed by them on everything from its key strategies in HR consulting to the partnership of AON and Manchester United. Finally, Mr. Sandeep expressed he was very pleased by the campus and experience in Indore, and it was always a pleasure to interact with the leaders of India’s tomorrow. Mediacom got a chance to have two words with him after the session.
Shoumik – Sir, what advice would you give to the students, as they are quite concerned about how to keep themselves relevant in the job market today, and the VUCA world as you mentioned.
Sandeep – Well, I think you all here are already doing most of the things in order to keep yourselves relevant. I don’t think that the question of relevance is around your skills or anything like that. I fundamentally believe that in VUCA world, your resilience, your ability to unlearn is going to be most important, so don’t become more emotional about what you know, where you come from, what you’ve done. There is a constant need of learning new things and that means that you’ll have to unlearn what you already know. So, if you follow that trajectory, I have no doubt that you guys will be the future leaders.
Shoumik – Sir, what advice would you give to a person who has leadership aspirations such as becoming a CEO, a person who is currently on campus pursuing his/her MBA?
Sandeep – Well, firstly I would say it isn’t a great aspiration just to become a CEO one day. You all are just going to be starting your journey and I believe one should do that with an open and clear mind and don’t bog yourself down about what you want to become, say ten years from now. For all you know, you might be setting a really low goal and you’ll end up achieving only that. Understand that you could actually end up achieving 20 or 100 times more than that. So, go with the flow, enjoy your life while you build it. Don’t build your life so that you can enjoy one day, otherwise it’s never going to come. So, have a great time.
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