New- gen leaders bring their own strengths like appetite for risk-taking, finding new possibilities and urge to make an impact. There are a few nuggets from my experience and learnings on leadership, I would like to share with new-gen leaders for making a lasting impact as a leader.

•As much as leadership is about creating something new, being strategic and scaling, it is equally about building the right culture, quality of work and impact of that work. Strategy without a healthy culture is an incomplete picture.
•Courage to challenge the status-quo and not settling with what exists is a must. Leaders must have a growth mindset with a will to constantly learn and evolve.
•Your leadership team can either make or break the organization’s vision and culture. I strongly feel building trust and having a cohesive leadership team is essential for an organizations and leader’s success. Trust building starts with You as a leader. Be real, accept that one is vulnerable, accept and learn from mistakes.
•Today’s leaders must have understand the changing landscape of technology, business and its impact on organization and people.
•Inclusive mindset is essential for a leader to build a high-performing organization where people can thrive. A leader must be actively seeking to work and collaborate with people with different backgrounds, cultures, perspectives and generations.

Amidst the changing times that we are living in, leaders have to be comfortable with this pace and magnitude of change in business and personal lives. There is a lot that is unknown, yet anticipating what could be next and taking bold decisions will differentiate one as a great leader. While we make all the business decisions, being compassionate and keeping people first should be the way.

Key Traits to Lead a Team & Execute a Project
Leaders and project teams have to understand the “Big” picture and how your product fits in. It helps define and optimize the right product goals. In semiconductor R&D centers, most of the critical projects are around product development, which demand faster execution due to rapid change in technology and evolving customer needs. There are a few important measures that drive successful project execution. Stakeholder alignment plays an important role while defining the product goals and project success factors, however communication has to continue to keep stakeholders and team updated and aligned on progress, changes and challenges.

Few more elements that should be part of planning and readiness check are-
•Team readiness - always look few years ahead in terms of technology and upskill the team continuously.
•Schedule - milestone adherence and checks are important to understand the status and if any risks to be mitigated.
•Quality - have the right KPIs defined and achieve it, as each mistake is very expensive in semiconductor’s context.
•Systematic post-mortem at the end of the project and incorporating lessons learnt into the next execution is the key.
As part of our strategy, we plan project and strategic reviews including assessment on the business scorecard key metrics. This helps us assess our focus on roadmap and project pipeline, talent readiness, operational excellence, what new has to be done and how we are enabling leaders and teams to deliver on critical projects.

I look at each day as an experience, both my day at work and in personal life. The day I see my products making into the final end consumer product and touching day to day lives of many people, it gives me immense satisfaction. There are many such instances. Every time I see my people grow into great leaders makes me feel proud.

I have never seen any day as a bad day. Ofcourse there can be a bad news, and the right approach is to understand and handle the situation.

Measure to Support the Team During Pandemic
Keeping our teams and their family members safe has been our top priority during the pandemic. One of the ‘SSIR Cares’ initiatives we have taken for their wellbeing is the Covid-19 Vaccination Drive for our employees and their dependents. This is to ensure that everyone gets vaccinated as soon and as conveniently as possible. We have completed phase one of a safe and convenient vaccination drive in June and aim to vaccinate over 2000 people with upcoming phases. In addition to the vaccination drive, we have a reimbursement policy to cover vaccination cost for employees and dependents who are not in Bangalore or are not able come for the drive. Second wave of Covid-19 has been devastating and impacted many of our team members and their families. Our intent has been to support them and be there for them. Be it encouraging employees to take Covid-19 healthcare leave to recuperate, providing assistance to find resources, hospitals, medicines etc. on priority or having facilities like 24*7 doctor consultation. While we enabled purchase of health-kit for Covid-19 infected employees, we also provided monetary support to all employees for covid-19 safety items like Thermometer, Pulse Oximeter and procured oxygen concentrators for support to employees and families who need it.

However, unfortunately we lost few of our colleagues. Though this loss is irreparable for their families and us, we are doing our best for bereaved families. In case of unfortunate demise of any of our employees due to Covid-19, Samsung Semiconductor India R&D Center will give ‘two year salary payment’ to the family of the deceased employee, in addition to group term life insurance policy. We stand together with the families left behind and this assistance policy will provide significant financial help to them. In addition, we have also extended medical insurance policy for the bereaved families.
This tragedy is unusual; we have not experienced something like this before. I strongly feel that companies and leaders should approach this situation with compassion, flexibility and take decisions anticipating what could be next normal.

Traits Future Leader Should Possess
Future leaders have to know that leadership is beyond title, it’s about what you make out of your role and opportunities you take up. In my conversations with young and emerging leaders, I always say that there is no substitute to having passion and vision in whatever you do. Having integrity, which means doing what you say and keeping organization’s interest first, and having humility to learn is the beginning to become an inspiring leader in the future.
Prepare today for the future! It’s always about the legacy you want to leave behind and want to be known for.