Talk with Mr. Jaitly

VK Jaitly is an exceptional speaker and is known for his motivational and leadership skills. As a proficient speaker he is apt at conducting training programs that inspire professionals. His trainings are well-known for being informative, interactive, and action oriented. His training programs expose professionals on the latest trends prevalent in the industry. He is the architect of ‘Business Excellence Program’ for corporates.

Jaitly did his M.Tech in Sat Comm and B.Tech (Honrs) in E&ECE both from IIT Kharagpur and he worked extensively in the area of Web Marketing for his MBA project.

Jaitly has a number of articles to his credit and has delivered lectures/ presentations at National and International Seminars from the forums like CII, FICCI, ASSOCHAM, AMCHAM, C-DAC, Common Wealth Countries Forum for e-Gov, CSI, CSIR, Cyber Media, Technical/ Management institutes including IITs and Defence Officers’ Conferences on diverse topics. He was invited to China at Nanjing University and a few others to deliver lectures. He is a sought after speaker on key occasions at numerous colleges. He has given interviews on Radio, TV and Internet.

Jaitly has traveled to US, UK, China, Australia, Italy, Egypt, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Maldives and thus has a global exposure and understanding, He had been the Leader for an All India Motor Cycle Rally and was Oi/C for a Car Rally.

 

Here are some excerpts from the talk he had with LinkedPune

 

LinkedPune : You are on  exploratory trip to Pune. What exactly are you looking forward in Pune.

Jaitly: Pune is the cultural capital of Maharashtra. There is huge industry. I have visited this city a number of times earlier on short visits. This time I want to meet a large number of my friends and their contacts in the industry to explore the possibility of conducting my workshops on ‘Business Excellence’ so that I can regularly visit this city for which I always had a great liking.

LinkedPune :  Sir, What are the key ingredients for a startup to be successful. Please elaborate.

 Jaitly: There is no standard recipe devised by anyone in the world till date that can assure guaranteed success for a startup, but one thing is sure that if your startup is based on a unique idea which is likely to be lapped up by the consumer then your chances of success become brighter.

It is said that have a dream and the dream will build you. But the dream has to be followed with concrete action and commitment and should result into a burning desire in the belly. Decide the direction leading towards your dream. It may be difficult to even decide the direction based on your dream. So break your dream into a number of deadlines. They will become your goals. And start achieving those goals with dedication, discipline and determination.

This philosophy if followed in toto shall increase the chances of success for a startup.    

LinkedPune :  How do you cope up with failures on the way to becoming an entrepreneur?

 Jaitly: Each failure has to be taken in the spirit of another stepping stone towards success. Show me an  entrepreneur who had absolutely a smooth cakewalk. The obstacles will be there. They are setbacks and one has to learn from each one of them and keep moving and the success shall follow. And sometimes these failures make you wiser and you should be ready for a conscious mid course correction too.

And all your goals should be SMART: Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Timed.

LinkedPune:  What do you enjoy more, mentoring to CXOs or grooming the young students.

 Jaitly: Both have their own challenges. CXOs and senior people have a lot of experience. There are two varieties amongst them. Majority of them are rigid in their attitude and approach and are not willing to change so easily and such people continue with their stagnant organizations or keep moving with the ups and downs of the market. The other variety is the willing lot who are ready to accept change. They are open to learning new things. Such CXOs take their organizations on the path of greater growth despite the minor upheavals in the market.

The college students are the uninitiated lot. They are inexperienced and are not able to appreciate many aspects of the corporate challenges. Unfortunately majority of them are directionless. Very few of them have the real spark in them and they are full of energy and enthusiasm. I get a great satisfaction when I come across some students of this type with abundant energy with dreams in their eyes. It is comparatively much easier to mould them and give them a direction.

LinkedPune:  What are the symptoms when a company must decide to go for your Business Excellence Program?

Jaitly: Let me first explain how to achieve Business Excellence.

 

It is the Excellence in Personal life, Excellence in Professional life and also Excellence in Public/Social life that will lead to Business Excellence. And once an organization has achieved Business Excellence, the productivity of the people and hence that of the organization is bound to go up. We all very well know that once the productivity of your sales teams, marketing teams, production floor people and even the HR and accounts people go up, this will result into higher Profitability of the Business outfit.

 

We must also remember that Excellence is not a destination but an ongoing effort. We must continuously try to keep achieving ‘The Next Level of Excellence’. So a regular regime of coaching and training should be the part of any organization striving to achieve greater heights. So if an organization is already doing such trainings, it is good and if not, they must start programs on business excellence irrespective of whether they are doing good or bad.

LinkedPune:  Your journey so far from Indian Navy to business coach was planned, natural progression or accidental.

 Jaitly: To be precise, I will say it was none of them. Being an Electronics and Communication graduate from IIT Kharagpur, I joined the Indian Navy in the technical branch and was deeply involved in technology for about 22+ years when I decided to join the corporate world. I delved into the so called processes like project management, BPR and ITIL etc. 

With my own experience and my interaction with a large number of friends in the industry, my belief strengthened in the well known concept of PPT (People, Processes and Technology/Tools) for the success of any operation or project. And my experience tells me that of the three, People are the Most Important as it is people, who manage the processes, and it is people again, who use the technology and the tools and it is the people who innovate and create systems.

And my passion was to manage people when I was handling technology as a senior person and again I was actually handling people while managing processes too. So I thought that the time has come for me to focus my full attention on people now. So I say that I actually evolved to be a business coach/corporate trainer or in general term a management consultant with a focus on people.

LinkedPune :   One last question, You mentioned “human networking” , can you please explain.

Jaitly: There needs to be a great stress on the relevant disciplines of engineering, be it civil, mechanical, electrical or even computer engineering in most of the organizations depending upon their area of operation. You can train your people on any new technology you acquire and your people will achieve the desired skills with a bit of training and practice.

 

Similarly, you can teach them the processes that need to be adopted. But all this training on technology and the processes will fail if your people are not energized, enthused, empowered and have the ownership mentality. So the greater focus on people is the requirement and that is what I call Human Engineering, that is the most important irrespective the type of industry or the type of products and services being offered by any organization. 

LinkedPune :

It was great to talk to you. I hope our members will benefit from your thoughts.

 

Please get back to Mr. Jaitly  on   jaitly.iit@gmail.com