Another interesting aspect of Selco...

The fourth day at Selco saw me attending a daylong meeting of forty three branch heads from across all districts of Karnataka, alongwith the horizontal support teams, like training, logistics, accounts et al.  I could easily draw a parallel to the Google operations global meet I used to attend at Mountain View, where all global leads and senior management met to review metrics and strategize for the road ahead. The one significant difference being, that the meeting at Selco was entirely in Kannada.

Selco has, at  ground level, shown that neither formal education nor english speaking are requisites to manifest empowerment, strategy or leadership.

No doubt this has been a long and risky process, but over the years Selco has leveraged local talent across the state, with all branch heads without exception, having risen through the ranks; right down from office assistants and sales executives to manage teams and head branches. They understand the work to the last detail and have intuitively and at times with guidance learnt to master marketing, customer service, top lines and bottom lines. I was amazed to see a manager (puc passed) wielding a laptop and making power point presentations, all in Kannada. They talk the same language of team play, motivation, focus, commitment as well as any of us do.  I understand Harish also did his trials and experiments to get where he’s got. For instance, he had ten of his senior managers locked up in a hotel with two IIM professors, for a period of five days with a fairly flexible agenda, and apparently the professors admitted that they had learnt as much as they had taught.

Even more beautiful to see is how seamless the blend is between the so called çlasses'; Selco also hires folks from the IIMs, London school of economics and the  like and its wonderful to see the complete break-down of language, educational and cultural barriers.