Leading change through people

For someone who has over a decade of cross functional expertise across industries and businesses both as a senior executive and an entrepreneur, tracing back the early beginnings can be a wonderful journey.Bagrodia explains, “I come from a business family. We have multiple businesses in manufacturing and services. Since the beginning,I wanted to do something that was more knowledge based and people based. I went abroad and pursued my MBA at Oxford thinking I would stick around in the UK for some time, yet the opportunity in India was so massive.

I came back, worked in a variety of industries such as commodity trading, IT services, BPO, KPO, etc. dealing with Fortune 500 clients. Throughout, I realised that India’s shift from a core manufacturing economy to a services-led economy would result in greater opportunity related to people. Since my days at Oxford, I have wanted to discover knowledge and share it. Two years ago, I left my corporate career and founded Leap Vault, initially providing only executive search and recruitment services. I went on to add training and executive coaching.”

Spotting an opportunity

As an entrepreneur, Bagrodia discovered that there was immense opportunity in high end executive coaching in India. “I wanted to provide something very differentiated within the realm of training and coaching. Thus, I decided to focus on the need to address change, both at the individual and organisational level. I approached ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’ because they had the most lovable brand in change management. Their ideas are simple but not easy and so it was important to provide training on how to implement these ideas.”
Today, the age of an average CEO has gone down, the senior-subordinate relationships are different and the internet is playing a greater role in the way business is done. In such times, as Mr. Bagrodia puts it, “What a change coach needs now is to say ‘I understand where you are coming from, I understand your issues and I understand the changes you will need to manage’. It is not about giving him the best solution; it is about enabling change management.”

Defining the future

Initiative founder of chief learning officer: CLO Summit India 2009, Bagrodia has spent the last few months exploring greater opportunity to promote learning and development. Throwing light on the current trends, he defines the key differentiators for the future, “In India, learning initiatives have not reached the expected level. Barring the case of a few companies, these have remained confined to meeting allocated budget targets. I realised that to reap the benefits of India’s demographic dividend, the youth has to be raised from the level of good English or numerates to a level where they can unlearn and learn, where they are in sync with the broader changes and demands of the environment. Companies must equate learning to innovation and allow for such empowerment at all levels. The second reason why learning is more important today is because the meaning of employee welfare has broadened. Today, it is about the mind, not the body. The concept of CLO will enable the emotional construct through learning and development and its direct impact can be seen on business results.”

An entrepreneur’s perspective

According to Bagrodia entrepreneurship is about doing something that has not been done before or has not been done this way. It is about using your opportunity responsibly. As a citizen of India, living in a good economy and with good people is an opportunity in itself. What you choose to do with it is what makes the difference. If he had to sum it up in one sentence, Bagrodia would call his pursuits an endeavour to effect change and make an impact.