IMA Summit: ‘CEO's role has changed from Situational Adaptability to Situational Agility’

At the IMA virtual summit held on Wednesday, a panel discussion on ‘The Role of the CEO in Building Brands’ saw the coming together of industry stalwarts who spoke about the evolving role of CEOs and how Covid has given this role a new meaning.

The virtual panel had Sarbvir Singh, CEO, Policybazaar.com; Kushal Agrawal, Co-founder XOXODAY; and Rajesh Ramakrishnan, MD, Perfetti Van Melle. Dr Annurag Batra, Chairman and editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld and exchange4media, was the session chair. 

Speaking on the evolving role of a CEO , Ramakrishnan,  said, “The CEO wears multiple hats in today’s context, and if I see it from a brand building perspective, a CEO is also a chief growth officer who notices and leverages trends to form the building blocks of future growth. The CEO is also the chief sustainability officer. The third role that CEO plays is that of chief enabling officer. The CEO has to manage external and internal stakeholders, and once the strategy is clear, he has to remove the bottlenecks and galvanize the team towards agreed priorities.”

Kushal Agrawal of XOXODAT, while sharing his leadership mantra, said a good CEO should be able to “walk the talk.”

“The CEO is also the chief culture officer in terms of what kind of culture you want to build in the organisation .The ability to collect feedback and implement it very fast is the only way to grow and make your product where you want it to be. While Covid has brought a lot of unpredictability, you have to build a culture where people can become part of your mission and a good CEO can do that easily,” he shared.

Sarbvir Singh underlined the role of customer centricity and explained how top brands across the globe focus on this aspect to stay top of mind.

“One of the roles that is important for a CEO is to be the chief repeatability officer. Also, customer centricity has become a key issue. The ability to dream and ability to create a vision that resonates with the reality of the marketplace is the mark of a successful CEO.”

Speaking how Covid has influenced the CEO’s role, Ramakrishnan said being empathetic, being inspirational and being the source of energy are still the defining traits of a good CEO.

“We earlier used to talk about situational adaptability; today one of the big traits of good leadership is situational agility. Also our ability to unlearn and relearn is another important facet that Covid has highlighted and taught us," added  Ramakrishnan.