Group CIO John Keells tell APIIT MBA’s ‘ I believe in Sri Lanka – stay focused’ APIIT launch NEW MBA Syllabi of Staffordshire University ( UK)
View(s):The strongest Industry linked MBA in Sri Lanka – The Staffordshire University that has a 21 year partnership with the Asia Pacific Institute of Technology( APIIT) hosted the top corporate personality Ramesh Shanmuganathan the Executive Vice President/Group Chief Information Officer of John Keells Holdings Plc at last week’s APIIT MBA Diaries in the backdrop of the launch of the new syllabi of the Staffordshire University MBA.
Ramesh Shanmuganathan the Executive Vice President/Group CIO of John Keells Holdings
The key message from the top business personality to the youngsters was ‘ yes things are rough but it will get resolved over time. I yet believe in Sri Lanka and stay focussed’. Mr. Shanmuganathan went on to say that ‘ When I decided to come to Sri Lanka twenty four years ago I decided to make a career as I believed in this country. Stay focussed and be creative in your work. The pandemic made us to look at business anew and we see how importance of technology in the new working model. The best example is the Keells outlet in Bambalapitiya which is totally automated. Including the checking out he said.
Ramesh Shanmuganathan is an entrepreneur and corporate executive. He is the current Executive Vice President and Group CIO of John Keells Holdings PLC, the largest listed conglomerate on the Colombo Stock Exchange, and has held this position since January 2006.
Shanmuganathan is also a member of the John Keells’s Group Management Committee for the Information Technology – Industry Group. He was the former CEO of Keells Business Systems Limited, a fully owned subsidiary of John Keells Holdings PLC, since January 2000 to December 2005, a systems integration company in the country as well as Director- Strategy and New Business Initiatives of John Keells Computer Services, another fully owned subsidiary of John Keells Holdings PLC, a leading Software Development house.
Educated at the Royal College Colombo, Shanmuganathan graduated from the University of Moratuwa with a first class honours BSc in Engineering (Electronics & Telecommunications). Later he went on to gain a MBA from the Postgraduate Institute of Management, University of Sri Jayewardenepura and received a Hayes-Fulbright Scholarship to study for a MSc in information technology & computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology and graduated with Phi Kappa Phi honours. He is currently reading for a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) at International School of Management, Paris, France. He is a Chartered Engineer, Chartered IT Professional and a Fellow of the British Computer Society.
An active memberships in several other professional institutions and is a visiting faculty member for several post-graduate programmes. He is also the Chair of the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Co’s (SLASSCOM) CIO Council and is actively involved with the ICTA and the Presidential Task Force on IT in steering IT to greater heights within the country. The key points made by the speaker are as follows:
1. Make work purpose driven.
Purpose matters more than ever. Reseach reveals that people who don’t feel their work contributes to their company’s mission are 630% more likely to quit their jobs than their peers who do. The way to help employees rediscover the purpose in their work is to make every task and project mission driven. As the speaker studied in the US he cited an example where a company called CommonSpirit, the largest nonprofit health system in America, starts important meetings with “reflections,” stories or videos recognising how hard it is to be a health care worker in a pandemic while also connecting to all the good they do for their patients and communities. Shanmuganathan said Managers can do the same by tying each team member’s work back to the bigger picture of why what they do matters to the world. When assigning tasks, managers should consistently outline answers to: Why is this project important? How will it impact others? How does it fit into the company’s broader mission?
2. Trust your people more than feels comfortable.
Encourage managers to offer direction, not directions. To help hybrid teams succeed, managers should clearly outline the milestones they’d like their reports to hit — and then let them figure out how to get there.
Once again citing the latest reseach Ramesh Shanmuganathan said that in the midst of the pandemic, a company decided to offer a product for mid-sized companies. Our leadership team set a clear timeline and success criteria, and then the managers stepped back to let the product managers and people scientists take over.
It felt uncomfortable at first, but by giving the team the freedom to decide their process and work product, we ended up with a better end product — and were impressed by the innovative approaches that arose. Indeed, research from Google showed that teams that index the highest on trust and psychological safety are 40% more productive than those who are low on these areas.
3. Learn in the small moments. Send people — and yourself — nudges.
Hybrid work means it’s easier to miss out on the small moments that make teamwork magical and spark innovation. The speaker cited that Google News, for example, was the result of a casual conversation between two employees standing next to each other in line for lunch. In an office, these types of interactions happen naturally; in a remote setting, they fall by the wayside and over time this is highly detrimental.
Nudges can offer an opportunity to spark these moments in a hybrid environment. Once again reseach reveal that personalize nudges based on a range of signals including individual learning goals, team focus areas, and job level. For example, if team members are eager for opportunities to learn and their manager would like to build mentorship abilities, we might deliver a nudge to the manager ahead of their next 1:1 that offers recommendations for how to have a growth-focused conversation with a report. After six months of receiving these types of personalized nudges, 90% of teams at a Fortune 500 company reported that they noticed their managers making clear improvements.
You could send nudges encouraging employees to “Reach out to a team member today” or ones that explicitly communicate unwritten norms, such as “It’s okay to ask a lot of questions “ voiced Shanmuganathan.
APIIT said in the communique that the new upgraded syllabi from Staffordshire University is all about Entrepreneurship and Marketing Innovation and the case study of Keells Outlet automation is a classic real life example on the new thinking required for today’s business executive. This is essentially what the new MBA from Staffordshire University(UK) is offering to Sri Lanka said APIIT. The
APIIT has staged top business personalities weekly in the year 2022 to address the country via the “APIIT MBA Diaries” which so far Included personalities such as Global branding guru Simon Anholt, Unilever Chairperson Hajar Alifafi, Ambassordor to China Palitha Kohonna, Nestle Managing Director Fabrice Cavallin and very recently the Sri Lankan Ambassordor to Belgium, Luxembourg and Head of the Mission to European Union Grace Asiriwathan, The former chairman of Sri Lanka Bar Council Presidents Counsel Geoff Alagaratnam Group CEO of Dialog Supun Weerasinghe and Ambassordor to United Kingdom Saroja Sirisena.
The new MBA of Staffordshire University that has been launched in 2022, which is offered for the February 2022 intake consist of subject areas – Marketing Innovation, Entrepreneurship and International Business. The logic for these subjects to be highlighted is because the consumer has gone through radical change and this has resulted in companies having to innovate/renovate their product range whilst the foreign currency issue has made it mandatory for companies having to go global. On each of this criteria we need entrepreneurship which is the center of the new learning experience said Dr Rohantha Athukorala Board Director of Asia Pacific Institute of Technology( APIIT).
Commenting on the new virus Omricon, Dr Athukorala said we must think ‘ contemporary’. We cannot use old and outdated to be. Humanity has learned a lot about the coronavirus in the past two years. Masks, social distancing and, most of all, vaccines have proved effective in curbing its spread. Yet one lesson has not sunk in: long-lasting travel restrictions are mostly futile. The behavior we must demonstrate in the new Sri Lanka is that Get vaccinated, learn to Test if we are having any symptoms and then get the treatment required. If we do not have this behaviour there is no point of all the education in the world. At APIIT awe took the high ground and became the 1st campus to be Covid-19 control certified. A new certification that was launched by SLSI in partnership with Rotary. We are ready to face the challenges of Omricon in 2022 he said. This is the new attitude required in the world to drive business growth and economic revival. We Instill this in an MBA graduate at APIIT so that when they go back to the business entity, they are ready to be the new CEO a of the organization said Dr Athukorala.
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