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7 Questions with Himanshu patil
7 Questions with Himanshu patil
Name: Himanshu patil
Current title: Co Founder & Director
Current organisation: Cloudsocial Technologies Pte Ltd
https://www.linkedin.com/in/himanshu-patil-cloudsocial
1. What have you found most challenging as a leader of a small or medium enterprise?
The most challenging is to ensure that all members are aligned to a common goal and for sure you will not have all the skill sets required in the available team.
2. How did you become a leader of an SME? Can you please briefly tell the story?
I was the Chief Operating Officer of a Nasdaq listed company operating out of India. I had over 500 direct and close to 10,000 indirect employees. Then I decided to move into an entrepreneurial role and set up a SME along with two of my colleagues.
3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?
In the morning I get up and have a cup of tea with my wife ( we have been married for nearly thirty years) where we catch up and exchange notes and generally discuss the day ahead. Once I reach office it is all about work till the end of the day, mostly spent in talking to colleagues, clients and some part of the day in just thinking about ideas to implement next. Once I am back from office then spend a little time with family and dinner after which either watch some Netflix or do some followup reading or penning more thoughts on ideas for a couple of hours sometimes more. Usually I sleep by midnight and get by 730 am.
4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?
At the start of any project, get all stakeholders in one room, identify all the interlinked dependencies, clearly allocate resources and responsibilities with timelines. Delegate, but keep track and never micro manage.
5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?
"Outliers'', the lesson learnt was that to master anything, you need to put in the long hard hours. There are no shortcuts to success.
6. How do you build leadership capacity in an SME?
Through delegation with empowerment and inculcating risk taking. They must overcome the fear of failure. Fail Fast.
7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader of an SME so far?
I started the company with colleagues from our earlier organization as the core. As I was many levels up with some of them in the earlier organization there was a barrier, they would not come to me directly or would hesitate. To get them to have open discussion was a challenge. And this is something I have been working on. The difference between a large matrix organization and a flat start up.