How do corporate leaders manage? Where do they draw inspiration from? CNBCTV18.com is publishing a series of interviews titled ‘My Management Mantra’ with experienced leaders who run major companies and oversee a large workforce. This one features Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO of the e-commerce platform Snapdeal.

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What time do you like to be at your desk?

Generally, I prefer getting my external meetings done before I get to work, so that I don’t have to spend time on the road going back and forth between meetings and the office. On days I don’t have external meetings scheduled, I tend to be in the office around 10am.

Where is the best place to prepare for leadership: at business school or on the job?

On the job, but also by spending quality time with leaders you admire and learning from them about how they have weathered many storms and navigated their organisations to success.

Describe your management style.

Being focused on a few things and driving the same focus across the team by having a small set of high-impact common goals across the entire organisation.

Are tough decisions best taken by one person or collectively?

Most of the tough decisions can only be taken by consultation with the key team members. Often after a constructive debate, everyone would converge to the same decision. However, there are times when the path to be taken is not obvious, which is when the leader needs to make a judgment call and take the team along with him/her.

Do you want to be liked, feared or respected?

Most importantly, seen as a peer and member of the team.

A business leader that you draw inspiration from?

Sunil Mittal, Uday Kotak and Ajay Singh.

Which management book has influenced you the most?

The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz.

Do you socialise with your team outside of work?

Yes. Our leadership team goes out for dinner once a month and a broader team goes out for a social event once a quarter. Outside of that, more importantly, we do a lot of engagements within the company with various teams which gives the opportunity for everyone to get to know each other as people, outside of the context of a task-focused discussion.

What would your key management advice be?

Spend a significant amount of time constantly communicating internally with the team – about the direction of the company, key focus areas, challenges, soliciting feedback on the team’s experience of working at the company as well as its strategy and execution. A great culture required a tremendous amount of physical, intellectual and emotional investment into internal communication by the leader(s) of the company.

First Published:Jul 2, 2019 7:34 PM IST