This was the session delivered by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor of Harvard Business School and considered one of the greatest business thinkers.

Change will continue to happen, more so in these downturns, change is a pain in the neck but we have to adopt it and improvise our offerings. Connect with your people so that they will create the change you are looking for.

She suggested 5 key differentiators between the winners and the losers in this “Changing” world

- Winning is a great deal compared to losing and that winning behavior has to be inculcated into the team which you have to as part of the culture of considering what is victory and encourage people for the success so that they will me more confident to try and get next successes. So one has to change the working culture where we mark what success is, achieve it, celebrate it and encourage who are responsible for it. This is highly contagious and small victories breeds higher confidence and leads to higher success. Winners she said thinks both small and big and they plan chores for short terms like a week, month etc and achieve it and celebrate it. She compared the winning to how sports team does, when they win, they spend lot longer with each, chat about it, celebrate it and create that aura of success around them but losers immediately disperse and want to be lonely. So basically setting small realizable targets, achieving it and celebrating the success and creating the aura of it leads to more confident team getting more successes. She also said that how you define success is also critical and is time/context dependent. For example in these down turns, Toyota like other auto counterparts lost money but they lost a very little compared to others and they would have felt that as a success in a way.

- It is not talent which differentiates winners from losers but it is the talent in the team that makes the difference. Culture of collaboration is very critical and especially in the downturns, antagonism is generally the prevailing condition but if changed to collaboration and working together atmosphere, they will emerge out as winners.

- Winners tend to be more generous (act of giving) even during down times. Winners show that they have a larger purpose than just making money.

- Winners are always active irrespective of the situation and keep working on what to do next while losers are passive. Winners keep ready for change, what next, future opportunities and always will be active with one or other and those who are active always end up getting innovative ideas and will survive and in the process will figure out new markets, new business and revenue models and will continue to make more money.

- Winners not always win all – they lose too but they find ways faster than losers to accept, recover, correct the mistakes and move on faster.

With this she concluded the last session of the day. She is a very good orator and knows how to drive her ideas. I really liked the way she presented and wish she had more time.

I am signing off for the day – had a long day got up at 3am to catch a flight and is almost midnight – will submit all these tomorrow and let me hit the sack and get ready for another busy day tomorrow.

Manjunath M Gowda, S7 Software