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| Group Annual Day |
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| The Sanmar group annual day was celebrated on September
22, 2000, with ‘CHANGE’, the theme of the day. |
| The business session of the group day started with
Professor S Ramachander, Director, Academy for Management Excellence
(ACME), who is working with the group on strategy, people and process-related
issues, explaining the day’s agenda. He highlighted the need
for change, the need to share experiences, to discover new ways of
doing things, the need to learn from self and from one another. Prof Ramachander
was the facilitator and anchor for the entire day’s session.
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| N Sankar presented the performance of the group
for the last financial year and the projections for the current financial
year. |
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| Prof S Ramachander, Director, ACME at our Group
Annual Day. |
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| P Viswanathan, N Kumar, N Sankar, M N Radhakrishnan
and B Natraj engrossed in a group discussion on the book ‘Who
moved my Cheese?’ |
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| This was followed by a detailed presentation by
each of the Managing Directors of the four core businesses viz., Chemicals,
Speciality Chemicals, Shipping and Engineering on the current status,
a brief SWOT analysis of their business and an overview of the strategy
and the key focus areas. |
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N Sankar giving away exceptional performance awards.
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| This session, the participants felt helped the senior
management employees across the group to get an overview of the various
businesses and the key strategies in each of them. |
| Sankar then spoke about the rationale behind the
recent structural changes and how the changes provided for ‘change
with stability’. The common thread binding all the businesses
in the group is the Sanmar Management Philosophy and the People and
Financial policies, he stressed. |
| He also expressed the need for the Management Process
to be institutionalised. He said that the group was defined not by
common equity ownership but by the way people here think, operate,
plan. It was expected that there would be standardisation in MIS and
review methods. |
| P Viswanathan, Chief Executive, presented the ‘Management
Philosophy’ of the group, underlining the way we do things at
Sanmar. |
| The Chairman then presented awards to those employees
in the Executive Cadre whose performance had been adjudged ‘Exceptional’
for the appraisal year April 1999 to March 2000. |
| 22 employees received these awards and 19 more employees
in the Management Cadre would be receiving the awards in a function
to be organised by the respective businesses. The presentation of
the awards to these high performers and having them join the senior
managers for lunch and dinner was done for the first time this year.
The recognition made for an extremely happy group. |
| The afternoon was devoted to a discussion of the
book ‘Who moved my Cheese’ a book written by the famous
author Dr Spenser Johnson. All participants were given advance copies
of the book. The audience was divided into groups and different questions
given for discussion in small groups. Each group presented its answers
to the larger group. Whilst the morning’s discussion focused
on ‘moving cheese’ and the direction in which the ‘cheese’
was moving, the afternoon discussions highlighted the need to be prepared
for ‘cheese’ moving and possible coping strategies. |
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N Sankar giving away exceptional performance awards.
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| At the end of the business session, Prof S Ramachander
summarised the day’s proceedings in the following manner: |
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Change with stability |
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Growth with optimism |
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Global market place |
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Culture – the glue that binds the group |
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High degree of professionalism evident |
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Down to earth approach – in depth knowledge
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Raring to go |
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Clear, logical, transparent thinking |
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Strategic thinking |
| The dinner hosted by Chandra Sankar and Sankar was
at Hotel Park Sheraton, the venue for the morning session too. The
entire place was transformed by a Gujarati theme – artifacts
and designs from Gujarat and it was now time for fun. The spouses
of the managers joined in the celebration. There was much merry making
with games such as ‘Kaun Banega Giftpati’, and ‘String
a Song’. There were songs by the talented and the not so talented(!)
– amidst an informal atmosphere of merry making. |
| Long service awards were presented to nine senior
management employees who had completed ten years of service with the
group. The newcomers to the group were welcomed along with their spouses.
Many won different prizes for doing well in the games. Some lucky
ones won prizes by draw of lots! Well, it was time for dinner and
the fun filled evening came to an end. |
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N Sankar giving away exceptional performance awards.
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