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Speaker Luncheon: Making an Elephant Dance: Transformation of Indian Oil Co.

free, RSVP required

The Ahlers Center for International Business welcomes N.G. Kannan, PhD, former marketing director and human resource director, Indian Oil Corporation, who will give a talk entitled, "Making an Elephant Dance: The Transformation of Indian Oil Corporation."

Lunch will be provided.

With over 37 years' experience in India's oil industry, Dr. N.G. Kannan will take us through his challenging journey of transforming a 50-year old public sector organization with 30,000 employees, having a virtual monopoly, to an organization needing to dance to the new tunes of competition. Utilizing a mantra of, "We take care of the people, and people will take care of the business," Dr. Kannan employed the three Es of strategic intervention: Enabling, Empowering and Energizing the people. During this talk he will emphasize the role of strategic leadership and high performing teams to meet the challenges in managing change, while elaborating upon his personal values on managing people, his team’s victories during this process and his personal failures.

Speaker Biography:
Dr. N.G. Kannan, PhD, is a visiting faculty member at Indian Institute of Management (Trichy) and National Institute of Technology (Trichy). Until recently he was the non-executive chairman of Lubrizol India Pvt Ltd., a joint venture company between Lubrizol (USA) and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, as well as the dean and advisor at the Institute for Technology and Management (ITM) Chennai, a top ranking, leading business school in India. He has the unique combination of an MBA in Marketing and a Doctorate in Human Resource Management. Additionally, he has earned several masters degrees and many post-grad degrees, including an MA in Economics, MSc in Physics, MCom in Taxation, MPhil in Mgmt and post-grad degrees in HRD, Training and Development, Operations Research for Management, Electronic Data Processing and Computer Management.

Dr. Kannan has over 37 years of experience in India’s oil industry in the marketing and human resources sectors. He held board level positions as director (HR) and director (Marketing) of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOC), India’s largest corporation and its first on the Fortune 500 list. In his joint capacity as director (Marketing) of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL) and managing director of IBP Ltd., he handled a sales turnover of nearly US$ 45B. Under his leadership, Indian Oil’s Marketing Division performance turned around from a negative sliding trend to a positive growth trend, despite tough challenges from private players in the retail sector at that point of time. He was responsible for bringing about a sea of change and converting IOC into a strategic marketing organization with excellent brand equity for IOC, its retail network and its products.