"The success and failure of a corporate house depends on the integrity, maturity and energy of its CEO, and his ability to inculcate desirable values within the organisation," says Prof. Tichy. Even CEOs of MNCs in India have not been able to assume the leadership role successfully, says the Michigan university professor. Some traces of emerging leadership can be found in GE India and Ford India, he elaborates.

Prof. Tichy says that the top management of Coca-Cola has failed globally to provide a leadership role in the globalised economy. "Coca-Cola India is not an exception," he says adding that PepsiCo, on the other hand, has achieved success not only in providing leadership, but also in creating leaders at every level.

He cites the example of PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico. "In the 18 month period before he became CEO in early 1996, Mr Enrico spent nearly a third of his time at his house in the Cayman Islands and Montana. This may seem like a pretty unusual way for a vice-president (who was to take over as CEO) of a multi-billion dollar company to do his job. But his job is exactly what Roger Enrico was doing. In these remote off-site settings, away from the daily demands of making potato chips, selling sodas and resolving assorted day-to-day problems, Mr Enrico was preparing strategies for PepsiCo to survive in the 21st century. He was running his own personal "war college" to develop a new generation of leaders for PepsiCo. At the end of the 18 months, Mr Enrico had prepared 100 leaders for Pepsi. And he had fostered some of their best ideas, resulting in an estimated $2 billion in top-line growth."

Prof. Tichy is visiting Bangalore to observe leadership trends in the technopolis. He was in Delhi recently to address members of the CII. "Winning companies build leaders at every level and the primary job of a leader is to develop leaders for the next generation," says the leadership guru. "Leaders need a teachable point of view tinged with edge if they hope to secure growth for the company." Elaborating on the `teachable point of view', Prof. Tichy says that "ideas coupled with values and driven by the emotional energy and edge constitute the leadership engine". He explains that it is the responsibility of a leader to assess changing realities and amend ideas as and when necessary, thereby making sure that ideas remain current and appropriate and lead to added value. Prof. Tichy is of the opinion that winning organisations always have strong values, which signify desirable behaviour and support the organisation's goals. "The leader lives the values both in his private as well as public life," he says.