Guest Lecture by Ms. Pooja Aggarwal
Guest Lecture Title:
"Leadership in crisis and agility as a strategic move"
Date of Conduct: 23rd August, 2020
Duration: 1.5 hours
Speaker’s Name & Designation:Ms. Pooja Aggarwal, Head of Operations
Organization: Schindler India
HOD/Concerned Faculty Head: Student Relations / Ms. Anuja Zanzad
Batch: International Business 2019-21
No of students present: 120+
On the 23rd of August, the students of the MBA-International Business Batch 2019-21, witnessed an enthralling guest lecture by Ms. Pooja Aggarwal, Head of Operations – Western Region 1, Schindler India. Ms. Pooja Aggarwal shared her insights on ‘Leadership in Crisis and agility as a strategic move’.
At the onset, she discussed the immediate impact Covid-19 had on the employees of Schindler India. She shared various real-time difficulties that cropped up because of the pandemic and the decisions she as a leader had to make keeping in mind the safety of her employees and ensuring business continuity. She shared her insights on the different aspects of leadership – Direction, Alignment, and Commitment. She discussed how working in a crisis however challenging, helps your business evolve.
She shared her experiences at Schindler and how they adopted the go slow, grow fast approach – going slow to predict and absorb the impact, implementing the identified opportunities and decisions fast. She mentioned how it is not only important to fix situations temporarily during the crisis but also think of the post-crisis situation.
She discussed how empathizing and showing solidarity towards employees helps build a culture of trust, build strong communication, and establish clear rules of engagement. The crisis calls for evaluating inefficiencies. She touched upon the importance of localizing and taking control of supply chains. She concluded by talking about how being adaptive and agile is an important mindset to survive crisis.
The session concluded with yet another intriguing Q&A session.
Feedback
- “A very insightful guest lecture on leadership by Ms. Pooja Aggarwal! I certainly learned a lot from her experiences especially about crisis leadership.” - Niharika Sharma, MBA – International Business, Batch 2019-2021
- I am really grateful to have had the opportunity to witness this guest lecture by Ms. Pooja Aggarwal. Her experiences on her strong leadership skills has helped me understand leadership much better amidst different challenges and situations.” - Arpit Aggarwal, MBA – International Business, Batch 2019-2021
Overall Feedback
The session was very engaging and helped us learn the impact leadership has especially in a crisis situation.
