The Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise, at the Indian School of Business, and the National HRD Network jointly organised an interactive session with Professor Dr Pius Baschera, Chairman of the Board of Directors of HILTI Corporation, at ISB's Hyderabad campus. The session was in continuation of several outreach initiatives undertaken by The Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise to disseminate and share best practices followed by renowned family businesses across the world. The session participants included many members from the family business community of Hyderabad.



During the session, Dr Baschera shared valuable insights on leadership challenges in building a global corporation. He emphasised that Hilti's caring and performance oriented organisation culture serves as the company's foundation, and that is why the company is globally known for its value driven culture.

Dr. Baschera said that it is important for an organisation to inculcate leaders that are a living example of its culture and core values. The company nurtures its employees as entrepreneurs, allowing them to take risks and make mistakes. They believe that only if employees grow and develop as personalities will the company grow. He shared Hilti's four core values of teamwork, commitment, integrity and courage, which not only exist on paper but are practiced every day in business. He opined that it is vital for businesses to strike a right balance between performance and values. He also spoke about a new corporate strategy 'Champion 2020' the company has devised, that focuses on sustainable value creation through leadership and differentiation.

Talking about this session Professor Kavil Ramachandran, Executive Director of the Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise, ISB, said, “Our mission is to be a catalyst and change agent for perpetuating the custodianship role of business families. Towards that objective, this session was an endeavour to share with Indian family business community the global best practices on value driven business leadership.”

The session witnessed rich audience involvement with several thought-provoking queries made to Dr Baschera. The session concluded with a vote of thanks by Mrs. Renu K from the NHRD Network.

Contributed by Navneet Bhatnagar.