Building Success: A CEO’s Path to Organizational Excellence

Sumit Bidani, CEO of Knauf India Pvt. Ltd., in a recent interaction with Janifha Evangeline, Editor, Higher Education Review, shared deep insights into his leadership philosophy, decision-making processes, and views on navigating failure. In a candid conversation, he reflected on balancing short-term goals with long-term vision, empowering teams, and building organizational capability to drive sustainable success. His thoughtful approach offers valuable lessons for aspiring leaders on resilience, adaptability, and the true essence of leadership.

Sumit Bidani, a seasoned professional with a robust background, currently serves as the CEO of Knauf India Pvt. Ltd. With a BTech degree from IIT Madras and a PGDBM in Marketing and Finance from XLRI Jamshedpur, Bidani commenced his career at Colgate Palmolive. Over the course of 28 years, he has garnered extensive experience in leadership roles with renowned organizations such as Colgate Palmolive, General Mills, Mother Dairy, Shell, and Fletcher Building.

As a CEO, how do you balance short-term goals with long-term vision and how do you ensure your organization stays aligned with that vision in a constantly changing market?

Through time and experience, I have learned that creating a clear connection between the short-term and long-term aspects of effective leadership is a fundamental principle. In any assignment or leadership position, it is important to start with a clear identification of the larger purpose - the "why" of what we want to achieve and to articulate a long-term vision. It is important that this vision is not merely identified by achievement of numbers but, instead, articulates a larger vision of what success will be at the end of the journey. When the larger "do" is articulated, it is often important to reverse-engineer the vision so both the leader and team can plan to achieve their vision as a whole. The most effective path is to establish clearly what "good" looks like in the future, then answer the question, "What does it look like today if we want to be able to achieve our future good." Then we can define meaningful short-term goals.

This is not a one-off process. It is critical to periodically revisit and refresh the long-term vision - every couple of years if possible to keep the team motivated and headed in the same direction. You can manage short-term goals through regular operations reviews, meetings, and check-ins on progress. But, similarly, it's important to have strategic reviews. These serve two purposes: the first is to check if the progress towards the original vision is progressing in the way that you expected it to; the second is to explore if external factors mean you need to recalibrate the long-term vision itself, either fully or in part. In this way, leadership is an active process - consistently aligning short-term actions to longer-term aspirations that stay flexible and responsive. This for me, lets you manage both the short and longer term most effectively.

Can you share a key decision you have made that significantly impacted the growth of direction of the company and what was the process behind it and what did you learn from that experience?

I am more attracted to the second route - focusing on the process because, at least in my own experience, I rarely see a single decision change everything. It is almost exclusively small, thoughtful decisions that have a more "meaningful" impact cumulatively. When running a business, we make a multitude of decisions, be they strategic or tactical, and, as I said earlier, we need to keep evaluating these decisions over time. For me, what is most critical is the process.

Over the course of the leadership journey, you realize quickly that you cannot influence every decision or outcome. Besides, you may not even have the ability or be present enough in every circumstance to make the best call. Over time, it becomes obvious that many of your team possess greater intelligence around specific things and know better what is to be done. This is such an important point of recognition. From that moment forward, one of my focal points of leadership has been around people being that people are genuinely engaged. People have to have a clear sense of how their role links to the broader organization's vision.

If they can make the link and have the right tools and information, they are much more likely to perform at their best. The second key aspect is capability. Simply just planning for the competencies you currently have is not enough, but the capacity for the organization for what it wants to be. This means that you are never thinking about skill sets, structures, and bandwidth that align with current ambitions but instead thinking about what it wants to be. In short, if I were, to sum up, the most important “decision” or the way I have led, it is to create a robust process to empower people in an environment that supports them to be at their best, and constantly build the capability to meet changing organizational needs. This has helped to get to right outcomes consistently.

Failure is often seen as an essential part of growth. Can you share a significant failure you have encountered and how have you navigated through it? What lessons did it teach you? 

I view failure as an inevitable part of the process of growing. The key is not so much how often you fail, but how quickly you recognize it and get on with it. A key lesson I have learned is the risk of denial. The longer you deny it, the more expensive it gets. Fix it as soon as possible. At the risk of being predictable, I have reflected on my failures and others' failures, and there is a remaining identifiable theme - the gap between reality and perceptions. Failures tend to happen when perceived action is based on what you think reality is, as opposed to what reality is. Between being disconnected from the realities on the ground, and ignoring the signals reality was giving you, or marginalizing the hard truths that need to be heard - I have experienced my share of failures. Against that backdrop, I constantly say to myself to be curious, keep my ears open, and engage genuinely from what I see is happening with teams on the ground. It is critically important to be in touch with reality against my perception of what is going on.