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C Muthanna picked up leadership lessons from soccer, his experiences
on the field taught him the importance of building and maintaining
team spirit and enthusiasm. He tells Abhinav Singh that the man-management
skills acquired during his days at Mico-Bosch have helped him shape
his team at Molex India
A good
team leader has faith in his team members, always stands by them
and is always overjoyed at the success of his team. He makes the
team efficient by instilling in it a sense of responsibility so
that they are ready to take on the reins of leadership and deliver
results even in the absence of their leader. That’s the philosophy
of MC Muthanna, the national sales manager of Molex India. “A
team has to have winning spirit in order to kiss success in this
highly competitive world,” he says.
In
his career that spans 13 years, Muthanna has had different levels
of responsibilities and assignments that have helped develop his
man-management skills. Now, leading a team as head of national sales
of structured cabling solutions at Molex India, the man is raring
to go. “I aim to head an organisation and become a CEO in the
next few years,” says Muthanna.
He
explains that a lot of hard work and determination has gone into
shaping his career. Born in Karnataka’s Coorg district that
is famous for producing brave warriors for the Indian armed forces,
Muthanna grew up in a middle class environment in Bangalore. His
schooling was at Clarence High School, Bangalore and later he did
his pre-university studies at St Joseph’s College, Bangalore.
These institutions gave him an opportunity to get involved in dramatics,
theatre and inter-school and college competitions, besides soccer
where he represented Karnataka in the under-16 team in 1984. Such
activities helped him build his confidence and determination which
later proved helpful in his professional life.
The
love of soccer was hard to resist for young Muthanna. There comes
a time in everyone’s life when one is at the crossroads regarding
which career path to choose. For Muthanna it was a choice between
sports and studies. He opted for the latter and was selected with
merit in the entrance exam for engineering at RV College of Engineering,
Bangalore, in 1986. He always wanted to be different, so decided
to choose a different field of engineering, that is Industrial Production.
The field involved many different subjects like thermodynamics,
operations research and management.
Muthanna
was selected by Mico-Bosch, as it was known in 1990, during a campus
recruitment drive. This became a turning point in Muthanna’s
life as the exposure at Mico-Bosch helped him acquire managerial
skills and in becoming a team leader. “I was lucky to have
been selected by Mico-Bosch as it moulded me into the professional
I am today.” Muthanna initially worked there as a management
trainee. “During the first year at Mico-Bosch, in order to
give you added exposure, you are required to work in different departments
for two months. I got immense exposure while working in departments
like R&D, process engineering and material management,”
says Muthanna.
Later,
he became a planning engineer and was in charge of capital planning
and identifying the needs of manufacturing. He was promoted to engineer
for process planning and was responsible for a set of processes
involved in the manufacturing of a fuel injection pump. Doing well,
he moved on to become a senior engineer who was responsible for
the assembly of the entire fuel injection pump. As a senior engineer
Muthanna was exposed to new techniques like Kaizen (continuous improvement).
His love for soccer however continued as he was the captain of Mico-Bosch’s
soccer team.
The
greatest challenge for Muthanna at Mico-Bosch was to extract the
maximum mileage from his team members. He says, “Each person
has a different
motivational level and a bent of mind when he approaches a set of
problems. This is where soccer comes into the picture as you may
have planned everything well in advance about the tactics your team
needs to apply during the game, but when it comes to the actual
game the team tends to deviate from the planned path. It is up to
a good captain to hold his team in good stead and guide it to victory.
It is important to ensure that you should not ask your team members
to do a task that you yourself as a leader cannot do.”
Muthanna
joined Molex in 1995 as an exports sales manager responsible for
marketing Molex products in Asia. His managerial skills and flexibility
to adapt to different situations helped Muthanna excel in his new
role. In 1997, he became the export sales manager with the additional
responsibility of a customer service manager. In that role, he was
part of the team that set up processes for ISO 9000 (completed in
1997) and QS-9000 (completed in February 2002).
In
1998, he became the national sales manager for Molex’s domestic
business and the next year assumed his present responsibility as
national sales manager for Molex’s structured cabling business
in India. Today he is responsible for business development, sales,
distribution, delivery of technical services and support to the
end customers and the channel partners. Eight people report to him
directly and he says proudly, “My team helps me deliver results.”
Now
in his mid-thirties, Muthanna spends at least 12-15 days of the
month travelling across the country and likes to read and listen
to rock music in his leisure time. Ask this energetic professional
about his plans for retiring and he says, “I want to reach
that stage where I can retire when I want and not when others want.”
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