In this Q&A session, our founder, Ram Kedlaya shares his insights as entrepreneur, business leader, technologist and product creator.

He shares his decades of experience in leading sales, marketing and product development in several countries around the world in US, India, Asia, Japan, Australia, China and Europe, in Startups and Fortune 100 companies including Microsoft, AT&T, Motorola and Hitachi.

Also, as a graduate of IIT Madras, Ram is passionate about working closely with students in US and Indian universities on entrepreneurial skills and mentoring young community leaders involved in social and environmental initiatives.

Q: Why did you start Group Tminus? What is its mission?
Ram: I am at a stage in my life, where I have an opportunity to give-back. I have been fortunate to have
an adventurous career in so many countries around the world in both global companies and in startups.

I started out in my career as a technologist, conceiving and creating products with smart people. At some point, I was asked to jump into a situation to run International Sales and Marketing 11 countries.I was thrust into various leadership situations. I had to learn a learn a lot of new things quickly, including doing business in other cultures. I was fortunate to have mentors and leadership coaches to help me through my leadership journey.

At Group Tminus, we hope to provide mentoring, leadership coaching and insights through our unique experience in technology, business and global markets in both Startups and Fortune 100 companies.

The mission of Group Tminus is to enable the next generation of Global Leaders and to be a partner for
organizations to help with their Business Transformation initiatives. Our mission includes creating a community of global leaders, a forum where these leaders can exchange ideas and build relationships, as they pursue global opportunities and challenges.

We are based in USA and in India.

Our aim is to bring the learning from emerging countries (the creativity and the long tail) to organizations in developed markets and at the same time, bring global leadership practices from companies in mature markets to help build next-gen leaders in emerging markets.

Q: Why is grooming leaders and building leadership capacity becoming increasingly important?
Ram: We are entering a new era of global opportunities, global challenges and global citizenship. This requires new thinking, curiosity and appreciation for global cultures and the desire to take on risk at a global level.

In a knowledge economy, insight and knowledge is power. Speed of acquisition of new insight is a differentiator. In other words, in an organization, the “insight quotient” becomes an asset.

The question is, how do you build an organization where self-leadership is in every person’s DNA?
How do you create can organization culture to focus on building leadership capacity to pursue global opportunities?

Q: What’s unique about the Tminus approach and why is it different?
Ram: Fundamentally, I am a big believer that every human being has latent leadership abilities, waiting to be unleashed, when given the right circumstances and opportunities.

At age 31, I was a founder of a video networking company. I realized very early on, that the opportunities for the company were huge and global in nature. Like all startups, we had hired very smart, hard-working people. But that was not enough to take us to the next step to tap into the global market opportunity. In short, we had a leadership capacity constraint that was limiting our ability to grow. We had to raise the "leadership quotient" of the entire company very quickly.

We did some very creative things. We encouraged our team members to take on risk, put them in situations requiring them to adapt quickly and surrounded them with mentors. This helped unleash the leader in them.

Years later, at Microsoft, I learnt a concept called Tminus. As a company, Microsoft is a phenomenal execution machine. We used the Tminus concept for project planning just about anything - from multi-year customer engagements to product launch to internal projects to global initiatives. The idea is simple – decide on the end goal, map milestones in a reverse Time dimension, working from the end goal backwards, to what do we need to do starting now!!

I was very much fascinated by this. One day, it struck me that the Tminus concept was a lot more powerful than this. It occured to me that this was really fundamental to all purposeful conversations in life. This was an aha moment for me! I felt the Tminus approach was a wonderful framework and language to build organizational leadership skills.

If you think about it, all successful leaders create a vision to move forward, but plan the entire journey backwards in time, from the end to where they are now, and course correct, as they execute.

As I mentioned earlier, I believe there is a leader nascent in every person. Our job is to help
them realize their hidden potential.

Our approach is very hands-on and different. We discuss real-life experiences, take them through a journey of self-discovery through mentoring and coaching along with a framework in Time dimension,
to help them make this journey.

Q: Can you share a bit about Tminus workshops?
Ram: Group Tminus workshops are an immersive experience to build self-awareness and unleash the leader in every person. The workshops are designed to be very thought provoking through a very interactive dialog using real-life examples.

People usually walk out of our workshops with the feeling, “wow! I never knew I had this ability in me” or “I never realized leading requires bringing out the spark in others” or, “I did not know ‘yes’ means different things in different cultures!”, or "...did not realize I need to work on my blind spots!".

Our goal is to help people accelerate their careers, understanding how to do engage with global cultures and help organizations enhance their leadership capacity and build power teams.

Q: How does Tminus engage with organizations?
Ram: We work with large companies by collaborating with their executive leadership on business transformation projects and offer customized leadership workshops by working with their Leadership Centers.

With mid-size companies, we work closely with CEOs and their executive teams to build leadership capacity and create power teams. We do this through customized workshops and working one-on-one with leaders as corporate coaches.

With startups, we work with founders and CEOs to help them grow their team, while retaining the entrepreneurial spirit. This is quite a challenge and many a startup can fall into the chasm. As the company grows, the elephant becomes too big and the entrepreneurial nimbleness gets slowly
eroded.

Q: Is Group Tminus involved with Community initiatives and with educational institutions?
Ram: Working with the community on social and environmental issues is important to us. We are currently involved in working with a community group called Swarna Friends, in a village called Herga in Karnataka India.

Our goal is to increase awareness to preserve trees. We have also participated in a project to build and maintain a community toilet to global hygiene standards. This is also being used by kids in a day care center. What is rewarding, is that the children have taken upon themselves to keep the facilties clean after use. It has become a way of life for them to maintain high standards in personal hygiene, which, we consider to be an important leadership attribute.

Our goal is very simple. Catch them young, nurture high personal standards in them and prepare them for global citizenship.

With educational institutions, we are serving as advisors to MBA student Entrepreneur programs in US universities, mentoring students and reviewing their business plans.

Group Tminus is committed to donating a percentage of its time and profits to community and educational initiatives.