Executive development
A programme is judged on the Monday after it ends.
Custom leadership programmes and in-company workshops, built for one cohort at a time around the decisions that cohort is about to face. The design starts with the sponsor’s problem rather than a curriculum, and the room’s seniority decides almost everything that follows.
Who is in the room
Three rooms, and they do not take the same programme.
Seniority is the first design constraint. A cohort twelve years in and a cohort thirty years in are not asking the same question, and material that lands with one will not survive the other. The figure on each card is the experience that room typically carries.
12–15
Emerging senior leaders
Being prepared for the jobs above them
Thirty-three high-potential and senior women leaders took this tier at IIM Kozhikode, working on strategic negotiation, conflict management and growth mindset.
18–22
Senior leadership teams
An intact team, with the CEO inside it
Muthoot FinCorp sent forty-one senior executives, including the CEO, CTO, CBO and six other CXOs. Working at CxO-peer level changes what a room will sit through.
25–30+
Heads of institutions and CXOs
Where capability is rarely the constraint
Twenty Advisers, Directors and Directors General under the Ministry of AYUSH, and the senior policy economists of the Indian Economic Service.
In the room
Three sessions, and what the room actually did.
Not a syllabus. These are sessions that have run, named with the organization that commissioned them and the material the room worked through.
“Our senior people hit their numbers and cannot say how.”
Leading and Developing High-Performance Teams
- State Bank of India senior leadership: at SPJIMR, February 2025.
- The Mount Everest case study: seasoned bankers drew the parallel themselves, between scaling the world’s highest peak and hitting their own demanding KPIs.
- What the room worked on: uncertainty, high stakes, decisions made quickly, and keeping a team aligned while making them.
“Two of our functions are at war and the CEO is refereeing.”
Negotiation excellence and conflict management at systems level
- Muthoot FinCorp senior leadership: at IIM Kozhikode, January 2026, where he was co-coordinator of the programme.
- The CEO sat in the batch: Shaji Varghese took part as a participant rather than sponsoring it from outside the room.
- What the room worked on: conflict addressed at the level of the system producing it, rather than the personalities in front of it.
“Our managers know the theory and do not use it.”
Strategic HRM for senior managers
- The PGEMP cohort at SPJIMR: senior managers from manufacturing, energy, infrastructure and consumer industry, January 2025.
- Five things on the table: performance management on matricized KPIs, talent and succession, engagement beyond perks, AI inside HR decisions, and business alignment.
- The question the session closes on: “How will your Monday morning change after these conversations?”
“Beyond concepts and frameworks, if we can energize people to act on what they already aspire to become, then our job as educators is truly done.”
Formats
What running one actually takes.
The shape follows the problem and the calendar, not a product list. These are the shapes that have run.
- Two days, one room, one subject: a focused in-company workshop on a single problem. Conflict resolution at Petronet LNG; emotional intelligence at the National Informatics Centre.
- A five-day residential programme: the full design, off-site. IIM Kozhikode, 14 to 18 January 2026, as sole programme director.
- Ten hours online, across four sessions: where travel is the constraint. An open programme on AI in human resource management, through SPJIMR Executive Education.
- A module inside a longer programme: one named contribution to a curriculum someone else directs, pitched at the seniority the room already has.
What you are commissioning
- Sole programme director: the whole design, from brief to close.
- Co-programme director: direction shared with the institution hosting it. South Indian Bank, Muthoot FinCorp, the Indian Economic Service and ONGC all ran this way.
- Faculty: a named session or module inside a programme someone else directs.
Behind the teaching
Why he is the one in front of the room.
Executive teaching is a craft separate from research, and it is examined separately. This is the record on that side of it.
- Faculty in Strategy and Human Resource Management, XLRI Jamshedpur: previously IIM Kozhikode and SPJIMR.
- PhD in Management, Strategy and HRM, IIM Ahmedabad
- Wharton Global Faculty Development Program, University of Pennsylvania: completed August 2025.
- SHRM Senior Certified Professional
- Best Paper Award, HR Division, Academy of Management, 2023, and a Best Reviewer Award the same year.
- Programme director and co-director: across leadership, strategy, HR and organizational development programmes.
Next step
Tell me who is in the room.
Who the cohort is, how senior they are, and the decision they are about to face. The format follows from that, and so does whether this should be a programme at all.