Pirates, Pythons & Piranhas - Will The Faint-Hearted Survive?

In the Keynote Speech at CEO ICONfluence held at Mumbai, Deepak Parekh shared insights derived from his own experience and his leadership role over the years.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen:Let me start by saying that I have always considered myself as an optimist by nature. Of course, there are many types of optimists:

• pie in the sky optimists;

• daring optimists;

• grounded optimists; or

• cautious optimists.

Yet, I draw my line on being an optimist with pirates, pythons and piranhas. Incidentally, the topic I was given to talk on is: “Pirates, Pythons and Piranhas: Will the faint-hearted survive?”

The truth is I have absolutely no advice to offer anyone being robbed at sea, strangulated by a venomous snake or having their flesh being eaten by a deadly fish!

As CEOs, if you do choose to take on the pirates, pythons and piranhas, please ensure you have a darn good succession plan in place and have paid off all your outstanding debt! That said, the topic of the talk is catchy and I do appreciate the creativity.

With so many CEOs in this room in the middle of the afternoon, I take it that business must be doing fairly well. At least there isn’t any crisis happening.

On a lighter note, I hope the CEOs here are not too free, too often in the afternoons. Some of you may recall that between the 1950s and 1980s in the US, there was the famous 3-6-3 rule of banking – which is borrow at 3%, lend at 6% and play golf at 3 pm! Life was quite comfortable till interest rates started moving upwards. When spreads shrank, riskier lending happened and eventually thousands of savings and loans associations (or S&Ls as they are called), went bankrupt, costing taxpayers billions of dollars. That was the end of CEOs playing truant in the afternoons!

I hope your time here this afternoon will be well spent!