In NEXT100: Leaders are born not made, is a popular belief held not only in our brick and mortar world but also in the in domain of bits and bytes. But IT Next decided to challenge this perception in the tech domain and launched an exercise in June 2010, which promised to unravel the Next 100 IT managers that were ready to make a cut to the big league, to take on the mantle of CIOs, CTOs or even CEOs. These chosen ones will be the technology leaders of India Inc. in the days to come. Though the selection process was a bit rigorous, the enthusiasm was exceptional. The culmination of a 6 month exercise happened at Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad, where these future head honchos debuted in front of the world. Presenting the story of these extraordinary individuals and how they made it to the exclusive club...
Methodology
To ensure that the Next 100 awards were completely fair and unbiased, it was decided at the very onset that the editorial team will play no role in selection or elimination of the awardees. The editors of the magazine were not even involved in the evaluation panel. Thus, in essence, the Next 100 is a truly industry award given by veterans.
The process was kick-started through mass-mailers and magazine adverts. IT managers were asked to register themselves and fill up a form on a special microsite that was created for the same purpose. Over 1,600 managers registered themselves for the awards.
The registration required 3 things, one was the self-nomination form that had personal and professional details about the applicant. Next was a special leadership test that IT Next had licensed for the survey. This comprehensive test examined the leadership ability of the applicant. And finally, there was a case-study that was provided to the applicant, which was to be solved.
The 3 components carried different weightage, with primacy given to the details that were collected from the self nomination form and then the leadership test.
In the meantime, some 40 top Indian CIOs were engaged in the whole process as advisors and they deliberated and decided on what are the steps that need to be taken. Based on these deliberations, the ranking or the marking mechanism was decided upon and thus a single docket for each applicant was created.
To make the exercise objective, each applicant was examined by 3 CIOs and their marks were evened out. Based on these markings, all the IT managers were ranked and the top 100 were selected.But the process did not end here; once the top 100 were selected, there was a background or reference check done to ensure that the claims made by the manager were indeed true. Once, it was ascertained to be so, the final list was collated and this is how the number 100 was achieved.
The Genesis
THE MAMMOTH NEXT 100 exercise, while launched in June 2010, started much earlier. Back in February 2010, on receiving the enthusiastic response to the inaugural issue of the magazine, which spoke about 7 steps to becoming the CIO, the edit team started thinking on how to take the IT managers to the next level, what would be the best approach, the kind of mechanism and other such things.
Over the next few months, various ideas were examined and summarily debunked, some considered to be too early, while others too late. But through all this lengthy deliberations, there was a consensus building up, that not only should IT Next aid the managers to move up the ladder, there also needs to be a mechanism, wherein the creme-de-la-creme of the managers were given a platform to preen in front of the world. This is how Next 100 came into being.A select team of editorial advisors, marketing and branding and techies was formulated to work out the nitty-grittys. In the meantime, the creative head was also involved to ensure that the output, while being content rich, was also slick and of high appeal. No corners were spared to ensure that the exercise reached out to as many managers as possible and it remained fair and just as well. After a few agonizing weeks, the awards were announced and managers were invited for submissions. This was in June 2010, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Next 100 is just not an event; it is something that everyone at IT Next strongly believed about. The Next 100 awardees will receive special mentorship and other benefits over the course of the year....till a new lot is discovered.
For complete coverage and details read the December issue of IT NEXT
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