McKinsey Interview Insights

 Toshiaki Higashihara, the executive chairman of Hitachi, is a featured leader in the Leading Asia series, which highlights individuals who navigate unique regional challenges to create breakthrough value and realize bold ambitions. Since taking the helm in 2016 until 2022, Higashihara significantly reshaped Hitachi’s trajectory by addressing deep-seated cultural issues, restructuring the organization for agility, and pivoting toward a digital future.

Diagnosing and Overcoming "Big Company Disease"

Prior to becoming CEO, Higashihara identified a systemic "big company disease" or bureaucracy at Hitachi. He observed several cultural obstacles rooted in the Japanese business mentality:

• Rigidity and Perfectionism: A culture of lifetime employment led to entrenched personnel and a mindset where employees set narrow scopes to achieve "perfection" simply to avoid criticism.
• The "3Q Shock": While serving as president and COO in 2014, Higashihara struggled with a lack of information flow. Internal companies would report they could meet budgets through the third quarter, only to reveal failures in the final three months, causing investors to lose confidence as stock prices dropped.
• Financial Instability: He noted that in 2009, Hitachi recorded a staggering loss of 787.3 billion yen ($5 billion), the largest ever for a manufacturing company at the time.

Structural and Governance Transformation

To modernize the conglomerate, Higashihara implemented radical structural changes:

• Dismantling In-House Companies: He broke down massive internal companies (operating at scales of 1 trillion yen) into smaller, more responsive units of 200–300 billion yen. These units, called "the front," were designed to interact directly with customers.
• Digital Integration: Across the entire company, he established Lumada, a unified digital platform.
• Board Revitalization: He completely revamped the board of directors to enhance objectivity. In 2011, only four out of 13 members were outside directors; today, nine are outside directors, a structure intended to allow the executive side to take "bold actions" under proper governance.

Strategic Acquisitions and Digital Talent

Higashihara prioritized the acquisition of GlobalLogic for 1 trillion yen ($6.3 billion) in 2021. He justified the high price by citing the critical need for digital talent and designers as the era of 5G and cloud technology emerges. He viewed the risk of falling behind in digital capabilities as far greater than the "retention risk" of potentially losing the acquired company's 28,000 employees. Under Hitachi's leadership, GlobalLogic's revenue grew 2.8 times by 2024.

Leadership and Talent Development Philosophy

In the broader context of transformation, Higashihara emphasizes that building strong individuals is only the first step; the ultimate goal is collective strength.

• Candidate Identification: Since 2017, he has personally interviewed approximately 300 people annually to identify future executive candidates, resulting in a pipeline of over 400 potential leaders.
• Empathy and Teamwork: He believes future leaders must "understand and empathize with others". Drawing an analogy from sports, he references manager Hideki Kuriyama’s victory in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, where the focus was on teamwork and the philosophy that "everyone is a captain".

Higashihara’s journey at Hitachi reflects a shift from a traditional, bureaucratic manufacturing giant to a digitally-driven global entity, a transformation mirrored by other leaders in the sources who prioritize purpose-led vision, talent alignment, and technological disruption to stay competitive in the Asian market.

To visualize this transformation, one might compare it to pruning an overgrown, centuries-old tree: by cutting back the thick, rigid branches that blocked sunlight and restricted growth, the leader allows the tree to sprout new, flexible shoots that can reach higher and weather new storms.

Amit Dixit, the head of Private Equity in Asia for Blackstone, represents a significant perspective within the Leading Asia series, specifically regarding the development of global companies within the Indian market. Under his leadership, Blackstone’s portfolio in India has reached a market value of $60 billion, characterized by a strategy that moves beyond mere investment toward active business building.

The "Buy to Build" Philosophy

A central theme in Dixit’s leadership is the shift from being a "buyer" of businesses to a "builder of businesses". According to the sources, this transformation-led approach relies on three key pillars:

• Deep Domain Focus: Blackstone maintains a strict focus on sectors where they have established expertise, such as software, services, pharmaceuticals, and real estate, allowing them to leverage existing networks and knowledge.
• Technology as a Horizontal: Dixit views technology not as a specific industry vertical but as a horizontal force that must be integrated into every business. This transformation future-proofs companies, leading to accelerated revenue and higher multiples upon exit. Examples include converting Sona Comstar into an electric vehicle company and shifting Aakash Educational into "edtech".
• Operational Offense: In volatile environments, Dixit advocates for "playing offense" by pursuing acquisitions and gaining market share while remaining focused on productivity and cost efficiency.

Talent Alignment and Ownership Culture

Mirroring other leaders in the series who prioritize human capital, Dixit describes Blackstone as a "glorified head-hunting firm".

• Equity Ownership: A critical component of his leadership is aligning management with shareholder objectives through broad-based equity programs that often extend to 150–200 people. Dixit notes that the behavioral shift when a leader becomes an "owner" rather than just a "manager" is dramatic.
• Empowerment: He advises family-owned businesses that attracting best-in-class talent requires giving managers operating freedom and empowerment without second-guessing their strategy.

Navigating Market Evolution

The sources highlight how Dixit has adapted to the shifting landscape of Asian private equity:

• Control Deals: There has been a fundamental shift from minority investing to "control deals," where Blackstone owns more than 51 percent of a company, allowing for more direct influence over transformation.
• Exit Optionality: To manage the risks of emerging markets, Dixit emphasizes having multiple exit options, including IPOs, M&A, and secondary sales, rather than relying solely on public markets.
• Governance: He maintains that "good governance is good business," urging companies to implement diversified boards, proper financial controls, and ERP systems to remain competitive.

Broader Context: Leading Asia

Dixit’s insights align with other regional leaders featured in the sources. Like Toshiaki Higashihara of Hitachi, who dismantled bureaucracy to gain agility, Dixit focuses on structural and technological overhauls to drive value. His emphasis on purpose-led growth in India—leveraging both the large domestic market and export opportunities—parallels Mukesh Ambani’s "North Star" of creating large-scale societal impact.

To understand Dixit's approach to business building, one might compare it to restoring a historic estate: instead of simply flipping the property for a quick profit, the leader reinforces the foundation, modernizes the infrastructure with the latest technology, and ensures the staff are invested as partners in the home's long-term value.

Mukesh Ambani, the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, is a central figure in the Leading Asia series, which highlights leaders who transform traditional businesses into high-value global entities. Under his leadership, Reliance has evolved from a small textiles business into a massive conglomerate encompassing petrochemicals, oil refining, telecommunications, retail, and deep-tech. Ambani’s leadership is defined by a purpose-led "North Star" vision, bold risk-taking, and a commitment to large-scale societal impact.

The North Star: Impact-Led Vision

Ambani’s strategic direction is rooted in his father Dhirubhai Ambani’s legacy of building "businesses of the future".

• Scale and Societal Impact: Ambani operates on the principle that a business aiming to impact a billion people is more likely to succeed than one simply aiming for profit. This "impact-led" vision treats profit as a by-product of fulfilling critical national needs.
• National Empowerment: A primary goal is contributing to India’s prosperity. This was evidenced by the launch of Reliance Jio, which transformed India into a digital-first country by providing 4G and 5G connectivity to nearly 500 million subscribers.
• Future Frontiers: Reliance is currently building one of the world’s largest manufacturing ecosystems for green and clean energy, covering solar, hydrogen, and batteries to address the global climate crisis.

Strategic Reinvention and Technological Ownership

A core tenet of Ambani’s leadership is the constant reinvention of business strategy every three to five years to stay ahead of global shifts.

• Deep-Tech Transformation: Ambani is shifting Reliance from a user of licensed technology to a deep-tech and advanced manufacturing company. For the 2021 launch of 5G, Reliance built its own hardware and software end-to-end to ensure technological sovereignty.
• Disrupting Traditional Norms: Ambani often challenges traditional business school teachings, such as those advising against heavy integration across the value chain, to capture larger opportunities.
• AI and Innovation: To attract top talent, he aligns AI development with a "big purpose"—solving complex societal problems rather than just chasing high-risk hardware games.

Risk Management and Institutional Culture

Ambani views institutional culture as the best insurance against risk.

• The Survival Principle: His approach to risk involves calculating the "worst-case scenario" and ensuring the organization can survive it.
• Jio as "Philanthropy": When investing $25 billion into the untested market of Jio, Ambani told his board that even if it failed financially, it would be the "best philanthropy" Reliance ever did because it would digitize and transform India.
• Building for Longevity: His goal is to ensure Reliance lasts as an institution for over 100 years, extending far beyond the tenure of any individual leader.

People and Leadership Philosophy

Ambani emphasizes that unlocking potential from "ordinary talent" requires absolute clarity on the mission.

• The Three Cs: He prioritizes Character, Competence, and Culture. He believes character is more vital than competence because skills can be taught, but trust is foundational.
• Empowerment through Heart: His philosophy suggests that "if you can win a person's heart, their mind will work for you".
• Organizational Flexibility: He argues that rigid systems and structures often limit high performers; therefore, he aligns Reliance's structures to outcomes rather than rules to maintain flexibility.

Broader Context: Leading Asia

In the larger context of the series, Ambani’s approach mirrors the "buy-to-build" mentality seen in Blackstone’s Amit Dixit and the bureaucracy-busting agility of Hitachi’s Toshiaki Higashihara. While other leaders focus on restructuring for current efficiency, Ambani’s insights suggest a more multi-decadal arc, focusing on how Asian companies can move from being consumers of global technology to being the innovators and owners of the "businesses of the future".

To understand Ambani’s philosophy of scale and purpose, one might compare it to building a transcontinental railway: rather than just selling tickets for profit, the leader focuses on the fundamental goal of connecting a nation. By laying the tracks (infrastructure and technology) that empower millions to move and trade, the prosperity of the railway becomes an inevitable result of the progress it enables for everyone else.

Alan Beacham, the managing director of the 137-year-old global logistics company Toll Group, is a featured leader in the Leading Asia series. His leadership reflects a transition from a traditional Australian brand into a high-growth, pan-Asian entity by balancing global consistency with deep local expertise and a focus on future-ready supply chains.

Strategic Pivot: From "Carbon Copy" to "Locality"

One of the most significant insights from Beacham’s tenure is the rejection of a "one-size-fits-all" global strategy.

• Organic Growth Engine: While Toll initially entered Asia through inorganic growth (acquisitions), Beacham has shifted the focus toward an organic growth engine. This approach resulted in a compound annual growth rate of over 14 percent in core markets like China, India, and Singapore, significantly beating regional GDP.
• Local Leadership: Beacham emphasizes that to compete with "local heroes" and "global giants," Toll must employ local leadership who understand the specific culture and customer needs of their markets. He advocates for a "nuance of locality" rather than a singular, carbon copy approach across different countries.
• Scale Philosophy: He describes Toll as being “big enough to matter, small enough to care,” leveraging its 137-year-old brand while remaining agile enough to provide bespoke solutions for specific markets, such as e-commerce inventory hosting in Singapore’s tight geography.

The Three Rs of Modern Logistics

Beacham identifies three core pillars—Resilience, Responsiveness, and Responsibility—that define the future of the industry:

• Resilience: In a volatile geopolitical environment with fluctuating tariffs and supply chain breaks (post-COVID), Toll focuses on providing optionality and diverse solutions for moving goods.
• Responsiveness: Driven by global demand for speed and visibility, Beacham views AI and digitization as critical horizontal tools to improve decision-making and track goods from source to destination.
• Responsibility: This extends beyond carbon reduction to include global compliance, ethical labor practices, and being "good employers". Toll has committed to a linear pathway toward net zero by 2050.

Shareholder Dynamics and Talent Mobility

Toll’s relationship with its shareholder, Japan Post Holdings, serves as a unique strategic advantage and learning opportunity.

• Cultural Exchange: Toll acts as a training ground for Japan Post trainees to gain international, real-world experience. Conversely, Toll uses Japan Post assignees to build "Japan desk" sales capabilities, utilizing their cultural and linguistic expertise to serve Japanese companies operating in Asia.
• Diversity of Thought: Beacham actively challenges his own "natural bias" by bringing different thinkers into his leadership team. He supports a 50:50 male–female gender narrative and has implemented accelerated talent programs to rotate young leaders globally, pushing them outside their comfort zones.

Broader Context: Leading Asia

Beacham’s approach mirrors themes found in other leaders in the sources:

• Purpose-Driven Success: Like Mukesh Ambani’s focus on impact-led growth and Vikram Sinha’s goal of "empowering Indonesia", Beacham aligns Toll’s mission with the purpose: “We move the businesses that move the world”.
• Technological Integration: His view of AI as a problem-solving tool across all "Three Rs" aligns with Amit Dixit’s philosophy that technology is a "horizontal" force that future-proofs businesses.
• Agility over Bureaucracy: His focus on "collaboration among teams" and "nuanced locality" echoes Toshiaki Higashihara’s effort to dismantle "big company disease" at Hitachi to make the organization more responsive to customers.

To understand Beacham’s strategy for Toll Group, one might compare it to building a high-performance racing yacht: while the hull and sails represent the strength and consistency of a global brand, the leader must rely on a local navigator who understands the specific currents and winds of each local bay to actually win the race.

Vikram Sinha, the CEO of Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, is featured in the Leading Asia series for his role in orchestrating one of the region’s most successful telecommunications mergers and pivoting the company toward an AI-native future. Since taking the helm in 2022, Sinha has focused on moving beyond traditional connectivity to transform Indosat into an "AI techco" that empowers Indonesia’s digital sovereignty.

The "AI North Star" and National Ambition

Following a successful merger with Hutchison 3—which defied historical failure rates for such deals—Sinha established a bold "AI North Star" vision comprised of three pillars:

• AI-Native Telco: Transforming internal operations and services through artificial intelligence to drive double-digit growth.
• AI Techco: Establishing a sovereign AI cloud and security infrastructure, moving Indosat into the realm of advanced technology provision.
• Empowering Indonesia: Shifting the nation from a "consumption country" to an infrastructure creator. This is exemplified by the launch of Sahabat AI, a sovereign large language model, and the creation of an "AI factory" to foster local manufacturing capabilities.

People-Centric Transformation

Sinha argues that 70 percent of success in AI and growth transformations depends on change management and people transformation.

• Growth as a Motivator: Unlike many leaders who use AI primarily for efficiency, Sinha frames the AI mandate as a growth engine. He believes employees are more energized by a growth mandate than a purely productivity-focused one.
• Investment Parity: A core principle of his leadership is that every dollar invested in technology must be matched by a dollar invested in people. He views AI as a "leveler" for Indonesia because it allows talent to contribute without necessarily needing to be coders or engineers.
• Inclusivity: Sinha tracks the percentage of employees actively using and creating AI products to ensure the entire organization, not just a few functions, is involved in the transformation.

Strategic Discipline and Scalability

Sinha emphasizes a "no shortcuts" approach to technological implementation to ensure long-term P&L impact:

• Domain over Use Case: He advises against a "tactical use case approach," which can be difficult to scale. Instead, he focuses on training data for an entire domain (e.g., customer service or network optimization), allowing multiple use cases to emerge naturally from a solid foundation.
• Horizontal Structure: To avoid the silos often found in large corporations, he advocates for a horizontal organizational structure.

Broader Context: Leading Asia

Sinha’s leadership style shares several hallmarks with other prominent figures in the sources:

• Purpose-Led Vision: Much like Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, who views profit as a by-product of impacting a billion people, Sinha connects Indosat’s success to the larger purpose of "empowering Indonesia".
• Bold Risk-Taking: His philosophy that an "ambition bigger than your resources" requires going "all in" mirrors the bold acquisition strategies of Toshiaki Higashihara at Hitachi and Ambani’s massive investment in Jio.
• Technology as a Horizontal: His view of AI as a fundamental layer for the entire business echoes Amit Dixit’s (Blackstone) belief that technology is no longer a vertical but a horizontal force that future-proofs every business.

To understand Sinha's approach to AI, one might compare it to building a community well: rather than just providing individual bottles of water (tactical use cases), the leader focuses on digging a deep, sustainable well (the domain-focused foundation). By ensuring everyone in the village knows how to maintain and draw from it (people transformation), he ensures the entire community is empowered and self-sufficient for generations.

Rajesh Rathi, the chairman and managing director of Sudarshan Chemical Industries Limited, is a prominent figure in the Leading Asia series, which highlights leaders who transform domestic businesses into global powerhouses. Under Rathi’s leadership, Sudarshan transitioned from a midsize, family-led Indian company into the world’s number two pigment producer, driven by a strategy of professionalization, organic excellence, and bold inorganic growth.

The Strategic Path to Global Leadership

Rathi’s transformation of Sudarshan was marked by two critical turning points:

• Direct Sales Pivot: In 2007, the company ended a joint venture with Dainippon Ink and Chemicals to pursue direct global sales and transform its portfolio.
• Focus on World-Class Scale: In 2017, Rathi implemented a rigorous diagnostic for every business unit, asking if it could attain global leadership; if not, the company exited the business. This focus allowed Sudarshan to become the most profitable pigment company globally through organic growth before pursuing major acquisitions.
• The Heubach Acquisition: In March 2025, Sudarshan finalized a complex asset and share deal to acquire the Heubach Group. This transaction catapulted the company’s sales from $285 million to $1.4 billion, adding 17 manufacturing sites and providing a truly global footprint.

Transitioning from Family-Led to Professional Meritocracy

A core theme in the sources is Sudarshan’s "seamless" transition from a traditional family structure to a professional entity.

• Foundational Principles: The company was built on the principles of meritocracy, discipline (punctuality), and financial prudence (plowing profits back into the business).
• Education and Competence: Rathi notes that family members were required to have global master’s degrees and MBAs to join, and eventually, the family unanimously decided that meritocracy must prevail over lineage to ensure sustainability.
• Global Talent: To support its expansion, Rathi strengthened the leadership team so that 50 percent of leaders are international with true global experience.

Bridging Cultural Nuances and Agility

Rathi emphasizes that becoming a multinational requires a deep appreciation for cultural differences:

• Agility vs. Process: He observes that while Indian companies are often viewed as "chaotic," this trait is actually a form of agility that, when combined with a Western "process-driven" culture, creates a competitive advantage.
• Presence and Empathy: Rathi plans to spend 50 percent of his time at a second global headquarters in Frankfurt to personally understand the people and challenges of the newly acquired German sites.
• Market Nuances: He has learned to adjust his management style for different regions—for example, knowing that a German sales target is likely a literal commitment, while an Indian target might require a mental "discount" for over-optimism.

Values-Driven Inclusion: The "Seva" Philosophy

Sudarshan’s culture is rooted in the Sanskrit word seva, meaning selfless service. This philosophy manifests in a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion:

• Gender Diversity: Rathi has pushed for 30–40 percent female representation on the board and hired over 200 women on the chemical shop floor, a move that initially faced opposition but resulted in the highest quantity and quality of production.
• Inclusion: The company is now expanding its focus to employ people with disabilities.

Broader Context: Leading Asia

Rathi’s journey mirrors other leaders in the series, such as Toshiaki Higashihara (Hitachi) and Amit Dixit (Blackstone), through his emphasis on dismantling traditional bureaucracy in favor of agility and talent alignment. Like Mukesh Ambani (Reliance), Rathi defines his mission through a "North Star" of global leadership and societal value rather than just short-term profit.

To understand Rathi’s transformation of Sudarshan, one might compare it to refining a raw gemstone: by applying the pressure of global standards and the precision of professional meritocracy, he has polished a domestic family business into a multifaceted global entity that now reflects its "world in color" across 85 countries.