Top taxmen to take leadership lessons from IIM-A, Harvard

Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has tied up with US-based Harvard Business School (HBS) to offer a four-week executive education course for senior officials of India's Income Tax Department.
Various aspects of leadership, dealing with change management in a large organisation and becoming more citizen-centric are some of the subjects that will be covered under the short-term programme to be launched soon.
The course has been designed by IIM-A and HBS Executive Education (HSB-EE), one of the top business schools in the world.
The course, having an intake size of 30, will have officers of the rank of Chief Commissioner and above, who would spend two weeks each at IIM-A and HBS.

"One of the prominent facets of change in India today is professionalisation and upgradation of capabilities of the public sector. IIM-A is committed to working closely with public institutions as they go through this momentous change," IIM-A Director Ashish Nanda said today.
"This is the first tie-up by HBS with any educational institute in India for such a programme. One of our key priorities is to connect with the private sector, public institutions and internationally renowned management schools.

"The I-T officers' course is coming at such a time when enforcement agencies world over are facing a difficult task conducting their duties," he said.

"The objective of the programme is to provide I-T leaders with perspective, skills and insights related to the leadership of a public enterprise, change management in a large organisation and becoming more citizen-centric," IIM-A Dean (Programmes) Ajay Pandey said.
"Public sector leaders seek to find the right balance between responsiveness and policy enforcement. In this programme, we will explore the appropriate balance between service-orientation and police implementation, and discuss ways to achieve the balance," he said.
"This is a new initiative. We have been making conscious effort to widen the horizons of our Executive Education Programme and particularly reach out to the public sector," IIM-A Chair (Executive Education) Abraham Koshy said.

"In the last 2-3 months, we have received 35 requests from public sector undertakings and government departments for executive education courses. We have also received 43 requests from private sectors for such programmes," Koshy said.