🪑1 Hot Seat & 4 Leaders: Apollo Hospitals’ Novel Multi-Leadership Strategy🏥

❓ A Business Conundrum
After a series of implementations, Apollo Hospitals revealed its succession plan in 2014. It involved Dr Prathap Reddy, the founder, establishing a plan that placed each of his four daughters on the throne.

In a country where succession is often followed by conflicts and disputes, Dr Reddy put in place a game plan to neutralise any conflicts that may arise among his daughters. Needless to say, this strategy was a rather interesting one. Let’s take a detailed look at it.

🪑Showing Them How It’s Done!
A rotating chairmanship model reserves a seat for each of the daughters at the head of the executive table.

Their roles during a single tenure will be as follows:
👩🏽 Preetha Reddy, the oldest of the clan: Head of hospital management
👩🏽 Sunitha, the second: Head of the Finance department
👩🏽 Sangeetha, the third: Head of the IT department
👩🏽 Shobhana, the youngest: Head of Insurance and Pharma Care

Being a multi-speciality hospital, Apollo has established itself as the leading healthcare service provider in India, integrating a variety of retail health services, and has maintained its presence in the international market as well. The multi-dimensional functionality of Apollo points to a key feature of the company—interdependency.

Commenting on the approach, Shobhana Kameini, the executive vice-chairperson at the time, said, “Each one of us is running a P&L that is fairly large and important to Apollo”. She also mentions the collaborative effort that is put into action when one of the sisters takes the lead as chairperson.

⭐ ‘Reddy’ To Lead By Example
The Reddy family credits family harmony as a key factor in ensuring there are minimal conflicts. Effective and frequent communication between the family members plays a large role in ensuring that the family patriarch’s empire stays on top of the hill.

Dr Reddy, on women taking charge in the business ecosystem, said “Women have capability and skill, but they don’t get the opportunity to demonstrate; which my daughters had and they have done extremely well”.

Rotating chairmanship has garnered recognition as an effective form of leadership, where a different chairperson is appointed after a specific period of time. Huawei, a Chinese smartphone manufacturing company, has adopted this system and appoints a new chairperson every 6 months.