R. Gopalakrishnan - Doodles on Leadership: Experiences within and beyond Tata

DOODLES ON
LEADERSHIP

Published by

Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2019

7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj

New Delhi 110002

Copyright R. Gopalakrishnan 2019

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors own and the facts are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-93-5333-524-3

First impression 2019

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publishers prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

Contents

Introduction
Balconies of Leadership

During my fathers generation, a government job was the most prized. Throughout my career, a corporate job in a well-established and successful organization was highly prized. I wonder what my sons generation will value.

A corporate job can be hugely satisfying. It all depends on how the person lives it. If he or she lives through the job as a means of earning a livelihood, you get one outcome. If the manager lives through it at high levels of engagement and leadership experiences, you get a different outcome. Such an outcome can be hugely satisfying because you first hone your transactional leadership, then develop your corporate leadership capability and finally, try to engage at a holistic level with somenot allsocial and societal issues which concern you and/or the corporation.

During the fifty years of my career, I experienced leadership moments and learnings at three levels: transactional, corporate and holistic. I call these the three balconies of experiences and learnings. I should clarify the meaning of each of these three balcony levels as I experienced them.

BALCONY OF TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP

In the first twenty years of my career, largely at Hindustan Unilever, I learned the principles and practise of business and management. The learning was focused on transactional leadershipgetting your teeth into a problem or challenge, thinking up alternative ways to solve the problem or overcome the obstacle, rallying a group of people to execute a solution and then making a go at delivering the solution. Transactional leadership ranged from delivering sales targets for a set of company products in a national region, to increasing the companys exports to other countries. I cut my teeth as an area manager in Karnataka with a soaps and detergents portfolio, led the national business of the companys foods business before leading the audacious exports drive of the companyaudacious because the company had to earn 10 per cent of its sales revenue from exports at a time when Indias exports were under 2 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

BALCONY OF CORPORATE LEADERSHIP

In the next fifteen years of my career, mostly at Unilever, I learnt about the multidimensional tasks of running a company. At Unilever Arabia in Jeddah, it involved engagement with the many stakeholders in the firmthe principal shareholder, eleven local Arab partners, a very multinational team of managers and employees in the company, the government and society. The lessons of this phase include executing on strategy and actions for a vision that the principal shareholders had enunciated. For example, in Arabia, Unilever had a vision to challenge Procter & Gamble (P&G), its principal detergent competitor frontally. I led the crack team to lead this audacious assaultwith mixed results, I should add, with the benefit of hindsight!

Arabia was a geography where, for historical reasons, Unilever had a zero share of the detergent market and the rest of the market share was with P&G. Unilever and P&G slugged it out in many parts of the world in a ding-dong battle of raids and counter-attacksfor example, in Europe and America. However, in most emerging markets, one or the other held a position of imposing dominance. In India, Indonesia, and Latin America, for example, Unilever was absolutely dominant, while in Arabia, P&G had an upper hand. It was into this field of unequal power that Unilever Arabia was sent to battle. Needless to add, Unilever had several other advantages in Arabia and an operational war chest was provided by the shareholders, so, while the task was challenging, it was not life-threatening.

BALCONY OF HOLISTIC LEADERSHIP

The last fifteen years were rich with learnings and experiences in holistic leadership. Most of this period was in Tata. For the role and position that I had in Tata, the operational and transactional responsibilities rested for the most part with the CEOs of the companies. They, along with their teams, came up with detailed execution plans, held intensive review meetings and answered to the board on how well the company team had delivered on its committed targets. I had the privilege of sitting on some of the boards, observing and contributing to the process of visioning and monitoring, encouraging and supporting company leaders in their endeavours, and exploring the environment in which the company was operating. In a sense, I had a perch from where I could observe a corporation in its larger sphere of workingthe deep philosophies of why the corporation exists, the industry atmospherics, the government and regulatory environment, the pulls and pressures of governance and competition, and the complex art of sharing with company leaders an exploration of higher orbits of strategy.

One of my important experiences was that I was taken quite seriously by policymakers and industry compatriots. I was hugely privileged, not because I was smart, but because I worked in Tata. It was a tradition in Tata that the groups leaders would play an important role in national economic development over several decades. I was one of the inheritors of that mantle.

My earlier books were from the first two balconies, based on my experiences and learnings at the transactional and corporate leadership levels. However, in the evening of my professional career of over half a century in management, I have now felt an urge to doodle about the view from the third balcony of holistic leadership.

The dictionary definition of the word doodle suggests that it is something rough, prepared absent-mindedly. Both these adjectives could well apply to this book titled Doodles on Leadership. This book is about engaging with leadership moments beyond the transactional and the corporate, the aha moments that are concerned with more holistic problems that occur in industry, society, nation, values and people. It has been written from the perspective of observations from a different positionthe balcony of holistic leadership.

A VIEW WITH A DIFFERENCE

The view from this level is quite different to the views from the balconies of transactional and corporate leadership. But in what ways?

Firstly, it is a view through the rear view mirror. It tends to be hindsight rather than foresight or an immediate view arising from the cut and thrust of the action in the field.

Secondly, it engages the mind in larger matters than the company and its operations. Why are things around us the way that they arein the economy, in society, and in citizenship? Based on experiences, is there an alternative view that I can express? Business people should, and do, engage with such larger issues. It is among the more satisfying of the roles that business leaders can play in the wider society.