Meet the Director of Tata Sons, R. Gopalakrishnan, as he talks of human resources and leadership

“Doing politics” (seen as non-student-like behaviour) vis-àvis studying (a benign student phenomenon) is a dichotomy that many from West Bengal higher education system will be familiar with. Long before “apolitical” became a cool word across campuses in West Bengal, students who showed even remote interest in college politics or interacted with people who were genuinely involved, had to face one stern lecture from either family, seniors or teachers. For Calcutta-born Director of Tata Sons, R. Gopalakrishnan, it was his Head of the Department at IIT Kharaghpur who did the honours. Gopalakrishnan was then a youngster completing his BTech degree at the IIT after completing his graduation in physics from Calcutta University. The reason why he was showing any interest in “politics” was purely academic. He was enticed by the opportunity of public speaking which political campaigning provided. It was merely an extra-curricular activity, and not the only one he was pursuing, there was debating for the college team; and writing and editing for the college magazine along with attending regular classes for BTech degree.

The Director cuts quite a figure. Yes, he is the “corporate honcho” but he harbours a humourous side, is honest to the core (he was the one to share the IIT story with us), and prefers to stick to simple answers when trying to explain anything. How he speaks is how he writes. In all of his three books, Gopalakrishnan is fluent with anecdotes and instances to describe and define. He resorts to jargon only when the situation demands it. There is little of that in his usual answers unless it is a pointed query. Also, a not-so-hidden aspect to this extraordinary leader is that he genuinely loves to teach. “I knew clearly that I was to be in a mercantile career but the instinct to teach remained an unfulfilled part of my personality,” Gopalakrishnan explains. It could be the fact that Gopalakrishnan and his siblings were the first college graduates in their family. Or that he did have a great time learning, but through the years whenever he received an opportunity to share his knowledge bank, he seized the chance.

Our talk was the perfect time to ask one of the leaders of the industry about what makes good business and business leaders; considering that he also worked as a dispatch clerk in a depot, and an invoice clerk in the accounts department while working for Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL).

Good People

“A few months before graduation, I appeared for the HUL interview for computer traineeship and was asked whether I would consider marketing instead of computers. I responded negatively: an engineer to visit shops to sell products? No way! A couple of comfortable weeks in HUL’s headquarters, I was given a ticket to go to Nasik and meet a certain Mr Kelkar who was to teach me to work as a salesman in his territory. I was upset. In Ozhar (a town in Maharastra), I was moving from shop to shop with a bullock-cart full of products and a salesman’s folder. Imagine my embarrassment when an IIT friend appeared in front of me and exclaimed, ‘I thought you joined as a management trainee’. But this was the most leveling experience of my life. Later, I realised the value of grassroots level experience. My advice to young people would be to seek out nail-dirtying, collar-soiling and shoe-wearing tasks. That is how you learn about your organisation, about the true nature of work and the dignity of the tasks that go into building great enterprises.”

In an earlier interview Gopalakrishnan had described a “professional manager”, as “one who tries to match his/her firm’s capabilities and resources to the mindset prevailing in the target market. One who assesses the mindset of his target market by the interplay among consumers, competitors, policy administration and politics. In management jargon, the mindset of the country pertains to the collective sense of destiny, direction, and discovery (what the Late CK Prahalad, Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Stephen M Ross School of Business in the University, Michigan, had coined as strategic intent)”. It is an idea that he adheres to even today and ones that he went on to write about in his first book The Case of the Bonsai Manager: Lessons for Managers on Intuition. In the book, Gopalakrishnan encourages managers to listen to their “gut” in times of difficulties. “Though no manager sets out to become a bonsai manager, yet they can reach out to new directions and goal by following their innate genius”. The Case Of The Bonsai Manager discusses the basic characteristics of human nature, how to chart out an agenda for change and explore complexities of employee behavior within organisations. In his second book, he further explored what he called “gut instinct” and drove the theme beyond it to “intuitive wisdom”. “All knowledge is the result of experiences. While theoretical knowledge can be acquired in institutions, putting it into practice and gaining intuitive wisdom requires many years of experience. If a person keeps an open mind and is willing to listen, this process can be expedited by learning from triumphs and failures,” explains Gopalakrishnan.

However, for a man who comes from a strictly empirical background, it is a surprise that Gopalakrishnan writes so extensively on behavioral and socio-economic sciences. “Yes, my training might have been strictly in the sciences where logic is everything, but in my early 40s I realised that the rules were not that simple. Technology may have developed over a decade, but the human brain was a more complex mechanism which had centuries to evolve. I realised that the human brain adapts far more slowly than technology does. So, behaviour of people was a more complex and fascinating process for me, governed by a bit more than logic. I have managed people who were articulate and yet did not succeed as much as reticent people who managed to do better than them. Physiologically as we have toxins in our bodies, psychologically, too, we have toxins which inhibit successes. I wanted to study these toxins or attitudes.”

A lot of ideas that Gopalakrishnan wrote in his first book were germinating around the time when HUL offered him (and several other seniors) a chance to conduct a mentoring programme for the less experienced company managers. Obviously, the man who loved and wished to teach “grabbed” the chance. “Teaching from experiences and drawing lessons from life itself, is a fascinating and a more effective process. Throughout my years in HUL, I have been part of several internal training courses,” he says. In 1984 Gopalakrishnan became the head of the export department in HUL. In those days there was little data on export worthiness; quality; documentation and entering new markets. Gopalakrishnan and a few of his good men, began to encapsulate what they had learnt through their experiences into modules. The modules were divided into 30 lectures that Gopalakrishnan took to the Bombay University and those were incorporated into the degree course on export, a part of business studies. Through the years Gopalakrishnan has internalised a favourite saying of Sir Thomas Lipton; “There’s no greater fun than hard work”. This attitude also helps us to understand how he expects a positive worker and a manager to behave. “The manager has to first capture the heart, then the mind and then the body (his/her inclination to work) of the people s/he is there to manage. Eloquence or simplicity are two paths to capturing the heart. Manmohan Singh managed this through his simplicity. A more powerful orator such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi captured the world through his eloquence. But getting the attention is not enough. You need to keep that undivided attention with you, on you and with your goals. A good manager manages to do exactly that.”

Good Business

One of the best examples of “good business” can be derived from Gopalakrishnan’s resume; the Tata Group. The “Tata’s biggest achievement will be for it to be recognised as an ethically upright corporation that uses capitalism in a socialistic way (currently the company is worth more than `6 trillion approximately). It is a company that epitomises the entrepreneurial Indian spirit, Tata’s promise to become a meaningful business may not be far from its laudable goal.

“What any company needs is a group of unstoppable workers as innovators. These unstoppable innovators must not be prolific in only idea generation but must have the innovation stamina or the follow-through skills of advocacy and persistence; innovators should not seek instant gratification as a reward, as the Bhagavad Gita states. Leaders of a company must be so emotionally entangled with innovation and young people’s aspirations that they do the job for which they are really paid, which is to groom younger people.” So get a holistic idea of the job that you do, desire what you deserve, take care of your physical health and know that direction is more important than distance. Recently speaking at a debate in Mumbai along with Mani Shankar Aiyyar, Gopalakrishnan chose to look at India’s economy as a “long term view”.

“Two or three years in a nation’s life is a tiny blip and all nations go through ups and downs. To get a fair picture, one needed to consider a longer span,” he said. He chose the year 2000, the start of the new millennium, as the inflexion point; from that to now was 13 years, and to draw comparisons with that, he looked at 13 years before 2000. Looked at this way, progress in every parametre was astonishing. Gopalakrishnan remains optimistic about India and her growth story, and on a smaller scale quite content with the direction that his life has taken him. Armed with his Kindle (more than 60 books in a gadget, what’s there to not like?), disciplined life (to bed at 10pm and up by 5am) and his zeal for life (a regular tennis player and a golfer), he is now on his fifth book. What is it about? Well, one has to wait and watch.