The Jugaad of Inclusion
Corporate Governance

The Jugaad of Inclusion

The purpose of reservation is to correct the exclusion of capable and qualified women from corporate boards, and not to provide yin to the existing board’s yang The response that we have seen so far to the new law mandating reservation of board seats for women has been disappointing and shows how far we are from real inclusion. Ironically, this applies to both those supporting and opposing the move. There has been jugaad in the best Indian tradition to comply with the new but to continue with the old way — a telling comment on the governance standards of boards which managed to do that well. The plethora of well-meaning men and organisations that have sprung up to “mentor” and “train” potential women directors are more patriarchal than progressive in their prescriptions, reflecting a poor understanding of what inclusion is really about (more on that later). They have tried to justify what […]

February 9, 2020 0 Comments
The brands of politics
Corporate Governance

The brands of politics

If brand-speak represents popular culture, we have less to worry about than some of us might think. Image credit: Siddhant Jumde The good news is that Indian brands unequivocally live in the world of customers and the people of India, and not in the world of politicians. They speak to people, mindful of commercial good sense, by tapping into popular culture; adding to the good news is that they still see popular culture as being quite far removed from the patriotic jingoism of today’s politics. Every Independence Day and Republic Day, brands in India do special campaigns—citizen brands talking to citizen consumers—and the conversation is quite revealing of the way business thinks about the state of the nation. We haven’t yet seen what the brand-speak for Independence Day 2019 will be, but it is a very safe bet, based on recent trends, that most will neither echo nor argue against […]

August 19, 2019 0 Comments
Alyque Padamsee: Always a champion, never a challenger, he strode the ad world like a colossus
Corporate Governance

Alyque Padamsee: Always a champion, never a challenger, he strode the ad world like a colossus

To say that he was brilliant, impossible, dazzling, utterly his own person and the definer of Indian advertising is an understatement. Like he said in his one-line ad brief for Surf, “Always the champion, never the challenger” Alyquee Padamsee died at the age of 90. (Source: directordhruv/Instagram) They just don’t make ad men like they used to. The charismatic Subhas Ghoshal, the charmingly intellectual Subroto Sengupta, the visionary people magnet Prashanta Sanyal. And now, joining that list of ad men who have died but will live forever, through legends about them, is Alyque Padamsee. To say that he was brilliant, impossible, dazzling, utterly his own person and the definer of Indian advertising is an understatement. Like he said in his one-line ad brief for Surf, “Always the champion, never the challenger”. And no-one could even come close to challenging the pedestal that he occupied—the world that he strode like a […]

November 18, 2018 0 Comments
Elastic @ Work
Corporate Governance

Elastic @ Work

My 27-year-old niece works flexi time at a big business technology consulting firm. “I don’t see why I need to go into office at all, except once in a while when it is really necessary,” she reasoned, shrugging her shoulders. “In any case, my boss comes into work once a quarter, I have a colleague in another office who is rated to be a top performer who hardly ever gets to work, and there is the hot-desking system in my office, so I don’t even have a permanent place.” (Hot desking is an office organisation system which involves multiple workers using a single physical work station or surface during different time periods. ) SMART OFFICES How do you connect with other people and work collaboratively, I asked her. With state-of-the-art communication systems, it turned out. “The other day, my boss asked me if I got what she was trying to […]

March 9, 2013 0 Comments
Cut! Zoom in on Board Chairman
Corporate Governance

Cut! Zoom in on Board Chairman

More prattle on independent directors cannot fix governance, the chairman’s role remains terra incognita While decision-making in most boardrooms continues to be governed by “come on, let’s be reasonable” rather than “this is the right thing to do”, the good news is that there has been a quantum jump in public discussions on improving corporate governance (CG), not to mention the predictable increase in the number of awards instituted for the same! Board evaluation and performance improvement and director search and training are emerging as high-demand, new consulting areas. Hopefully, all this focus will soon raise the bar on governance quality. But for that to happen, the discourse needs to be broadened beyond its single-point focus today on independent directors. Discussion on how shareholder directors and executive directors can improve the levels of CG must also happen. But the biggest omission by far that needs to be fixed is around […]

October 29, 2012 0 Comments
Improving Corporate Governance
Corporate Governance

Improving Corporate Governance

It would help to reduce the familiarity quotient on boards and factor in business health beyond profits. Corporate India has been calling attention to two issues: one, in the context of the proposed Companies Bill, is reasonableness in non-executive director liability and penalty for misdemeanours pertaining to day-to-day operational management of the company. The other is the call for better public governance. Suddenly, there is more open complaining to ministers in public meetings about extortion by government agencies and blatant rent-seeking behaviour. This is probably a good time for corporate India to also look inward and improve its own corporate governance, moving it beyond regulatory compliances to better oversight (an unfortunate corporate governance term that means the exact opposite in the English language). There is enough low-hanging fruit to be taken advantage of in the form of improvements that can be quickly implemented. The first area to improve is board […]

February 27, 2012 0 Comments
Blind Spots and Slippery Slopes
Corporate Governance

Blind Spots and Slippery Slopes

I read the most brilliant article in the April 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review titled “Ethical Breakdown” that resonated a great deal with me, and I want to share it, because I suspect that many of us are thinking a lot about the “difficulty of being good” – that lovely phrase which has become my touchstone ever since I read it on the cover of Gurcharan Das’ book. The article deals with the question of why good people do unacceptable things, and why it doesn’t get spotted and stopped early on. Think board dynamics; where we sometimes unthinkingly classify asking questions or insisting on more analysis as disruptive or demoralising behaviour, when the sense of the house is that it is a good decision and there is a time-bound pressure to it so why not go ahead; or in not being appreciative enough of good outcomes that have been […]

May 21, 2011 0 Comments
And the award goes to…
Corporate Governance

And the award goes to…

We certainly have been a chaotic, noisy democracy this last year, with lots of societal churning. As mythology tells us, any churning done jointly by the good guys and the bad guys, yields both poison and nectar, and so we have had good, bad, ugly and funny incidents. This year’s award for constructive disruption goes to the insurance regulator, who issued a fiat that insurance companies must diversify into insurance. It was a “shock and awe” regulation, as a foreign analyst dubbed it, but it ensured that the insurance industry applied its mind to moving beyond the comfortable value space of wealth management and mutual fund-like offerings with a garnish of insurance sprinkled on top. Of course, parts of India Inc shook their heads disapprovingly, as business models fell apart, at the “value destructive” behaviour of the regulator. The “who pulled the trigger” root cause award for this goes to […]

December 18, 2010 0 Comments
The Right To Grow
Corporate Governance

The Right To Grow

The Indian economy has been stress tested for the past year and a half, and we are now exhaling a collective but cautious sigh of relief. Yes, the economy has slowed down but we are still hanging in there at a 6.5+% growth, which is much better than what it was in 2000-2003. Also there do not appear to be any major cracks in the edifice of the global economic powerhouse that we are in the process of building. One must admit though that there is some merit to the often made argument that we have not been hit any less than everyone else, since the percentage decline in our GDP growth has been as severe as the economies in the world which have contracted. Hence, our slowdown is equivalent to their recession. However, we have had no collapse of institutions, and what’s more, consumer demand is up and about, […]

November 12, 2010 0 Comments
The Magic Ingredient
Corporate Governance

The Magic Ingredient

The assumption that a big-name bank with a set of smaller local partners, yoked together by technology, will automatically win over the local money lenders or the informal financial sector needs to be challenged. “Biometrics” and ATMs are not consumer value propositions, they are the supply side story. The local pawn broker who is usurious is also culturally sensitive. He knows that the mangalsutra mortgaged to him needs to appear on the bride’s neck at the time of a wedding and that is part of his idea of customer service. He will wait behind the venue, both to hand it over and take it back. A friend whose family is in the business tells the story of how it offered the service of making artificial jewellery in exactly the same pattern as the items mortgaged by customers – a winning proposition for both sides. Similarly, in urban slums people talk […]

September 18, 2010 0 Comments
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