Pound Wise

R. Gopalakrishnan is an unusual corporate executive.

R. Gopalakrishnan is an unusual corporate executive. He does not write about himself,about the great business decisions he has made and how he has conquered the dizzying heights of market shares,enterprise values and stock prices. He does not sell us simplistic ideas. He does not pretend that if we all started using the latest three-by-three matrix for which he holds unique patent rights,then we can build successful businesses and start aspiring to win Achiever Awards from TV channels and other award-givers. He is not a consultant who never having run any business nevertheless feels fully qualified to tell others how to do so.

Gopalakrishnans book is less about management as a science and more about human beings. It appeals to the individual in each one of us. We may not all master the Black-Scholes Option pricing model,we may not be able to do conjoint analyses in market research and,of course,we may not be able to understand magic mantras which are bandied about by experts intuitive,counter-intuitive and sans-intuition! But all of us need jobs,need to get on with colleagues,need to get on with bosses,need to sell something to someone or the other and hopefully as we go along in life,we want to be moderately fulfilled,maybe a little happy. And,guess what,our grandparents wanted the same for themselves. Corporations may have been transformed by Alphas and Betas. But the challenges and responses of individuals in a social context and a business or a corporation is no more or no less than a specific social context remain unchanged. And it is this area that Gopalakrishnan covers with transparent lucidity and a limpid prose style. He is not pretentious,sanctimonious or someone who talks down.

He walks us through anecdotes that remain etched in the readers mind long after clever theories are forgotten. At first,I thought the anecdotes were about people very similar to many I have come across in life. Gradually,it dawned on me that each story was about myself myself at different times,in different situations,subject to different stimuli. All good books are catalysts that encourage us to explore the alleys of our inner consciousness. This management text does precisely that and avoids the temptation of presenting technocratic solutions bereft of values.

Gopalakrishnan has been a senior executive at Unilevers and is now part of the senior-most team at the Tata Group. He wears his achievements and his position lightly. His humility,which is a feature running throughout the book,constitutes a lesson in itself. His style is folksy and to the point. However complex and jargon-ridden the life of a manager may in fact be,however much he or she has been reduced to becoming a slave of PowerPoint inanities,the human issues of over-reach,ambition beyond ones ability and unproductive reactions to a harsh world an inevitability which we all face just will not go away. Such issues may be getting exaggerated and more important in todays business world. And Gopalakrishnan provides the perfect antidotes to these potential toxins.

One of Ramas names in Sanskrit he has 108,according to an ancient prayer is Bhava Rogasya Bheshajam. This translates as The Healing Balm for the Ailments of the Soul. Gopalakrishnans book with its finely honed insights can be called an ointment in itself. I try to stay away from the usual management handbooks. After reading most of them,you are left wondering what the author has said apart from putting out a good PR blurb for himself or herself. This book is different. It is particularly appropriate for bedside reading,as it is one of the most un-verbose and un-pedantic tomes that I have read in recent times. As you fall asleep and reach the dreamless turiya state it is just possible that some of the insights churn in the interstices of your brain. While you may not emerge as a better manager a dubious and florid proposition in many ways,you might emerge as a better adjusted human equipped with insights that help you position to yourself the fact that managing a business successfully is a subset of a larger and more important endeavour managing ones career,ones opportunities,ones limitations,in short,ones life with greater harmony than we currently seem to be able to generate.

Definitely worth buying and worth gifting to the men and women in grey flannel suits among our friends who have been persuaded to believe that their fate is to alternate between euphoria and angst.