Tatas to Ambanis, corporate giants thrive on trust

Leadership and trust: Cyrus Mistry should have known better. When he took on the Tatas in the most pernicious manner, he should have known it was not just a battle between Ratan Tata and him but equally between something seemly devious and trust. For now, over 150 years, the House of Tata has stood for trust. Unwavering and uncompromising and when Ratan Tata took over the mantle as Chairman of Tata Sons in 1990, he went on to further embellish these values. Values which to this day he believes in and lives by. 

And this is what stood the House of Tata in good stead in many a battle. Brands be they individual brands or corporate brands have seen the efficacy of living by and living for trust. It could be the trust of a vendor or a shareholder or a policymaker that they may have earned. Ratan Tata is too decent and dignified a human being to admit to this but it’s clear he made a mistake in agreeing to Cyrus Mistry taking over. I have written this before and won’t hesitate to say, Cyrus’ appointment as Chairman of Tata Sons was a body blow to both the culture and the value architecture of the House of Tata but then again, it’s my opinion. 

That mistake has more than been rectified in fact obliterated by N Chandrasekaran’s appointment as Chairman of Tata Sons and the performance of the House of Tata as also its stellar rootedness in its values is there for all to see. Which is why, trust can never be created without strong leadership and leadership which is merit-obsessed and value-driven. Both must co-exist. Chandra has more often than not exhibited both. From turning TCS into a behemoth, he keeps embellishing both the profits and the values at the House of Tata.
 
There may be times when not every Tata company will be at the top of the table in its category, but you can rest assured that it will eventually get there. Trust cannot be delivered by an abstract entity: you need people to deliver it and leaders know how to extract that level of competence from those who lead. Which is why people hardly leave the House of Tata: and the reason is trust. They know that the House of Tata will do what it right and stand for what is right: be it as a corporation or as a product provider.
 
Mukesh Ambani today epitomises scale and audaciousness like very few do. And this evident in how a petrochemical business such as Reliance is today a consumer marketing company as well. Who would have imagined that in less that 9 years, Jio would become the largest telco in the country not to mention all the other verticals that Mukesh Ambani has spawned. 

Be it Reliance Retail or a strategic stake both in The Oberoi Hotels or the Mandarin Oriental in New York to the endowments in the form of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, this has been a journey that would take many generations to build. But here again it’s the combination of leadership and trust. Mukesh, for those who don’t know is both a voracious reader and in many ways a futurist. 

I remember as far back as December 2015 when Jio was soft launched with a beta version for partners and employees, he was already talking about Artificial Intelligence. Many thought his forays into news and entertainment were vanity projects only needed to understand his strategic vision: he was slowly creating a content juggernaut which today it is. 

And a lot of this is reflected in how Mukesh treats his people. He wants them to be entrepreneurs and for him, scale is critical as he knows scale is not only attractive but also allows for correct pricing. The pricing at Jio was revolutionary at first but has today become an industry benchmark. The fact that the median age of people who work at Reliance Corporate Park is evidence of the fact that Mukesh is slowly but surely creating a new set of leaders. 

You only have to plot the graph of Reliance’s journey from 2002 after the unfortunate demise of his father Dhirubhai Ambani: the last 22 years of Mukesh’s helmsmanship have seen a meteoric rise that even Dhirubhai may not have imagined. Leadership, as Mukesh has shown, is not just about the audacity of the dream or the audacity of the vision but equally the audacity of execution. Time and time again, Mukesh has shown the world the kind of execution he can make happen which is why partners across the world and markets love him. But more importantly, trust him.

There are many others in India who have exhibited strong leadership traits and converted both the corporations they head as also the brands they make as bywords for trust. Be it a Godrej or a Bajaj or a Biocon.
 
These are the true icons of a progressive India. An India that is inspired by them and has benefited both from their sagacity and capabilities