Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to all of you all tonight, or I should say afternoon, because many of the CMA functions actually kick off in the evening, so I'm used to saying good evening. But good afternoon to everybody and a warm welcome to the Kolkata Management Summit. And of course, CMA being the pillar behind it. A little bit about CMA, ladies and gentlemen. Calcutta Management Association was instituted in 1957 following the recommendations of a committee constituted by the All India Council of Technical Education. This committee advocated setting up of regional management associations in major cities of the country. CMA was formed as the first institution of its kind in the country under the aegis of the Union Ministry of Education. CMA was the prime force behind the formation of the All India Management Association, which we all know as AIMA, the apex body of the management education in India. Ladies and gentlemen, before we begin this amazing afternoon, which is of course going to go into an evening, I would like to call on Mr. G.M. Kapoor, President of the Kolkata Management Association, to kindly give the welcome remarks.
And a very good afternoon to everyone. A very warm welcome to all of you, and especially to Mr. Koushik Chatterjee, who has taken the trouble to come all the way from Mumbai to be here. It gives me great pleasure to have all of you at this seminar where we gather to explore a topic that is not just timely but transformative: The Manager of Tomorrow - Strategy, Skills, and Evolution. The corporate landscape is undergoing an unprecedented evolution. Artificial intelligence, once a concept confined to science fiction, is now a critical force shaping industries, redefining roles, and challenging traditional ways of thinking. As we sit at the crossroads of this digital revolution, the role of managers is being re-imagined. I was told that this subject has been done to death, but I totally disagree, since we are nowhere near the upper limits of this learning. Every day is a new day. The speed at which generative AI is growing is phenomenal. Today's discussion centers on questions that are vital for the future of business: How will AI redefine decision-making, strategy, and leadership? What skills and qualities will a manager need to thrive in an AI-driven workplace? Can human ingenuity and AI collaborate harmoniously, or is there a risk of displacement? These are not just theoretical questions; they are realities that demand immediate attention. The manager of tomorrow will need to master not only technology but also the art of empathy, adaptability, and creative problem-solving, qualities that AI alone cannot replicate. AI can bring about unimaginable change in various domains. Just to give an example, disruption in Hollywood or Bollywood. James Cameron, the well-known filmmaker with Titanic, Avatar, and Terminator under his belt, has joined the board of Stability AI. Their CEO Prem Akkaru speaks about his association during the making of Avatar 2, where certain shots took 6,000 to 7,000 hours of computer time to render. Today, this can be generated in minutes. In fact, in the next 5 to 10 years, vast majority of film, TV, and visual media as we know it today is not going to be rendered but generated. I'm not familiar with the IP rules in this regard, but it may be possible to see a movie with Madhubala and Dilip Kumar in the lead roles. New creativity is bound to emerge. Healthcare, creation of proteins, scientific research, visual intelligence, work productivity, the list is endless. We are fortunate to have with us our keynote speaker, Mr. Koushik Chatterjee, our esteemed panelists, and Professor Anil Sinha, who will deliver the concluding remarks. They bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to this conversation. Their insights will help us navigate this complex yet exciting frontier, providing us with a roadmap for balancing innovation with human-centric leadership. I encourage you to actively participate, ask questions, and challenge ideas, because it is through this collective engagement that we can shape a future where both humans and machines thrive. Once again, thank you for being here. Let's embark on this journey together to understand and define the manager of tomorrow. Thank you, and let's get started.
Ladies and gentlemen, before we move ahead, we've got a small video. So I want everybody to put your eyes on the screen because this is a very interesting video on none other than, of course, Sir Jehangir Gandhi. Please see it.
Sir Jehangir Gandhi, born on November 18th, 1896, at Bombay. Sir Jehangir Gandhi took his B.A. Honours in Physics and Chemistry from St. Xavier's College and Wilson's College, Bombay. He completed his post-graduate studies in Business Administration at Columbia University, New York, and in Metallurgical and Steel Works Engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh. In 1921, he joined the steel works as a metallurgical engineer. His meteoric rise saw him being appointed General Manager in 1938. He was the first Indian to hold this position. As General Manager, he was instrumental in cutting down cost, eliminating waste, and steering the steel works successfully through the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1945, he was appointed Director in Charge of Tata Steel. A most significant recognition of his outstanding ability came in 1959 when he was appointed a Director of Tata Sons, the parent firm controlling the Tata group of companies. He was also the Chairman of the Indian Tube Company and a Director of Indian Tin Plate Company of India Limited. Besides steel and engineering industries, Sir Gandhi's activities covered a wide-ranging field. Recognition of his professional ability and his broad vision as a technocrat came from both within and outside the country. He was called upon by the Government of India to help in the country's industrial and steel development plans. He was also involved in working out blueprints for the designing of modern management and technical education in the country. He was the Chairman of the committee appointed by the government whose recommendation led to the foundation of both the Indian Institute of Technology and the Administrative Staff College, Hyderabad. Sir Jehangir Gandhi was the President of the Board of Governors of the Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur. In fact, it was he who conceived the idea of the institute and was deeply involved in its working and progress since it was set up in 1942. As Vice President of the Acharya Jagadish Bose Centenary Committee, he initiated in 1960 a scheme of Science Talent Search, now widely known as Jagadish Bose National Science Talent Search Scholarship. The Kolkata Management Association was founded under his leadership in 1957. In 1945, he was conferred the Knighthood. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1958 for his outstanding contribution towards the industrial development of India. In 1964, he was invited by Columbia University to accept at a special convocation the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. Sir Jehangir, a leader, a visionary, and a technocrat.
Extraordinary, ladies and gentlemen. Now it's time to kick off the 23rd Sir Jehangir Gandhi Memorial Oration. But before we do that, I'd like to call on Mr. T.V. Shenoy, Executive in Charge, Bearings Division, Tata Steel Limited, and immediate former President, CMA, to kindly introduce our keynote speaker.
Thank you, Jimmy. And good afternoon. Good afternoon, I said. CMA is known for a loud, robust good afternoon, and let me try once again. Good afternoon! Yeah, that's the way it is. And it's my pleasure and privilege to introduce Mr. Koushik Chatterjee to you. Mr. Koushik Chatterjee is the Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer and member of the board of Tata Steel Limited. He's got over 30 years of experience with the Tata group, and he completed his undergraduation from the University of Kolkata. And he's a fellow member of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. Mr. Chatterjee joined Tata Steel in 1995 in the Corporate Finance and Planning Group. In 1999, he was transferred to the Group Executive Office of Tata Sons, the parent company of Tata group, where he worked with the Group Finance Director for 5 years. In August 2004, at the age of 36, Mr. Chatterjee assumed the role of the Chief Financial Officer of the company and designated as the Vice President Finance. Mr. Chatterjee was also appointed on the board of Tata Steel in November 2012 as a whole-time director with responsibility for finance function globally for Tata Steel. As a Chief Financial Officer of Tata Steel, he led the financial stewardship of the company, including many, many troubled times in M&A, financing strategy, balance sheet management, investor relationships, enterprise risk management, financial operations and control, sustainable finance, finance academy, and people development. Among his many milestone achievements, he has over the years led the transaction planning, structuring, and execution of the acquisitions of over $25 billion in India, Europe, Canada, Africa, and Thailand, of course in Singapore and Australia as well. He has led the financing program for the company for over $60 billion, including the refinancing and also financing strategy for the organic and inorganic growth. In 2016-2017, he led the complex multi-stakeholder negotiation with the consortium of trade unions in UK, and not so easy aspect to deal with in multi-stakeholder negotiations, especially for the steel pension scheme. Mr. Chatterjee is on the board of Tata Steel, Tata Steel Europe, and other Tata Steel Group companies. He is a trustee of the IFRS Foundation and also a member on the board of the World Steel Association of Brussels. Well, we all know the financial acumen of Mr. Chatterjee and also the love for his cash flows, and of course, getting the best out of people. I have had a ringside view of it. But apart from this, he's a keen, he loves traveling and a keen eye on photography. Welcoming Mr. Chatterjee for the session.
Very good afternoon to all of you, and thank you, Shenoy, for that kind introduction. I would like to thank Mr. Kapoor and the Kolkata Management Association for inviting me to speak on the 23rd Sir Jehangir Gandhi Oration. As we saw in the video, I'm truly humbled and honored by the invitation to speak at this occasion. The way I would like to progress my conversation or my talk this afternoon is first to give a context setting before I get into the subject in particular. In recent years, or in the recent era, if I may use the word, we've been living in spheres of outrages and outages. There is a significant amount of trust deficit in the society at this point of time, and we see this societal disruption in many spheres and many times. This city saw significant disruption a few months back, which continued for weeks and days, and that signifies the deficit that exists between the establishment, the society, the various stakeholders in the community. This year, out of 64 nations that went for elections, the incumbents lost, and that kind of signifies the intent and the outrage that is within the societies towards people who are in power, people who have economic power, people who have social power, or even elected powers. And this does have a reflection on the rest of the stakeholders of the ecosystem in our society. The geopolitical dynamics, if you open the social media or the news, you would get a sense of the world in turmoil, whether it is wars in different zones, cold wars, trade wars, and military buildups happening all across the world, does build in a sense of the outages that are happening. On supply chain, for example, we do have a significant amount of mass movements. It started with the Arab Spring some years back, but it has cascaded into various parts of geographies, and the economic stability is therefore in a state of disruption. If I look at the ways in which the recent elections in the US happened and the reaction of the capital markets and the reaction of the political establishment across the globe, it is very clear that we are possibly looking at a threat of multilateralism. It is the trade blocks which are getting polarized. It is China block versus the US-led blocks. You've seen the threat of tariffs. While tariffs are not good for any economy for a long term, but tariffs are a negotiating tactic to bring people to the table and to demonstrate the nationalism and protectionism that happens across borders, especially in the form of trade flows and also on people flows. The threat of deportation of mass-scale immigrants is also a reflection or a manifestation of that trend that we are seeing across the globe. We saw that in the UK, the elections were fought on immigration. We are seeing this in the US, and we are seeing this in multiple geographies. Even in mainland Europe, near home, we have a similar problem in our neighboring countries, and we are therefore looking at a very volatile state where people are not in a state of stable mindset to carry on on their day-to-day jobs. This is also leading to a significant level of inequality, and inequality is actually the source of the societal disruption, and this is triggering into the entire ecosystem of stakeholders.
So in that context, if I now talk about what's then the future of the corporation, where does the corporation lie? Because it's not on the fringes. A corporation is right inside the society, and therefore a corporation effectively has to deal with the balance of the society, the balance of the stakeholders, the ecosystem, the expectation. I see this in many parts where I travel for work. A case in point is in Netherlands. We have a very large steel plant in Netherlands, and the air quality of the steel plant, around the steel plant, the AQI is five, and yet there is an uproar of the community saying it is polluting. So if I talk about what's happening in Delhi or Kolkata or my city in Bombay, to say that we are at 270 or 300, Delhi at 500 in winters, but that's the expectation. That's the expectation of the community in a corporation that you have to actually undertake investment to make that five into three or to zero. Now, when I came back to India and I told my colleagues in my company, and they said that's the typical Western way of looking things, but that's not going to be the case in the years to come. Even in India, the younger generation, the stakeholders are not going to be patient. They would have a demand, they would have an expectancy. So it's not a universal given that we can do as a corporation what we do, the community can fend for itself or fetch for itself. That only intensifies the trust deficit, and that is where a manager and the community of managers have a role, and I'll come to it. I was part of a British Academy Global project which was named as Future of the Corporation in a collaboration with the University of Oxford, and we had to distill what is effectively the framework within a corporation works. And the first one comes out to be the purpose. So what is the purpose of a corporation? What does it serve? Is it just an economic engine? Does it just generate profits? Is it the only purpose of a corporation in the 21st century? And as we are progressing through the 21st century, that's not going to last. That was okay in the early part of the 19th century or over the last maybe 200 years of Wall Street capitalism, but it is not going to last. And you can figure out that if the societal purpose of being is not addressed by a corporation, it will not have a sustainable lifespan. And therefore, defining the corporation's purpose is critical in the context of regulation, in the context of society, the stakeholders. The world is moving out from the Wall Street shareholder as the only stakeholder to a larger ecosystem of shareholders. So a manager of tomorrow cannot just think of only the shareholder; it is to think about the non-financial stakeholders, be the community, be the regulator, be the government, be the larger society, the suppliers, the customers, and so on, and their interest. It's a balance of interest, and it's not just one-way interest.
The second part of it, beyond purpose, after the company defines the purpose, I call it the four Ps: Purpose, Planet, Profit, People. And that are the four foundations of any corporation. So if a manager is entering his or her career in any company and wants to build a professional career, can't be one lens of what am I told to do only in terms of generating profits for the company. Today, when we are looking at youngsters, there are many who question, 'What's your climate goal?' This is not a question at the end of an interview you've kind of selected somebody and you ask, 'Do you have anything to ask me?' In our time, when we got in, we were quiet. We thought, you know, looks like the interview's gone off well. Today, a youngster is saying, 'What are your sustainable goals? What are your climate goals? How much are you polluting? What's your biodiversity plan?' So these are important issues because planet is important. The other day I was in Sikkim, and I was traveling from Bagdogra to Gangtok, and you can actually see the extent of damage the flash floods have caused just a few months, maybe 11 months back, because it's just that the global warming, the climate goals have been kind of fictitiously looked at by certain parts of the society, certain parts of the corporation, and not given enough importance when we are constructing, building roads, highways, when we are investing into high carbon-emitting industries. And we realize that coming from a steel industry, which is a basic and a foundation material for the world, it is a hard-to-abate sector. But within that, we have to use the best technology, we have to invest in the best processes to ensure we have a pathway to reduce CO2 emissions in the future. And that's why our goals sometimes are higher and more tougher than the national goals and the NDCs. But that's the sign of how corporations have to be responsive in terms of maintaining their biodiversity, maintaining their climate goals. And without that, again, companies will not survive. In Europe, again, if I give the example, the moment carbon gets priced and costed, it's an economic cost. So if today, for example, the European Union Emission Trading Scheme, the CO2 is about say 70, so what was free earlier, in India it's still free, the moment it becomes 70, the decision-making changes, the investment pattern changes, whether to invest or not becomes important. So if, and this is the society which is putting pressure in Europe, it started early. In India, we're still on the negotiating table, but we're just buying time. There will be a time when carbon will get priced sooner than later. When it gets priced, the choice of technology, the choice of investment, the location of investment, what kind of strategies around climate goals will come into being. So planet is now part of the corporation. It is not outside the corporation, and as managers, we have to feel that. So we need to be alert, aware, and when we are taking judgments on investments, judgments on capital allocation, on judgments on technology, on markets, on products, we have to implicitly or explicitly take into account the impact on the planet.
The purpose flows into profits. Earlier, it was to be the other way around. If I make profits, I can define a purpose. It doesn't work that way. It will not work that way in the future. So we need to ensure that we have the ability to define our strategy in a manner where we pursue our purpose, focus on the planet, profits will come. It may come in a manner where it is a fair balance of all the stakeholders. It will not come as one-sided. So the whole duopoly or monopoly or oligopoly conditions change, and therefore there is a rebalancing. And it just doesn't happen within a particular geography; it happens across geographies. And finally, to people, because people make it happen. It is this consciousness of people, the managers, which will drive all of this, because these are inorganic stuff. So the organic being is the human being, and it's the human being who will drive, think, and move towards it. If I look at where we stand as a country in India, I think we are today on the runway. We are gathering speed, but we've not crossed the V2. As airlines cross the V2, you have to take off. We are still on the verge of takeoff. If I look at holistically, GDP numbers are sometimes illusionary. You don't look at only GDP numbers. It is a holistic view of human development index, it is the financial indicators, and what opportunities does it provide. And of course, India is in a fantastic position to grow on a multi-decadal path to become a developed country, not just again on GDPs, but effectively on ensuring that there is a certain amount of stability, prosperity, and happiness in the citizens of this country, which means a social balance, an economic balance, and an ecological balance that should exist within the country. So a manager of tomorrow is faced with a lot of things. The manager of today is also faced with a lot of challenges in front. One is the excitement of the future. So if there are any youngsters who are in their academics waiting to build a career, there is a huge amount of excitement for the future because the future ahead, especially in India, is very significantly bright. Even if there is no triggers coming in from the establishment, India is in that cusp of takeoff, so that will certainly happen. India is a technology-friendly country. It is a country which has got a good demographics. It has got the foundations. We just need to ensure that we maintain the stability of institutions, and India and its population, all of us as Indians, will certainly have the ability to drive growth in the future.
But equally, there will be challenges of disruption. So if I am a manager, I need to ensure that I understand that it's not a one-way ticket. There will be disruptions, and how do we actually frame our mental constitution to ensure that we can manage disruptions? So getting comfortable with uncertainty, ability to handle risk, convert the risks into opportunities. Some may convert, some may not convert, in which case we need to reduce the residual risks and ensure that we are able to deliver on the objectives that the corporations have. We have to bear the burden of stress. When you grow fast, you will be stressed. And today, one of the biggest issues is the mental health of the working population. Sometimes it comes up, sometimes it doesn't. It's hidden, but you hear very often incidents which are, if you trace back, and mental health is unlike physical health. Today, I go out into a chill weather and I don't take protection, I'll get a cold. Mental health actually builds up based on circumstances, based on everyday experiences, based on small indicators, and which kind of accumulates, and then there's a tipping point. And therefore, a manager of tomorrow has to have the ability to undertake what kind of stress works for him or her. The manager of tomorrow has to undertake the ways in which you can remedy yourself. And this is important because it's a long career, it's a long investment in whichever organization. Howsoever, many people leave organizations to go to another organization saying I had stress. You go to that organization, after a few years, you'll have our stress. That's not the solution. Jumping organization is not the way to deal with stress because if everybody is on that race, you'll have that stress. Key point is how to address that, and there the self-leadership is an important element. If you have your own ability to lead yourself, your own ability to manage difficult situations, awkward conversations, challenging environments, you would have your own self-discipline. There's no magic switch which can be prescribed. It is what I can absorb, what I cannot absorb, what I aspire for. It's also a balance of aspiration and ambition. If I am aspiring to be reaching somewhere which is unusually high, must be comfortable with the stress. Shenoy talked about the fact that I became a CFO of Tata Steel at the age of 36. I was not prepared, or neither was I made prepared for that role. It was given to me. I took it as a duty. The risk was taken by people who appointed me the CFO. I tell this even today, and my job was to make their decisions feel right. And so when I got the offer that you are being appointed, I actually went up to our then Managing Director and our Chairman, and he said, 'Why me?' Because I was 36, my wife was just about 30, and my son was 2 years old. And I really didn't know because I was not prepared, neither was I made prepared for that role. But once that decision was made and they found something that I possibly could do, it was the onus was on me. And so when I go to B-schools and people say, like what Shenoy said, I said that's not very usual, and that is not the most appropriate thing to do because your balance of life gets skewed very quickly because the amount of stress that you take because you're an unprepared person. Earlier, people used to get onto these roles when they were well past 20, 25 years of their experience. So we suddenly get it in the 10th year of your experience, you are underprepared. But then comes the challenge of how do you prepare yourself, how do you balance all the priorities, and ensure that between the work that you have and the life that you have, you find out a balance. I may be saying it as a prophetic words just now, but it was really challenging. I don't know whether I've succeeded; that my wife can say that. But the fact is, it is an eternal stress point to ensure that you can deliver to the needs of the organization, especially if that organization is growing or going through its own level of stress. It becomes important, therefore, the manager to look at himself or herself to say what is my constituent, how do I handle each of these volatility, and how do I address them. And none of it can you do by alone. So there comes the ability to work with the team. If you have a good team, half the job is done. How do you know you can have a good team? You can have it only when you understand the people factor amongst the people who work with you. Selecting people is not about being loyal to you; it's about understanding the capacity and capability of those human beings who are also investing their careers in that organization. And how do you take them along? How do you ensure there is enough empathy, yet there is enough constructive stress to make things work? Because everything is not binary. Life is a nuanced approach towards how do you address every day. And the people who are good with managing ambiguity, uncertainty, converting opportunities into outcomes, and handling risks and stress are the ones who are best prepared. Whether they reach a certain position or not is an outcome, but the pathway of preparedness is very different. And you often don't get time to structure it because you're doing it as you are going in the path. There will be times when you will trip and fall, but have the ability and the courage to stand up and walk again. The other part is the ability to keep the value system in place. So while we are entering into a machine age, as Mr. Kapoor rightly mentioned, if you read the literature on AI, you will realize that we are the amoeba of the machine age. We are just now looking at fulfilling our primary needs through ChatGPT. That's like at the basic level. Okay, if you look at the next 5 years, it will be a productivity tool. Most corporates today are saying we will adopt generative AI or AI essentially to make my work better. That's a productivity tool. The pace at which the digital intelligence is growing, it has just crossed the level of human computing. And therefore, while we may want to stop at a certain level, the neural networks of AI will not stop at that level. And therefore, you would hear a lot of noise or lot of conversations on responsible AI. Because the fact is that once it goes, today we are saying what is my goal, the computing is focused on that goal, but AI will learn by itself. It's coded like that. We process 100 bytes per unit of time. AI processes trillion bytes by the same unit of time. It is not specialized, it doesn't know anything, but it learns. The speed of light, when Mr. Kapoor talked about the Hollywood or Bollywood movies, no AI is structured like that, but you expose it, that's how the neural networks work. And therefore, over the next 5 to 20 years, we will see an exponential growth of the good part of AI and also the dangerous part of AI. We will see the dinosaurs coming out. Nobody, even the inventors and people who have worked on AI for couple of decades, still don't know which direction it will go. And believe me, it can become pretty dangerous if AI infiltrates into, for example, the military systems. It might just decide on its own to know how it will program itself to even start wars. We don't know. And therefore, people are talking about kill switches. So it's that age where currently the manager has to look at what AI can give, what machine learning can provide. Today, we are at the productive usage of AI. How can I compute faster? How can I model faster? How can the predictive analytics be faster? That's the current space. But the world of AI is not going to be limited at that level. We have created something. People are talking about a Geneva Convention on AI that we need to control it, and what is the protocol that will happen. The most powerful countries will be the people who will drive AI. So a manager sitting today in this room or in any office, when they become interested in AI, it is important to understand at what stage of learning the AI will provide the
Productive value and it is important to be on top of it, and therefore, along with self-leadership comes self-learning. Gone are the days when everything will be through formal methods of teaching. It is through your whatever — whatever I want to learn, I can today learn from various sources, open sources across the universe. You can go into a Stanford site and look into a webinar of a few Nobel laureates in the subjects that you want. You can go into any university, any academic world, or even training centers, and learn what you want to learn. So the self-learning is the most important element along with self-leadership that a manager of tomorrow — and in fact, the manager of today — has to orient itself. And this is going to have a very significant element, and that is where the value systems will also get tested. You know, values are something that will always be at the back of mind of whatever you do, because the social media, the artificial intelligence, and any digital intelligence applications can actually test your value system, and if we are not really focused on maintaining that and not getting derailed, it will certainly have very contrarian efforts to the objectives of any manager for the future. Therefore, one should look at the entire universe of a career or profession, a corporate life, or any vocation for that matter, in actually looking at one's own internal rethinking and rewiring to ensure that there is a fit for purpose to the environment that exists outside us. It is important for us to be responsive but also be responsible. Today, on the one hand, you can make any comment on anything and there's no bar, so you can be very responsive, but are we being responsible? That's a question for us to see. As human beings, we are often very judgmental rather than actually exercise our judgment. So something happens and we are very judgmental and make an opinion, but we struggle to exercise our true judgment on decisions, whether it is in work or whether it is in life. And a manager of tomorrow has to train herself or himself to ensure that the judgment on decisions that she or he takes is appropriate to the cause that is put in front of them. Understanding the system thinking is important. What's good for the organization — this was a truth that existed even earlier. You saw the video, Sir J.N. Tata was somebody who actually built Tata Steel. If you go to Jamshedpur, you can actually feel — there's a center for excellence that we have — you will feel that the implementation of a vision was Sir J.N. Tata. It requires a lot of passion, it requires a lot of diligence, perseverance to build institutions. A manager of tomorrow, a successful manager of tomorrow, is one who is focused on building institutions, not just his or her career. If you look at what is good for the organization, you will in some form or the other be doing good to yourself. The timings may not match, the proportionality may not match, but it is important to ensure that the institutional needs, the value-based institutional needs, are addressed and is most appropriately dealt with. I think it is important also to ensure that one is looking at a holistic view of life rather than just being a narrow view of life. I talked about people who keep leaving organizations, maybe thinking in the right way, but if you are invested in an organization, a manager would be better served if they can look at how that organization has benefited and what's the mutuality or symbiosis that has happened through the time they have invested in the organization. It's not a one-way street. It's not that people work only for salary. As I said, to build institutions, even if it's a fraction of a portion, it helps the institution. Finally, if I were to look at something which I carry with me, because I got this for my late father, and during my professional journey, every time something good happened and if I shared with him, he used to say, 'But continue to be the good human being, because without that, individuals don't prosper, and a collective of individuals within an institution doesn't help the institution to prosper.' So if you're not a good human being, if we don't have the empathy, if we don't have the ability to work with others collaboratively — because nothing can be achieved alone — it is always the team which can help in achieving a common purpose. And it goes back to those four Ps. The first P of the four P, the purpose of the corporation — the future of the corporation lies in the collaboration of the people who have invested in that institution. And therefore, that common purpose should always be something which is important for all of us as individuals, in whatever we do, wherever we do. And the other point which is critical, which we as a society are not — when you listen to the TV talk shows, it is very apparent — we are not good listeners. We've given away our ability to listen. We only listen to reply, we are not listening to understand. And if you're not listening to understand, how would you leave your brains with a thought to shape the thought that the brain needs to process? And if you're not good listeners, I can tell you AI will have the edge, because it doesn't need to listen, it just needs to process. Because we need to listen, then we can process; that's how the human way is wired. So I think we just have a responsibility as managers to also contribute to the society through our behaviors and kind of reverse these signs of decay that we see in the society across the world. As individuals, we have a role to play. We may not move the needle, but collectively it may move significant way in which the future generations will look at us. And therefore, the manager of tomorrow has to be in sync with society, be in sync to the value systems that the society needs, especially in a disruptive world. And while there is no magic switch, it's a human journey; we can all take it together. Thank you very much.
Yes, Mr. Chatterjee, it was really enlightening, you know, for us to understand, and I love that last portion of it — you have to be a human, you know, it has to come from inside if you really truly want to make a difference and want to be successful. And right now, I would like to call on Mr. Shenoy. We're going to have a Q&A with Mr. Chatterjee at the moment, and if Mr. Shenoy could kindly come on and we could answer a couple of questions which have been thrown on.
Thank you, Jimmy, and can we give a round of applause for one of the most valuable speeches ever? And, Koushik sir, as I am reflecting on the last hour, I'm sure — while this is being recorded, it would have been a master class for many of those who are still stepping into the corporate world, and also who are steeped into the corporate world. Koushik sir, I just got a few questions around the table which I have got, but maybe I'll pick up a couple of them and start off. This — you did mention about handling disruption, stress, and failures. You talked about the future of the corporation and the four Ps. We also heard a lot about the good human being. Maybe if you reflect back on your career, Koushik sir, you talked about self-leadership and the ability to handle stress and failures. At a younger age, we often talk about successes. So for all the people who have moved into the corporate world fresh from engineering, fresh from college, and getting right into the corporates or entrepreneurs, handling failure during these times, how they should go about it?
I don't think actually one has to be very comfortable with failure. And I'll talk about it on a lighter note. My son, when he was in school, used to generally be good in his studies, and you get those ranks, one, two, three, four, five. And one day he asked me, 'While in school, what was your rank?' Because I said next time you should do better. So I told him that look, both your mother and I have never stood second. Your mother always stood first in university, and I never reached second. So you can take your own pick. But I think it is important to not get disheartened by failures. I think, if I may say that, personally I've had many trips across my career, but as I said, if your value systems are within yourselves, are in the right place, if you are focused on a certain goal and objective, it doesn't matter how many times you trip and fall. If you think you have been sincere in your attempt — maybe that attempt was not good enough, which can happen — but keep at it, and this 'keep at it' is an important element, at least for me. And the adjunct area is to be patient. So if one is patient with anything that you do, even if it's an aspiration or an ambition, it is always something that levels out. And therefore, I think one of the key elements of human behavior is to be comfortable with failure, learn from failure, but never get upset with failure. It's easy to say, because every one of us when we trip, we are disappointed. We are even disappointed when our country loses a cricket match. But it is important to keep that faith. And if you keep the faith and you internalize why potentially we have failed, at least to me, I don't mind telling myself, 'Sorry that you've not done well enough to cross the path or cross the bridge,' and therefore, you continue to attempt your own ways of doing things. So I think it's important to be comfortable with failure, not be anxious about failure, because if you get anxious, then your mental makeup is not the same. So it's not that you should target to fail, but you should target to succeed. But if you don't succeed, have a controllable element of disappointment and move on.
When you did talk about failure, and when there's a door of failure which opens, there's a door of success waiting down the line. And just connecting with cricket, you did mention about it, and you talked about teams, building teams. We just seen an IPL auction, and we have seen players go from maybe what, two years back, of two crores to getting 27 crore. And I pick up the point which you said — ability to invest on people and have constructive stress, and having a ringside view of how you operate. I must tell you, getting the best out of people is not an easy task. You need leaders to do that, and Mr. Chatterjee has done that. So how do you go about getting the best out of people? Thin line between pushing them to the wall versus getting them over the wall, but getting the best out of them is often a challenge. But how should leaders step into doing this?
Again, as a personal anecdote, when I moved from Jamshedpur to Tata Sons, I had the good fortune of working with Mr. Irani, who was the director of finance of Tata Steel. He was my predecessor in Tata Steel, but then moved as a group finance director in Tata Sons. And he picked me out from Jamshedpur, and I didn't know him. I still don't know what is the basis on which he said, 'You come and work with me.' And in the early 2000s, we used to do a lot of strategic work, especially divestment programs, M&A, restructuring, new JVs. And I was not trained to do that. I just started my career in the manner speaking, maybe five years old. And he would typically push me to the deep end of the pool, to say, 'You carry on.' So I remember once when we were doing the Tata Sky joint venture, my counterpart whom I was negotiating with was James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son. And I was this flunky who was on the negotiating table. And I came and told him, 'Sir, you know, how do I negotiate with him? He's kind of the owner's son.' He said, 'Doesn't matter. You have your brand, your visiting card, that's good enough. You just do your work. What do you think is right for the institution?' And time and time again, over those six years that I worked with him, I had the circumstances where I was pushed there, and it was a self-learning exercise. And that's when I understood. And even today, I always look for people who are, A, self-motivated, B, who can get into things which are unfamiliar to them, and C, have the ability to be honest in their inputs. If you have that, I think the best of from the people will come out automatically, because if we are all aligned on the same platform, we are all professionals. We want to give our best and get the best outcome. That's the satisfaction you get. Your salary doesn't change month to end based on your outcomes, but the institution gets value out of it. So trusting people, having faith in people, and selecting the people who have the self-motivation is the best form of getting the best outcome.
On that note, on getting the best out of the people, we have questions which are around the corner. Would I open it up? Yes, we have a few hands raised. If you could send the mics there. Yeah, please.
Thank you, Mr. Chatterjee, very well-crafted, well-articulated message and learning for all of us. This is S. of TCS, I work in Tata Consultancy as a program director. I just have one pertinent query, especially in today's world. You touched upon self-leadership, learning, and also touched upon very prominently about the AI aspect which the future manager has to be aligned and has to adapt. But there's another dimension also we are seeing day in day out, which is also kind of binding in today's world; that is the net zero and energy transition. Right, unfortunately a lot of places it is a lot of work happening on the books, not in reality. Recent COP29, we had in Baku, and we have seen the situation of the attendance, participation, outcome, etc. And most of the cases, people talk — even if the top leaderships talk of this is something to be done, but it's high cost because it doesn't give immediate benefit, but at the same time high risk is there. Especially AI also calls for a lot of energy, because Nvidia we are showing that large kind of thing, energy hungry. I also energy hungry. In that case, human value coming in the point, and being really sensible, responsible, and responsive, how the future manager has to be equipped and address this energy transition demand and Net Zero demand along with the AI demand, and how they should prepare themselves and communicate to their industry and society at large. What is your view on that? Thank you.
It's a very good question. So I think the energy transition or the net zero transition started off as a buzzword, but it is taking shape at different pace across the world. As I said, when you start costing carbon, and that reflects in your outcome performance, you are bound to take action. So the geographies where carbon is priced, and one of the predominant geographies is Europe, people are taking action. China has started doing the same in their own ETS program; they have started pricing carbon, though it's a market by itself. So once you start doing that, it is important. The question is for policymakers to figure out the transition in a manner where the societal balance is not affected. So that's why the word has come out as 'just transition,' which is just to all the ecosystem players. I think, as far as this transition is concerned, it has left the station. While people may say with the new president in the US coming in, it is going to reverse, but I doubt whether US companies themselves want to reverse or not. Yes, you might have the oil and gas companies getting a freedom to do more investment in oil and gas or any other high-emitting sectors, but I feel that the climate goals are real, and you can actually feel it. The reason why I give the example of a recent visit to Sikkim — the climate disasters are affecting us. Three weeks back, I was also in Jodhpur, and normally by November it becomes cold, and the temperature there was some 38 degrees. And the people there are saying, 'We are not used to this, because by this time you normally have a significant amount of weather change.' So the climate change is real, it's palpable, it's affecting. You ask any insurance company across the world, they'll tell you the claim ratio — you look at the number of cyclones that are happening even in India. So I think it is important to recognize that climate change and climate goals have to be pursued, investments have to be done. And if I talk about high-processing industry like data centers, etc., which takes in very high energy, I think there has to be a technology — whether it is renewable, etc. — which has to invest. So there is a lot of investment happening today, but it's not at scale, it's still at pilot. So I think we are on borrowed time, and we need to move this needle fast.
