BW Communities

Case Study: Keep Distance, Power Brake

BW Online Bureau Nov 08, 2014

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[Chaitanya Suri sat on the edge of the kitchen platform on one leg watching his mother restlessly fidget with this and that. She was muttering one moment, and the next she was wiping her hands down her sides on her sari. Chaitanya recognised these movements.  "Ma, what's worrying you?" he asked her gently. He had told her last night that he had been made the CEO of his company Rollsum India, manufacturers of packaged food. But the news did not seem to bring Ma joy. And now she was whispering uncertainly, "He should have been here to enjoy all this... why do I need all this? He wanted you to become a big man..." She was remonstrating with her Guru on the altar, a small shelf in her kitchen corner. "Okay Ma. By your own teachings, bapu is there with me in spirit, correct? So then, tell me how do you feel being the mother of a CEO?" he said half teasing, half engaging her while helping himself to food from the cooking pot with his bare hands, deliberately to distract her. Sure enough she whacked his arm and said, "This is wrong, Tannu! Unhygienic! How did they make you CEO? You don't know anything even now!" "How do you think we make our food products, Ma? I have to taste our products, like this, see, I will show you..." and he dipped his hand into the kofta curry and fished out a kofta as she stood there shaking her head and stroking his back in an unusually happy manner. Unhygienic or not, he was a good son, she thought. The story of Chaitanya becoming CEO was as unusual as he was a candidate. An engineer, he was essentially a doer, an accomplisher. Very simple in every way, every boss he had worked with until now, held him in high regard as someone dependable. Working with Chaitanya was such that only after a few months one stopped and realised what a blessing it was having him watch over everything. He had that manner of doing without lights and sound. Chaitanya had joined Rollsum on the rebound after hurriedly quitting Kavant Pharma, which, he accidentally discovered one day, was mired in extremely illegal stuff. Frightened out of his wits, he took the first job that came up, and that happened to be from Rollsum. When the company started crumbling after two years of his being there, Chaitanya fought the fires daily like a soldier, albeit in his region. But he was in the biggest and largest region: the West. On the rebound, Rollsum made some hasty strategic decisions, all of which bombed, leading to huge attrition at the top. By 2008, the management had come to depend exclusively on Chaitanya, whose perceived role had by then gone beyond the western region. Aiding this was a key fact: the chairman, Abhay Acharya, had his office in the same building where Chaitanya and his western region worked. So Chaitanya had come to be his local voice of wisdom, and this reputation naturally travelled to Rollsum's head office in Delhi. When the head of plant operations quit in 2009, Acharya instructed that Chaitanya should take care of the plant operations until they found a replacement. This was easy because the plants were all located in Gujarat. Soon after this, Chaitanya was called upon to bail out the management during a particularly tricky curve it was negotiating with some messy worker retrenchment at the factories it was selling. He had managed the situation admirably, refusing to break law or ethics, yet keen to extricate from the situation with victory for all. Chaitanya had all that it took to keep the company running: strong management skills, people skills, and patience. He had a steady manner of dealing with crisis and chaos. He mostly remained unfazed and had a stunning focus on the task at hand, whatever it was. The board had begun to notice this. When attrition shot up in 2009-10, Chaitanya had asked the board to protect the workers and the sales teams. "The factory workers are key for our continuity; they are good, know the processes and are high up on the learning curve. Retraining will put a strain on quality, which we cannot afford now. And the sales team? We need them, for sales is what is going to keep the company afloat." break-page-break Over the next two years, some level of trust was restored in the operations and even the promoters, who had earlier resisted Chaitanya for his ethical stance, now felt his commitment was a blessing. Ethics was not a strong point with the top management, the shareholders and the promoters — they were reputed to have done all kinds of things in their periphery, so that finding people for Rollsum was not easy, as its reputation had come under a cloud. So when a CEO had to be appointed, Acharya told the board, "I like this fellow, Chaitanya. His initiatives have worked out well for us. Importantly, the trust that he enjoys with the stakeholders — external customers, internal employees, vendors, agencies, etc., is indicative of the their bonding with him and their confidence in his leadership. These are pluses in his favour..." Yet some felt a regional guy could not be given corporate responsibility. Acharya said, "But de facto, he has been doing a corporate job! He is here in Delhi three days a week to fight our fires. So what regional handicap do you see?" Another felt he was just an IIT, and would lack the finesse of a school-groomed manager. Still someone else felt that he was a hands-on chap, dealt with the nitty gritty, and did not seem to have the presence of a business leader. When he heard about the decision, Chaitanya was taken aback. He called Acharya and said, "Why do you need a CEO when you didn't have one until now? And this is a bad time to put this halo around me. All these people I work with, they will feel distanced...." "Don't worry," said Acharya."We need the company to have a face and that has to be you." But Sujeet Mathur, a board member had told him artlessly, "Arre baba, if we want to sell the company tomorrow, it must look well-appointed with CEO-she-e-o and all, no!" Chaitanya called Acharya again, "I don't know what is going on in Delhi, so I don't feel comfortable with this designation. When I promised to turnaround the company, it was with perpetuity in mind, not a ‘fattening before sacrifice' exercise. How do you expect me to feel committed to an artificial role?" But Acharya waved away Mathur's prophecy. "One of the first steps of being a CEO is selective hearing and collective ignoring. You keep your nose to the ground and keep going." Reassured, Chaitanya called his wife, Bhavani. "Listen," he said to her on the phone, "Don't laugh, but I have become the CEO." But Bhavani laughed. "That is so funny, I can't even imagine what you will look like!" But presently, she expressed discomfort, "You have to be careful with these guys..." she said. "You know, being a star manager who fulfils all demands is one thing. But now you have been given a designation that ties you down! "These are all strange people, Chaitanya — prone to fits of anger, internecine jealousies, undesirable legal shenanigans, with bankers... How will you deal with them? Will life change? We are not those kind of people. I am happy that we will have more money and we can do more with it, but won't your life get constricted and restricted and all that? At least make sure you don't fall into the trap of over-work. I don't want the peace and calm we have, the time and space for just sitting and smiling, to change." Monday morning, just as he was taking a call from Delhi, Dara, Karna and Dileep entered the room. They were his senior sales managers. Waving to them as he usually did, Chaitanya went back to his call. Soon he sensed something was amiss. Usually they were noisy and he had to often shush them...why did I not get a response from these guys?... and he looked up. They were standing at the door with a bouquet. "Eh?" he said. They laughed and congratulated him, and said, "We heard the news, you have become the big boss!" That is when it actually hit him. Big Boss... Is this going to affect my relationship with these people? That they called him "big boss", rankled. These were his people, with whom he shared such a rapport — they worked together, shouted at each other, forced work out of each other. All these guys had the ability to fight me back. Now with this big boss position on me, will they fight me back or will they quietly succumb to the pressure I will bring upon them as the CEO? Chaitanya looked at them with his characteristic grin, and said, "Bas kiya...! CEO is what, hanh? You know, just a label!" Some silent pondering later, he said, "What irony hanh... you guys do all the hard work. But look, I get the reward!" And in a second with that dancing look he told them, "Chalo aaj beer ho jaaye and this time also you will pay!" They laughed, but  Chaitanya was anxious. They did not call me ‘Chatni' as they always do! Then, he said to them in all friendliness, "Guys, listen. Who else will understand this better than you: ‘New Improved' ka matlab kya hai? Only name change; content remains the same. So, nothing has changed, please. We have a goal to get to, and we will stay with that, okay? Two, the market must not get disturbed. Underplay the label — if not the distributor will view the same selling as pressure. This festival season, we are going to seize the market and pitch our flags. We have eight new launches, bahut kuch ho raha hai. All this CEO etc. is theory; practice will be, ‘business as usual' please..." These were his solid team, his movers and shakers. The bonhomie among them was what contributed great dynamism to their flow. Now they had begun to ‘revere' him. In the process, I will get more distanced from them. Or they from me... Oh, why have they put a label on me?  Chaitanya realised that their lives were now changing. Things had already begun to change. People were knocking on his door before they entered, Shaila, the secretary, now barred easy access... . And if he called anyone directly, they were very restless talking to him. So there is process now, heck! Earlier, I would go to the lowest level and get my work done. Now, it seems I must keep some distance and give space to people to operate. Why do people keep a distance from a CEO? To Bhavani, he said, "It's strange no, two people being the same, if you change their designations, the relationship between them is altered!" Chaitanya's key anxiety was the speed at which they were working the markets towards a turnaround. So, he was working with the finance and marketing chaps too. Earlier, nobody even remembered he was GM. The bonhomie was such. Now the CEO collar clanked like a cowbell. Chaitanya did not want anything to change. Later, he said to his wife: "I am uncomfortable, Bhavani... I am a different creature now. I don't think I even count for a human! If I want to go to Manikanda in IT, do you think he will continue to tell me, like he used to, ‘Go away, po-da! I have a life to live, I will give it to you after a week. This week is for IPL...'!" To Acharya he confessed, "We had that back-slapping engaging style where we flowed together and yet delivered. Now I wonder: can a CEO be the enabler? All was going well, why did we feel the need for a CEO? How do I make sure that I don't lose the bridge with them?" To Cyrus, an old school friend and marketing head of Damex Fuller, he said, "The company has a huge bank loan to repay by next December. I need to run with the sales fellows non-stop... now will they share the bad news? You know when I was in sales, I too did not reveal the real picture to top management. So why should these chaps? They will paint hunky-dory pictures! How is one to know what is the truth?" <img src="/businessworld/system/files/foot11_mdm.jpg" width="200" height="200" style="float: right; margin: 5px;">Cyrus: Nothing like that. After a few days, it will be back to normal. But there is a need to build a distance. I don't think it can be avoided. You cannot seek to have a bridge to everyone, because then you will be under pressure always. There will be times when you will need that gap. And then Mathur from the head office called and said, "Chaitanya, tum Dilli shift ho jao!" Chaitanya got thinking. His children were very well settled in their school; they would take poorly to change. His daughter especially, who was head girl and whatnot, would yell the loudest. No, he did not want an unstable home life now. "Please, may we put this on hold?" he asked HR. "I'd rather deal with one change at a time, the turnaround will be the first. Let us hang on for 18 months, allow me to accomplish all this." break-page-break Then HR emailed him and said, "In that case, you must at least have a different office. Admin will be in touch with you, the 11th floor office will be redone..."  Chaitanya called Kunal Swami in HR. "Kunal, let us slow down please. No change till we clock profits.  People know we are on a drip. Being CEO does not mean being swathed in opulence. There is an overdraft strangulating us... We have been bleeding for six years. We are just beginning to turn the corner. This year's appraisals were force rated because we had no money. You take away their increments and give me a carpet? The CEO-ship is just a convenience measure. There is no need to make a drama, please! My third floor room is decent. It has been a good room for me; I don't want any expression of change... This will just put more distance between me and the people, and there will then be more punctuations like the secretary, one ante room, one personal pantry... Kunal: Just go and see the room, boss. It has been designed for quiet; working away from the clutter of office madness. Chaitanya: And that is exactly what I cannot afford now. Kunal, I need every resource easily accessible and without any walls. Last 18 months, we have worked together as one. We applied designations only when the skill and responsibility was required. Now you put me in a fortress and have a snarling tiger at the door, and all work will fizzle out. "Then again, we have had so many austerity measures for the staff. In fact, the senior management must adopt austerity above everyone else! Even when it came to promotions, who all got ‘Outstanding'? Who got promotions? Senior management. But wasn't it a far greater number of junior staff whose increments were cut because they were force rated? Let this change not be visible. It is embarrassing." Chaitanya's application to the turnaround was almost manic. But only the staff and managers saw him at work. Top management was in Delhi and had no idea how he dealt with the market, with distributors, etc. To be distanced from his sales and marketing teams was, for Chaitanya, loss of ‘market affinity'. Daily, so much happens! These men are the carriers of essential intelligence. For example, will Dasan knock on my door to tell me that Kutappan from Pirovom is toying with the idea of taking up distributorship for Teffer? Will Samar slide past my table as he always annoyingly does, grabbing my neck for support as I curse him, and tell me, "Killer, Parel-Lalbagh-Byculla completely consumed by Inji, (the ginger paste). We are rocking boss!" Does that add value to my knowledge of Inji? Of the markets? No! But it is telling me we are right about Inji. That same subtle intelligence will now come to me in stupid acetate sheet, wrapped in sophisticated (useless) language like: ‘Inji is visbile'. Inji had better be visible. It jolly well be after spending Rs 14 lakh on its first day blitz. But it is health and reality that comes from Samar's slide, grab and slap. When Tanisha, Raja, Bulldog and Nirma-King fight and scream over the presentation in the conference room, I see health. Will my clinical 11th floor cage do that? But Mathur said, "Young man, you will get used to it. Good people like you have to go there one day. The first few days are not easy, but thereafter it is heady, trust me." When Acharya called him from London, Chaitanya did his best to explain, "If you trust me to run your business, how come it is difficult to trust the very first move I make as CEO? If you had not put that collar round my neck, I would still be in Mumbai, still in my small cabin, and all would have been well. What breathtaking change are you now expecting with all this? "Nothing has changed in the way the organisation does business, in the way competition is behaving or anything in the environment. It's time now to keep a steady eye on the tricky variables. But now I do not want distraction, not for a second. Look, all I am saying is keep status quo for 8-10 months. Let us achieve a few milestones that I need for the survival of the business, and then we can make whatever cosmetic changes that you want." His biggest concern was not allowing anxiety among the staff who he had kept from accepting other offers. Many had trusted his faith in the turnaround and stayed back. When Kunal flew to Mumbai with the keys to Acharya's room, Chaitanya took them gracefully and thanked him. Then he said, "No hurry, Kunal. I will move once I decide to move. It will happen in fullness of time!" Classroom Discussion Can a CEO really enable without running with the pack and being one with them? casestudymeera (at)gmail (dot)com (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 10-10-2011)