<div>Gauri Rao stood in the middle of the bridge rooom at the Crucible Club, fanning herself. It was incredibly hot and the two main French windows were sealed shut. Presently, a staffer Ram Singh came rushing in. <br /><br /><strong>Gauri:</strong> Kaise ho, Ram Singh? (and then...) There is a meeting at 4:00 p.m. Why is the air-conditioning not on? <br /><strong>Ram Singh:</strong> Ma’am, I was told that since only women are attending, there was no need to turn it on.<br /><strong>Gauri (smiling at Ram Singh):</strong> Can you please turn on the AC? And that must have been Mr Dua’s instructions?<br /><strong>Ram Singh:</strong> Yes ma’am.<br /><br />Gauri called Mr Vijet Dua. “Hello Mr Dua, you have been well? ... Of course, me too! Ah, I was saying, can Ram Singh turn on the AC even if the meeting is women only? Oh? I didn’t think I had to reveal the agenda of my meeting, Mr Dua? Ha ha ha. What can be so confidential? Well, we are plotting... ha ha ha! And here is Ram Singh, poor fellow....<br /><br />When the call ended Ram Singh apologised to Gauri. <br /><br /><strong>Gauri:</strong> I understand, lekin ab achche din aa rahe hain... ha ha ha! <br /><br />Firdos Daftary walked in saying, “I didn’t need directions, Gauri, I just followed your famous laughter!” As the rest of the ladies arrived, the AC began to cool better. <br /><br />They were meeting at Gauri Rao’s behest. Last week, there had been quite a buzz as the deadline approached for Sebi’s directive to companies to compulsorily appoint women on their boards and many companies were frantically calling placement firms to find them lady directors. At the Morro Group, CMD Vinayak Morro had not been able to find a capable lady director for the board of Morro Vulcan Steel. Three names that were sent to him by a placement firm had not met favour with his retired father, Vittal Morro. “They are good managers,” he told Vinayak and Shirish Patnaik, the CFO of Morro Vulcan Steels. <br /><br />“But a director is a director...she have to bring that extra special fire to the boardroom. Ten years from now, all three will be very good. But not today....Find women with prior board experience!” said Vittal Morro.<br /><br /><strong>Vinayak Morro: </strong>Baba, there aren’t too many! <br /><strong>Vittal Morro: </strong>Maybe, but I am not appointing untrained directors, male or female. It is unfair to everyone. <br /><br />And a hopeless Vinayak Morro had to send three more CVs to Patnaik.<br /><br />Desperation had set in at Morro. Two of the ladies had declined graciously saying they knew nothing about the steel industry, nor had any core experience in heavy industry and did not see themselves adding any value. The third had already taken up two directorships of which one was a start-up, and felt she could never do justice to a third appointment. <br /><br />It was during that terribly frustrating moment, as Patnaik held his head, that Gauri Rao, the head of Morro’s MR, walked in (See BW issue dated 18 May 2015). Having examined the arguments of other senior managers at Morro, Gauri decided to meet some of her women friends who were very senior managers/VPs/functional directors.<br /><br />There was Achala Panigrahi who ran her own successful HR consultancy. There was Krittika Sahni, senior VP at a bank, Firdoz Daftary, quality and purchase head at her father’s hospital, Amai Virkar, CFO at an MNC. There was Madhavi Lal, Morro Retail’s VP Marketing and a few more. <br /><br /><strong>Firdoz (major stakeholder in her family business, Hospitals): </strong>Media does have a way of twisting occurrences. I have read almost every news report on this and some very reputed magazines think that companies are unwilling or unwanting to appoint women on their Boards. I completely disagree! <br /><strong>Manika Wagle (partner in an MR conglomerate):</strong> Reluctant? We have a situation of compulsory appointment. Then how can there be reluctance? We do not have board ready women. <br />Gauri: Reluctance could be because the available candidates do not have the requisite qualities. <br />Manika (laughing): A colleague of mine had this to say: ‘Directorships are essentially old buddy clubs in India. How do women become <br />buddies?’<br /><br />The women were amused and laughed, as Firdoz said, “You know, it takes such a lot to reach that level! Not just variety of functions but intensive involvement! And not just hands-on, but also dealing with crisis, with pressure, with bad news, with emergencies, with terrible postings... <br /><br /><strong>Gauri:</strong> And so that is why we meet today. Have you been approached for a board position, Minhaz? <br /><strong>Minhaz Khanna (HR head of a large cement company): </strong>A family-run business approached me, but I didn’t make it — I suspect my long international stint was not encouraging! The search firm shared with me the client’s response: she is not very well connected with the circuit in India and she will not be able to bring us business.” Difficult to tell what they meant. But maybe they felt I lacked the cultural fit, whereas I had believed that a board position is about corporate governance and actually leveraging skills and capabilities. <br /><strong>Madhavi:</strong> Exactly! But please tell me, in this huge brouhaha over wanting ladies on the board, is any company wanting to look at your skills in the area of corporate governance?<br /><strong>Minhaz: </strong>Interestingly, there was no specific conversation about corporate governance. The meeting felt more like an interview frankly — and that is something I had not anticipated. A couple of women I know who ARE on boards, advised that the best way to do this is to cold call companies and let them know you are interested. <br /><strong>Madhavi: </strong>Nooo, very inelegant! Yet I guess this must be because this ‘must have women directors’ is an emergency what with deadlines and penalties.... so, I guess you have to do the unseemly, ungainly thing. But I am wary of that... it is a buddies’ club finally!<br /><strong>Manika (reading her messages): </strong>Ok, he says, ‘Directorships are friendship clubs or parking slots for retirees with good CVs. Structurally, how does a lady fit in? <br /><br />Also directorships are traded. You join my board and I join yours. Only in few cases genuine professionals are used and that’s where women directors are finding place’. <br /><br /><strong>Krittika:</strong> But there is an undercurrent of gender inhibition. When men get to a functional head position or CEO, they are automatically taken on to the board even without prior board experience —and mentored. But not women... we don’t see that readiness to receive her and coach/mentor her.<br /><strong>Madhavi: </strong>Has this been the experience of other women like you, too? <br /><strong>Achala (HR consultant):</strong> Listen to this: in a sales and marketing driven company they used to have a man heading marketing and on the board, but when the man left and a woman was hired, they decided to change the organisation structure such that the marketing position was delinked from a board responsibility. The lady joined and her role was quietly made just a functional one! In her place, a man would have refused to join or would have quit the organisation if the appointment was later delinked from the board position. <br /><br /><img width="640" height="376" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=6e1d718a-0b6d-4236-a0a7-bc48ae1a0a60&groupId=222861&t=1431347613030" alt="" /><br /><br />Now here is the twist. The client’s explanation was that the company already has a female finance director — they don’t think it necessary to have another woman on the board! So, the interesting thing is that no one thinks of increasing gender diversity on the board; they say we need one, we have one — why more?!<br /><strong><br />Gauri: </strong>This is the reality. Finally it is all so apologetic....<br /><strong>Minhaz: </strong>Absolutely! I was told by the interviewer at one such organisation — ok, they are always men who interview for board positions please (everyone laughed) — he said: “ We will put the person first in one of the internal companies before considering them for the board of the public company...” That was odd.., ha ha!<br /><strong>Achala: </strong>Man or woman, boards want non-assertive people. The constitution of a board is a legal requirement. But many companies want boards that will not question or opine. That might be why the same names appear on many boards. <br /><strong>Gauri: </strong>Has your firm recommended names for company boards? <br /><strong>Achala: </strong>Yes, we have. There are enough women who will not come on board unless they are very clear that the company has ethical practices. You see, women have the luxury of choosing the ethical.<br /><strong>Minhaz:</strong> A male board member said to me, “This space is fraught with danger; Do women really want to go to jail?” I was rather taken aback. <br /><strong>Gauri: </strong>But that is the underbelly of being in governance. It is often said, ‘Ethics is a luxury women have’ — so they are as easy to drop offers that look even marginally iffy. <br /><strong>Krittika: </strong>This actually gets very interesting. Obvious as it might seem, why is it easier for women to say, ‘Thanks but no, thanks’ to offers that entail bending the law? Are women less adventurous? Or is adventure and power a male thing? <br /><strong>Achala: </strong>I am not qualified to comment on that. But I have a different take. First, there is a very small percentage of women in corporate/academic circles at a level where they would make it to the board. And most of them have already satisfied their need for self-actualisation. Hence a board position will only be a bonus and not a necessity. For that, how much risk are they willing to take? This makes them less receptive to any and every company. Plus, women feel more strongly about corruption. <br /><strong>Gauri:</strong> So, have you asked your lady prospects what their expectations are from a board position? Are they cognisant of the risks? Did your dialogue with them go further? <br /><strong>Achala: </strong>Yes... we discussed this, and their reaction was, “Find us a proper one”. Why? I feel it is prestige, status — a ‘I have arrived’ funda.<br /><strong>Gauri:</strong> See, there is a deeper issue here. Granted there are issues of ethics but those are there at all levels, not just boards although I agree the liability is significant at the level of the board. But there is another issue as well. Boards need people who know the industry well, people who have the passion to build your organisation. <br /><strong>Achala: </strong>I agree, yet what we see is discouraging. One of our clients has just hired a lady director for their board, an IIT grad and an excellent professional. Despite all this, she has been put on a CSR committee. What use is that?<br /><strong>Gauri:</strong> In my opinion, that is great use! CSR is by far the most misinterpreted. Social responsibility is as important as the main business. Hence, your IIT friend has a tremendous role to play as a strategic advisor to ensure every rupee is spent sensibly. And purposefully, not as a ‘charity’.<br /><strong>Amai (who had been quiet all along):</strong> My view is that there are a lot of very talented women who could add a great deal to board deliberations. Many of them are outside the corporate world, belonging to professions such as teaching, NGOs, healthcare and so on, and will therefore bring true diversity to corporate boards. Particularly relevant when companies are looking to get more integrated into the societies and communities that they work with.<br /><br />There will be a transition phase that we will go through, and there is of course the fact that promoter-led companies will have their quota of wives/mothers/sisters/daughters appointed to boards, but I think it’s one of the ways to break the clubby world of independent directorships.<br /><br /><strong>Gauri: </strong>Correct me if I misunderstand. These women you refer to — teachers, professors, scientists, and so on — are you suggesting their profiles for CSR initiatives? <br /><strong>Amai:</strong> I think it goes well beyond CSR, into the way companies conduct business. For longevity and sustained growth, companies do realise that it is not just the shareholders that they have to consider but also consumers and the community at large. Take the example of a beauty care company. The decision to eschew parabens may not be justified by cost considerations or required by statutory regulations, but can be driven by a longer-term consumer interest; these are typically the kind of larger debates that a more diverse board can address more effectively. Ditto for GM foods.<br /><strong>Gauri: </strong>So, Firdoz, at your hospital, will you have more than one woman on your board?<br /><strong>Firdoz: </strong>We already have four women directors but that is because the medical fraternity is equally loaded in favour of women. My question is about the corporate world which has a smaller appetite for mediocrity than, say, the public sector. I worked with a health equipment major for eight years. It is a part of the covenant my Dad enforces for both working with him and earning shares in his hospital business. And in those eight years one thing that stuck with me was this: reservation of any sort promotes mediocrity…as meritocracy gets marginalised. The company I worked with initiated a drive to hire women only in senior positions. A lot of deserving men were denied opportunities to rise in the organisation and some were specifically told that the mandate was for woman managers only. It was a disaster, I promise you.<br /><br />One of you here talked about the onus on directors, personal liability and so on. So what? So really what? This is what reservation does. It makes you want to be protected always. There should be a level playing field...If you mess up, go to jail, take it on the chin...To this day I have to fight it with my three brothers and uncle to win a proposal. It ain’t easy!<br /><br />Gauri slipped her business card towards Firdoz. Vittal Morro would jump with joy to have someone like her, she knew! <br /><br />(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 18-05-2015)</div>
