The Year Of The Last Action Hero

Why we don’t need poster boys and rock stars but quiet performers.

- Brian Carvalho

That was serial entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala in his prelude to a discussion with three teenage innovators at the Forbes India Leadership Awards in October 2018. The man who steered India towards cable TV when in his teens may have been trying to make the point that India needs more first-generation entrepreneurs (along with the next-gen brigade), and that there’s indeed no limit on the lower side. But Screwvala’s polite distaste for poster boys—and poster girls—makes you wonder how much of it was fuelled by the big names that fell from grace both in India and overseas in 2018. There were the abrupt resignations of Martin Sorrell, CEO of the world’s largest advertising agency WPP, and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, followed by three high-profile Indian bankers calling it quits before their terms ran out. Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn moved from corner room to the cooler. In between all this, Elon Musk decided his Twitter meltdowns weren’t enough, told the New York Times that he wasn’t on weed in a teary interview, and less than a month later, chose to puffthe magic dragon on a live TV show. Without getting into the reasons for these abrupt departures, sackings and breakdowns, suffice it to say that perhaps the only boss who lost his job for sheer lack of performance was Manchester United manager José Mourinho. And we haven’t even run the opener around the Me Too can of worms.