The Ratan Tata Way: Neeyat, Neeti And Niyam

As a leader, he preferred being an intellectual nomad rather than a map-bound explorer. Though he pushed colleagues to be efficient and effective, he always behaved kindly with them

- R GOPALAKRISHNAN

RATAN Tata was loved by almost everybody, understood by most people and was misunderstood by just a few. That is a pretty good track record for any human being. To be loved by everybody is a rare gift for an enterprise leader. To be misunderstood by only a few is a superb record. He never uttered the words in the title of this article: neeyat, neeti, niyam. The coinage is my summary for his style of leadership.

Neeyat

This word derives from the Arabic neeya, which alludes to strategic or deep-seated intent. For any enterprise, the neeyat should not be to 'make lots of money' because that would be akin to saying that the neeyat of a human being is to 'breathe in lots of oxygen'! Just as our body needs oxygen at calibrated levels to live healthily, an enterprise needs profits at calibrated levels to live healthily. Profit is a measure of enterprise efficiency, but not of enterprise effectiveness. Too much profit, like too much oxygen, can be toxic.

Ratan Tata desired that, like human beings, enterprises should be nurtured.

to become efficient and effective. To be efficient, they had to operate at top-class levels. To be effective, his enterprises had to have the community at centre-stage.

Here are a few instances of how Ratan walked the talk, not to show off as an example to others but to be, well, himself.

When Covid happened, the Tata companies' profits and efficiency were negatively affected, like for most other companies. However, Tata group's contributions to Covid relief were significantly higher than earlier years' expenditures on social responsibility. This typifies the act of corporate effectiveness.