Mr R Gopalakrishnan |50 years of corp exp | Former Vice Chairman-HUL and ED -Tata Sons | Author

Mr R Gopalakrishnan (Gopal) |50 years of corp exp | Former Vice Chairman-HUL and ED -Tata Sons | Author

In this interesting conversation, the venerable Mr R Gopalakrishnan takes us through his formative years in St Xaviers, way back in 1954–1964; how , after his B.Sc Physics -Hons he was recommended by Rev Fr. for a Rs 450/month job at McKinnon Mckenzie but as events turned out, he chose to study at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, how he chanced across the Hindustan Lever newspaper advertisement for a Systems Analyst, his transition to Marketing to eventually become Vice Chairman of @HUL in 1997, lessons he learnt in course of his HUL stints, experience with Tata Sons as Executive Director, stints as Advisor to Government of India, and now life as an author — thoughts on success and failure, the corporate world, learning of 6 languages and his advice for youngsters on Careers

You cant afford to miss this one on Anurag Singal YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQa9y-1Pc3g&feature=youtu.be

Q1. Can you please share some snippets from your formative years way back in 1954 in St. Xavier’s Collegiate School? What was that one turning point which re-defined your career trajectory?

Ans: When I was in St. Xavier’s College after finishing school, at the conclusion of my B.Sc. Physics hons., the principal of science college asked me whether I would like to go for an interview to a company called McKinnon Mckenzie, a shipping company and he is entitled to only recommend two people from the college and would I like to be one of them. Back in 1964 to join a company sitting in a fair place in Calcutta, McKinnon Mckenzie make a salary I think of 450 Rs seemed like a dream job and it looked like you could stay there all your life and retire from there. I went for the interview and I was put through certain stages of the interview where they said you also have to lead the managing director and I was very surprised and I told them I am a 18-year old fellow, why should I be the managing director, but I met him and the managing director looks into my eyes and says “If you don’t mind I will call you son because you are so much younger, do you really need the job because your family needs the job.” I said no, so then he said, “then my advice to you will be to study more. My career came about in a different period but your will come in a different India, to be highly qualified is very important, to be curious, to keep learning is very important and you are too young at this point of time.” Of course my father was very upset. He said, “who told you we need the job, you could just carry on studying.” Then I went on to study further and then I got a job in Unilever but that remained with me for a long time that young people should prepare their lived for the careers and times that would happen in the future and not in the times that happened in the parent’s past, and that was quite a turning point for me because it taught me the importance of firm — curiosity, learning, and keeping up-to-date and re-learning which of course stayed with me through my career.

Q2. You learnt 6 languages — English, Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, and Sanskrit. Were you reluctant towards it and were imposed by parents or did you very fondly want to learn all of these languages?

Ans: I don’t think I am very unusual or exceptional. Many Indians speak two or three languages. You probably know your mother tongue most likely, you probably know Hindi, and in order to advance in life people speak some English so it’s very common for an Indian to speak three languages. Those in the cities, maybe a bit more, so in my case I didn’t do anything exceptional. I was in a Tamil house also, we spoke Tamil at home, I would step out in the streets of Calcutta, and they would be speaking Bengali, so even if it’s not perfect Bengali, you learn something. In school, Hindi was my first language so I had to learn Hindi, and back in the 50s it was thought that Hindi is the national language so in my career Hindi would become very important. My parents believed Sanskrit is the root language for all Indian languages so Sanskrit was offered as the third language in the school so I studied Sanskrit for three years but I am not fluent in Sanskrit. As I grew up, I started going to Maharashtra, Gujrat, married somebody from Andhra so you start to learn many languages, and I think many Indians are in that category, I am not exceptional. It’s the reflection of the adaptability of the Indians, one of the things I said in the Made in India Manager book that Indians are so adaptable that they adjust to their space, to whichever circumstance you are placed in, and I think linguistic adaptability is one facet of adaptability that all Indians have and I am just one of them.

I started recommending many languages because there is certain part of your brain which is known as the linguistic part of your brain and at a young age you can learn very well, when your brain is very plastic and absorbent and I also learnt German. I learnt it when I was in school and I can still manage a few words and if you drop me in Germany, with some difficulty I will find my way around. I do recommend other than your mother tongue, Hindi and English, if you can manage to learn another Indian language or foreign language, it’s very well worth it.

Q3. When you landed at IIT Kharagpur instead of this 450 Rs job, did you at any point regret not taking that job?

Ans: The life in Kharagpur was quite like my hostel life back in Calcutta so I was quite used to it. Today it doesn’t take much time to reach Kharagpur from Calcutta but in those days it took almost 5 hours, we had to take a bus or train to the Howrah station and from there you get down at Kharagpur and then you take a cycle rickshaw. So we really were a community which had to vent for itself and one of the things I really valued in Kharagpur was that you could not runaway for the weekend to daddy’s home, like in IIT Bombay and Delhi, 60–70% of them go away, but in our case even the Calcutta based people could not run away to Calcutta because it’s not that easy to get away, so we were a community among ourselves whether it was drama, theatre, adda or chai, debating, studies, all of it. Many people in Kharagpur would remember that we flowered there as human beings. We might have come from completely diverse backgrounds but we were forced to live together and life is all about that; you don’t choose your neighbor, you don’t choose your colleague, you adapt and learn to live together. Many IIT Kharagpur alums will confirm this that Kharagpur played very formative part of their lives, I never regretted not having taken the McKinnon Mckenzie job, and anyway that company did not exist after another 10–15 years.

Q4. Was it serendipity that you chanced across this advertisement in The Statesman for Hindustan Lever’s System Analyst job?

Ans: We didn’t have placements in those days; nobody came to the campus and there was a war with Pakistan in 1965, there had been a Chinese war in 1962 and the biggest recruiters were the Army, the Air force and the public sector units. I was not eligible to join the air force and all because of my eyesight, I am fairly myopic, and I had done my industrial training — 1 year in Nelco in Bombay which was radio assembly factory, 1 year I went to Bhabha Atomic Research, and somehow I didn’t take either of them as being my likeable career, I am not sure why. All my IIT friends in the end of the pre-final year would start applying to United States universities. In those days I think almost 60–70% went abroad but I was like a general secretary of the students’ association and very much involved with the literary festival, sports festival, I lead the IIT Kharagpur contingently, so I was very busy with my extra-curricular activities and of course I had to keep my academics. I never applied to any United States university so come January 1967, people started saying I have got admission here, I got scholarship there and I was sitting there with no job and no opportunity to go abroad, and I just happened to see this ad, they wanted people for their newly setup computer department, they wanted engineers and I applied. So many unplanned things happened to you and I am very thankful for it.

Q5. You didn’t choose to do an MBA — you said in an interview that had you done it, you would be the first batch of IIM Ahmedabad — Later when MBA become the cult thing , as it has become today , and the passport to the CEO world, did you have any reflection?

Ans: Honestly at that time, MBA was a very unknown subject and it seemed to be general fluff in my opinion, because I could understand people being students of chemistry, physics, mathematics, philosophy, economics but management is an interdisciplinary subject and I thought going and spending another 2 years from Indian Institute of Technology to Indian Institute of Management might not be very fruitful, it wasn’t a great judgement on my part but I took that view. I did my B.Sc. Physics hons. Then I did my B.tech. hons. then I will be doing my PGD, so how long will I keep studying. I had got the job in Hindustan Lever which was not an unknown company, it was quite prestigious so I said let’s start working. At the end of the day you learn by working. But once I joined Hindustan Lever I found that luckily for me, again an unplanned serendipity, it was a company which laid great emphasis on training their people so I was sent to many many short term courses, and I even went and attended a IIM Ahmedabad’s three-tier program, my company sponsored me so it was like a accelerative MBA. They call me an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and many years later I was lucky to be sponsored to Harvard Business School for the advance management program so I am an alumnus of Harvard as well. So if I have to be technical about it, I am an alumnus of St. Xavier’s School, St. Xavier’s College, IIT Kharagpur, IIM Ahmedabad, and Harvard Business School. It all happened a bit by accident but it’s alright.

Q6. What was your starting salary at HUL if you were to compare with 450 Rs per month?

Ans: I think they offered me 650 when I was ready to join, and by the time I joined they had done some salary revision and I got 750 so I had started on 750 Rs, which was not bad.

Q7. Mr Scott Burney at HLL gave you your break in Marketing & Sales. Looking back on that interview, what do you think convinced him to give you that break?

Ans: It didn’t quite happen that way. Scott Burney was on my final interview board, he was the marketing director of Hindustan Lever as it was called in those days, and he was one of the four members of my final interview panel, and at the interview panel he said “Do you think you will make a good marketing person?” and frankly in those days I used to think it’s a bit downmarket to be a marketing person. I said no I am a computer person and I want to do computers and he merely said, “Think about it. Maybe you will make a good marketing person sometime later in your career. If you change your mind, come and knock at the door of marketing director.” It so happened four and a half years later I did go and knock but he was not there anymore. There was someone else, and they gave me an opportunity to enter marketing.

Q8. At that point, did you ever imagine that you would become HLL’s Vice Chairman in 1997?

Ans: In those days, we were very happy if we reached senior management level, thinking of becoming a director was at least not in my radar screen, so it was like climbing a mountain, you think you reached the peak and then you see there is another peak, then you go to another peak and then at some stage you stop climbing the peak. So I think opportunities would come, experience was diversified and Hindustan Lever made sure you are disturbed from your comfort zone every 3–4 years and put into new challenges, which helped a lot. I didn’t think of it at that time because I used to get irritated to get transferred from Bombay to Chennai, Bombay to Delhi, etc. you were mentally prepared almost like a camper. Most Hindustan Lever managers would not dream of staying in the same place. They would expect to move much like police or railways or IAS.

People say they want to plan their career, I think your career develops. You have to be the player and not the umpire.

Q9. In terms of marketing and sales, which would be that one challenge that you took and said in this territory there was no demand or I created demand. What was that one massive marketing and sales challenge that you took up and worked successfully?

Ans: I never stayed in any job for more than 2–3 years, then if there is something you are participating in to say that I made a challenge and I solved the problem, that happens to people who have been around for 20 years doing the same thing. I participated many challenges, for example, I was the sales manager in the West when Nirma made its first appearance and it took Hindustan Levers 15 years, lots of people participated in it, I also ran part of that journey to try to make a response to the Nirma challenge which came later, but I am not the guy who worked on it, I am not the guy who made it happen, so that is one marketing challenge I remember that it looked like it would wipe out the company at one time, but then Hindustan Lever got over its constraints, its challenges with very determined leadership. I think the lesson that I remember the best at a personal level is when I went to Jalandhar and I was not familiar with Jalandhar at all and I worked in the marketplace with a very senior salesman who is a Union leader and he was twice my age, but I was his boss and I used to carry a little diary in my pocket in which I used to write down time spent on greeting, explaining the product, booking the order, merchandising and in the lunch time I told him that he spent a lot of time behind informal talks, so he asked me to do it better since I was his boss, and I was in a dilemma because I don’t know who is married and who has got a grandson and I had nothing to ask as I didn’t speak Punjabi. My experience was quite limited because of my limited language fluency and in the evening I went back and he asked how did you do and I said it was quite bad, I was straight on the job and I did what I did, I couldn’t ask any informal question because of little knowledge about their family, so he said, “Business mein Rishta bohot important hai. Rishto ko aap sales call nahi marte wo alag baat hai, but you must know people.” So long as you don’t do your subordinate’s job you will never learn the dignity of work — that’s what he taught me. I think that’s a lesson I remember very well.

Q10. In your stint at the Tatas, what were your nostalgic moments, the most memorable projects — interacting with The Ratan Tatas and Ishat Hussains. In terms of organisational culture — this would have been a great transition as well, but was it easy?

Ans: Every city, every person, every company has its own peculiarity, special characteristics. Hindustan Lever was already a process-oriented Western company. Unilever is very good at sorting out things in black and white, so that you deal with the core issues. TATA is a very Indian company, it worked more through relationships than through processes. I am not saying one is better than the other, I am saying we need both process and relationships. In Tata, the unity factor was very strong, “hum sab saath hai”, in Unilever, the competence factor was very strong, “hum aap se behtar hai”. So there is a difference in the way they both worked and one has to adapt. Both has great opportunities and I am very fortunate I could learn both and adapt to both.

Q11. Do you have any major memory in terms of a project that you did which was like a defining moment in your stint with the Tatas?

Ans: One day I was asked in Tatas whether I could chair Tata Group Innovation Forum and Mr. Ratan Tata told me, “I want you address the culture of the company, not the processes.” Changing culture is a very different challenge, most managers are trained to change processes, how to make the quality better, how to have less rejects, those are all you can convert into sort of algorithms or processes but how do you make people of Bengal as industrious as people of Maharashtra, I mean that’s a different challenge. So I knew it would take a lot of time and I spent 14 years chairing the Tata Group Innovation Forum. I think I learnt a lot because I got the chance to visit top universities and companies to see how do they do it and then I ended up writing a book called The Biography of Innovations, so I remember that as something that to me was greatly and deeply satisfying.

Q12. In your public service engagements, you have straddled the entire pyramid — Railways, Pulses, Electricity and Monsoons — you clicked everywhere — was being passionately curious, what was the key factor that clicked?

Ans: Honestly speaking, I wasn’t chairing any of those sessions, I am not an expert, somebody invited me to join in panel on the particular subject and I saw it as an opportunity to learn, because I had no idea before that as to how is electricity generated, how it is distributed, how Pulses are grown, how important is Pulses, how do the railways run, are they efficient or inefficient, these are the subjects that were coming in the course of my own work so each time I was being invited to come and learn again. Each one was a small MBA course because I would be sitting with 10 other people and nobody would be an expert but everybody knew a little bit of something. So I think I saw it as a chance to be continually learning and challenged, that’s why I joined the committees.

Q13. Was there a conflict in your mind as to these problems would have been solved much better much faster in a private sector and in bureaucracy the way the government works a lot of problems gets stuck for years, did the thought ever come to your mind of getting the job done had you been in Tata?

Ans: You realise what looks obvious to you when you are sitting in your own corporate environment, is not so obvious when you are sitting in a public environment. You also realise you can take a decision in a Tata or Unilever environment but in a public environment you have to be conscious of many other stakeholders. I think it brings you humility that there is much more to it than what I thought by reading a book or a newspaper.

Q14. our father had advised you that you should always do something that keeps the brain active. I am so grateful that you chose to share your rich experiences through writing, speaking, teaching and advising. How would you reflect on that?

Ans: I had a conversation with my father when he was still alive, long before my retirement, and he said to me never put off something that’s a passion because in those days (I am going 40–50 years back) retirement meant sitting in your house and waiting for your pension cheque. He said you must start doing it well before, so I wrote my first book when I was still in service. In fact, Mr. Ratan Tata wrote the forward of the book, and he said you have to continuously work to keep your brain alive because if you just wait till you hung up your boots, then your brain won’t work. One of the things that I found was very satisfying to me that if you retire you re-fire, because you start your third career, as a author, and a corporate advisor, and I realised the world’s richest place is the graveyard because everybody carries his experiences and learnings with him to the graveyard and it is burnt or put under the ground. We have such a rich experience of so many people, but we don’t share it with other people and if everybody starts writing a book, the publishers would go out of business, so you have to learn to write a book, and that’s what I started doing. I read books on how to write a book, I started practicing by writing articles; I have written over a million words so far, and I found writing became a passion. Each time I had a problem in my career, apart from solving the subject I started researching the subject and reading about it and I ended up writing a book. So I got 17 books now.

Q15. How would you balance professional glory and personal emancipation? A lot of youngsters are unhappy that they haven’t achieved much. What would be your advice to them?

Ans: The conflict is arising in your own mind. If you have decided to stay in a particular city, and look after your parents, then that is an important priority. It is not to be judged by somebody else, and automatically it might provide some limitations. I made a conscious decision to not got to America for M.Tech or MBA. Therefore, I will never be a candidate to be the head of Google or Apple, I can’t hold that against myself and feel frustrated. I feel there are multiple pathways to god or success, but you have to define your god first. I think success in life to me has been am I learning more than I learnt last year? Am I on an accelerated journey of learning? Am I enthusiastic? Am I passionate? If those are happening, everything else will fall into place, and I think people who pursue self-improvement and learning, that’s for me has defined success. Success has been a by-product.

Nobody can stop you from feeling frustrated, other than yourself. There are companies with politics but it is everywhere, whenever there is more than two people, there will be politics. There is certain amount of politics that you are contributed to, although everybody gives the impression that he is a victim, we are all perpetrators. You can choose your politics; these are matter of personal choices and I think any frustrated person is frustrated because he has chosen to be frustrated.

Q16. Final thoughts — you took life as it came — “Main Zindagi Ka Saath Nibhaata Chala Gaya” — was this your mantra forever and how did it make a difference in an era when we are either lamenting the past or worrying about future?

Ans: Your task is to do your best and as the Gita says, the fruits may not come to you, zindegi ke saath nibhata jaa raha hoon.

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