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ENTREPRENEURS ALL: (From left) Mr Sunil Kant Munjal, President, CII, and Managing Director, Hero Corporate Services, Mr S. Mahalingam, Executive Vice-President and CFO, Tata Consultancy Services, Lt. Gen. Mohinder Puri, Deputy Chief of Army Staff, Mr R. Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, Tata Sons, Mr N. Srinivasan, Director-General, CII, and Mr R. Seshasayee, Managing Director, Ashok Leyland, on their way to attend a panel discussion on `Achieving and Sustaining High-Performance' organised by the CII southern region in Hyderabad on Saturday. - A. Roy Chowdhury

Hyderabad , April 23

WHAT does it take for companies to sustain growth and survive for long? Take the metaphor of body and soul and apply it to companies and products. "One has to focus on making pure atma (soul) that can survive in another body," said Mr R. Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director of Tata Sons Ltd.

Citing yet another metaphor of turtles, he said companies should be ecologically adaptive to make them survive for long. The ability to react played an important role in adapting to evolving markets.

Mr Gopalakrishnan was participating in the session on `Achieving and sustaining high-performance' organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) Southern Region, here on Saturday.

He prescribed four principles for companies.

"The kind of business you are in must be changing faster than the equity markets," he said. He cited Tatas' own experience of diversifying into a variety of fields in its long history of 137 years.

Business was all about entrepreneurship. "Institutionalisation of entrepreneurship is very important," he said.

High degree of care for human dignity and financial prudence were the other two key ingredients to make companies survive for longer.

The three key components for sustained growth were strategy, execution and sequencing it (execution) right. Stating that megalomania was not the right kind of approach, Mr Gopalakrishnan said aiming at something dramatic might not get people there. "People are not machines. The ability of leaders is proved in making them ecologically adaptive," he said.

Mr Sunil Kant Munjal, President of CII and Managing Director of Hero Corporate Services, said the lesson to be learnt was to celebrate mistakes in order to learn from such mistakes.

"Talent is trainable. But it is the attitude that is the key," he said.

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