The Hindu Business Line : ‘Information is power’

“You could be super-intelligent but without information it has no value. Information is power,” emphasised Mr J. Radhakrishnan Additional Secretary, Finance Department, Tamil Nadu. Today’s corporate world is hungry for managers and they need the right information to succeed, he said.

The IAS officer was addressing over 300 management students of the Sathyabhama University at the inaugural Business Line Club lecture series, a corporate-academia interface.

Mr Radhakrishnan narrated a simple anecdote from his own life to illustrate how information makes a difference. He was not able to crack the civil service examination at the first attempt in the ‘80s when he wrote it in Kerala but found that several from Bihar were qualifying. “They had the syllabus in hand but my preparation was not organised,” he pointed out, and that made a difference.

‘Work hard’

Outlining other facets of making a successful career, he said that there was no substitute for hard work. “You have to work hard, there’s no excuse, you’re only as good as the previous day,” he stressed.

Again, he pulled out an anecdote from his own career graph to buttress his point. Acclaimed for his role in managing the aftermath of the tsunami when he was Collector of Nagapattinam district, one of the most affected, he said that all that was in the past and he would be recognised today only for his work here and now.

He exhorted the students to have immense self-confidence while never comparing themselves with others. “Have tremendous self-esteem, but not arrogance,” was his advice to the management students.

And, one should have the ability to learn from failure and not be despondent. Again, he pointed out to some of the mistakes committed during the tsunami relief, especially where some of the makeshift shelters were concerned. But, he and his team were able to learn from its failure and do a better job later.

It’s also not just enough to have skills but one should also be able to cash in on opportunities, was Mr Radhakrishnan’s advice to the students. He drew a cricketing analogy by citing the success of M.S. Dhoni, who, he said, had the skills, and despite hailing from a region without a history of cricket such as Jharkhand, he was able to cash in on the opportunities when they presented itself and is now a star.

Earlier, Mr Radhkrishnan talked about disaster management in the context of the tsunami relief work, which was a managerial challenge in itself. Using a slide show , he explained that relief work needed to restore livelihoods of the people affected, and required enormous amount of material and money, and people’s involvement, and organising it all together was a big task.

Even media management was important, he stated. “Like in business, one had to give the right information at the right time.”

Mr K. Venugopal, Joint Editor, The Hindu Business Line, in his address, stressed on the usefulness of a business newspaper for the students and the rich resource base that Business Line has, which could be accesse d online by them for information on a wide variety of business issues.

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