What they taught me at my workplace

As one looks back at his or her career, there will be learnings from each experience that have helped the person evolve — as a professional and as a leader. This is a recollection of learnings from my professional assignments.

I joined Procter & Gamble in 1982. I had just passed out from the Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune. Gurcharan Das was the MD then. Like all management trainees, I too was put through a year's training to get exposure across functions, and settled down in finance.

As a part of the finance job, one was also exposed to manufacturing projects. We were hands-on on several projects — from reducing scrap in hard boiled candy production to reducing wastage in making Vicks Vaporub to manufacturing challenges in Clearasil soap. The opportunities to learn were many. But it didn't end there. In four years of joining the company, I was not in finance — I was in sales and marketing.

Gurcharan proposed that ‘GM potential' managers be made to rotate jobs. I had aspired to become the CEO of an MNC company by 40. This gave me the grounding needed to attain that goal and I am grateful to him for that.

From finalising accounts of factories, I started understanding brands for the next four years. I was a sales representative in the new function for three months, with Sangli as my headquarters. I handled Mumbai and Maharashtra thereafter as an area manager. The perspectives that exposure to finance gave me were not yet at play, but this was the beginning. The foundation had been laid.

P&G was not just a marketing school for me, it was a management school. Years later, I recalled and applied what we had heard from Gurcharan — on ethics, values, and aspects such as job rotation. Aspects such as values are eternal and had been discussed in B-school. But when I saw them being practised like they were at P&G, they made an indelible impact.

Parke Davis

This is an assignment that I don't talk about, and with good reason. But that doesn't mean there were no learnings from it. I worked with Parke Davis for a year after I left P&G.

The day I joined the company as sales director, I met the group director. I knew I had made a mistake by joining the company. What do you do when your value systems and those of your immediate superior do not match? You are inclined to leave the job. I told myself that I must not leave in a hurry. I gave it a year. And in that one year, I learnt what not to do in the industry. The experience made me richer, and better prepared for the roles that lay ahead.

L'Oreal

When Jeane Michel from L'Oreal, who interviewed me, said it was the largest cosmetics company in the world with sales running into billions, I was not sure whether to believe him. I told him I would surely get back to him. Readers will forgive me for this when they consider that this was not the Google era. I called my sister in the US who confirmed that it was indeed a huge company.

At the time, L'Oreal operated in India through a distributor, a division of a pharma company. So despite its size globally, one wasn't sure whether to take up the assignment. I was assured by the company's representative that the intent was to set up a 100 per cent subsidiary in India — that the team I would be building here would be a L'Oreal team. The rules at the time just didn't allow 100 per cent ownership, but if and when it happened, I would effectively be launching L'Oreal in India.

The entrepreneurial nature of the opportunity and the freedom that came with it were tempting.

I turned to my friend Girish's father for advice. A. S. K. Rangan was then VP-HR at Colgate. We discussed the option for an hour-and-a-half. He told me to take up the job — only to prove to myself that I was worth it. I was at that stage where as a young manager, people say you're doing a great job, but you think what you're doing is fundamental, basic. He told me that getting the fundamentals right is not very common. The adventure began soon after.

The Chairman, Lindsay Owen-Jones, came to India in 1992. He was here for two days. At the end of the two days, he told us that we would soon have a 100 per cent subsidiary in India. It wasn't there when I joined. But by 1994, that vision had come true.

His vision was larger than the present, and he needed a team that could see and relate to that vision. We had to build an organisation for the future. Those on the team could not question whether the 100 per cent subsidiary (and what was needed to grow that subsidiary) would happen. It was our job to make it happen.

I am delighted to say that most of the guys running the company today were handpicked by me in 1994-'95, including the country manager Vismay Sharma.

The journey of setting up the company was laden with challenges, many of them that entrepreneurs will relate to. I remember a call one day from a sales staff. He was with a truck, stuck at the Octroi naka. The C&F agent had refused to pay the toll, and the goods were stuck midway. I called the finance manager, only to realise that the C&F agent hadn't been paid for three months! There were issues at the distributor end. I withdrew money from my bank account and got things going.

There will be issues — some small, some large. When you have a vision, that's what should drive you. You can't lose sight of that vision because of those issues. And the efforts will pay off. If not in your term, you will see the organisation grow on the foundations that you helped build many years down the line. And like I do today, you can proudly say that you had a role to play.

Gillette

It was in the late 90's that I was on board at Gillette as MD. In my first year with the company, I was in Dubai as the regional director assisting my boss, managing 20-plus countries. But I was brought on board, really, to help merge three organisations with Gillette in India. Gillette was in the process of acquiring Wilkinson Sword, Jeep and Duracell.

India was just about becoming a global economy during that time. A critical part of the role involved projecting India in a global organisation. Another key learning here was on bringing discipline into large teams. I learnt a rule that I would never forget: ‘If you exceed the top line by ‘x' per cent, you must ensure that the bottom line sees at least half that growth.' The relentless focus on these things at Gillette gave me a holistic perspective on top line and bottom line planning.

One learning from P&G that came to the fore in my stint at Gillette was about how processes are critical to ensure sustainability of growth. In all organisations, and especially in a merger scenario, one must respect the fact that people and processes can build or destroy organisations.

I remember, we signed the Jeep agreement at 3 am. We knew that the news would be out in the morning, especially within Jeep. At 9.30 am, I was at the Jeep office. We had to make them understand that everything was fine; that no jobs would be lost. Yes, we wanted to integrate them into the Gillette culture, but what was good about the Jeep culture had to be retained.

We understood that this was critical, also because we had just bought the Duracell business. We simply didn't understand the battery business, and the people who did were critical to the success of the acquisitions.

As MD of Gillette, I honed my style of people management. I learnt that the job of a leader is as much about instilling belief in people, as it is about leading by example.

(As told to Gokul Krishnamurthy)

(Jagdish Kini, Founder of enterprise 5c Management Consultants, can be reached on jagdish.kini@enterprise5c.com)

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