Page 45 - AIMA : Foundation Day Souvenir

decisions in such companies are still taken by the top guy. In any case, I am talking about what happened 30 to 40 years ago.
There was great training from Lala ji, who had himself learned the ropes the hard way from his elders. ‘There are no short cuts to hard work’; ‘Honest practices will never be compromised’; ‘You will meet deadlines, no matter what the personal discomfort’; ‘You will persevere till the job is accomplished’; etc., was the pep talk given right at the induction stage. Then there was demonstration by personal example. Let me narrate this one particular case which has many lessons.
On one of his frequent visits to our plant, Lala ji asked the GM, at the airport itself, whether the laminations line had resumed operations? Now, this line, a critical part of any electric motor, had stopped working almost 10 days ago. Our own engineers and even the local agent’s representatives had tried hard, but failed. We were waiting for an engineer from Japan. When Lala ji was informed about the situation, he decided to drive straight to that particular shop as he wanted to have a look at it. Upon arrival, he took off his jacket and got inside the line, and a couple of managers followed him. Once inside, he asked about every single switch, indicator light, relay, and hundreds of other connectors and attachments and their role in the running of the complex line. He would ask for something to be switched off or on, some screw to be tightened or a small part to be replaced. The heat inside was stifling; everyone was perspiring. First his tie came off, then the sleeves were rolled up, even the shirt was taken off, but Lala ji did not give up. Finally, after some three and a half hours, Lala ji emerged and the line was functioning perfectly. Everyone was sheepish but the great man had a big smile on his face. He said, “I am sure, if you had persisted, the machine would’ve been running several days ago. After all, you guys have set it right today also, I was only asking questions and boring you.”
One of his annoying traits was that Lala ji wanted agendas for all meetings to be done to perfection. Just a spelling error or a skewed
line or some such minor mistake and he would fly with rage and chastise all those who were involved in preparing the same. The meeting will be postponed even if it meant 20 officers flying back to their base and returning after a couple of days with the corrected document. I remember asking him once as to why he wasted so much time and money on these small details? His answer floored me completely, “Do you think I do this for fun? My only reason is that all those involved should have total clarity on the subject.” Indeed, when we made a perfect agenda, we had to make sure that we knew all the facts! By no stretch of imagination am I making a case that family-owned companies are not as good as professionally managed ones. If it were so, then the likes of GE, Nokia, Blackberry, Exxon Mobil, and Kodak would still be alive and kicking. In fact, the CEOs of these giants enjoyed absolute power—just as the owners do! These powerful, big guys, lording over monolithic organisations, did not have any promoters to question them. Perhaps power went to their heads and spelt disaster for their companies. Of course, many family-owned companies have also perished, but, perhaps, more of the so called ‘professional’ ones have met this fate.
Anyway, let me get back to my story. There were frequent rebukes, unpleasant pulling up sessions, even cuss words. There was zero- tolerance for dissent. We would feel miserable and often want to quit. Many did so. But, there were rewards too—again, totally unstructured and whimsical, often illogical and unreasonable, seemingly unfair to other colleagues, and yet, very pleasant ones. Let me tell you about one such case.
Circa 1969 or 70; it was about 7 pm when I finished discussing the papers marked to me. As I was saying good night, the big boss asked if I was planning to attend the wedding of a colleague that evening. “Yes, of course, I am,” I told him. “Good, in that case, if you don’t mind waiting for a while, we will go together. I want to just show my face at the ghurchari (a custom in Indian weddings wherein the groom sits on a white mare and proceeds to a temple). You can carry on after that.” After a while, Lala ji came out and asked me to get into the car with him and
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