MAKING COMPANY FUTURE-READY - We Need to be Simpler, Faster and Agile:
Tata Motors CEO
Guenter Butschek, the
former Mercedes-Benz veteran who took over as the chief executive at Tata
Motors a month ago, foresees the brand as a true global success story in a few
years from now. Butschek has kick-started a transformation process, which seeks
to work towards operations which have speed and agility, and are simpler. The
55-year-old, a former Airbus operations chief, says he is very excited to lead
the change at the nation's largest automobile maker. Edited Excerpt of his
first interaction with the media.
Initial Impressions
I celebrated my one-month
anniversary with my team at an offsite two days ago. The company takes great
pride in its history and people in the company have a great passion to excel.
Tata Motors has consistently pioneered new segments, both in commercial vehicle
and passenger vehicles.
On what Prompted Him to
Take up the Job
The brand, it is a globally
recognised brand, and its contribution towards the mobility in the country, be
it for goods or people. The other factor was Tata's strong commitment to the
people and community. This is something which is very appealing and it also
deals with one of my basic convictions. If you want to make a difference, it
can be only made through people.
On plans to take the
company forward
To make the company future-ready,
we need to consistently evaluate ourselves with the global benchmarks, because
we would not be satisfied with the Indian benchmark. We would like to have a
global footprint and this is largely possible with the pipeline of new products
that have been put in place and I am quite excited about them. Along with
product, we are putting in place right processes with focus on technology,
quality and reliability and passion.
On leadership changes
My basic assumption is that
everybody would like to be part of this transformation journey . As we go on in
this journey , we will see, who enjoys the journey and who does not. Then I
come back to your question -if change is needed to be applied, then the
question is who is going to apply the change, the one who does not enjoy the
journey or the one who is actually running the train -and might critically
review who should be on the train and journey . If this is not an exciting
journey , then I don't know, what else could be more exciting.
While focusing on this exciting
journey I would like to take everyone on it and really mobilise and unleash the
talent at Tata Motors.The talent base will focus on the right issues, it is now
management's responsibility to give the direction to identify and determine
the right issues.
List of Priorities
We need to very carefully
consider how we position the brand.We have certain attributes attached to the
brand, which are interpreted differently based on different products, and also
by customers or the market. I think the Tata brand is possibly one of the best
known brands, hence it is a very strong asset, so there is no room for any
interpretation.There needs to be actually a clear statement that captures the
brand values of Tata Motors.The brand statement we define will act as a
backbone to the organisation.
On Internal Transformation
We need to deliver on three
things.We need to be faster. We need to become much simpler in the way we are
doing business and we need to create a much higher degree of agility in order
to flexibly respond to the customer demand. You can not be a customer-centric
organisation if you are not flexible and agile. We are working to bring in more
accountability to our business unit. We are also reviewing our product
portfolio.
On Possible Restructuring
We have undertaken a
project called Organisation Efficiency. The initial idea was, `let's change the
organisational structure'. Honestly speaking, that would be a little
shortsighted. We want to mo ve from current metric organisa tion to a more
business unit organisation to foster accountability and profit and loss
responsibility of the business units and support the business unit with some
cross function. At the same point of time, we have now put this transformation
context around. We need to change the culture, values, brand identity as far as
the overall organisation is concerned. We are doing a very holistic review,
which may conclude in the coming few weeks or months. Focus is to make the
organisation faster, simpler and agile.
Impression on the Nano
It was groundbreaking and a
visionary decision. It created a new segment and showed strong commitment
from Tata Motors and, especially , Ratan Tata to provide affordable mobility
solution for India. Nano has served a big deal to the Indian automotive sector We
are below our initial expectation. However, we are pretty much in line with
the segmentation of the market. Nano has legitimate right in this market,
because it ac tually provides an option below the entry model, a solution for
in dividual mobility . The car, as such offers great potential, but it needs to
develop further. We did launch the Gen X of the Nano; the sales ha ve picked
up. We will review our product strategy . Nano plays a role in this discussion.
I think we are at the crossroads, where we need to think about the game
changers.
|
Ketan Thakkar
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ET18MAR16
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