MANAGEMENT SPECIAL .....`Companies Should Walk the Talk on Values to Create the Right Culture'

`Companies Should Walk the Talk on Values to Create the Right Culture'





Billionaire industrialists Harsh Mariwala and Ajay Piramal said organisation values and culture were key to becoming an industry leader, attracting talent, improving employee performance and gaining market integrity and trust, at the ET India Leadership Council meeting in Mumbai.

The India Leadership Council, a membership-based engagement platform with access restricted to a select group of companies, aims to help achieve the goal of building the country's overall business environment and developing business leadership.

Mariwala, chairman of Marico, said he started crafting values for his firm as early as the 1990s once the business started to grow and professionals started taking up top management positions. This helped the company's management imbibe the culture from the top, he said.

“We had recruited 30-40 people at senior and top level within six months to a year. They came with a different set of beliefs in terms of leadership styles and behaved in a different manner. That forced me to write down initial thoughts on what should our values be,“ said Mariwala.“When developing a culture the top two or three layers of management are very important. The fact that values were discussed with them got their minds.“

Mariwala said the values have to be reinforced through a regular mechanism, not via a board placed at the reception or in conference rooms. The value of meritocracy started reflecting in recruitment practices at a time when Marico was perceived as a family-managed company. He bought in professionals, started a leadership development programme and made Marico's HQ open-office plan to enforce trust and transparency .

Piramal, chairman of pharmaceutical and finance company Piramal Enterprises, started the discussion by giving the example of notorious lawyer Edward J O'Hare, who turned in evidence against his client -mobster Alphonse Gabriel Capone -in 1931.He is believed to have turned honest to teach his son values of honesty and integrity. His son goes on to become a national hero in World War II. Piramal said values create economic value for businesses across industries. He, however, warned that companies have to “walk the talk“ on values to create the right culture.

“People say values are expensive but I say they create economic value. We have been successful in buying and selling companies because we have a reputation of fulfilling deal terms in letter and spirit. When we exited the textiles business we paid our bankers and labourers. We must have been the only company to do that,“ Piramal said, referring to the demise of Mumbai's textile industry after a long labour strife in the 1980s when almost all mills went bankrupt.

Mariwala and Piramal also touched upon how purpose and challenging assignments were important factors in attracting and retaining talent, when other business leaders asked them about retaining millennials who change jobs more frequently.

“When you give them challenges and new opportunities, they stay. Always give them more than they can do,“ said Piramal.

Concurring with Piramal, Mariwala said: “Millennials take purpose of their work very seriously .Companies have to change their culture if they want to attract young talent.“

Sep 23 2017 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)