‘Future CEO must be master gardener, growing talent, leaders’

With nearly 30 years in the corner office, R Seshasayee is one of the longest serving CEOs in TN Inc. Apart from a long stint at the helm of truck and bus major Ashok Leyland, he has held non-executive roles in Infosys, IndusInd Bank and Asian Paints and watched the business environment in India and Tamil Nadu change over the years. In a freewheeling interview, he talks about how the CEO's role itself has transformed and what TN can look forward to in the future. Excerpts: As former CEO of Ashok Leyland, and one of India Inc's senior leaders, you've seen tumultuous changes in the corporate world. What do you see in the rear-view mirror?Truly exciting times! When the economy was opened up, every company had to fast forward itself to become globally competitive. To the credit of Indian industry, we rose to the challenge. If you see the commercial vehicle industry, 30 years after liberalisation, the dominant players are Indian companies, not the MNCs. To get here, during the 2000s, we had to fight our battles on three fronts simultaneously: Technology, product quality and industrial relations.Ashok Leyland was critically dependent on foreign technology, which was not contemporary. We had to get out of that trap. Ashok Leyland terminated its overseas technology arrangement, as did many others in the auto sector. But India had no experienced manpower in technology development to quickly become self reliant. Fortunately, that was when Detroit was facing headwinds from imports. I camped in Detroit, persuading Tamil Nadu-origin engineers to come back home. Other leaders from the auto industry did the same, and it eventually transformed the industry.We also launched aggressive quality journeys, signing up with Japanese gurus. The most challenging battle was to correct the confrontational equation between management and trade unions. When we learned to work together, jumps in productivity and quality followed. How did the role of a CEO change in the go-go years of the 2000s?In the late 1990s, after decades of shackled existence, we found ourselves released suddenly into a jungle, where we needed to learn to survive and then to succeed. But India had arrived on the world stage. I remember the excitement of the very successful ‘India Everywhere campaign' at Davos in 2005. The world began to look at India with interest. Indian auto ancillaries looked at exports aggressively. Some Indian entrepreneurs were lured into buying global companies indiscriminately, some of which turned out to be disastrous. It was also an inflexion point in the evolution of the role of a CEO. We, as professional CEOs, had to be more entrepreneurs and less managers. After decades in auto, you moved on to diverse roles, from Infosys to IndusInd bank and now Asian Paints. How did you manage the transitions?While I held executive positions in the auto industry, the rest are non-executive governance roles. Although the roles are different, you can't be an effective chairman, unless you know the business thoroughly. I've always been and continue to be curious about learning new things. In Ashok Leyland, I joined as an internal auditor, but my curiosity led me to tech and engineering. What qualities will define the CEO of the future?The clock-speed of businesses has increased dramatically. The world is far more unpredictable and complex. The future CEO will need extraordinary skills to detect the spark that will ignite the future and to move with speed, anchored in customer centricity. They must be a master gardener, growing talent and leaders. What will Tamil Nadu's industrial landscape be like in the future?As income levels rise, services will be consumed exponentially more than manufactured goods. Value creation will happen predominantly through knowledge enhancements, whether in manufacturing or service. Innovative knowledge is best created in small groups, unburdened by bureaucracy. Organisations will become smaller and nimbler with contracted services and collaborative arrangements, supporting innovative, small knowledge creators. Tamil Nadu is well-placed to provide the environment for thousands of knowledge value creators. The state needs to move fast to strengthen higher education that leads into entrepreneurial parks. We will need 50 research parks like the one at IIT Madras in the next decade. I also envisage a meteoric growth for the digital entertainment industry backed by technology innovators and content creators. Tamil Nadu has huge creative talent, that needs to be strengthened and coaxed into digital space.