“CRASH –
Lessons from the entry and exit of CEOs” by Shri R. Gopalkrishnan
Shri R. Gopalkrishnan is a
well known Corporate Leader and Management Author and Advisor and needs no
Introduction. However, a few words of Introduction will be useful to a Young
reader.
He studied physics at
University of Kolkata, Engineering at IIT Kharagpur. He has attended advanced
Management Program at Harvard Business School. He has served as the Chairman of
“Unilever Arabia, M.D. of Brooke Bond Lipton, Vice Chairman of Hindustan Lever,
and as the Executive Director of Tata Sons and several Tata Group Companies.
Presently, he is a Corporate Advisor. He is actively engaged in both
Instructional and Inspirational Speaking. He is the author of bestselling books
such as The Case of the Bonsai Manager, When the Penny Drops: Learning
What’s Not Taught, and A Biography of Innovations: From Birth to Maturity.
While many people talk
about the path to the top of organisations, very few are honest about how
difficult it is to stay at that position. Shri R. Gopalakrishnan
analyses the ‘software’ challenges, which leaders confront every day, and
shares the insights he has gained developing, managing, investing in and
supervising a variety of companies. The author shows that great leaders
continue to excel not just because of their skills and intelligence but also by
connecting with others using emotional competencies like empathy and
self-awareness.
The book is divided into 2
parts- Part One has 5 chapters and Part 2 has 15 Chapters.
In part One of the book,
the Author explores many pertinent questions: Is company performance a
surrogate for leadership and CEO Performance? If a company falters, is it
purely related to CEO performance? Conversely, if a company does well, is it a
definite credit to the leader?
The Author observes that to
be successful, a CEO requires cognitive intelligence as well as an intuitive
emotional intelligence – which means he or she must have a responsive sense of
empathy for the views of various stakeholders. In his experience, once a person
gets into a leadership role, there are forces that cause his or her emotional
intelligence or sense of empathy to shrink, This poses the real and hidden
challenge to the leader, a challenge he or she is unprepared for. The power of
a leader damages his/her brain. The damage cannot be totally avoided, but its
pernicious effects can be mitigated.
The Author then goes to
examine why power causes brain damage. He examines: What brings out the
best in a person? Perhaps a need to challenge one’s capability? He
opines: when leaders feel that their intelligence is being tested rather than
being merely incentivised through money their motivation is triggered. Money
helps, but ambition is aroused of internal drives and challenges. This is what
people in Leadership positions experience when they assume a bigger
responsibility.
The Author observes that
power causes a significant behavioural change in leaders. Leaders tend to be
self assured, they need to be so if they have to lead their people and the line
that divides self-assuredness and over confidence is a thin one. The leader’s
confidence can be rooted in logic and data, or it can be rooted in feelings and
emotions. If his /her confidence is based on the best available data, then the
leader comes across as authentic. It is a positive form of self confidence. If
the leader’s confidence is not data based, the leader may seem impetuous or
someone who is not rooted in reality. This is negative form of self confidence.
The author
goes on to examine how and why power damages the leader’s brain. What happens
in cases of behavioural change? Does the person change because of power or
because of being placed in a radically different context? Or do the people
around the new leader view him/her through a separate set of lenses?
The Author puts it simply, and shorn of jargon, that Leaders loose a bit of
their emotional capacities, those very emotional capacities that were essential
to their rise. That holding power change the way leaders process their world.
They became impulsive, less risk–aware and less adept at seeing things from
other people’s perspective. That power blinds the leader to others’
perspectives, power turned the leader into an abstract thinker, power leads to
unrealistic optimism about goals and power leads to the view of the world in
terms of goals already set.
The Author concludes that
power intoxicates and it impairs human judgement-in short the acquisition of
power causes brain damage. Every leader whether in politics or society or
business is vulnerable to this danger. Several leaders learn to cope with the
inevitable threats and dangers, but many fail. They become victims of
the affliction.
Thus, in Part One of the
Book the Author examines the above questions and issues on the basis of his
extensive study and review of the available literature on the subject, and his
long years in business in leadership positions.
In part Two of the book,
divided into 15 chapters, it tells similar stories of various well known
business leaders who exited from their CEO positions for one reason or
another : Carly Fiorina HP at HP, Jamie Dimon at Citibank, Vikram Pandit at
Citigroup, John R. Walter at AT&T, Lee Iacocca & Mark Fields at Ford
Motors, Michael Ovitz at Walt Disney Company, G.Richard Thoman at Xerox, Jim
Donald at Starbucks, Travis Kalanick at Uber, Chris Viehbacher at Sanofi,
Ramesh Sarin at Voltas India, Klaus Kleinfeld at Arconic, Anshu Jain at
Deutsche Bank, Vishal Sikka at Infosys. It is pertinent to note that none of
the aforesaid leaders had to exit either due to moral turpitude or financial
misdemeanour.
The Author narrates an
incident involving a heated exchange between J.R.D. Tata and a Senior Director,
A.D. Shroff, who sent his resignation from the Tata Group. The matter was
patched up by J.R.D with a great sense of egalitarianism and humility,
in his letter to A.D. Shroff, dated 23.08.1951:
“I was surprised and
upset at receiving your letter. I do not remember exactly the words I used
during the somewhat heated exchange at the agents’ meeting but my complaint to
you was merely that an argument you used to score a debating point over me was
not an honest one. That is surely a far cry from questioning your honesty and I
am surprised that you interpreted it in that way.
You have a
right to resent my speaking angrily or showing your discourtesy as a result,
and for that I sincerely apologize, but if friends and associates decided to
part every time they had an argument, life would become
very difficult.”
In the
Epilogue, the Author quotes Thomas Middelhoff, a top–notch and famous executive
in Germany, CEO of the German media giant- Bertelsmann, later on found guilty
of misusing corporate funds and sentenced to 3 years in jail on charges of
embezzlement and related tax frauds, after his release from the jail from an
interview by Financial Times in May 2018, “I was out of touch with reality and
thought that certain rules did not apply to me. Ability brings you to the
top, but character keeps you there.” He admitted that a key flaw in his
character was constantly craving public attention and affirmation. Over the
years, he felt that he had been carried away by narcissism and hedonism.
The book is based on the
Author’s extensively study and research on the subject, which is borne out by
copious notes at the end of the book running in about 30 pages wherein he has
given references to all his sources.
Filled with anecdotes,
analysis of various situations CEOs may find themselves in and unconventional
advice to help them, Crash: Lessons from the Entry and Exit of CEOs
is for veteran leaders as well as for those who aspire to start their own
ventures. This book is useful not only to CEOs and other Senior Management
Executives but also to every person who is running even a small or medium size
Organisation.
