Conquering THE BUSINESS

In 1996, Hema Hattangady took over as the CEO of Conzerv, and embattled family-owned firm based in Bangalore that manufactured digital energy meters. Over the next twelve years, she grew it to a Rs 100 crore market leader, and as India's largest energy-management company. An extract from her biography traces the crucial years when a young mother decided to take an active role in business on threshold of change

The business turnaround was a trickier challenge. At the board meeting in mid-1996 where I was appointed as CEO, I asked TT, 'What do you expect of me?'

He said, without missing a beat, 'Make this company profitable and professional'

And there was my mandate, in six words. The company had accumulated losses, negative net worth and less-than-stellar revenues.

The first step was to transform the almost feudal culture, usually found in a family-owned and managed start-up. With my first few actions, the message that I sent out to the hundred-plus employees who worked for us read:

'We have new owners now- the venture fund that has continued to invest in us at the lowest point of our business when there was no light in sight. They trust us to do the right thing. And that is what we will do. High-efficiency performance at top speed is the new mantra. We have great products and we are in a great market. Only we can come in the way of our own growth. You can be in with me on this ride, or out.' The second step was finding my voice and my leadership style. As a first-time leader, I tried to be decisive (I had seen what happens when the leader was indecisive) and became obsessively interested in listening and learning from the board members and industry leaders I met at trade shows or industry body meetings. I later learnt that I was called an 'ink blotter'.

The former head of HR for Unilever, R.R. Nair, who advised us on human resources and was my leadership coach, later said that I had developed an almost 'extreme desire to excel with self-imposed standards of excellence'. 4 That was at once both, an asset and a liability of sorts. The liability was because it put tremendous pressure on others to keep up with the pace. It made me a difficult and demanding person, quick to criticise and slow to praise. It took me a while to leam to take a chance with people and to be generous with them even as I was hard-nosed about holding them accountable.

Because I came with no experience, I developed a strong need to know the macro picture. It helped that I had a burning ambition, which I did not bother to disguise. After all, I had been waiting in the wings for far too long. But buried in the outwardly confident 'I know exactly what I have to do' persona, I was diffident, worried that I would not pass muster and also deeply conflicted about spending so much time away from my one-year-old son, Raghav, who was born eleven years after we got married. It didn't help that I also found it difficult to gain respect from distributors and customers in that market who were unaccustomed to a woman in my role.

As a result of all these pressures, I developed an impatient, often demanding style and a reputation among employees as having a very short fuse. The redeeming feature of my style at that time was perhaps the fact that I had what was described as a 'clinical level of candour' by one board member, regardless of the impact. But saying it like it was helped people know exactly where they stood with me.

The third step was to build the senior team and with them, develop a vision and a strategy. To start with, my senior team had just one member: Ashok. I leaned heavily on him. R.R. Nair and TI` were also forever around as advisors and confidants. Given their combined intellectual calibre and experience, I couldn't have asked for more. On the contrary, on some days when it all got too much, I found myself asking for less! I desperately needed managers and executives to build and lead teams and act on' all the brilliant advice I was receiving. And it is in the building and rebuilding of the Conzerv team that I learnt lessons in two areas: first, in managing and leading people; and second, I learnt about myself discovering that I had a passion for . people and could connect emotionally with all levels and ages. Indeed, I derived energy from people.

Once the senior team, comprising the heads of marketing, quality, HR and sales was in place, I engaged the services of (late) Mr H.R. Gupta, the former MD of Widia (India) Ltd, and a respected leader in the machine tool industry in India, to help us craft our very first vision, mission and values statement. Our vision was to become India's largest energy management company. The mission and values came from that vision.

- Extracted with permission from Westland Books