An Indian corporate leader spellbound local audience highlighting ethical issues
The guest speaker at the Sri Lanka Chartered Financial Analyst’s (CFA) awards ceremony held in Colombo recently was R. Gopalakrisnan, an author, an orator and a corporate leader who worked at the helm of many multinational companies such as Unilever , Tata, Brooke Bond Lipton , Hindustan Lever both in India and abroad for 31 long years. He has many accolades to his credit having studies physics and engineering in India. He was the past president of the all India Management Association.
Gopal as he is known affectionately to his friends is an international speaker who is actively engaged in both instructional and inspirational speaking at home and abroad. He has spoken at Hong Kong, Hangzhou, Kular Lumpur in Asia and at Dubai, Abu- Dhabi in the Middle East and also at Brussels, Paris, and at Philadelphia.He prefers to speak on subjects such as India, marketing, governance , strategy, organizational transformation , people management and innovation. Gopal is an author of four best selling books and some of them have been translated into Chinese , Hindi, and Tamil.
These include the case of the Bonsai Manager, when the Penny Drops published by Penguin and What the CEO really wants from you by Harper Collins and A comma in a sentence by Rupa publications in India. He is currently working on his fifth book. There was something philosophical about the speech he made that evening. It was not based on any financial matters by any stretch of imagination but on ethical issues that we face in our day to day life and the subject of sports that plays an important role in our lives. Referring to Roger Federer the great tennis player he said it took him nearly four hours to beat an opponent in a match that showed his prowess in the game. The audience listened to his speech with intense interest.
He narrated another incident in India while being driven to work in his car by his Chauffeur. He was seated in the front seat and was deeply engrossed with his lap top when the car came to an abrupt halt. It was then that he realized that a policemen had signaled the chauffer to halt the car. The Chauffer having alighted from the car walked up to the policeman and was engaged in a conversation with him. Soon afterwards they both walked up to him and the policeman explained to him that the chauffer had driven past the traffic red lights which was an offence. Gopal then having alighted from his car told the policeman that he was not aware of it as he was busy browsing his lap top at that time. Strange enough the policemen having spotted the TATA sign on the dress of the chauffeur told him Gopal a fascinating true story
The story was that policemen from Bombay traffic police were grateful to TATA because some one had distributed free rain coats having seen policemen performing traffic duty in rainy weather minus their rain coats. The policemen as much as to show his gratitude had let Gopal and the driver go away scot free without being charged. This was an example where some one had brought honor to the Tata company by a doing a simple gesture. It was more of an ethical calling on the part of Tata employee than a business imperative, he told the newly qualified CFA members. He said obligation on part of employees of a company was far more important than their entitlement.