The Tata Group Brass Go Back To School

Guess what Sheila Nair, director (business development), Indian Hotels, Anil Vaidya, chief operating officer (Mithapur), Tata Chemicals, and R R Akarte, general manager (engineering research centre), Tata Engineering, Pune, will be doing on March 12 at the Tata Management Training Centre (TMTC) at Pune? They'll be going back to school for attending classes on leadership and management skills or dissecting case studies presented by management experts Michael Gold, director of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in London, and James O'Toole, research professor at the Centre for Effective Organisations at the University of Southern California.

Nair, Vaidya and Akarte are, in fact, following in the footsteps of Tata luminaries who've already undergone such training. In January this year, 40 managing directors, executive directors, vice-presidents and chief financial officers -- including Titan Industries deputy managing director Bhaskar Bhat, Tata Tea deputy managing director Percy Siganporia, Tata Infomedia managing director Hosang Billimoria, Tata International managing director Sudhir Deoras, Rallis India chief executive officer and executive director Rajeev Dubey and Tata Engineering executive director Ravi Kant -- attended a week-long programme at Pune.

Explains Satish Pradhan, executive vice-president (group human resources), Tata Sons, "This programme is aimed at bringing the leaders and other executives in the group back to the classroom, in order to enhance their leadership and management skills, making learning an inherent part of the group's human resources strategy. The programme is strictly by invitation and will be a sustained effort that will be focused and constantly recaliberated."

For the Tata Strategic Leadership Seminar, as it's called, the Rs 38,000-crore Tata group has roped in leading management gurus from across the world to address the key executives from Tata group companies. The week-long January session was addressed by management specialists such as Nitin Nohria, Das Narayandas and Krishna Palepu from Harvard Business School.

On Tuesday, Gold and O'Toole will be speaking on subjects such as "Leadership of Strategy" and "Leadership of People". The programme will be divided into two sessions.

Pradhan says, "This will be an ongoing human resource practice at the Tata group. But since these programmes have a gestation period of at least one year, we plan to make it a yearly practice. So the next such programme will be held only in January 2003."