The Jet Story

Well Mr. Goyal lived up to the image he is carrying in the minds of many employees, especially ones who are with the organization since the beginning. I have seen this image, his aura amongst these people. On personal level, as an individual, I would buy his story only with a spoon of salt.
It is impossible to believe that such a major decision would have been taken without his knowledge, as he claimed during the press conference; And, he has all the reason to do a rethink on the ways his business is being run. May be he would like to review the decision making process or the effectiveness of his so-called trusted management team. In my view, he should review a few more issues.

• What is his role in running the business? And, who all are there in other roles?
• What is the capability of the management team? Is it agile enough to meet growing challenges of the business environment? Does his team have all characteristics of an effective and capable team? Is it really professional?
• Where is the corporate strategy of this company? If it is there, how come it was caught unaware and landed in this messy situation? I’m sure the company did not take this decision based on just a few days’ developments.
• Is he aware of his organization structure? How does it look like in terms of nos.? Is it a pyramid or an inverted pyramid? What is his cost-wise organization structure? Does it compare with any other organization anywhere?
• If the decision was just to go about retrenching trainees and probationers, how come his organization has more than 15% employees are in that grade? Doesn’t it indicate that his firm, particularly his strategy dept., was either oblivious of the emerging business environment? What could be the case, incompetency or complacency or just laxity?
• He may like to review some of the statistics published in news papers:

1. App. 2000 employees, i.e. app. 17% of workforce, are paid more than Rs. 1 lac monthly. I assume, most of them would be pilots, engineers and experienced cabin crew members. If not, he may like to find out who they are?
2. More than 200 employees, i.e. app. 2% of the workforce, are paid more than Rs. 10 Lacs monthly or more than US$ 22000 per month. What level would they be working at? He may wish to look at this no. too.
3. He may like to look at the increase in the salary cost over the years and seek some justification in its variance.
4. Recruitment of fresh foreign pilots is still going on?
   Adverse business conditions, be it fuel price or infrastructure or anything else, would always be there. Challenges in different forms remain there in every business. A professional management is supposed to do precisely this function.

He was correct that he is no stranger to issues and he has handled all such issues decisively. I am sure Mr. Goyal knows what to do and how, in this scenario. And, also that he could do it in the best way.
His is, no doubt, a “rags to riches” story. It is to be seen if his too would end up as one who could not manage the growth and become example of why promoter should be different from manager case-study. One may argue that he is so but it needs to be adhered in strict sense. And, this lesson is required to be learnt by many in years to come.
Jet Airways has been the face of emerging and vibrant India. All wishes to it to keep flying high.

Cheers! The worst is yet to come..:)

It was like “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” or in more contemporary terms, it was Indian version of “A case of exploding Mangoes”.

I had known it the day Mamtadi got involved in it. It was just a matter of time. Unfortunately, it happened a little too late and at a little too high cost to Tatas. A little surprising for them to get into this mess. They have been around, doing business for almost a century now. They should have known it earlier than me. (Shall write more on her and Bengal in some subsequent note)

It is a good luck for us that our democracy is strong and guided that we have got leaders like Mamtas, Mayas, Lallooes, Mulayams, Karunanidhis, Devigowdas, Choutalas etc to choose from. And, there had been even bigger leaders like Jagannath Mishra, Bindeshwari Dubey, Devilal, etc in the past, who serve the icons of this breed.  

I am sure in a weak democracy and poorly designed systems, these people would have been filtered out before reaching up to this level and would not have been able to influence India’s course. Unfortunately, some visionary had identified their origin “People get the leader they deserve”. However, he was not able to identify or did not choose to spell the vicious cycle that goes behind this, especially for this breed of leaders. “Lead people to the place where only you can lead”. Bihar can be the greatest example. Fifteen years of un-interrupted rule and a loss only to the person, who played the same game more aptly. Now, these old-timers are annoyed that they have been denied their share in the annual flood lottery festival, especially when the prize is “n” times larger this year.

It is no surprise that wherever these leaders are strong, the region/state is doing wonders. Riding on self-servicing social causes, this breed is making case-studies in economic performance under their respective rules. But that is obvious for leaders with such great capabilities. Somebody should look at their credentials, educational, social, police history sheet, past life. There would not be any surprise. What is their fault if they do not understand economics when they were forced to move out of their educational life? They were sincere enough to complete respective courses even after 5-6 years of study but, alas, they were forced to vacate hostels, forced to appear in exams and forcefully awarded marks to pass and leave colleges. Some simply got bored that nobody cared for their education after a few more years and, hence, decided to move-on from college life. Not surprisingly, they are literate, they are farsighted, etc etc. They have all quality of great leadership. In fact, looking at them, National Literacy Mission should revise their curriculum. They may be breeding a nation of leaders.

In fact this breed has given a new classification of present generation of leaders. Today’s leaders either belong to this class or they do not belong to this class. There are common traits though. Traits, which are the basic characteristics of any leader such as

• ·         Ability to convince some people of anything under the sun
  
• ·         A few court cases (mostly named as politically motivated) with a few trips to jail/lock-ups
  
• ·         A family history (of leaders or of history-sheeters or of both)
  
• ·         Ability to charm the media, print/electronic/anything, especially anchors, who are mostly of opposite sex (Somebody should examine, who charms whom)
  

So, my dear friends don’t be surprised. Tata at Singur is just one case, whicn happens to be the most recent one. Remember stories of Charwaha Vidyalaya (Schools where you can take your cows and buffaloes and goats and sheep. They learn. You sleep and somebody gets legal ownership of the land), or the great Fodder tales (where buffaloes travelled 800Kms overnight on scooters to get quality fodder) or Taj corridor (Whie you see Taj Mahal somebody gets land around it) or Greater NOIDA airport or Meham (do you still remember this word). Anyway, all these leaders are alive & kicking. Many such stories would be made in time to come. Just don’t take pain now. Enjoy. Remember - Picture abhi baki hai mere dost….