HE CAME. HE SAW. HE INSPIRED

THERE ARE LEADERS, THERE ARE INSTITUTIONS AND THEN ARE THOSE EXEMPLARS WHO ARE INSTITUTIONS OF THEIR OWN.

- BY SOURAV MAJUMDAR AND V. KESHAVDEV

But there was somebody who was outlining the shape of things to come.

That was Professor Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad. The-then professor of corporate strategy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business in the University of Michigan would come to India each year to conduct workshops.

It was on one fateful day at a workshop in Bangalore (now called Bengaluru) in 1996 that Kamath, who had accompanied Narayanan Vaghul, chairman and managing director of ICICI, truly understood what the Prahalad-o-mania was all about.

Behind closed doors, 30 of India's top business leaders were in rapt attention waiting to be dissected by an academic who saw a future before they did. “The workshop would crush you. Crush you in terms of what you're not doing and what you need to do. But you came out that much stronger,” recalls the 77-year-old who is now the non-executive chairman of Jio Financial Services (JFS).

Later that day, Prahalad walked into the room and said, almost casually, “This session will be a little different. It won't be about strategy, or what I usually talk about. It will be led by Professor Wayne Brockbank.”

Brockbank, Clinical Professor of Business at the Ross School of Business, introduced himself: “I have only three questions for you. After that, you guys will decide how the class goes.”

Akin to firing a loaded revolver, Brockbank shot off the questions.

“How volatile is your environment,” he asked. “Ten,” someone said. Everyone agreed.

“How competent are your people?” “Eight or nine,” came the consensus.

“That's not bad,” replied Brockbank.

Before posing the third question, the professor told the motley crowd: “Think over this carefully.”

Then as a bolt from the blue came a question that left the audience squirming: “How inclined is the organisation to change? How capable is your organisation? How capable of change are you as leaders?”