Godrej chairman Adi Godrej shares leadership lessons

Adi Godrej is a most purposeful man in his 70s. Punctual, focused and driven where his business is concerned. He was privileged to have been born in the Godrej family with plenty of opportunities, but learnt his skills and values like any common man.

As a youngster, he spent a summer working as a bell boy at the Grand Canyon earning tips. On another occasion he nearly got arrested on foreign soil stuck in transit between two countries. He
made headlines in the Parsi community for marrying a sikh girl—and all this at 24.

At the workplace he grew Godrej into a conglomerate that went from locks to selling soaps, personal care and now even homes to Indians. He learnt at every stage and believes two important mantras shaped his successes. One, the need to imbibe and follow best practices in the organisation and two, knowledge, which is to know the trade and know it well.

"I feel my biggest contribution to the business was to introduce management practices which helped in taking some focused business decisions and driving the group ahead. I was the first management graduate to join the business in the family," he remembers. This exposure was important to him. There were no major management institutions in those days except in the US. Adi says that his tenure in America, a stint at MIT stayed with him and greatly influenced his business. 

As a management student, one of the key things he had learnt was the importance of building teams and retaining people, an idea that he imbibed earlier in his career and it stayed with him all through. "I learnt the power of team work. I was a member of Pi Lambda Phi—a fraternity at MIT, which was known for welcoming people of all races and religions. In 1961, our live-in fraternity elected an African American classmate as its president— something unheard of in those days," Adi shared. "Later when my children joined the business, they provided a lot of feedback to me."

A lot of ideas that Adi stands for today are ideas he first encountered as a young manager in the Godrej group and consequently learnt over the years under mentorship and guidance from his dad and uncle.

"Because I had studied management I could see that a lot of our practices could be altered and improved such as marketing and research; consumer insight which were not thought of in those days."

Financial and cost accounting, and organised HR development were not heard of in India then and he was cognisant that his studies and knowledge would be able to add value. "My focus was not to drastically change things to start with. I wanted to add competitive value." So he focused on picking more consumer goods to add to his portfolio.

Adi learnt a lot about the ways of the world thanks to his early travels, a penchant that runs deep in the family. Somewhere it even influenced his work culture as Adi would later travel to learn and remain connected to the world's top people at events like the Davos World Economic Forum. His passport probably bears testimony to the nearly 100 countries he has travelled so far on business.

Knowledge is power, he believes. Adi Godrej is well known in the business circles to be a man who knew every grain of his trade, and every price of his raw materials such as palm oil were going for. Former head of Hindustan Unilever in India and a well regarded corporate director Keki Dadiseth famously said "Adi would know every nickel and dime."

His experiences and learning he is only too happy to share. Given today's entrepreneurial journey there is so much to celebrate and so much to learn for first time entrepreneurs. Go for leadership he asserts.

"Leadership is about doing the tough things which need to be done and no one else wants to do, not just the popular ones. It is about telling the truth about how things are, not what people want to hear."