A lecture long forgotten- almost

Memories of Ahmedabad back in Calcutta

One to one, lone wolf usually don’t leave an impression in a short span of time. He is slow to interact, slow to make associates. He usually resorts to the technique of knowing the domain the other guy is and uses metaphors from there to make an inroad.

One to many, lone wolf can address an audience provided the audience’s level and profile is known. He finds it extremely difficult to make an impact upon superiors. Superiors usually get used to lone wolf ways after a great deal of initial suspicions because they consider him as a little on the sly and finds it not very easy to place him.

One technique given a self profile such as this is to grab one or any opportunity that he can to speak to an audience. In 2002 while attending the FDP at Ahmedabad a certain young Prof. Saugata Rray engaged Business Policy for us. Business Policy was another name for strategy. Lone wolf has had no introduction to the subject till then although he was involved with the strategic initiatives at Indian Oil to gather departmental opinions on aligning the HR department with business policy when Subir Raha was Director (HR). He later became the CMD of ONGC and was instrumental in the energy security initiatives of India , gaining stake in faraway oil fields such as Sakhalin in far eastern Russia.

Saugata Ray was sophisticated yet a certain air of brashness was a feature as well. He was to be in Calcutta in the weekend and would be back on Monday morning. As a contingency plan he entrusted the class to engage the HLL case and the class entrusted it to me and Ravi Subuddhi.
Monday morning I was ready to engage the class. It was a hot day so I had a bottle of water with me as well from which I took occasional sips more to camouflage the tension than out of thirst. I started with a dividing gesture of the black board. I said that he metaphor I am going to use for the presentation was David takes on Goliath and on one side of the board I wrote ‘David takes on goliath’ and on the next half I wrote ‘The empire strikes back’.

I went on to explain the David part of the story and peppered it with Niru being the root in many Indian languages for water suggesting purity and cleanness as the reason for the choice of the NIRMA name and so on. The class went well, Saugata had expected at best a .ppt on the HLL case. As the hour came to a close the entire class rushed to me in appreciation. They had mistaken my drinking from the bottle as an imitation of Saugata because he used to do the same as well. I did it quite out of a desire to conceal by distress. Through the crowd Saugata himself offered his palm at me saying congratulation.

Little did I know that it would cause such a flurry although I had prepared reasonably well. In April 2008, I was attending a programme on Strategic Management Mergers and Aquisitioons. One of the introductory sessions was engaged by Prof. Saugata Ray and Siby Jose at the end of the session introduced me to Saugata and he replied ‘Yes I remember, he did the HLL case in Ahmedabad’.

He is currently the dean at IIM Cal.