Jamshedji Tata: legacy lives on

Jamshedji Tata was an extraordinary man. A visionary  and a great human being. His values are still cherished by the TATA group  

JRD Tata’s birth anniversary is on 29th July. The TATA group celebrates it like a festival, with all gaiety and fervor. Informally, with love known as “Jeh” by all in-house employees, made a substantial contribution to what Tata Group is today. The longest-serving chairman of the group and the main figurehead who pioneered many successful companies under the aegis of the group. Any celebration of Tata Group could never go without offering reverence to Jeh first.

Tata Group is a phrase synonymous with the pride of India, a symbol of excellence, and an untainted legacy of principles, rectitude, and business ethics. It is also one of the largest conglomerates in the world with a combined market capitalization of $315 billion(The largest conglomerate in India) and employs nearly 1 million people(one of the largest employers in India). Not only do the TATAs bask in the praise for the benchmarks it has set for all the budding industrialists and entrepreneurs, but it also smiles in adulation for all the milestones it has achieved in its 154-year-old long journey. The first steel company in India; the first IT company in India; the first Salt brand in India; the First hydroelectric power station in India and the list goes on and on, I might run out of all the questions which have first and India simultaneously, but Tata Group shall never run out of all the companies which are a pioneer in their respective fields. It exults in the achievement of creating more than 100 companies and subsidiaries and seems to have made the mark in every emerging sector and every tangible business arena.

So what does the Tata Group do well so it could achieve so much and still goes strong despite several new players emerging on the scene?

Is there any secret magic recipe brewed in the cauldron and nibbled by the TATA’s top brass at Bombay House? Well, the answer to the latter is a simple No. The Tata group does things that are so simple that it happens to shroud the conspicuous lucidity and is adjudged with all the perceptible convolutions, and isn’t genius all about making the complex simple?

 I was born in the city founded by the TATAs and have worked in the group for 4 years; I have seen the group function and have tried to understand the management style from a stone’s throw distance. Every company and all its subsidiaries reverberate with a single motto of marching with excellence. The following nuggets are just an attempt to present to the world, a series of ideas that are conceived from the insights I have garnered during my tenure in the group. I shall not shy away from sharing the same values which I have imbibed through my experience at the TATAs. So what exactly is in the cauldron?

Values that are Indomitable: The Tata group functions under the simple Zoroastrian values of Humata, Hukhta, and Hvarshta which means good thoughts, good works, and good deeds. Everyone in the group from the past chairmen to the junior-level executives had worked under these principles and the future chairmen and executives will follow the same principles in the times to come. The credence towards the values remains alive in every employee which has bereft the group of any sensationalism or scandals from the Tata Group’s inception till today. The broader version of the above three principles is the Tata Code of Conduct which everyone in the group has to adhere to. Following the code which sets the moral standards high consequently leads to the conception of organizations that shall last long. Any Tata group company you work for has to live with the same moral standards.

Leadership with Empathy: When India was hit with the lethal COVID wave and every organization in India was struck by catastrophes that were too hard to control, most of these organizations as a natural reaction resorted to massive layoffs and huge retrenchments. It was unfortunate and seemed like the whole country was not only dealing with the pandemic but also economic decline and massive unemployment. In the midst of all the unemployment wreck and economic agony, it was the Tata Group that did not terminate a single employee. Even though most of the Tata companies were reporting losses during the period but still the Tata Group stood with the employees paying their remunerations on time. Ethical leadership that emanates from the group remolds itself into empathy, trust, and providing necessary security to the employees in times of despair. These leadership ideals are also not new it’s been followed for ages, there was a time when people joked that working for the TATAs is akin to working for the government because of the stability and permanency that it provides to its employees.

Daniel Goleman, author of the world-famous book “Emotional Intelligence” validates through research that empathy is one of the key variables in the value system of successful and long-lasting organizations. The TATAs since their inception have fostered a culture of empathy and compassion in their value chains, but are empathy and an unflinching value system the only ingredients for the formulation of a successful conglomerate? To be concluded…

(Writer is currently an Academic Associate at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. Views expressed are personal.)

Disclaimer: Author is a former employee of TATA group.

Source: PTI