Many big businesses in the country like Reliance Industries (RIL), Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) and Wipro are in the throes of a top management rejig. Their old management structures, often driven by the promoter-manager or a company-lifer CEO, were good enough for punching above par growth in the 1990s and 2000s. But, as the complexity of doing business increases multifold?from geographical diversity, non-conventional competitors, shorter business cycles, complex technologies?and emerging opportunities tease core business beliefs, clearly it?s time to ring in the new or risk missing the bus. In fact, of late, anecdotal evidence suggests that no other issue is consuming company managements more than the capability and readiness of their top honchos to harness the humongous opportunity that an economy growing at close to double digits presents across sectors. No wonder, a host of them are busy with internal reorganisation to remain agile and nimble for the next phase of growth.

The country?s biggest engineering and construction company, Rs 45,000-crore L&T, recently announced splitting itself into nine virtually independent entities, with a dedicated company-style CEO, CFO, HR head, board, and a separate profit and loss account in an effort to become more competitive, develop a stronger leadership pipeline and clearer succession path for high performers to the corner room. RIL is working on a structure that moves the oil-to-retail conglomerate from its erstwhile ?entrepreneur? driven style to a process, professional CEO approach of its key businesses in oil, gas & energy; retail & telecom; petrochemical & polyester and SEZs. Information technology major Wipro junked its three-year-old joint-CEO model and settled for relative newcomer to lead it back to industry-beating growth and handed over decision making to managers close to the market. And M&M is quietly populating its India ranks with expats to see it through new businesses in aerospace and two-wheelers, even as it pushes home-grown managers to its operations in over six dozen global locations.

Though not exactly similar in nature, the succession process currently on at the $90 billion Tata Group and at Infosys Technologies in replacing outgoing chiefs Ratan Tata and NR Narayana Murthy, respectively, is also grappling with issues of how the new person fits in with the challenges these organisations face in the post-slowdown, Chindia-rising new world business order. Murthy has already spelled out the challenges for his replacement?making and managing ?a truly multi-cultural organisation with local leadership and local talent?. Tata, too, had hinted that his successor needs to marry the group?s Indian values with its overarching global reach, with around two-thirds of revenues coming from outside India, and that the group is open to an outsider, even a foreigner, if need be.

L&T?s current chairman & managing director AM Naik has been very categorical on the need for the software-to-rigs monolith to operate in a more entrepreneurial way, even while the country?s largest private company, family-owned RIL, seeks a more ?process? driven future for itself. In fact, at first go, L&T?s and RIL?s approach may appear diverse, but essentially both are trying to de-bottleneck their top management and create an empowered group of leaders to take on roles erstwhile fulfilled only by the owner-manager or the larger-than-life professional CEO. As RIL scouts the globe for new energy sources such as shale gas, and enters big businesses such as power generation and broadband, it?s clear that a small group close to the chairman taking all calls on things strategic and operational is no longer plausible, and the process of creating a strong leadership pipeline needs to be institutionalised. This new-found ?process? and ?institutional? orientation to top management at RIL also becomes necessary as more and more of its revenues come from outside India, and therefore the need to be in sync with global best practices in human resources, too. First reports out on the business transformation plan being drafted for it by management consultants AT Kearney and Booz & Company point that the blueprint is as much about its new investment strategy as the management pyramid that will oversee it.

At the core of most of these recent management rejigs is the realisation that it is the drive, skills, integrity, empowerment and resourcefulness of people, especially at the top, that will separate the winners from the also-rans. For instance, tomorrow?s leader in the IT services space will be determined by how the top leadership in tier-1 companies is able to crack the elusive non-linear model of growth, which is making growth relatively independent of the number of coders added to the company?s manpower. Or for a currently predominantly business-to-business focused company like RIL and L&T to grow or acquire managers capable of handling scale in consumer-facing sectors like retail, banking, finance, retail broadband, etc. Recollect that RIL is staffing, at the top, its five-year-old retail subsidiary, Reliance Retail, with expats from Southeast Asian countries used to big box retail, in order to manage the scale that is gradually building up here. And L&T has already broken tradition and hired outsiders to head two of its promising businesses?power and IT. Tata Motors again picked an outsider, and a foreigner at that, as its global CEO last year. Clearly, as far as getting ?people ready? for the future, there are no holy cows for India Inc.

shailesh.dobhal@expressindia.com