Anand Mahindra: A New Code of Conduct
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Image: Photograph: Fotocrop; Illustration: Malay Karmakar; Imaging: Sushil Mhatre
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ANAND MAHINDRA, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra Group
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Anand Mahindra heads the $6.3 billion Mahindra Group, a conglomerate that specialises in automotive products, information technology and infrastructure. Mahindra graduated from Harvard College and then completed his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Under his leadership the Mahindra Group has strengthened its position in almost all the business in the group’s portfolio. Mahindra speaks eloquently and is a frequent contributor to debates on business issues and government policy. He was chosen by CNBC TV18 as the Outstanding Business Leader for 2009.
At a time when tidal waves of shoppers are hitting Apple stores to grab the first iPads, it seems reasonable to presume that an ‘idea that will change the world’ will be a ‘thing’; some product, device, or gadget.
It is all too easy to forget that the ‘things’ that really alter our world are, and always have been, powerful and abstract ideas. Ideas that change the way we think. Ideas that change the way we perceive the world and our role in it.
Gandhi got an entire subcontinent to follow him and achieved a bloodless victory over the powerful British Empire by articulating the startlingly simple concept of ‘Satyagraha’ or non-violence. History provides myriad similar examples: Mandela and his vision against apartheid; the concept of human rights; universal suffrage.
Powerful ideas do not always have to occupy high moral ground. They can be practical, such as the late C.K. Prahalad’s constructs of ‘core competence’ and ‘fortunes at the bottom of the pyramid.’ They can be scientific, without being unquestionable fact, such as the theories of evolution and the subconscious. They can be inspirational and empowering like the rallying cry of American presidential candidate Obama — “Yes, we can.” Or they can simply be a global wake-up call, like the film An Inconvenient Truth which probably created a more enduring legacy for Al Gore than a potentially bland and lacklustre presidency!
The kernel of a new and disruptive idea can emerge from the ashes of a previously venerated idea, and there is evidence of that today. We are witnessing, I believe, the breakdown of a very powerful and pervasive idea that has shaped the credo of commerce until now. This is the notion that the core purpose of business is to maximise returns to shareholders, to the effective exclusion of all else.
I remember, more than a decade ago, Tata Steel deployed an advertising tagline that declared ‘We also make Steel.’ Their ads extolled the virtues of their corporate social responsibility and seemed to imply that making steel, and money, was a means to an end. The ads became a subject of amusement, and Wall Street devotees quickly pointed out how old Indian companies were not ruthlessly — and appropriately — focussed on financial returns, which was why they lagged in global competitiveness and were not investors’ favourites.
Perhaps there was some truth in the contention that large Indian businesses were oligopolistic and sleepy; like alligators basking in the sun that needed to be rudely awakened and forced to glide back into the fast flowing river with reptilian aggression.
However, there are signals of the birth of a new idea, one that is not a single manifesto, but an amalgam of beliefs that have been under construction for some time. There has been a widespread perception for a while — even before the great meltdown — that a new mindset was called for. With news of Enron, Madoff, Ramalinga Raju, Lehman, we all knew something was not quite right. The Rolling Stone article that referred to Goldman as a ‘giant vampire squid’ was exercising poetic license to its fullest, but it did indicate a groundswell of discontent.
Business schools responded to this sentiment with initially desultory efforts to draft an ethics code, or to teach integrity in the classroom. But I do not believe such exercises effectively acknowledged the call for a new zeitgeist; one which proposed a new and expanded role for business in the context of the wider community.
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