It is not often that the failure of a board of directors spills so openly into the public domain. But the ICICI board under the inept leadership of its Chairman, M.K. Sharma, has managed to make themselves the poster child for poor corporate governance in India. It has sullied the reputation of everyone associated with…
Tag: Tata Group
Five Lessons from 2017, with questions for 2018 and beyond
Let me start by wishing everyone Happy New Year! I was delighted at the traction that the blog has gained over the year. During 2017, I wrote thirty posts. The four most popular were:
What is Strategy?
My first teaching assignment at SMU (Singapore Management University) was teaching the core strategy course in the DBA (Doctor of Business Administration) program. This was an interesting assignment. Despite a thirty-year teaching career, I had previously never taught a strategy course. Of course, over the years, there had been many comments by students of my…
How Cyrus Mistry was Fired as Tata Chairman
On 24 October 2016, Cyrus was in his Bombay House 4th floor office examining what seemed like a routine agenda for the Tata Sons board meeting that was scheduled to start in five minutes at 14:00 hours. Through the grapevine, Cyrus had heard that some of the board members had an unscheduled informal meeting earlier…
The Interview That Never Ran
A primary function of PR agencies that are hired by companies is to feed journalists with stories / questions that will reflect poorly on the other side. Last week, I received one such set of gotcha questions from a senior journalist of one of India’s leading newspapers. For some reason, despite the tight deadline given…
I Just Got Fired!
“Calling all the people here to see the show Calling for my demons now to let me go I need something, give me something wonderful” As someone who almost opted to become a professional DJ, it’s fortunate that my favourite song of this year is Love and Hate by Michael Kiwanuka, with the lyrics above….
Nirmalya Kumar 