Godrej, Tendulkar and the ISB

The cricket World Cup, which India eventually won, had its reflection on the graduation day of the Indian School of Business. In its 10th year and in a year in which the school, which according to many is the brainchild of Rajat Gupta, saw the former managing director of McKinsey and its first chairman resign.
 
The first influence of the game was visible in the 49th executive board meeting of the school, which elected Adi Godrej, the chairman of Godrej Group as its second and new chairman. "Unfortunately the attendance was little light as you know there is the cricket final going on in Mumbai. There were in 13 or 14 board members (out of around 30) who attended the board meeting," according to Godrej. This, he still felt was not bad considering that the normal attendance is 15 to 20. Godrej, however has had a better track record. According to Ajit Rangnekar, the dean of the ISB, "Godrej has attended 48 of the 49 board meetings of the school which is a Sachin Tendulkar like performance and I hope will continue till we get to 100."
 

If you needed more cricket: Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive officer of  the WPP and the member of the ISB governing came on stage to address the students with a Sahara India Tee shirt and a hope that India wins the world cup final.

But then there were thoughts for the 569 graduating students to take home too: "Leadership is about doing the tough things.... A leader - he or she - must have a clear vision of the future." The message from Adi Godrej, seemed all the more important hen he takes over the chairmanship from Rajat Gupta in not necessarily the best of circumstances. On March 21st a note put out by the ISB said: "Rajat Gupta has requested the ISB Executive Board to relieve him of his Board responsibilities till his pending matter with the US SEC (relating to insider trading allegations) is resolved."
 

Then there were the important 10 thoughts to think about for the students from Sir Martin Sorrell. These included: Globalisation and the new emerging geographies; about differentiation; about studying the population trends, the power of the retailers, about companies that are both global and local, the role of government, which will increasingly be the client and the regulator, about the fact that doing good is good business and thinking about the power of the healthcare industry.
 
There were the three nuggets of advice from Judith Rodin, president, Rockefeller Foundation: "My first piece of advice, she said is: Don't run from the shared problems and dramatic forces reshaping our world. Instead, leverage them. Even better, profit from them. Not at the expense of anyone or anything.  It is possible to do well and do good - to make money and have a social impact. Take, for example, the mobile phone industry. One billion people lack access to health care, yet some five billion people have access to mobile technology. That's why the Rockefeller Foundation is focused on using mobile devices to improve health outcomes in the developing world, to create an interoperable system for sharing patient diagnostics, disseminating care and treatment information, and identifying and stemming epidemics before they become widely spread."
 
My second lesson today, she said: "just how exactly can a business create leverage given the towering global challenges and the maze of operating complexities faced by every sector? After all, answers aren't always clear in this new era. And neither are the questions. But, counter-intuitively, this is a good thing. This uncertainty forces us to be innovative, and my second lesson this afternoon is that innovation is a source of tremendous power, and also tremendous profit, in the 21st century."
 
Finally: Short-term profits are individual, she said, "but long-term profits are very much shared. And that is why the third lesson I leave you with is that the business community has an important and unique role to play in generating profits not just for investors, but also what we might think of as global shareholders. Businesses, which are relentlessly driven to innovate, can have an outsized impact on global prosperity and resilience in the 21st century."
 
Important lessons for the new graduates of ISB, a school that now has more than the "Godrej" porch greeting you at the entrance.