Turnaround Management- Crisis.. Survival.. Revival.. Renewal..

Sharing decades of his diverse and rich experience with the budding managers was one of his ways of giving back to his Alma matter. Capt Mohan Ram, an ex-naval officer and a business veteran- the man behind the historic turnaround of TVS Motor Company, and an ex- IIT-Kgpian of the batch of 1953 returned to deliver lectures on “Structured Product Development” and “Turnaround Management”. A man in his 70s, he spoke at both sessions with such passion, enthusiasm and energy that we 20-somethings were totally awe-struck. A series of power packed lectures infused with a healthy dose of wit and humour with the help of anecdotes was truly stimulating.

The first of the veteran’s lecture was on “Corporate Turnaround” aided with the real-time case study on the turnaround of TVS Motor Company which is a legendary feat in the Indian corporate world. The TVS story through crisis, survival, revival, renewal, results, challenges and responses was nothing less than a Hollywood block buster that had the audience sitting at the edge of their seats. With the narration of each of the adversities and their management, the audience could see many B-School textbook lessons coming to life. Though he probably was thankful to god for providing him with the opportunity (disguised as adversity) to hone and show case his skills, he wished that none of us go through such stormy weather ever in our lives. The journey from a market leader in mopeds to a factory lockout to the Deming Quality Award to finally the present TVS Motor Company taught the budding managers memorable lessons that were learnt through experience and will surely come handy in our long careers ahead.

The second lectures was on “Structured New Product Development – Key to Quality assurance and effectiveness” taking us through the journey right from customer-need recognition to customer feedback post purchase. He spoke of NDP as being a structured, cross functional and an organizational capability enhancement process that consisted of various elements such as concurrent engineering, measured introduction of new technologies, standardization, patent and IPR protection etc. He then elaborated on the various stages involved in the structured product development process with examples such as the much successful TVS Scooty: the design, development and launch of which the Captain was deeply involved in. He then spoke at length of the customer oriented attitude and culture that corporations must adopt in today’s world in order to survive and thrive, citing examples of companies that have perished because they were not able to evolve from a product oriented company to a customer oriented company. The veteran concluded the talk with this very important lesson in life: “Learn from Failures”.

When the captain’s presentation and the Q&A session ended the audience couldn’t help but give him a standing ovation and hoped that he would return to deliver more such lectures.

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Contributed By –

HR Sampreet,

MBA 1st Year, VGSoM