Sharing decades of 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 Ltd, and an IIT-Kgpian of the batch of 1953 returned to deliver lectures on “structured Product Development” and “ Turnaround Management”. A man in his 70’s spoke at the three 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 two lectures was on “Structured New Product Development – Key to Quality assurance and effectiveness” riding us through the journey right from customer-need recognition to customer feedback. 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 Captain was deeply involved in. He then spoke at length of the customer oriented attitude and culture 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. He then took us through Kano’s model of customer satisfaction before delving into the six trade-offs between product development objectives. He then narrated the genesis of the very successful scooty and the evolution it had gone through. He then walked us through concepts of QFD, house of Quality and FMEA with real life examples from his experience at TVS and other organizations he worked with. The veteran concluded the talk with this very important lesson in life: “Learn from Failures”.
The second of the veteran’s lecture was on “corporate turnaround” aided with the 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. He also shared with the students the lessons his experience had taught that cannot be taught out of books. 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. He instead laid out in front of us every challenge thrown at him during the turnaround phase and every move he made to counter them, for us to learn from his invaluable experience. The journey from a market leader in mopeds to a factory lockout to the deming quality award to the present TVS motor company taught us- the budding managers memorable lessons that for sure will come handy in our long careers ahead. 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 many more lectures.
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