R. GOPALAKRISHNAN is author, speaker and corporate advisor, with a career spanning over 50 years. He spent 31 years in Hindustan Unilever Limited, where he rose to be vice chairman, followed by 19 years in Tata Sons as a director. He now serves as non-executive chairman of Castrol India; an independent director of Hemas Holdings PLC, Sri Lanka; executive-in-residence of S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai and distinguished professor of IIT, Kharagpur. He has authored nine books so far, notably A Comma in a Sentence, Six Lenses and Doodles on Leadership. PALLAVI MODY, professor at SPJIMR, feels that her core competence lies in simplifying jargon. A prolific writer of business cases and op-eds in financial dailies, she is deeply interested in value creation by corporates who build and lead the India story.
How is a ‘Shaper’ different from a manager and a business leader? A Shaper operates with a long-term vision and successfully changes the trajectory of the company to make it future ready, in the way Anil Naik shaped the future of Larsen & Toubro (L&T). The narrative traces the spectacular five-decade-long journey of Anil Naik as a junior engineer from the shop floor to the position of MD, CEO and chairman. The story traverses through the parallel life journeys of L&T and Naik and witnesses their trials and tribulations. Naik built the growth trajectory of L&T on the foundation of ‘value creation’ and transformed the company into an agile and competitive business conglomerate. Based on a series of personal interviews with Naik and his team, the book explores Naik’s mindset and actions that transformed L&T into a leading Indian MNC with a global footprint in fields as diverse as defence, nuclear power and aerospace to financial services, IT and engineering services. How Anil Naik Built L&T’s Remarkable Growth Trajectory is the second book in the series, Shapers of Business Institutions. The book reveals ‘The Naik Way’—new theories of leadership and management as a catalyst to growth.
