Cynthia Rodrigues

Elizabeth Matthan, the head of Tanishq's design team, drives home the need for a leader to motivate and integrate

Elizabeth Matthan has intuition to thank for the direction her life has taken. Intuition told her that she would be happiest working with her hands in the design field. Heeding the call, she chose jewellery, fascinated by the strong workmanship aspect of the art.

Today this head of design at Tanishq, ensures that design remains the focus at all times. Juggling the roles of designer, design head, manufacturing and business orientation, she says, "I have to balance all roles. The category managers are some of my internal customers. They give me their overall requirement in business terms. I must have a good rapport with them to understand them. Not everything they say is directly relevant to my work. I prod them for information which I can turn into a story and share with my team."

Ms Matthan has to find a common path between the category managers' requirements and the designers' creativity. However, the demands of running a large team leave little time for design. While she often advises designers regarding their work, Ms Matthan can rarely use the input in her own collection on account of managerial duties. Unfazed, she says, "I get very excited when I see a product; it doesn't matter whose it is. When I see a doodle on a napkin I can visualise the final product." This intuitive connection is what makes her the wellspring of motivation that her team can draw from.

Young designers are often flush with ideas that need to be channelised in the right direction to appeal to the buyer. "Sometimes I don't give the designer all the business information at once because it might constrain the designer's mind," she says. This prevents designers from eliminating possibilities at the beginning. Ms Matthan adds, "I give them enough information to get them stimulated." On the other hand, category managers must be made aware of the possibilities in design. "We try to give them saleable designs within the required price points and materials, and suiting current markets and trends. At the same time, we try to do something new within that design."

As a designer, Ms Matthan strives to ensure that the team's designs raise the bar. "I believe that this department needs to be two steps ahead," she says. "We may not cater to two steps ahead but that is the only way we can push the envelope on design."

The desire to excel, to drive herself into achieving more, runs through Ms Matthan's pursuits. She takes great pains to drive her team onward. A typical day's work involves guiding designers in the right direction and conducting design reviews where people can learn from each other. She also ensures that the design incorporates business inputs, since the product has to sell and create an image for the brand.

She admits she has benefited tremendously from Tanishq's policy of hiring bright people and giving them plenty of freedom and opportunities. "For a designer, Titan or Tanishq are the best places to work. The investment that the company makes in us is based on its belief that design can sell and contribute to growth and profit," she declares.

This increases the pressure on the designers, obliging them to drive themselves in their desire to live up to the company's expectations. "If you have freedom, you have to motivate yourself," adds Ms Matthan. "You can't expect others to do it for you."

Ms Matthan prides herself on keeping her team motivated. She organises a lot of formal and informal meetings where designers can review one another's work. "Designers are not always happy with the direction that we take. I encourage them to debate and put forth their point of view even if it is completely opposed to the view we decide to take," she says.

The mentoring takes on other forms too. Ms Matthan and her team study trends and forecasts, explore links between the Indian and global markets and spend time with consumer groups. Tanishq allows its designers to travel nationally and internationally to visit expos and jewellery shows. "This helps them understand the sheer possibilities in design, and open up their minds," she says.

The guidance enables Ms Matthan to break down creative blocks, which come from overdoing a particular kind of jewellery, and blocks created by people's aesthetic sense. "I need to convince designers to break through their mindsets and do things they thought of as boring or impossible. Sometimes there is a learning curve; sometimes it is a matter of breaking barriers. Over a period of time, I have to make them believe that they can do more than they thought they could. I have to bring out the potential in the person."

It is steps like these that enable designers to move two steps ahead of the consumer. But the consumer does not always appreciate "being two steps ahead," which causes immense frustration and dissatisfaction to the designer. Ms Matthan clarifies, "Sometimes we create certain designs of a show-stopper variety that enable us to push the envelope and create an image for ourselves in the design realm. If not the consumer, we need to be two steps ahead of our competitors." In the bargain, Tanishq manages to educate the consumer about good design.

At other times the frustration is in relation to certain ornaments (like the mangalsutra) which are inherent to India's jewellery culture and cannot be experimented with. That is not, however, an excuse for steering clear of traditional jewellery. Tanishq tries to find common ground between tradition and modernity. Ms Matthan avers, "We may be thinking two steps ahead but in the actual product, we must have our eye on the consumer. If we jump too far ahead, our consumers will lose sight of us."

Younger people, in particular, love the motifs, detailing and ghungroos but prefer jewellery that is light and more subtle. "They don't always want their jewellery to be a statement of how much gold the family has," says Ms Matthan. Harmonising all-time bestsellers with current market trends is a huge challenge for the team.

Regretting that design schools don't focus too much on the cultural aspect of jewellery, and that students are the poorer for it, Ms Matthan says, "Most new age designers do not identify with traditional jewellery. They think 'This has been done over centuries, how much value addition can I contribute.' So we began to interweave traditional motifs with the modern."

Besides being true to the designer in her, Ms Matthan also has a responsibility as a leader. She says, "A leader in design must be able to keep design alive, in spite of the constraints. He should also be able to see the potential of an idea and be willing to see it through."

A leader in design must feel passionate about design yet not shrink from the business side of it or else, in Ms Matthan's words, "the designer in you will just depress you". People skills are also essential. The leader must know how to manage people well so that competition remains healthy and ego clashes are avoided. The leader should also study people's personalities and interpersonal relationships. The most important thing is to cultivate a culture of design within the company.

It is such leaders that will be able to lead their teams and companies into a future in which India will be prominent on the international map of design. "I believe that Tanishq is pioneering and we can be the first movers in this direction," she says. Considering the commitment that Ms Matthan brings to her work, it will be only a matter of time before her intuition about the prominence of Tanishq in the world of design becomes a reality.

Uploaded on May 13, 2005