Jai Wadia

G. Jagannathan, executive vice president and head of business excellence at TCS, stays in professional overdrive while making time for the harmony of music and the drama of theatre

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels," said Thomas Carlyle, chronicler of the French revolution. G. Jagannathan would agree. The divinity of music is what makes it so enthralling for this executive vice president and head of business excellence at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which might explain the quiet ardour he has for singing and listening to bhajans. Jagannathan has even cut his own CD, but there is more to this polymath than music.

Jagannathan's enthusiasm for music is complimented by a keen interest in acting, which he pursued for a long time. Adding to that, he has authored a book, Getting More at Less Cost - The Value Engineering Way, published by Tata McGraw-Hill.

Music was deeply rooted in the environs Jagannathan grew up in - his mother and two older siblings were musically inclined - and the tradition has been carried forward. His wife and two sons are all keen musicians; Jagannathan's older son plays the harmonium, the keyboard and the guitar, and his younger one, a tabla artiste, is much sought after in the student community at Yale University, where he is pursuing his studies.

Jagannathan senior's interest in debates and dramatics was ignited during his school days in Nagpur, Maharashtra. He was cast in many school dramas and that led to him scripting his first play. The year was 1975 and the theme was radical for the time: extramarital affairs and their effects on the offspring of such relationships.

His extracurricular interests did not distract Jagannathan from the student side of life. He was one of the chosen few who got listed on the Vidarbha merit list from a pool of 40,000, and he received scholarships all through his academic career. "I barely paid anything at all till I completed my masters in technology [with specialisation in industrial management] from IIT, Chennai," Jagannathan recalls.

These excursions, though, are overshadowed by the big responsibility this consummate professional has: that of driving business excellence throughout TCS. Jagannathan's first job (he started at Larsen & Toubro in 1972) taught him crucial marketing skills. "L&T served as a valuable training ground," he says, "where I learned the importance of sales and the art of selling, which is something that each and every person, and not just sales people, should learn." These marketing skills have proved indispensable for Jagannathan, who continues to use them, whether he is working on the materials management side, in productivity services or with business excellence.

"Those days were very tough for me," recalls Jagannathan of his time with L&T. He lived in Borivali in suburban Mumbai, worked in downtown Churchgate and went for theatre rehearsals to Matunga, which is somewhere in between. He juggled a hectic work schedule while pursuing his interest in acting and giving public performances at the famed Shanmukhananda hall.

The work-related part of his life, stretching over 32 years, has seen Jagannathan handle a variety of responsibilities: marketing and sales, integrated materials management, value engineering, productivity services, total quality reengineering and business excellence. He worked with Telco (Tata Motors) at Jamshedpur from 1974 to 1985 as a manager in ancillary development. Before joining TCS he was the chief executive officer at Tata Quality Management Services for a span of two years.

Now based in Santa Clara, California, Jagannathan does not get much time in his current capacity to pursue his theatrical endeavours. Instead, he is busy leading his team, gearing them towards beating their own scores in business excellence. "Business excellence actually means excelling in every aspect of the business, whether it is for TCS, Tata Steel or Tata Motors," he says. "It is how you produce the product, how you deliver it to your customers, how you interact with your clients, external or internal. Basically, it is all about doing everything you have in your business well."

A key tool adopted by Jagannathan and his business excellence team at TCS is the Tata Business Excellence Model (TBEM), which is based on the renowned Malcolm Baldrige model. TBEM is integrated into the business system and addresses all practices and processes related to leadership, strategy, customers, knowledge management, human resources, and core processes and results. All business processes and sub-processes are assessed and analysed and the feedback received is used to make changes that lead to improvements.

One of the biggest challenges Jagannathan faces is in deploying the wide variety of TBEM processes, approaches and initiatives all across TCS, an organisation that is growing by an average of 50 per cent every year (it is planning to add 13,000 more employees by the end of 2005). Educating newcomers about the company and making sure everybody (new and old) follows TBEM processes is a huge task. But, says Jagannathan, "that's where we have done very well in the last six years". According to him, TCS compares well with the best IT companies in the US and elsewhere. "We are the world leader in processes and in excellence," he says.

The on-stage Jagannathan is used to, and even likes, being in the spotlight, but in the professional work environment he prefers shining the limelight on colleagues doing excellent work. He is the facilitator, helping his team perform better and giving credit where it is due.

Jagannathan balances the demands of a hectic working life with a potpourri of interests: meditation, Vedic chanting, fitness classes and, most of all, music. He indulges his love for acting by catching the occasional Broadway play, or, whenever he gets the opportunity to visit India, watching a Tamil play anchored by the famous Cho Ramaswamy. This, after all, is a person who understands the Shakespearean adage of life being but a stage.

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Uploaded on August 8, 2005