You have aberrations from time to time; there is no perfect world. It is how we react to those aberrations and how we overcome those issues that will set us apart from the rest. Last year at this time, it was a matter of great happiness to see one of our companies finally win the JRD QV Award. I think Jamshed (Dr J. J. Irani, then MD of Tata Steel) and his team deserved every bit of the acknowledgement they received on that occasion.

The Tata Steel people could have taken a holiday, a sabbatical from this whole process, since they knew they could not win the award again, that being what we had decided. But it is really gratifying to see that the company decided to stay with this process and continue to work at it. As Jaggu (G. Jagannathan, CEO, TQMS) said, this is a journey that really has no end.

It is very, very important that our companies operate in a manner we can all be proud of and that we develop a holistic sense of excellence. We cannot just be paying lip service to the word excellence; we should have a deep-rooted commitment to excellence, in every sense, in whatever we do.

There are many, many changes of mindset that the group has to go through. Some of it is in processes but much of it is in our souls. If this group is to achieve what we hope it can, if it is to remain on top, if it is to thrive on the traditions that our ancestors established, then it needs from every one of you a sense of great dedication and commitment — not to operate as we did in 1904 but to operate in 2001, in 2050 and in 2080. And we must go forward holding sacred to ourselves our business integrity, our value systems and our fairness to all our stakeholders.

The Tata Group has a tremendous resource: you and your colleagues in this room, and those outside in several of our companies. The greatest thing we can do is to marshal and direct this synergistic resource to make our group stand out far above the rest of the businesses in this country. We need to strive for excellence and we have a process before us that will help make this happen.

I would like to personally thank Jim and his team again for giving this whole process the kind of time and effort they have. I would also like to thank everybody else who participated in this great process. This is the start of a journey for you, too, and one recognises and hopes that it will be one of the foundations that we set for ourselves. I really believe that the Tata Group has much to gain from this process in the years to come.

This is the speech Ratan Tata delivered at the JRD QV recognition function held in Mumbai on July 29, 2001.

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Uploaded in August 2003