The JRD QV Award is the pinnacle of an in-house process that recognises and rewards business excellence among Tata Group companies. In this address at the latest edition of the awards function, Group Chairman RatanTata celebrates the blossoming of an idea whose time had truly come

I believe that, after the excellent presentations we have seen today, this address can be nothing but an anticlimax.

On days like this I go back to that time when one wondered whether a great group like ours, which has made its mark in the country and has a reputation the world over, should have been touched at all, or whether one should have just concerned oneself with continuing the traditions and the manner in which we operated. Being a restless person — and perhaps more critical than I ought to be — I thought that we all really needed to change, to move with the times and try to engage with the changes around us.

India is opening up and competition has increased tremendously. Without being critical, it is true that many of our companies had their heads in the sand and were resting on past glories. In the course of time, the view gained ground that we were less nimble than others, more resistant to change and more set in our ways. What we needed to do, of course, was benchmark ourselves against the best, get away from doing things the way we were, and put certain processes in place.

At that time I talked to Jim Setna (J. K. Setna, chairman of the executive committee of Tata Quality Management Services or TQMS) and we thought that we should start something to recognise excellence. We decided to institute the JRD QV Award and that’s where this whole exercise started. Jim and his team, instead of just putting together an award with a cursory kind of assessment process, thought out a robust and comprehensive process which I think we are all benefiting from now. This process has, in fact, set the tone and laid the foundation for what I believe is one of the important changes we have made in the group over the last five years.

It’s very important for us to realise that the world is moving at a tremendous pace. Many of our companies have not moved fast enough and many of our people still don’t see the need for change. Where we can change is to have something to guide that change. And that change has to be embodied through people and processes.

When we started this process, some of us, and certainly I, felt frustrated because I sensed a great deal of cynicism among many people who thought all this was unnecessary, that it was just a fad. Nothing has pleased me more than to sit here today and see that an idea to which we gave birth five years ago has blossomed into something that, hopefully, will be one of the driving forces of change in the group.

We are going through difficult times in some of the businesses we are in. But I do believe that with the kind of commitment I have seen, and the kind of effort that our ‘mentors’ and ‘assessors’ have put into this process, that we will have a very, very important basis on which the Tata Group can move forward. I believe that the commitment we have seen today embodies the pride that people have in the group.

The Tata Group must lead India in terms of what it does, not only in business but also as a corporate citizen and as a participant in the country’s growth. This is a holistic view. We want our managers and companies to drive their businesses using every means they can to achieve their ends, but they must do it in a way which stands out and continues the traditions that the group has established over the years.

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Uploaded in August 2003