Guess what Sheila Nair, director (business development), Indian Hotels, Anil Vaidya, chief operating officer (Mithapur), Tata Chemicals, and R R Akarte, general manager (engineering research centre) Tata Engineering, Pune, will be doing on March 12 at the Tata Management Training Centre (TMTC) at Pune.

They’ll be going back to school an attending classes on leadership and management skills or dissecting case studies presented by management experts Michael Gold, director of the Ashridge Strategic Management centre in London, and James O’Toole, research Professor at the Centre for effective Organisations at the University of Southern California.

Nair, Vaidya and Akarte are, in fact, following on the heels of a bevy of Tata luminaries who’ve already gone back to the classroom. In January this year, 40 managing directors, executive directors, vice-presidents and chief financial officers – including Titan Industries Bhaskar Bhat, deputy managing director, Tata Tea deputy managing director Percy Siganporia, Tata Infomedia managing director Hosang Billimoria, Tata International managing director Sudhir Deoras, Rallis India CEO and executive director Rajeev Dubey and Tata Engineering executive director Ravi Kant – attended a weeklong programme at Pune.

Explains Satish Pradhan, executive vice-president (group human resources), Tata Sons, "This programme is aimed at driving the leaders and other executives in the group back to the classroom, in order to enhance their leadership and management skills, making learning a coherent part of the group’s human resources strategy. The programme is strictly by invitation and will be a sustained effort that will be focused upon and constantly recalibrated."

For the Tata Strategic Leadership Seminar as it’s called, the Rs.38,000 crore Tata group has roped in leading management gurus from across the world to address the key executives from Tata group companies.

The week-long January session was addressed by management specialists like Nitin Nohria, Das Narayandas and Krishna Palepu from Harvard Business School.

On Tuesday, gold and O’Toole will be speaking on subjects like ‘Leadership of Strategy’ and ‘Leadership of People’. The programme will be divided into two sessions, with two groups of people, with the first group attending one session and the second attending the second session simultaneously.

Thereafter, the groups will interchange sessions.

Says Pradhan: ‘This will be an ongoing HR practice in the Tata group. But since these programmes have a gestation of at least one year, we plan to make it a yearly practice. So the next such programme will be held only in January 2003".