Reflections of a chief strategy officer in a diversified conglomerate

• Main Author: KUMAR, Nirmalya
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
• Subjects: Strategic management; Tata; International Business; Marketing; Strategic Management Policy
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/6788; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/7787/viewcontent/KumarN_HCL_1.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

After a lifetime as an academic, I was hired as Chief Strategy Officer (“CSO”) at Tata, a colossal $100 billion group with more than a hundred companies and 650,000 employees worldwide. At first sight, the job of being strategy head for the Tata Group may seem rather different from my academic role, with implementation responsibility and ability being the key difference. But, it did not require much of an adjustment for two reasons. First, I was not the typical academic. For twenty years, as an external consultant, I had been working with top executives and helping them think through their strategy. Second, my job was not to be responsible for execution.