2020-02-01_strategy+business

32

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as Can you be a shaper of
great institutions?
Former Tata Group director R. Gopalakrishnan
says the best leaders focus on building both a better
business and a better world.
by Art Kleiner

A

s a business strategist and writer, R. Gopalakrishnan has devoted

his work to studying ethics, leadership, and human capital. He

began his 31-year-long career at Unilever’s massive, idealistic India

business, and then became a board director at the even more

massive and idealistic Tata Group, where he was head of Tata brand and strategy

for almost 18 years. Along the way, Gopal (as he prefers to be called) developed

the idea at the heart of his new book, Doodles on Leadership: Experiences Within

and Beyond Tata. He says that business professionals, as they proceed through

their career, rise through three levels of leadership: transactional, where

they deliver functional results;

corporate, where they coordinate

functions; and holistic, where they

engage fully, on behalf of the

business, in addressing broad-

based, long-range issues.

Recently, Gopal sat down

with strategy+business to talk about

his view of holistic leadership. To

him, the goal of a leader should

not just be to achieve results. It

should be to create and shape an

influential institution: a business

as significant to its community as

Tata has always been. Ph

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ata

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R. Gopalakrishnan