Induction speech by Mr. Nitin Paranjape at JBIMS

On Aug 8, 2008, we had Mr. Nitin Parajpe, CEO, HUL, at our campus for Induction of our batch of 2010. He motivated us through his speech which reflected his 21 years of experience in corporate world. Some of the extract from his speech:
“The topic for my today’s speech is ‘Success’; How to be successful. There are two qualities that are needed in a person to be successful; first is a certain level of intellect and second is the ability to work hard. These two qualities are necessary things to be successful but not sufficient. Emotional quotient is something that makes those qualities work. IQ is the hardware and EQ is the software. EQ is the ability to relate people and things, ability to understand and deal with people.
There are people who are successful academically but are not successful later in their life. But there are some who are ordinary in their academics but gain a lot of success in their life. These people have high EQ. Smart people crib when they see relatively less intelligent people succeeding. Problem with them is that they judge the world by their IQ and the world judges them by their EQ.
Remember 3 C’s of success. Courage, Conviction and Character. Conviction means believing in your values and abilities. Courage means having ability to get what you believe even you have a risk of failure. Conviction comes through knowledge. Courage is needed to challenge the system. Have you heard the name of T.N. Sheshan? He was the election commissioner of India. He had the courage to clean the system. Remember IAS officer Mr. Chandrashekhar? Thane is no more what it was before he came. They succeeded in their cause as they had no other personal agenda than a larger cause.
But sometimes we see many successful people fail. Enron failed because they had only one mission statement - Maximizing shareholders capital. They did not show integrity and they failed. The third ‘C’ comes here - The Character. Character of a person makes sure that the courage and conviction tread proper path. First 2 c’s are meaningless without the third C. What caused the greatest crisis of the decade - i.e. subprime crisis? It is the greed of financial organizations. The greed either for money or to move up in corporate ladder by showing outstanding performance.
You can’t have successful business in failing society. There is a difference in doing well and doing good. Doing well is meaningless unless you do good for society. The first 4 words on Merck website are ‘The people come first’. They say the medicine is for people and not for profit. When you follow this belief, profits are bound to come.
I want to tell you three things of leadership that you should not forget. Firstly, the foundation of success rests of belief system. If belief system is flawed future is flawed. Secondly, the idealism should not be replaced by pragmatism as it happens with most of the managers once they get used to the system. We as fresher are having combination of energy + enthusiasm + idealism. You can be pragmatic in other fields but don’t allow it in the space of beliefs. Thirdly, there is nothing like work – life balance. As work and life are not separate entities. Work is a part of life.
Once, a man having excellent career as a manager, on the death bed, was asked what he wished. He said, “I wish, I would have invested my time in relationships. I wish I would have seen my children grow up.” Invest in people, build relationships. They will enlighten your life.”
Though he said that we would forget his speech in future as he forgot everything happened in his own induction 23 years ago, we won’t forget the learning we got from the veteran of the management world.
Sagar Nikam
Aug 8, 2008