A full year has passed since Cyrus Mistry walked into Bombay House as Chairman of Tata Group.
It must have been a daunting moment. Cyrus was not only taking the reins at India's largest conglomerate, responsible for 500,000 employees, but also replacing Ratan Tata, the iconic business leader of modern India.
He also knew that when his predecessor took over, he had been forced to spend many years dealing with entrenched interests within the Tata empire. Like any major organisation, it has its own politics and tensions. Further, in a tough global and domestic economy, ensuring continued growth of the Tata group would involve many hard choices.
In his first year, Cyrus has shown that he is his own man, with own plans. He has built a youthful, energetic, leadership team around him, appointed more women into top jobs and made impressive choices to lead core Tata businesses, such as T V Narendran at Tata Steel.
Cyrus has authorised major investments in research and innovation, and made significant strategic calls in sectors from mobile phones to banking to aviation.
This is an impressive list of achievements for a single year. Yet, perhaps the biggest anniversary compliment to pay to Cyrus is how seamless the transition from Ratan Tata has appeared.
Cyrus has led Tata through significant change but carefully and quietly, avoiding needless controversy and antagonism. He has made his own decisions but continued the unassuming style of leadership that made his predecessor so beloved. He has focused on detail, on innovation, on long-term growth, not publicity or the quick buck.
Most important, he has preserved the down to earth, unflashy culture of Tata. I have seen this for myself. When Cyrus visits Jaguar Land Rover in the UK, or Tata Motors in Pune, he is equally comfortable negotiating with politicians and trade union leaders, or, in his shirtsleeves, talking to designers and engineers about the nuts and bolts of innovation and production.
In this practical environment, Cyrus shows a complete absence of ego but an unwavering commitment to creating a better product and a better company. He clearly knows where he wants to take Tata.
This quiet focus and drive, which encompasses a prodigious work and travel regime, heralds more change to come. I expect we will soon see major new initiatives in sectors from retail to automotive. After all, no business can succeed without innovation. New ideas are essential, new trails must be broken.
Cyrus knows change is inevitable. What must be retained during such a transformation is the ethos of a great company.
In his big strategic calls, in his unassuming effectiveness and, most of all, in his understanding of the crucial role of both business innovation and the preservation of values, Cyrus Mistry's first year has shown him to be a worthy successor to Ratan Tata.
(The author is founder of Warwick Manufacturing Group and was a part of the committee which selected Cyrus Mistry to lead the Tata group)
