MERRY MEADOWS Chapter 1 - Back to Basics

Writing has become more about typing on a keyboard rather than the actual putting of pen to paper. The word processor on the TCS Laptop in my use comes with multiple advantages. As one warms up on the keyboard, the flying fingers enable a speed of documenting one’s thought expression that pen on paper couldn’t possibly match. More so, during reviews of the draft one can pick up mid paragraph and expand the narrative with no unsightly scratching of text, or the placing of asterisks, or resort to tiny handwriting to fit into tiny spaces on the margins of the page.

What to say of writing, the entire world of publishing has been turned on its head over the past three decades. Desktop publishing, the Internet, and social media have enabled penniless but thought rich writers to gain a worldwide audience that would otherwise have been impossible. The monopoly in thought propagation of a few all powerful publishing houses has been challenged and decimated to a large extent.

However, this very late night, or very early morning, whatever 3am qualifies for, I have set aside high technology for a bit, except for the reading lamp and ballpoint, and gone the old fashioned route of literally putting pen to paper. I realize that all that I write will have to be re-inputted. But rediscovering my finger muscles, and exercising them, warrants the effort, as indeed does the sheer pleasure of writing longhand.

The TCS Connect Customer Newsletter

The story that I am in the process of penning has been overdue in its telling, or so the commissioners of the project have begun to feel. It was in 2002 that I signed a contract with TCS to write about its incredible two decades of existence in the rough and tumble of a cloak and dagger high octane Pakistan.

Had that been the only contract I’d signed with TCS that day then the project would have been long completed. But along with researching and writing the TCS book, I also undertook to develop the content for the TCS Customer Magazine Connect.

This second contract kept me firmly rooted in the current reality of TCS which in itself was, and is, evolving at a dizzying pace. Looking back, the third decade of TCS’s existence has been supercharged. The term quantum growth has found physical expression in the speed with which the TCS red and white corporate colours have spread through the length and breadth of Pakistan, as well as overseas.

The TCS of today is very far from the quaint boutique operation that KNA started in 1983 with a single shop and a handful of shipments. The TCS of today can best be described as an express logistics behemoth; an express logistics behemoth operating in a variety of enterprises that leverage the TCS core logistics strengths developed painstakingly through trial and error, and the conscious development of the TCS human resource. Its formidable corporate social responsibility outlays find expression in the education and health sectors, and the development of entrepreneurship in our educated youth is a flagged priority.

One can therefore understand why the book has remained a work-in-progress, because TCS itself remains one heck of a work-in-progress. I suppose the book is finally beginning to see the light of day because the realization has dawned that it must now happen. It’s a spiritual thing that some lay great store by. Call it fatalistic if you like. There arrives a time when things begin to flow on their own accord. The hurdles and hiccups begin to disappear, startling the pace of progress.

Rectifying the Disconnect

The spiritual aspect not withstanding, the real reason that this book is seeing the light of day is because all concerned I sense are now more comfortable about having their story told. This wasn’t the case before, or at least so I felt.

In every relationship there is a strong element of body language which says it all, if one is ‘listening’, that is. The vibes that I got always put me at an arm’s length from what was going on in TCS. In the 1980s and 1990s TCS went through some uncomfortable gyrations that generated a very low trust culture, hallmarked by frequent departures from amongst its rank and file, leading to high employee turnover with its unsettling consequences.

Around the turn of the Millennium the TCS Chairman and owner of the enterprise, KNA, took a stand in the name of sheer corporate survival, and removed his nephew Naveed Awan from the chief executive’s office. Pakistan’s business landscape was dominated by enterprises that were family owned and centrally managed by members of the family, with loyalty, not business acumen or merit, as the deciding factor. TCS was no different then.

But Naveed had run a very shoddy ship that had begun to flounder. His actions had spoken louder than his words where family loyalty was concerned, and had Naveed still expected to retain his position within the organization then he was so obviously being delusional. Before Naveed ran aground the TCS ship some drastic measures were needed to be taken.

KNA has come under criticism from his peers for his soft, seemingly indecisive approach when it comes to human resource management. He hates taking the tough decision of letting people go, his compassion prolonging the misery of his organization in some cases.

Naveed Awan was enamored of the good life and the TCS Head Office, at the time situated in the Nursery district of Karachi, was run like a country club, or so it was said. True that high performance teams need to be relaxed, but they need to first be capable of turning out high performances. That wasn’t happening, and the party atmosphere was playing havoc with the bottom-line.

As an engineer, there was no doubting KNA’s analytical capabilities. As an engineer who had spent countless hours in the cockpit of a modern jetliner, his quick decision making abilities, especially when under pressure, were finely honed.

As a leader of men he was tried and tested. He had won the hearts and undying loyalty of his fellow flight engineers at PIA when as president of the union he had taken on the martial law regime on a matter of principle, turning his back on lucrative employment rather than compromise.

But KNA was also a family man, deeply aware of all that went into the building and maintaining of the family bond. His elder brother, elder to him by 22 years, had taken him under his wing, and nurtured and nourished him on his way to self-empowerment.

The Brigadier had left his mortal abode for his abode eternal, and now KNA, the master of a fortune built by his own hands under his brother’s early tutelage, had to give back as he had once received.

I have no doubt that this is the context in which he viewed his nephew Naveed Awan. Or maybe KNA’s soft hearted and soft spoken personality was actually depictive of a God fearing, law abiding, meek man momentarily scared into submission by the party animal in his nephew.

Seeking Professional Management

Some good men had left TCS because of Naveed, and amongst them were Jamil Janjua (JJ, not to be confused with Javed Jabbar who also goes by similar initials), Saqib Hamdani and Najeeb Nayyer. Saqib and JJ had found gainful employment without any difficulty at Servis and the British Council respectively, and Najeeb Nayyar was involved in his family business Team Nayyer that dealt in plastic molded aerodynamically designed auto bodies, amongst other things.

Management theorists and practitioners around the world were debating the merits and demerits of professional management as compared to family owned ‘Seth’ management. The ‘Seth’, or the owner and head honcho, was reluctant to delegate real authority to professional management.

The reason for this in most cases was a deep distrust of anyone who didn’t belong to the family. This had stunted the growth of national companies, for in the absence of professional management recruited on merit, the ‘Seth’ was stuck with his resource of sons and nephews, no matter how mediocre. The leading business schools of the world were advocating the move from family to professional management.        

Increasingly KNA became convinced that this was the only course of action for him to follow, and even after he was fully convinced, he waited, coaxing and cajoling his nephew to mend his ways, but it was not to be.

I am not privy to what went on during the changeover. During the many interviews that he gave me KNA was never comfortable talking about the messy part of the TCS business history. But I am assuming that this was a particularly difficult period for him, the sorrow of parting from his flesh and blood compounded by a personal sense of failure in the realm of human resource development and management.

The beneficial side to this debacle, and there is always a silver lining in the darkest of storm clouds, was that it imbued in him a new sense of purpose, and there was a barely controlled forward looking urgency dominating the discourse which did not permit the shedding of tears over spilt milk.

Once KNA had decided to make the move the entire set up at TCS was overhauled. Naveed Awan was shown the door as gently as it was possible, and JJ, Saqib and Najeeb took over the reins of TCS from Naveed, with JJ in the chief executive’s chair, Saqib as director operations, and Najeeb as director marketing. This set up had been in place for a short while when I appeared on the scene at TCS.

Merry Meadows - Memoirs of an entrepreneur