The jury's still out on ET Awards
The rest of Berkely House may well be deserted as the weekend kicks in, but Mittal Steel’s floors are buzzing with activity.
By Sudeshna Sen, TNN |
LONDON: On the seventh floor of the steel-and-glass headquarters of Mittal Steel in central London, there’s no sense of a Friday evening at 8 pm. The rest of Berkely House may well be deserted as the weekend kicks in, but Mittal Steel’s floors are buzzing with activity.
For this is a jury chairman who wants everything done just so, and he wants it done just now. We don’t need to introduce him. Let’s just welcome the new chairman of the ET Awards Jury ’06, Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, also board president of Arcelor Mittal. It’s a first for him with ET, this jury, and it’s a first for us. Here’s a sneak preview of what it’s like to work with LNM.
“It is naturally a privilege to be associated with the prestigious ET Awards for Corporate Excellence,” he told ET. He’s not taking the responsibility lightly. As soon as Mr Mittal receives the tonnes of background material on the nominees ET’s team of experts and analysts had put together (hundreds of pages of research and profiles), he swings into action.
Bringing in that special edge that’s made Lakshmi Niwas Mittal a global force to reckon with, the new chairman of the ET jury takes a quick look at ET’s Black Book - a comprehensive dossier on Awards - and takes over.
He calls in ET’s team in London and Mumbai, along with his own core team of specialists, and creates a structure right there. He’s fine with how ET and the juries have done it in earlier years; he just wants to tweak the processes to bring in a quantitative element to the short-listing process, and to ensure that the jury can have a more meaningful discussion in the two hours they have on Friday, September 8, in Mumbai.
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He’s done all this in an hour, and we’re running to keep up with him. Whew! In a few moments, he has despatched emails to all jury members - the who’s who of Big Business - requesting them to fill out the score-sheets in a few days and revert. They all do.HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, an ET Awards veteran who has been involved with us since the inception of the Awards in 1998, exchanges a few ideas over the email before sending in his scores. Ditto Kumar Mangalam Birla, who’s prompt with his ratings.
ICICI Bank boss-man KV Kamath, Bharti’s Sunil Mittal, Unilever’s Harish Manwani and McKinsey’s Adil Zainulbhai all make it possible to streamline the process in order to get more time for focused discussion at the jury meeting. Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik, in between his high-profile meetings, managed to steal some time to fill out the score-sheet.
These Eight Wise Men who will sit on judgement to pick the best of the best. “I am particularly looking forward to being part of the jury as it will expose me to all that is best about Indian business, both the people and the companies. And all of this at a time when there is considerable optimism about the outlook for Indian business,” says LN Mittal.
Over the next few days, in relays across time-zones in India and London, Mr Mittal’s team and ET sort through the piles of data and research provided by ET. Jury members have all been requested to send in their individual score cards rating the nominees - and they do, from all corners of the world.
Confidentiality, with a capital C, is of course top of mind for Mr Mittal, as he’s busy collating data from other members of the high profile jury before landing in Mumbai early on Friday.
More mails, and conference calls later, we look like we’re about as prepared as Mr Mittal would like us to be.
LN Mittal is a man who prefers to have everything sorted out well in advance; he believes in keeping all the homework done, as that makes things go more smoothly.
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Before he flies out to chair the jury meet and address a gathering of 300 of India’s top CEOs, he wants to dot the Is and cross the Ts — every possible and improbable option is explored, explained, and questioned.And no, we’re not going to keep him closeted with the jury. After the meeting, Mr Mittal will join in a roundtable with his co-jurors, and tell an audience of India’s top CEOs the key attributes that make Indian businessmen successful in a global environment. ET will naturally bring you the despatches from the action-front. Stay with us.
Raymond is the presenting sponsor of The Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence in association with The Oberoi Hotels & Resorts. TIMES NOW is our television partner.
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