"I need you in India, Suresh, the MAGGI crisis is getting serious, and Nestlé needs you to support the team there!”
These words came as a thunderbolt for Suresh Narayanan, former Chairman and Managing Director of Nestlé India Ltd., who was barely four months into his tenure in the Philippines when he was called back to navigate one of India’s biggest brand crises.
“Life has a unique way of throwing us curveballs when we least expect it,” he writes in Courage Under Fire.
In a conversation with exchange4media, Narayanan reflects on the Maggi crisis, the myth of invincible CEOs, the importance of trust and why empathy and people-centricity must remain at the heart of leadership, even under relentless performance pressures.
Q] Your book challenges the conventional image of a leader as someone infallible and always in control. Looking back at four decades of leadership, do you believe corporate India has spent too much time celebrating successful CEOs and too little time examining how they behave when things go wrong?
If you look at our history, if you look at our mythology, if you look at our texts, they always eulogize and always make supermen out of people who were mortals, who did their jobs well and with a lot of commitment and drive.
I think corporate India has followed a similar pattern, culturally in consonance with the rest of the country and societal norms. And I think we are making a grave mistake because we are entering a world where uncertainty, volatility and BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible), as they call it, are going to be the rule of the hour.
So, a leader must exemplify competence, compassion and courage, of course, but should also look at their own vulnerabilities and view these not as weaknesses but as possible strengths they can leverage in times of difficulty. Vulnerability does not mean you are weak; it just means that in life, there are a few things beyond your control.
Q] The MAGGI crisis was as much a battle over public trust as it was a regulatory and business challenge. When the consumer has already formed a judgment, how does a leader distinguish between defending the company’s position and genuinely listening to what has gone wrong?
I would liken the accusations made against an honest individual to those made against a company. While the scale is very different, the crisis of confidence and the crisis of trust remain similar. Every company has a DNA, just as every individual has a DNA, and the DNA in the case of Nestlé is food quality and safety. And when that is challenged, you muster up the facts: the fact that you have done no wrong, that there is an error in the testing mechanisms. But you address it politely, resolutely and firmly so that nobody gets offended, while the facts are put on the table.
So you act with transparency. Trust is an invaluable asset that works in difficult times. In good times, trust is taken for granted. In bad times, trust becomes a great weapon in the hands of companies to leverage. We reiterated this fact over a period of time, calmly, in a composed manner, but with full professionalism and an enormous amount of conviction.
Q] Your experience in Egypt during the Arab Spring presents a very different kind of crisis, where circumstances were largely beyond corporate control. Is knowing when not to intervene an underestimated leadership skill?
In my long experience of more than four decades in the corporate world, I have realized that there are three arcs or three circles of influence. The core circle is what you can control, or things which are under your ambit, under your power and within your capabilities, conviction and professionalism. There is a middle circle which is a little bit of a mix. Some parts of it can be controlled, some cannot, and you have to identify which are the ones that are not controllable.
And then there is an outer ring which is completely beyond your control, which has got to do with politics, weather and various other acts of God that you have no control over. So I always say, and I say this in my book as well, act on what you can control and what you can influence.
But do not try and meddle in things that are beyond your ken and beyond your competencies. And I think sometimes leaders confuse the power they possess with the power that is needed to do a particular task. So sometimes silence is a statement, sometimes silence is the word.
Q] A recurring argument in Courage Under Fire is that leadership must remain fundamentally human. But companies today operate under relentless pressure to deliver quarterly results, improve productivity and protect margins. Have we reached a point where empathy is celebrated in leadership literature but quietly penalised in corporate boardrooms?
Look, I know this statement in this paragraph was written with my genuine conviction that working long hours doesn’t necessarily mean working effectively or efficiently. Because the human body does tend to switch off after a point in time, and relentless hard work is only going to damage your other interests in life, your relationships and your health.
During the crisis, I worked very long hours, but that was inevitable because of the nature of the problem. Otherwise, I have never missed a dance competition of my daughter, a sports meet or a parent-teacher meeting.
We are entering an increasingly fractured world. A world where performance matters at all costs, where principles of empathy and compassion do not matter anymore, and where it is just a question of efficiently churning out whatever you are expected to. And if you don’t, then you are ejected from the organization on Slack or email, without even a modicum of decency and respect being given to you.
So people-centricity, compassion, empathy, purpose, values, behaviours, trust, credibility and outcomes are perfectly compatible with a high-performance organization. Today, mental wellness is problem number one and that problem is increasingly arising because of work-related stress. And who is going to reduce work-related stress? It is going to be leaders.
So yes, I think empathy has been used a lot as a word. It has been eulogized in the dictionary but unfortunately, less of it has been put into practice.
Q] When you took charge during the MAGGI crisis, brands still had some control over the narrative through traditional media. Today, a controversy can become a national conversation within minutes, often before a company establishes the facts. Should brands now invest more in building trust than in building visibility?
Trust is the centrepiece on which a brand stands, just as it is for a human being. Therefore, any amount of glamorization of the marketing process by addressing all issues other than trust is going to be infructuous, for the simple reason that consumers buy a brand because they trust it.
Why did consumers come back to Maggi? Because they trusted the brand, because they loved the brand, because they had savoured the brand and because they had an emotional connection with it. That’s how they came back to the brand.
For any marketer to say, “I will look at visibility without trust,” is a very fatal statement. Because visibility for what? Why should somebody notice you? If you advertise yourself saying, “I am this and I am that” but your actions are exactly contrary, then why would somebody want to engage with you? Therefore, trust is at the centre of every person, every relationship and every entity, and that is something a marketer can never forget at any point in time.
Q] Your book argues that leadership is defined by behaviour rather than position. Beyond financial success and corporate titles, how would you want people to remember Suresh Narayanan?
I think there was a line that I once read, attributed to Larry Bossidy, the former Chairman and CEO of Honeywell, which said that you will never be remembered for the profits you made or the revenue you generated. You will only be remembered by how you made the other person feel.
And that is really the essence of leadership. Long after you have left this table, if people are still talking about you in fond terms, in respectful terms, in affectionate terms, I think that is far more valuable than having led a corporation that quadrupled its market capitalization or showed double-digit growth or double-digit profit growth.
All of this happened during my time as the Chairman of Nestlé, but for me, the essence of my leadership is the fact that somebody still picks up the phone and talks to me in a friendly, affectionate tone and says, “Sir, can I get your advice on this?” Or, “There is a bit of good news in the family. Can I share it with you?” These are the moments, I think, that matter. Leadership is about flesh-and-blood moments.
Q] Has writing Courage Under Fire inspired you to consider another book?
You know, one of the things I’ve realised is that it’s far easier to sell a brand or a company than to market your own brand. So, Courage Under Fire is taking all my courage and making me do things that I’ve never done before. Later on, if I do feel the need to write another book, I will. I have the time, I have the inclination, but as of now, I think the sweat of my brow is being fully stretched with one book at hand.
