Story:
TITAN - Where leaders can be found everywhere

I. FUTURE SHOCK ,Strategy is not decided in the board room but decided by employees Mr. Bhat, in 2004, in one of his address to employees, had triggered the thoughts of people, to an interesting question “What does it take for our company to record a fivefold growth in 5 years time?”; this implied that he dreamt about becoming a billion dollar revenue company by 2009, from our USD 200 million revenue recorded in 2004. There was a rousing reception from employees to the challenge posed by him.Very interestingly Mr. Bhat was very clear that, the “what and how” part of the growth will have to come from the employees.

Brief details on FUTURE SHOCK -The year 2003-04 was a turnaround year for Titan Industries Limited. After a few years of financial pressure, the company was then poised at a point of inflection, with enormous potential for future growth. The organization had to now craft out its long term strategy for the next five years. Organizations would typically call a consultant like McKinsey and work with them to put a plan together. Or the various business heads would be asked to put their five year plans together – and a summation of that would become the organization’s plan. This would have led to a top line which would be an arithmetic progression of each year’s growth and led to perhaps, a sub-optimal growth overall!

At Titan, however, things work differently. FUTURE SHOCK 09-10 was unveiled by Bhaskar Bhat. It was a unique, first of its kind program, where several of the Company's younger executives were constituted into teams to look at various growth opportunities for the future with respect to both our existing businesses and new businesses, both in India and abroad. The objective was to collectively pitch our goals much higher and establish a collective ambition which would propel the Company to much higher levels of business and profitability in the future.

The unique feature of the program was its format. The program had members from various functions ( In all ,13 teams were formed through a process ). Internal team leader, an internal mentor, a financial anchor and an external advisor , were identified for each team.. The mentor and the external advisor would challenge the assumptions, provide the much needed external perspective, act as a sounding board and stretch the team's thinking. It was a unique format to have an external advisor - these were people like Senior Vice Presidents from the consumer durables / FMCG industries, consultants, people from academia etc. who had in-depth knowledge of the Indian economy and the consuming class. The external advisors were personally invited by Bhaskar to spend time with the Future Shock teams. The crowning glory of the program was when the teams had to present a five year business plan to a Jury comprising our CEO, senior members from the Tata Group and the external advisor. The presentation by the teams were also attended by a large cross section of executives from Titan , who were given the power to Vote to select an idea of their choice. Some CEOs of Tata group Companies were also on the Jury.

This was a very unique format, much appreciated by many in the Group. Senior TATA leaders appreciated this program for its grass root level involvement of employees to raise the bar for the future of the Company. Future Shock 09-10 sowed the seeds for many of the current new businesses that Titan Industries has diversified into and propelled the Company into significantly higher goals than would have ordinarily been possible through a normal business planning process.(Find below pictures of Future Shock)

The Prescription Eyewear business was one that came out of Future Shock. A brand called “Titan Eyeplus” has been launched and it is estimated to grow to a Rs. 500 crs business soon. The jewellery business, (which had started with Brand Tanishq, for Urban woman) launched a new brand targeting the semi-urban and rural markets in India called Gold Plus which was the 2nd business to come out of Future Shock. Nine years later, the two new businesses launched as an off shoot of Future shock process have blossomed to become large, respected and profitable businesses.

Jewellery Goldplus, an all manufacturing people led ( the head of business , the retail head , the category & design head all from manufacturing background ) mass market jewellery brand, through slew of pertinent innovations spanning product, process & customer service, had become the first brand within Titan to be profitable from year 1. It also gained the distinction to be the first brand to record maximum sales revenue in the first year of operation, and also in recording the fastest RS 1000 Crores, cumulative sales revenue. This brand is all set to achieve 250 Million $ sales revenue this year.

MARKETING INNOVATIONS BY GOLDPLUS

Find below photo of the World's First Gold Nano Car

Find below photo of World's Biggest Gold Bangle

Eyeplus, with over 250 stores, has established market leadership in eyewear business. This brand is marching with the ambition to acquire a customer base of one million within the next 3 financial years. Many innovations like, remote eye testing & online eye testing have been indigenously developed benefitting large customer base.

INNOVATION IN TITAN EYE PLUS

Find below first of its kind online eye testing by Titan Eyeplus

Find below Switchers Collection-3 different looks-1 stylish frame

 While the future shock program had paved way for converting many ordinary people in to Extraordinary leaders , Here is what an employee has to say about the program  Employee speak : I had 20 years of hard core manufacturing experience in automobile industries & I was wondering , how I would shape up when I joined this brand & retail led ( B to C ) company. There were manufacturing & business challenges. At one point when I had proposed that Titan is missing out on the opportunity of addressing people in the bottom of the pyramid , I was pleasantly surprised to have been asked to lead this new brand ( Goldplus ). Coming to a customer facing retail business without any past baggage of experience in Brand & retail , has not only helped me to unearth my hidden potential , but has also helped the company with new learning. Many stunning , innovation initiatives , challenging & breaking the industry convention were successful , in creating a new niche for our brand. Ananta , the unique loyalty program ( appealing to the heart of the customer , when the entire competitionwas appealing to the mind of the customers with discounts & gifts was a grand success. Ananta , was selected amongst the top 10 best customer service initiative in the Oracle retail congress held in Berlin , ahead of many international brands. Today I am a CEO at Titan handling new business , and such things can happen only in Titan." L.R.Natarajan , CEO , New Business

2. TELL ME SURVEY , A process to listen to the voice of stake holders , in deciding the next year’s operating plan. By using a structured questionnaire called “Tell me Survey”, the MD’s office created a process for understanding the pulse of a cross section of employees, in terms of what went well the previous year (as perceived by them), what did not go well, what new initiatives had worked and what did not, what the company should pursue and what we should not and so on. The survey also includes cross section of our vendors and franchises.

Around 10% of employee population (around 600) is involved in this well managed survey which maintains strict confidentiality. Many of the ideas endorsed by large section of employees are incorporated in the next year’s budget by way of companywide initiatives. The suggestions that are not taken forward are communicated back to the employees both in the open house and through smaller meetings of select participants and top management. The following initiatives were driven based on the feedback from Tell Me survey in the last many years-

The objectives of each initiative was defined. Cross functional teams were formed, providing them with the required resources. The empowered team were the leaders in going about accomplishing the task assigned to them.

1. Rejuvenating Brand Titan

2. Improving Tanishq Retail

3. Resolving Titan – Sonata conflict

4. Cost reduction through Cost Erosion programme (2=20 for a Rs. 20 Cr cost reduction)

5. Productivity for Prosperity (a cost reduction programme)

6. Improving the Performance Management System

7. Revisiting the Compensation Practices

Click here to see the questionnaire used in the survey

3. Initiatives towards equipping & energising employees to lead , even when they lack formal authority A. Innovation School of management , Skill & empower the common employee in solving a big challenge. It is perhaps one of the most unique initiatives across industries, where a common employee is trained on skills to innovate and groups of employees thus trained, are given orbit shift challenges to crack. More than the results achieved (stunning results have been achieved, nevertheless), the employees feel empowered and play the leader’s role in going about the projects assigned to them with pride & passion.

A six month course on innovation, co-created by EREHWON, an innovation consulting company who are pioneers in “ orbit shift Innovation methodology “, was designed with 3 days of class room session , on the “what , why and how of innovation” , followed by 4 hours / week free time to work on identified innovation projects, 2 hours / week of mentoring in a week, and a monthly review with senior management team , ultimately leading to a diploma in innovation for the employees.(Click Here- To have a look at the innovation school brochure). So far 200 of our employees have been converted as trained innovators, and manufacturing innovations contribute to around 20% of our profits in our jewellery division. (To have a look at one of our innovator’s project, please click here).

Find below the photos of Innovation School of Management and the first batch of innovators from the school.

B. Interweave- Connecting the dots! Provide platforms to make employees as Heroes “If only Tata knew, what Tata knows!”- R Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director - Tata Sons Afore is a statement made by R Gopalakrishnan, fondly called as RG in Tata fraternity, highlighting the imperative of tapping into the collective might of the USD 100 billion Tata Group. There are organizations such as Sony, Xerox, and Motorola, which were once the powerhouse of innovation and technology, but soon lost out to more nimble, creative challengers. These pioneers had all the right things in place, but failed to synergies various pieces of expertise together in delivering a real performance. The question is- how would Tata Group in general and Titan, in particular remain vital in changing times? It is therefore imperative that we don’t lose out on assimilating and leveraging the nuggets of excellence that exist across the breadth of Titan.

Because ideas are born at the intersection of disciplines, and Titan has presence in several disciplines, it is only natural for us to enable more such fertile connections. To ensure cross- pollination of ideas and enhancing collaborative engagements, Titan Innovation Council has launched a series of initiatives such as the Titan Interweave. (Please find below the Titan Interweave Logo)

The Titan Interweave is an event where the best practices from a particular function or region is shared with the larger audience, and here the intent is to encourage broad basing of such practices.The first edition of Titan Interweave was hosted in Bangalore in July 2011 for the Sales and Marketing Team. The event saw 25 ideas being presented to an audience of over 200, and several of these ideas were later experimented with other functions. This was then followed by a event hosted for the Northern Region in July 2012, and later in January 2013.Since then it has been replicated by the Western region in 2013 as well. Cumulatively, the Titan Interweave has touched over 10 percent of Titanians from across locations and business divisions and this has resulted into people having meaningful dialogues, productive collaborations and innovative ideas and solutions.(Please find below photos of the Interweave Event)

C. HOD fund , Trust the employees, tweak the rules, empower them in experimenting their ideas. This is another unique initiative which encourages employees to experiment new ideas. This is achieved by creating processes which enable employees to receive up to RS 100000 per project to help them experiment their new ideas. One can take up as many projects and can collect RS 1 Lac for each project, through a simplified process from the local finance department. Quarterly review forums are established to understand how the money has been spent and the results achieved.

Employee speak about HOD Fund “This initiative truly liberated us! In our kind of organization it usually takes a long time to get the allocation of fund for any new experiments, this slows down the process and interest in the project itself. After the introduction of the HOD fund, we have been allowed to utilize up to one lakh without any question and it has given a huge leverage and pressure to perform for all the HODs. This was a well thought out and need of the hour innovative initiative through which we are able to implement the new ideas without any delay, and keep the employee morale high and able to generate more such ideas.”-Mr. Rajendran G , Group Manager , Jewellery Division.

 Few of the projects which utilised the HOD fund are given below-

1.Light Weight Collection (metal mould) (Please find below a photo of the Light Weight Collection Challenge)

The Challenge: Tanishq in its product portfolio has many famous Fashion Jewelry products. These Fashion Jewelry items need to be light weight and require repeated accuracy. The traditional method used for casting of these jewelry items was called Lost Wax Casting which used a Rubber Mould. However, a Rubber Mould doesn’t yield satisfactory repeated accuracy.

The Solution: the team came up with the idea that a Metal Mould should be used instead of a Rubber Mould. The Metal Mould would give the desired repeated accuracy and hence help in making lighter jewelry. However, another hurdle confronting them was the fact that Metal Moulding Machine is very expensive.

How the HOD Fund helped: The team turned to the HOD fund. Using it they purchased a few parts from outside and using some parts that were available in-house, they made a low cost Metal Moulding Machine. The Metal Mould achieved repeated accuracy and led to 50% weight reduction compared with regular casted item. This made light weight fashion jewelry collection possible. Thus, they managed to achieve a low cost yet highly effective solution to a complex problem owing to quick access to capital made available through the HOD fund.

2.One Day Wonder (Guide Card Printer) (Please find below a photo of the One day wonder Challenge)

The Challenge : One of the challenging steps in Jewelry Manufacturing Process involves embedding diamonds in the jewelry item. This step becomes complicated because the size of diamonds involved is very small and each diamond needs to be embedded in the exact right spot meant for it. If a larger diamond is forcefully put into a smaller cavity, the diamond is likely to break and alternatively if a smaller diamond is put into a larger cavity, it will be loose and there is a risk of it popping out. Given that the difference in sizes of the diamonds is very minute, it was challenging as well as time consuming for the worker to ensure that the right diamonds were embedded in the right spot all the time.

The Solution: To overcome this problem, the team came up with a simple innovative solution. It was proposed that the back side of the Bill of Material for each jewelry item would have a layout (a detailed image) of the jewelry item and in this layout using proper color coding it would be indicated which diamond needs to be fitted in which spot. With this process, achieving accuracy became easier and much quicker. Order Processing to Final Product completion within 24 hours became possible.

How the HOD Fund helped : though the idea was good, it’s implementation required that the team had access to high definition color printer. In the normal course of things, a request for having a color printer installed would have taken a long time as it required multiple approvals. The HOD fund was found to be of great use in this scenario. They managed to immediately procure the printer and implement their idea which otherwise would have taken a much longer time. Over thirty projects have been completed successfully by using the HOD fund.

D. Innovation Challenge Program, An initiative to mould middle level managers into future business leaders. This again is a unique initiative at Titan which focuses on adding to the skills of the Middle/ senior level management. 30 managers were sent to the Indian institute of Management Bangalore for an interesting two weeks program , exclusively created for Titan by IIM faculty , for a) Exposing managers to the threats and opportunity in the market place b) Educating & guiding them on the required skills c) Giving the exciting projects and empowering them to work on the same.Please click here for more details.

Employee speak : “It was a great initiative from Titan to identify some of us to be part of the Innovation program @ IIMB. The structured inputs provided by the faculty were really enriching and the sessions with innovation experts & industry leaders were even more exciting. The TMC members’ participation and encouragement during the program re-instated their commitment on enhancing the innovation culture in the organisation. The learning from this program has completely changed the way I think and act in the day-to-day life. Thanks to Mr.BB, Mr.CKV, Mr.LRN and the entire organisation for the wonderful opportunity.”-Mr. Panneerselvam , Senor Manager - Goldplus.

4. Initiatives towards enhancing the competency of employees (Enhancing their leadership capacity) A. MBA program – Alliance Business School , Educate employees to become future leaders, In an attempt to create a talent pipe line for our organization, our company had collaborated with a leading Business school for providing a 3 year part time MBA program to our executives. This program has been a resounding success with over 100 of our executives ( mostly from manufacturing department ) having completed the MBA program successfully. The tuition fee was sponsored by our company.

Please see picture of one of our executives in the MBA convocation function.

Following is what one of the executives, Employee speak : Mr. Elangovan A, had to say about the MBA program: “I am proud to be a part of this wonderful institution – this organization called TITAN. A place that has helped me grow and realise my potential. An institution that nurtures the individual, and takes proper care, and helps him grow – both on the professional and academic fronts. It encouraged me to continue my education – after I joined on the basis of my Secondary Qualification – enabling me to complete my Diploma Certificate. The policy of elevation of employees from the labour level to the Staff Level is a boon to all the aspiring professionals, and, added to that is the sponsorship for management education (MBA from Alliance Business School), that came as an icing on the cake. To put it in short, a place where you get it all – Motivation, freedom to perform, no barrier for growth; a place that boosts your confidence with support, genuine concern for its people and praiseworthy people practices. To grow from the level of an operator to a Manager handling one of the core operating units of the division – is an achievement that I am indeed proud of – made possible by the policies of this wonderful organization. Thanks and Gratitude to this home called TITAN.”

B. E to L level , Unique program to train, skill & upgrade workers as supervisors & give them platform to grow further. The culture & work environment provided by our company has been conducive for a majority of the employees to fulfil their aspirations, including our workmen. This program of providing opportunities for our workmen to be promoted as supervisors ( if they pass all the stringent tests ) was introduced in the year 2005. Amongst the 1500 + workers , this program had encouraged , 45 % of them in completing their basic degree, (they joined with just a Class X qualification) through part time & distance learning institutes. Today we have over 100 post graduates, many engineers & business graduates amongst our workers. So far through this program, 550 workers have been upgraded as supervisors and amongst them there are around 10 people, who have moved up over a period to become managers. Please click here for more details. 

C. SAMVIT Power of Knowledge – online learning portal. Titan Industries continues to provide online training to support the day to day working requirements of its employees. Online courses can be used as reference tools to help answer your day-to-day on the job questions or as part of your personal development. These learning resources are available 24x7 from any internet connected computer both at work and at home. Please see attachment for more details Click here

D. Assessment Centre (followed by mentoring) Develop talent pipe line Assessment Centres help organizations identify and develop competent people, which is now the need of the day. Assessment centres are tools that involve assembling “recommended managerial candidates for specific purpose of assessing their potential and arriving at the decisions regarding their promotions at work.” Companies take a group of up to a dozen candidates away from work environment for several days, giving these candidates simulated management problems such as a case study, role plays and in-baskets. After a series of interviews and tests, observers (usually industrial psychologists or senior managers) collate the results to produce overall potential ratings for each candidate. It is used for the following-

1. Selection – Assessment Centres help organizations in getting the right people in.

2. Career development – The identification of the competencies possessed by the individual helps organization decide his career plans.

3. Potential appraisal – These centres help organizations identify if the person can handle the challenges offered in the next higher position.

4. Identification of high potential managers – This creates a pool of managerial talents & multifunctional managers that would be available across the business group etc.

5. Succession planning – Identifying the right individual for critical positions such as CEO, CFO etc is very important for the success of the organization. These centres reduce the risk of such wrong identification.

6. Allocations of challenging assignments – These centres provide the organization with the strengths and weaknesses of every participant. This helps the organization in deciding the candidates who would have the necessary abilities to undertake the proposed challenging assignments.

7. Management development – These centres provide ample opportunity to its participants to reflect on one’s capabilities and to improve by observing others perform in the AC.

8. Identification of training needs – Assessment centres provide candidates and organization with concrete data on the improvement areas, which can be utilized, for training.

9. Identification of a global pool of talented managers - Adjusting oneself in the global scenario is a critical requirement of some positions in the organization. Assessment Centres help organizations to identify such managers Process followed in Assessment Centres.

The list of critical responsibilities, at each stage is given below-

A) Pre Assessment Centre process • Defining the objective of Assessment Centre. • Get approval for Assessment Centre from the concerned officials. • Conduct job analysis. • Define the competencies required for the target position. • Identify the potential position holder and send them invitations. • Identify the observers. • Train the observers. • Design the Assessment Centre exercises • Decide the rating methodology. • Make infrastructural arrangements. • Schedule the Assessment Centre. • Inform the concerned people of the schedule.

B) During Assessment Centre process • Explain participants the purpose of the Assessment Centre, the procedure it would follow and its outcome. • Give instructions to the participants, before every exercise. • Distribute the competency-exercise matrix sheets among observers. • Conduct all exercises. • Conduct a discussion of all observers on every participant’s ratings, at the end of the session. • Make a report of the strengths and improvement areas of every participant. • Give feedback to participants. Get feedback from participants and observers about the conduction of Assessment Centre.

C) Post Assessment Centre process • Compile reports of all participants and submit the list of selected participants to the concerned authorities. • Make improvements in the design according to the recommendations. • Evaluate the validity of results after a definite period.

E. Mobility policy , Give growth opportunity to internal candidates The mobility policy was crafted by the HR department with a view to increase employee job satisfaction and enhance opportunities for career development. This policy provided a defined process for cross-functional/departmental moves thereby opening opportunities for internal talent to take up new, challenging roles. Over 1000 employees have benefitted from this initiative. To read more about this policy click here.