Ravi Chaudhry, CEO of CeNext Consulting

Besides entrepreneurship, the most important topics I teach at the Kellogg School are corporate governance and culture. Coming out of the pandemic and with heightened awareness of the impact of corporations on the future of societies, I welcomed the former Chairman of Tata Group companies,  Ravi Chaudhry onto The Reboot Chronicles, for a no-hold-barred talk. Ravi’s book, Quest for Exceptional Leadership: Mirage to Reality has been acclaimed as a discerning analysis of the leadership vacuum that pervades the world. He believes that leaders have to re-discover the leadership traits that lie dormant within them. He is the founder and Chairman of CeNext Consulting & Investment Pvt Ltd, New Delhi. Prior to that, he was Chairman of four companies in the Tata Group, India. He has consulted with many Fortune 1000 corporations as well as been an advisor to Governments of Switzerland, Turkey, Brazil and Norway, as well as the World Bank. 

In Ravi’s mind, the last two years have been a breaking point for the general public with corporations. As he says, “Business leaders are pretty good at keeping track of the company’s performance indices. But somehow, they still apply the toolkit of yesterday. They tend to miss out how radically society has changed in the last two years and how the social contract, which kept the wheels of economy moving, is broken.” 

He sees how employees have awakened to the lack of equity, fairness, and transparency, and how an increasing proportion of customers are asking tough questions about company ethics. He typically begins his consulting with corporate leaders by asking them if they are aware that the world is changing faster than anyone could comprehend, in directions that they are not likely familiar with. The big challenge for them is to keep abreast of what is happening, distinguish between risk and opportunity and identify anomalies before they become established trends.

He decries corporate boards as too often “the echo chambers of like-minded peers, with self confirming news inputs that reinforce our beliefs.” To him, there are seven non-negotiable tenets of business today. The first two are related to ESG: Decisive stakeholder primacy over shareholders, social and climate justice. The third and fourth relate to the respect for women and minorities, and support for youth activism, and regard for trade unions and employers. Fifth and sixth reflect corporate director ethical citizenship, transparency and humility. And seventh, is to create and nurture a company with sustainable profitability.

In Ravi’s world of fixing the corporation, he requires a total narrative shift from “corporate governance, to governance of the corporation. Beyond compliance to corporate character. Beyond corporate lobbying, to corporate acknowledgement that society matters, and nature matters more than all the corporations put together.”

It was a heady discussion filled with ideals that will inspire you to new levels of possibility in the world of corporate governance. And yes, he does have recommendations for the most controversial corporate entities today. Talking about you Zuck.