This was meant to be a googly, which he has responded with care. Here’s Dr Bhaskar Das in the August 31 edition of Das ka Dum. Read on…
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Q. Given Uday Shankar taking charge at Viacom 18, a lot of his trusted lieutenants have joined Viacom18. It’s happened in the past as well. Many from BCCL joined DNA when it was set up in 2005. Your views on this trend?
A. I strongly feel that your conviction about an individual joining Viacom18 has resulted in a significant exodus of executives to the new organisation is a sweeping conclusion because the factual data that I have from the public domain does not support the conclusion. Assuming that it happens, you have to accept that it’s not the individual that attracts another senior person to a new organisation. It is the volutional decision of the joinee also. There can be an element of comfort at both levels but there is no guarantee of success as the case of DNA has proved. One must accept that the landscape of any future competitive scenario is not only determined by an individual, but collectively on the response of an organisation to counter any competitive missives.
The kind of exodus that happened at the launch of DNA was quite unprecedented to my mind because of the relevant compulsions at that point of time. The calculation obviously went wrong as the response from the market leader was more on the offensive and the assumption about legacy player couldn’t dance to the new competitive dynamics proved to be wrong. Hence success of an organisation is surely influenced by the leadership, but ultimately it is the team that makes the difference in terms of response to the competitive challenges. So I don’t agree with any migration of unorganised to another as a viable competitive response.