What lessons in management can we possibly learn from bonsai crocs, which are stunted because they are confined to a small enclosure soon after emerging from the egg? Or from the caterpillar whose transformation to a beautiful butterfly is so painful? Or from flies that cannot fly straight, cave crickets that are comfortable in darkness, or pigeons which fail to reach home? Well, plenty, as Tata Sons Executive Director R. Gopalakrishnan has eloquently argued in his jargon-free forthcoming book, ‘The Case of the Bonsai Manager—Lessons from Nature on Growing’. Filled with anecdotes he has been collecting for more than a decade, the book draws from his rich management experience. “No one sets out to be a bonsai manager... a manager’s growth gets stunted by his own acts of omission and commission. To achieve his full potential, a manager should explore new possibilities, going beyond the analytical and the logical to gut and instinct,” he says. Sudipta Datta spoke to Gopalakrishnan, who spent 31 years at Hindustan Lever before joining the Tatas in 1998, about his new book on how managers can tackle big-ticket mergers and acquisitions, and why a good story always clicks. Excerpts:

• What inspired you to write the book?

About 10 years ago, the number of reports about top leaders getting fired started attracting huge press coverage; it also caught my eye and set me thinking. I wondered why successful people, CEOs, VPs and so forth make seemingly elementary mistakes? Is this inevitable or is there a way to reduce these mistakes? One also cannot escape the similarity with life itself. The way we try to minimise them is when parents and grandparents try to leave a legacy of stories which embed in the mind and come back at important times. Management also bears a similarity to life. My profession happens to be management, so I write with that perspective, but the messages could apply to life in general.

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