Book review
For corporate leaders, the challenge is to find new ways of doing things. Smart Leadership: Insights for CEOs presents twelve CEOs who have done just that, and set new benchmarks for growth and performance in their respective industry in the process. More outstandingly, whether it is Kumar Mangalam Birla, N.R. Narayana Murthy, Rahul Bajaj or K.V. Kamath, they have shown how such growth can be sustained, year after year, even as the business environment becomes, in the words of one CEO, ‘ferociously competitive, rapidly changing and fluid’.

In this compact but insightful book, Gita Piramal and Jennifer Netarwala draw insights from these CEOs, heading companies as diverse as Lijjat papad to Tata Consultancy Services, on how they accomplished their goals in such a competitive environment, and what others can learn from them. They come up with lessons on some of the core aspects of leadership: decision-making, building teams, nurturing talent, managing change, and an unwavering focus on growth. Indian companies are today grappling with the challenge of moving up to the next level of competition—one where an organization has a demand for its product or service anywhere in the world. Smart Leadership offers practical tips on effecting that transformation for executives at all levels.

• Published by Penguin Books India
• Published: December 2005
• Imprint: Portfolio
• ISBN: 0670058327
• Edition: Hardback
• Format: B
• Extent: 216pp
• Classification: Business


About the author A journalist with a PhD in business history, Gita Piramal has written for many years on the corporate sector for leading Indian and international publications such as the Financial Times and the Economic Times, and is a consulting editor of the World Executive’s Digest. She also has been involved in the making of television programmes on Indian business for the BBC and Plus Channel. In 1986, she co-authored India’s Industrialists, and in 1991 contributed to Business and Politics in India—A historical perspective, published by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. She divides her time between London and Mumbai. Other books by Gita Piramal include Business Legends, Business Mantras and Managing Radical Change (co-authored with Sumantra Ghoshal). Gita Piramal is one of India’s foremost business writers. She is now the managing editor of The Smart Manager, India’s first world-class management magazine.