My boss is always right. Or is he?

Both my boss and I defied the sacred management commandments

When I joined TCE in Mumbai nearly six decades ago, a senior colleague jokingly told me, "The boss is always right, as per the Ninth Management Commandment. And if he's wrong, refer to the Tenth, which says to follow the Ninth!" This memory resurfaced recently during discussions about gruelling 70-90 hour workweeks.

After seven years in Mumbai, I was transferred to TCE's Bangalore (now Bengaluru) division, where I worked under the exceptional leadership of my boss, whom I'll refer to as Bs1. A Tata Power expert in thermal power plant operations, Bs1 possessed outstanding vision and managerial skills.

In the early 1970s, TCE was engaged by several electricity boards, including private sector companies, to engineer their new projects. Bs1 and I, as a core group head, attended numerous technical meetings with clients and vendors. Two incidents from that time still amuse me.

The first occurred after a meeting at BHEL, Haridwar, for TNEB. Bs1 and I were travelling to Delhi to catch a flight to Bengaluru when our taxi screeched to a halt to avoid hitting a herd of pigs. While the pigs escaped unscathed, a group of villagers, seemingly ready for a confrontation, rushed towards us. Without hesitation, Bs1 instructed the driver to speed away. He quipped that stopping would have led to unnecessary arguments and a missed flight. I agreed. It was a classic example of the Ninth Commandment in action.

The second incident, however, left me puzzled. In 1981, we received a call from the Gujarat Electricity Board requiring a study on installing a desalination plant combined with a 120 MW thermal power plant in a coastal area to address water scarcity in nearby villages. We prepared a detailed presentation with about 40 transparencies for overhead projectors—PowerPoints were unheard of then—and travelled to the Wanakbori thermal project site for the board meeting. We landed in Ahmedabad on the previous evening and proceeded to Wanakbori after dinner by road in a taxi.

An hour into the journey at around 10 pm, a group of men with sticks tried to stop our car! Sensing danger, I urged the driver to speed up, ignoring Bs1's unusual suggestion to stop. Bs1 teased me, saying, "You, being from the land of soldiers (Kodagu), are afraid of these people?" I insisted it was unsafe, and the driver confirmed that the area was known for unruly gangs. I concluded that Bs1 was wrong, defying the Ninth, and in effect the Tenth, Management Commandment. But his stance remained a mystery. While the GEB project did not come through, even now, I wonder what prompted him to suggest stopping the car. 

After retirement, Bs1 donated his wealth to societal welfare and moved to Salem, Tamil Nadu. Though he is no more, I hold him in high regard as one of my most revered mentors. The unresolved conundrum of that night lingers in my mind, a testament to the complexity of human thought.