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On Sunday 17 January 2021, we lost another icon (after FC Kohli) in the management consulting world in India – the passing away of Sharu Rangnekar, a titan for 40 years in the field.
A great thinker; author of books and producer of management videos; speaker at seminars and a guardian of ethics in the profession, who never hesitated to call a spade a spade! In our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguity (VUCA) world now, one rarely comes across such people; people with qualities of head and heart, whose integrity can seldom or never be questioned!
I had first known him as the managing director of Searle India, who were my clients in the late-1970s. I had myself come from the pharma industry after 14 years and had started a consulting company. It was a pleasure working for this company where this unusual man set up a new culture of informality, to the extent that his immediate reports (people reporting him) were expected to have private meetings with him at regul
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In October 1999, I had written about an old building in my neighbourhood, which still exists in 2021, in the same condition. It has been neglected by the owner, who receives just Rs150 as monthly rent from each of the six tenants in this two-floored apartment building, built in about 1956.
The tenants will not move out, nor allow the rent to be increased. Nor will the tenants cooperate with each other to maintain the building, manage the common areas and services like water, or the large area in front filled with weeds and puddles, instead of what could have been an attractive garden.