Based in Mumbai, Anant Goenka ’07 MBA is vice chairman of tire manufacturer CEAT and its parent company, RPG Group. He led CEAT through a transformative decade in which its market cap increased from $44 million to more than $1 billion. In 2023 the Kellogg School of Management awarded him the Kabiller Science of Empathy Prize. Here, he shares how focusing on the firm’s values led to success.
What impact does empathy have on the success of a business?
Empathy has two very important stakeholders: first, your people. If you’re truly listening to your employees, you understand the challenges they face. You’re able to make a much happier work environment, which results in better productivity, lower attrition and more growth.
The second stakeholder group is your customers. If you listen to them and are able to see their challenges from their eyes, your insights can be your differentiator. You can solve their problems by developing new products and services or even advertise more effectively with strong insights. We have found that our advertisements only succeeded when they emerged from strong customer insights.
One of your initiatives involved implementing and innovating company values. Tell us about that process.
Defining our values began with gathering a team of various people across the company to think about what we currently stand for and where we want to be. We emerged with play-to-win agility, customer focus, empowerment and caring for people as our values. Our team communicated these across the company and built high awareness over time.
Then we initiated a “management diagnosis.” People across the company would spend a few hours in another department to understand how that function is living up to these values. The observers would present an assessment on the values-based actions they saw and what could be improved. Both sides learned a lot through this process.
I have been inspired by the story of Netflix and the book “No Rules Rules” written by its founder, Reed Hastings. It is one company that is an embodiment of values-based leadership.
From your experience, how does Kellogg foster empathy in student life and academics?
When you visit Kellogg, you can tell how much the culture exudes empathy. I remember during my own student orientation, a professor shared this message with us: “It’s very easy to make friends with people who are similar to you — but reach out to people who are very different from you. You can learn a lot from them.” Interacting with people from different backgrounds and cultures helps you grow as a person. That’s something I have tried to live by during my time at Kellogg and now.
The class on values-based leadership, taught by professor Harry Kraemer, is also something I use as my North Star in terms of what leadership means. Empathy was a key skill that he spoke about. He also defined other principles of leadership, like courage, motivating people and managing change. I keep those as a checklist in my own mind of how I want to lead.
In fact, I still keep my Kellogg notes and files from all the courses in my office cabinet and refer to them when I need to dive deeply into a subject.