Old values like honesty and integrity never fade out, and we are proud to have them with us all the way

Deepak C. Mehta is a soft-spoken man. He says what he has to with enough conviction to hit a home run at the first shot. Managing Director of Deepak Fertilizers and Petrochemicals Corporation as well as Deepak Nitrite Limited, D.C. Mehta as colleagues call him says, "We are a TQM (Total Quality Management) company." There is no arrogance in the statement, just understated pride and why not? Recently, a company product was on display in Switzerland and when asked if that could be benchmarked with others, the director for the exposition remarked, "But sir, your product is the one kept as THE benchmark!" Here he speaks to STRIDES on a rain soaked afternoon.

How many of the policies that you hung up on your walls do you follow?
(Smiles) We endeavor to follow all of them. The issue is not to follow these blindly but to go behind each sentence and see that it is implemented.

To what ends does a good, satisfied customer base help?
To no end. That is why we like to say that we a re 'customizing' the needs of our customers vis-à-vis our products rather than outstanding them! That is what makes us more customer centric and brings us closer to his needs. Earlier we would have our sales persons convincing the customer to opt for a 97.5 percentage if he needed 98 percent, now we are in the position to offer him 99 or even a 100 percent!

Surely the added incentives to customers must have helped the bottom line, but irked the human resource pool?
(Smiles) No. In fact they have taken it up as a challenge. Perhaps one of the reasons that we have pitched this battle for improved customer services not as a dreary uphill climb, but as a fun oriented corporate picnic. I feel that once you have enthused your workforce they give out the best.

How would you compare your people versus machines?
If you look at both as assets you will realize that, people are one asset that is certainly more important than any other asset. However with machines you do not have to fine-tune them all the time as you have to with people. People management is a hands on job. It doesn't work by remote control. It doesn't work by autopilot. It works by keeping in touch. It works by letting people know what we need from them and by being sensitive to their needs in turn.

Do you bamboozle your workforce into doing what you want, or do you use a more subtle approach?
We set tasks. We set up committees. We set up systems. We listen to ideas. We make our groups and in turn make them into profit centers. We empower the workforce and then we find that excellent ideas have been extremely well implemented and in turn they have been so successful that we can be tempted to turn those profit centers we have created to companies on their own!

What about global competition?
We may not be able to compete in size, while people may say that size does matter, but in the last few years we find that we are often better than the Germans or the Japanese, and that in itself is a pat on our backs. What we like to feel and say is that while we may not be world size, we are world class.

What is one sterling example of being world class?
See whenever we entered the foreign markets, they all wanted us to give then DDP or delivered duty paid which in short, meant they would want things as if the factory was next door to them. We understood that and delivered to India.

Have you, in Human Resources completely done away with the old system and values?
Certainly not. We are proud of the fact that we are Indian to the core, and we have kept the basic values of honesty and integrity alive. This is our old value. We insist that we are not a company that leads people down garden paths to get on to the fast track. In short we never pull a fast one.

What in a nutshell would be the light in Deepak?
(Smiles) Innovation. For this we continuously motivate people, by being in touch with them constantly. Not only in our corporate office, but even in our plant. Each of our managers is given free rein to innovate and then show us how effective that innovation can be, and then as I said earlier, he is given empowerment, and the chance to implement that innovation, that idea. We motivate them to motivate, they get motivated and innovate and they in turn motivate their team members to do the best possible.

How does motivation help in human resources?
Continuous motivation brings about commitment. We at Deepak have a lot of internal commitment, and we take great pride in being committed not only to ourselves but to our customers as well. There is nothing we would love better than to carry this pride with us wherever we go.