M. Ramesh

Mike Connors, the British Deputy High Commissioner in Chennai, once said that when he joined the diplomatic services, someone told him how to make a long speech while lacking in substance, thus: tell them what you will tell them, tell them and tell them what you have told them.

Wry British humour, but when it comes to long, empty speeches and events, anybody in the world can take a correspondence course from us Indians.

It is nearing the end of September, and thankfully, another AGM season is coming to a close. More than anything else, these corporate annual general meetings epitomise our penchant for wasting time even as we delude ourselves that something important is being done.

Some shareholders might believe that they are holding the management to account and giving the blue-suited blokes a prod here and a nudge there, so that the jockeys run the horses well down the course, but most of us know the AGMs are a grand farce.

And even that the shareholders do not make one bit of difference to the manner in which the management has decided to run the business.

Truth is, as we see in one AGM after the other, shareholders are apathetic to the conduct of business. The meeting is just an opportunity for them to bellow at the management and revel in their own eloquence. Managements have apparently taken it as one of the minor burdens imposed by the law and sit out the drivel, not minding either the ignorance or the irreverence that spouts from the speakers.

In an AGM a couple of years ago, the top brass of a large truck manufacturing company sat poker-faced as a shareholder spewed venom at the company’s “erotic performance”, not bothering to offer the defence that the company’s performance was quite consistent, not erratic, as the shareholder intended to charge.

At another AGM, a leading industrialist from Chennai, the Chairman of a large industrial house, sat eyes fixed on the ceiling, as a friendly shareholder ended each one of his wisdom-soaked suggestions with the benign enquiry: ‘Do you follow’?

Sad! What a colossal waste of time! It is perhaps once in a hundred times that there has been any meaningful discussion about the accounts or strategy, and even less often where shareholders have caused any material alteration to the management’s proposals.

Their issues are singularly common. If it is not a demand for bonus (in Chennai, one shareholder has become known as ‘Bonus Padmanabhan’), it is the quality of coffee served, or the poor choice of hall for the AGM or the recent fad — managerial remuneration.

It is about time an alternative system is thought of to bring shareholders into the loop. And it is not the AGMs alone. There are grand conventions, seminars and conferences with high-sounding corporate themes where, even if it assumed that every speech is of significance, incredible lengths of time get consumed in invocations, flowery welcome addresses, introductions, and the like.

But, sadly enough, when it comes to taking questions from the audience there is invariably time only for “one or two question” as the speakers have to leave. At least, as often as not, the content delivered at these meetings is patently insipid — it happens when speakers expand on issues like ‘value creation’, or the ‘need to be customer-centric’.

It is time to move on, to do away with invocations, floral tributes, votes of thanks and all the rest of it. It is time to value time.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu Business Line