Motilal Oswal

Claim to Fame

Oswal has grown the company into one of India’s leading financial services players. Having started with just two people, it now has 1,400 employees and over 700,000 customers. He has served on the boards of the BSE and the Indian Merchants’ Chamber and on committees of the BSE, NSE, Securities and Exchange Board of India, and Central Depository Services. Oswal was among the highest income tax payers in the country from FY95 to FY99. The Institute of Economic Studies, New Delhi, has awarded him for his contribution to India’s industrial development.

Age: 52

Job Experience: After completing a chartered accountancy course, Motilal Oswal, along with co-promoter Raamdeo Agrawal (now joint managing director), founded the company in 1987 as a sub-broking unit.

Most organisational initiatives fizzle out or fall short of expectations not because they aren’t well thought out but because the execution is not up to the mark. There may be various reasons for this: Either people don’t know their goals or how to achieve them, or they don’t keep track of progress and are not held accountable for falling short.

A few years ago, I attended a programme, The 4 Disciplines of Execution, by training and assessment services provider Franklin Covey. The takeaway was: Instead of getting involved in too many activities, a leader should have a set of priorities, or WIGs (wildly important goals). For successful execution, every team member should be clear about and committed to these WIGs. These goals must be achieved; nothing else matters.

Not only has this approach helped me improve productivity in a big way, I have also been able to adopt WIGs across the company. Everyone in the organisation has WIGs and knows the measures of success and can track their progress. The scorecard motivates people to be winners. All in all, WIGs have become for me a WOL: way of life.”