Business Excellence Convention

Business Excellence Convention 2024: Celebrating Success, Inspiring Excellence

The annual Business Excellence Convention took place on December 10-11, 2024, at the prestigious Taj Lands End in Mumbai. This gathering, which celebrates the Tata group's unwavering commitment to excellence and collaboration, brought together CEOs, Team Leaders, Deputy Leaders, Assessors, and Tata employees from around the globe. Around 380 attendees participated in person and 10,000+ joined virtually, making it a truly global celebration of excellence.

Day 1 began with Shreyas Srivatsan, Deputy General Manager, Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) as the host. He set the tone by describing the Convention as a celebration of the relentless pursuit of excellence. The gathering paid a tribute to the late Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata, honouring his extraordinary legacy. Shreyas outlined the two-day agenda, which included four esteemed speakers sharing transformative lessons and insights, interspersed with the much-anticipated excellence recognitions.

The first speaker, Paddy Upton, a celebrated cricket coach and mental conditioning expert, shared his experiences as the strategic leadership coach for the 2011 ICC World Cup-winning Indian cricket team and head coach of Rajasthan Royals in the IPL. Paddy emphasised the importance of creating a positive team environment, fostering collaboration over authority, and leveraging collective intelligence. He stressed the need to unlearn outdated approaches, focus on strengths, and prioritise the ‘Big Five’ for success—Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise, Relationships, and Energy Management.

The first set of recognitions highlighted the tireless efforts of the Business, Data and Cyber Excellence Teams, celebrating their dedication to excellence.

The next speaker was Viren Rasquinha, former Indian hockey captain and leader of the national team at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Drawing from his illustrious career, Viren spoke about India's ‘Quest for Gold’. He highlighted the importance of having a good mentor or coach, making split-second decisions on the field, and balancing on-ground execution with strategic oversight. He stressed on the value of focusing on individual strengths and reiterated that every player’s role is vital to driving a team’s success.

The curtain closed on Day 1 with the second set of recognitions. The spotlight shone bright on Star Teams as well as individual achievers, including Star Assessors, Rising Stars and Star Deputy Team Leaders. Additionally, recognitions were presented for Best Practices and Webinar categories, celebrating innovation and excellence across the board.

Click here to see the BEC 2024 photographs

Click here to see the list of recognitions in BEC 2024

Day 2 began with Siddharth Bhatt, Deputy General Manager, TBExG, hosting the session. He set the context around customer experience, describing it as the intersection of the head, heart and hands coming together to create true customer love. The second half of the Convention featured two more inspiring guest speakers Louie Gravance and Commander Abhilash Tomy.

Louie, a renowned keynote speaker with 25 years of experience at Disney, shared transformative insights on customer service. Drawing from his tenure at Disney theme parks, he spoke about the importance of creating ‘wow moments’ for customers. He highlighted the significance of going above and beyond, ensuring seamless experiences by ‘never letting them see the wires’. Louie spoke of concepts such as letting customers lead the dialogue, creating the illusion of spontaneity, and embracing ignorance as a strength. He concluded by highlighting that exceptional service benefits both the provider and the recipient.

Next, Commander Abhilash Tomy, addressed the gathering. Abhilash, a retired Indian Naval Officer, aviator, and yachtsman, captivated the audience with stories of his daring adventures at sea. As the first Indian to complete a solo, non-stop circumnavigation of the globe under sail, he shared the challenges of navigating without modern technology, throwing light on human resilience and ingenuity. Through his experiences, Abhilash reminded the audience of the power of human capability and determination, inspiring them with his tales of making deep connections and friendships at sea.

Then, Sanjeev Singh, Vice President and Head, TBExG, provided an update on the progress of various excellence journeys within the Group. In 2024, TBEM Assessments saw participation from 14 companies, with 190 Assessors, 20% of whom were women, and 34% were new Assessors. Sanjeev also highlighted the key enhancements to the process, which included TBEM 2.0 framework being aligned with Group’s priorities, focus on integrated assessments, enriching assessment teams’ expertise, and enhancing the rigour in the scoring process. In addition to throwing light on the feedback from the companies, Sanjeev provided updates on the Data Excellence and Cyber Excellence journeys too.

N Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Sons, along with Aarthi Subramanian, Group Chief Digital Officer, Tata Sons, presented the prestigious recognitions to deserving individuals and companies, honouring excellence in Business, Data & Cyber Excellence, Improvement Intervention Engagements and Excellence Competency Development across categories such as Star Team Leaders, Long Serving Mentors, Most Engaged Company, Significant Impact and Significant Engagement across various programmes.

Reflecting on the origins of the excellence journey, which began in 1994, N Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Sons, acknowledged Tata companies' commitment to this journey, as he addressed the Convention. He noted that these recognitions exemplify the spirit of excellence and personal growth. According to him, the TBEM process provides companies with an opportunity to get an outside-in perspective, highlights their best practices & opportunities for improvement, and enables leadership development. He urged companies to consider the business excellence movement as a Leadership Development programme, and for CEOs to review engagement of leaders across levels in this initiative. He also asked company heads to focus on the critical areas of Safety, Data, Customer Experience, Digital, Talent and Reputation Management as part of the business and strategic plans.

The Convention ended with a vote of thanks, marking the end of an insightful and inspiring two-day gathering.