Chief Operating Officer / India
The decision changed when its assumptions became visible
- A continuing industrial service
- Five operating sites
- Eighteen clients, 118 employees and ₹92 crore FY26 company service fees
- A defined executive remit
- 84 operations staff
- Four heads and ₹21 crore FY 2026–27 non-electricity expense; electricity and capital separate
- Engineering to operating leadership
- 29 years
- Five appointments from July 1997; COO since January 2023
Decisions & consequences
01Withdrawing the efficiency conclusion from a lower electricity total
In 2023 I used a comparison between two operating periods to support an efficiency claim. Electricity consumption had fallen from 1.2 GWh to 1.05 GWh, a raw reduction of 0.15 GWh or 12.5%. The arithmetic was correct. Customer production had also changed, however, and the comparison did not establish how much of the difference came from our operating changes. Engineering head Sonal Qorzethi challenged the interpretation before I could use it as evidence of the programme's benefit.
The commercial sponsor wanted to retain the headline because the lower total was real and customers understood it. Finance asked whether a more cautious account would undermine the investment already made. I accepted that withdrawing a result was awkward, particularly because I had presented it confidently. I nevertheless separated the observed consumption from the explanation we had attached to it. The raw figures remained in the report, while the claim of an established efficiency gain was removed.
We funded a ₹36 lakh measurement and comparison review. Qualified specialists examined the operating conditions, the customer-production account and the evidence needed for a suitable baseline. My responsibility was to support that work and change the management account, not to prescribe a technical adjustment that would reproduce the result I wanted. We did not convert 0.15 GWh into cash saved or an emissions benefit. Those conclusions would need their own boundaries, assumptions and relevant evidence even after the operating comparison was understood.
The immediate outcome was less satisfying than a replacement success percentage. We had a clearer statement of what had been observed and a defined review still to complete. The original programme's merits remained open to examination. A different production pattern could coexist with an efficiency improvement, but the totals alone could not establish its size or cause. I wanted the unresolved question retained rather than quietly answered through a convenient label.
I would now ask for the comparison conditions before approving the headline. This case matters because the mistake was in my interpretation, not in somebody else's meter reading. An operating leader must be able to withdraw a conclusion without discarding the underlying evidence or treating specialist challenge as an obstacle to telling a positive story.
Keeping ten service complaints unresolved instead of assigning convenient blame
A 2024 review covered thirty-six complaints about the compressed-air service received at customer operations. Our contractual supply interface mattered, but some discussions treated it as though it settled the physical cause of every problem. The supplier team could point to observations at its delivery point, while customers described conditions further inside their own systems. The accounts were not always sufficient to establish where the relevant issue arose. I wanted the investigation to cross the administrative conversation without crossing anybody's technical authority or site permissions.
The account manager preferred a firm allocation of responsibility so that each complaint could move towards commercial closure. The operating team worried that a joint review would make us responsible for installations we did not control. Both concerns were reasonable. I asked Sonal and the qualified owners to define the evidence needed, with customer participation and appropriate access arrangements. Commercial and legal colleagues retained interpretation of the actual service terms. Cooperation did not mean admitting every allegation or authorising our teams to alter a customer's equipment.
The joint review cost ₹48 lakh. Fourteen cases had supplier-side findings, twelve had client-side findings and ten remained unresolved on the evidence then available. We kept the unresolved cases in a separate account. They were not assigned to customers because our interface reading looked acceptable, nor assigned to our own teams merely to make the complaints disappear. Findings also remained distinct from the later corrective work and any commercial resolution, which required their own decisions.
The process took longer than closing every case against a single contractual category. Customer and supplier teams had to agree how to share relevant observations, and some questions still lacked enough support for a conclusion. I retained that inconvenience in the operating review. The resulting account was more useful for planning the next investigation, even though it did not deliver a universal resolution or a claim that all future service complaints would be easier.
My lesson was that responsibility and explanation need to be connected without being confused. A contract can define who owns particular obligations, while a technical investigation may still be needed to understand the condition reported. A COO should make space for both accounts and resist the pressure to turn uncertainty into blame simply because a management report prefers every row to have a final owner.
Reducing a heat-recovery proposal to the demand that could be supported
In 2025 a proposed heat-recovery programme at one of our operating sites carried a ₹2.4 crore investment request. Its commercial account assumed that useful customer demand would be available throughout the year. The source of recoverable heat was attractive, but the prospective user's actual pattern had not been examined with the same care. Review supported the proposed use during four months; the other eight did not yet have an established demand. The annualised opportunity had moved ahead of the customer evidence.
The project sponsor argued that installing the larger arrangement would make it easier to develop further uses later. A customer representative saw potential but could not commit the missing periods. I accepted that a larger installation might preserve future options. I did not accept those options as equivalent to demand already supported in the investment account. Qualified engineers retained assessment of the actual heat conditions and proposed system, while commercial owners examined the use and terms. I asked that the decision return to that combined basis.
The ₹31 lakh feasibility expense remained a cost of the work already done. We did not approve the ₹2.4 crore programme on its original assumptions. Instead, a ₹44 lakh bounded pilot was authorised to examine the supported use more closely. That smaller amount was not described as the same business case delivered more cheaply, and the difference from the unapproved proposal was not claimed as cash saved. The pilot had a narrower purpose and left further technical and commercial questions unresolved.
This decision disappointed colleagues who had invested effort in a larger proposition. It also meant we could not present the whole theoretical resource as a useful annual output. I kept that distinction in the board account. Heat that can potentially be recovered still needs an appropriate recipient, timing and system before it becomes a supported benefit. We did not publish a quantified fuel displacement, emissions reduction or net return from the pilot because those outcomes had not been established.
I would now ask the demand owner to participate earlier, before a full-year assumption becomes embedded in an appealing investment model. The leadership lesson is not that pilots are always preferable or that seasonal uses are unattractive. It is that the resource and its useful destination must be assessed together, with the cost of learning retained when the supported next step is smaller than the original ambition.
Testing the duty contact instead of assuming a message meant a response
In 2026 we examined the contact arrangements behind out-of-hours service at our operating sites. The process contained familiar individual numbers, and teams assumed that an issued message would reach someone who could take the next step. We ran twenty-six planned contact drills, clearly identified as tests. Twenty-two received the expected acknowledgement and four did not. No actual emergency or customer incident is represented by those numbers. The exercise showed a weakness in one stage of the process, not the performance of the complete response.
A regional manager preferred to refresh the individual numbers and continue. He argued that experienced people knew whom to call and that a more formal duty arrangement might slow an urgent exchange. I agreed that a process should remain usable. I also thought the business could not base its service promise entirely on the availability of particular individuals whose circumstances might change. Operating and safety owners needed to define the appropriate responsibility, with workforce arrangements reviewed through the proper channels.
We spent ₹22 lakh on the duty-contact review and supporting process changes. The aim was a supported organisational account of who should receive and acknowledge a service contact, with unresolved failures retained for follow-up. We did not publish technical intervention instructions or treat an administrative acknowledgement as permission to work. Attendance, competence, site access and the actual response remained separate matters governed by the responsible technical and safety arrangements.
A further twenty-six drills produced twenty-four acknowledgements and two unresolved failures. That was a useful test result, but the later set was not a controlled study proving a causal improvement in real events. The two failures remained open, and even the twenty-four acknowledgements did not demonstrate field arrival or resolution. I asked for the management report to name the stage tested rather than describe the entire service as proven ready. The distinction made the result less expansive and more useful.
I would repeat the exercise as part of examining the actual promise, not as a celebration of a favourable percentage. A reliable contact route matters because later action may depend on it, but it is only one dependency. My responsibility as COO was to make the gap visible, fund appropriate work and preserve the limits of the test rather than let a delivered message become the whole meaning of a completed response.