Make the commitment as clear as the ambition

In 2020 an institutional request book of ₹8.4 crore supported a purchasing proposal I endorsed. ₹2.1 crore consisted of cancellable reservations, leaving ₹6.3 crore as the firm portion. The combined total was useful for understanding interest, but it did not mean that every rupee carried the same commitment. My approval allowed the larger number to do more work in the procurement argument than its conditions justified.

We corrected the purchasing basis and incurred ₹46 lakh in freight and markdown remediation. That cost was not the full value of the reservations. I did not describe the entire ₹2.1 crore as lost sales or imply that every cancellable request disappeared. The account concerns commercial planning, not an invented revenue-recognition failure. Rohan and his finance colleagues retained financial reporting responsibility, and qualified owners retained interpretation of the actual arrangements.

The commercial team had a reasonable concern: treating all reservations as irrelevant could leave us unable to respond when customers confirmed them. Buying colleagues also needed enough clarity to make timely commitments. I asked the teams to preserve the different conditions rather than solve that tension by giving the whole request book one label. The enterprise could then decide what uncertainty it was prepared to carry instead of discovering it inside a headline it had already accepted.

My contribution was to acknowledge the judgement I had endorsed and require a more useful basis for the decision. The correction did not eliminate demand uncertainty or prove a later financial gain. It made the distinction between interest and commitment available to the people deciding how much stock and cash to commit. I would include the remediation cost when explaining the case, because the lesson arose from a choice the business had to repair, not from a cost-free improvement in presentation.

In 2022 we examined whether readers and shop colleagues could locate available titles when names and descriptions appeared in different languages or forms. Buying more prominent bestseller space would not necessarily solve that problem. I supported a ₹1.2 crore programme covering 600 titles in six languages at nine shops over twenty-four weeks, combining catalogue work with colleague capability.

The review used 120 matched title-search tasks. Before the work, forty-three located the correct title; afterward, eighty-nine did. The difference was forty-six successful finds in those tasks. I did not describe it as a forty-six per cent sales increase, a count of unique customers or a literacy result. This was a bounded before-and-after observation, not a controlled demonstration that every change came from one intervention.

Commercial colleagues wanted resources concentrated on the titles already moving in greater volume. Their argument mattered because shelf space, training time and cash were limited. I asked the executive team to consider discoverability as a capability rather than assume that low visibility always meant weak demand. At the same time, a better search result did not settle the commercial case for every language or title. We needed to retain the next questions about actual buying and service.

The CEO decision was to fund a defined piece of retail capability and make its evidence intelligible. Language specialists and colleagues doing the catalogue work retained responsibility for the details. We did not claim an automated translation certification or a permanent solution to every search. The result gave us a better account of what people could find within the reviewed tasks. It also prevented a promising discovery outcome from being enlarged into a business or educational benefit we had not measured.

In 2023 an institution proposed an annual exclusive-access arrangement at ₹28 lakh, linked to indicative book orders of ₹2.8 crore a year. The opportunity was commercially attractive on its face. It offered a concentrated route to families and made demand easier to discuss as one account. The indicative order value, however, was not a firm revenue commitment, and the access fee did not by itself establish the return the arrangement would produce.

I declined exclusivity and authorised ₹14 lakh to publish open ordering details for families. The choice reflected the kind of relationship we wanted to build: useful access to books without making our commercial proposition depend on being the sole route. It was an internal business decision, not an allegation that the proposed arrangement was unlawful or that another participant had acted improperly. Qualified legal and commercial colleagues retained assessment of actual terms.

The institutional team was concerned that we would lose an efficient route to a large order pool. I did not answer by promising that an open approach would generate more profit. We had not established that outcome. Nor could I describe the whole ₹2.8 crore as revenue we had certainly sacrificed, because the figure was indicative. The executive discussion needed to keep the opportunity, fee, conditions and chosen alternative distinct.

My responsibility was to make the trade-off explicit and support the teams expected to deliver the alternative. Publishing ordering details cost money and did not settle every question of reach or service. The case records the arrangement we declined and the work we funded, without inventing a commercial victory afterward. A CEO can choose a relationship principle and still give owners an honest account of its cost, uncertainty and the evidence needed to judge how the alternative performs.

Our 2024 programme held twenty-four free public events at twelve shops and recorded 960 attendances. People could attend more than once, so the number did not represent 960 unique readers. The associated direct book gross contribution was ₹7.6 lakh, against ₹32 lakh of direct programme expense. That left a ₹24.4 lakh gap before shop costs. The evidence did not support calling the programme self-financing.

I had been too willing to let attendance and an attractive community account stand beside the commercial figures without resolving the relationship between them. We could value the programme and still recognise that the measured book contribution did not cover its direct expense. The word associated also mattered: the account did not establish that every related purchase was caused by an event or would otherwise have been absent.

Some colleagues wanted to stop the programme once the gap was visible. Others argued that a bookseller should not reduce every public activity to immediate sales. I brought a different question to the board: whether we wished to fund a defined programme openly, with a budget and a clear purpose. The board approved ₹25 lakh for the following year. That was a new spending decision, not a claim that the earlier gap had been recovered.

We retained the need to examine relevance, delivery and cost within that allocation. Attendance did not establish lasting reading improvement, and a budget did not make the programme immune to review. My contribution was to stop asking a weak self-financing story to justify an activity that required an explicit resource choice. Owners and colleagues could then understand what the enterprise had chosen to support, what it cost and which claims remained outside the evidence.

A 2025 review examined 180 routine commercial decisions and found that 140 had come to me, while forty were handled regionally. We had regional leaders and an organisation chart that suggested delegation, but the observed route still depended heavily on the CEO. Some colleagues wanted reassurance before exercising authority; in other cases, my habit of becoming involved had made escalation the expected path.

We spent ₹38 lakh on training and clarification of operating authority within board-approved boundaries. The work included understanding what colleagues could decide, when a matter needed escalation and how I should respond when a decision properly belonged elsewhere. It did not transfer statutory responsibilities or remove the board's control over material commitments. A different route for an ordinary decision had to remain compatible with the enterprise's actual responsibilities.

In a later comparison of 180 routine decisions, forty-two came to the CEO and 138 were handled regionally. That was ninety-eight fewer CEO-routed decisions in an equal-sized reviewed group. It was not proof that decisions became faster, more accurate or compliant merely because they reached someone else. Those qualities required their own evidence. I wanted the routing observation reported clearly without turning a delegation count into a universal management-success measure.

The uncomfortable part was changing my own behaviour. A CEO can ask for stronger local judgement and then undermine it by rewarding every request for personal approval. I needed to respect the agreed boundaries while remaining available for matters that genuinely required escalation. The case records a change in how routine judgement travelled through the organisation and the resources committed to support it. It leaves open the continuing task of assessing the quality and consequences of that judgement, rather than declare the organisation independent of its CEO from one comparison.