My Leadership Journey by Mr. Harish Manwani

Bombay Management Association in collaboration with Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies will be conducting this LeaderNXT Program on 4th February 2023.

Harish Manwani was the global chief operating officer of Unilever. He is currently the senior operating Partner at Blackstone and a director of Whirlpool, Qualcomm, Gilead Sciences and Tata Sons among others. Harish Manwani has won awards ranging from CNBC’s Asia Business Leader of the Year award to Singapore’s Public Service Medal. He shares his leadership journey and lessons with HQ Asia. At the time of the interview, he was the global COO of Unilever. In many ways, Harish Manwani is the archetypal ‘one-company’ man. After graduating with a master’s degree in 1976, he joined Unilever in India as a management trainee. Having been with the company for over three decades, he served as COO of the Anglo-Dutch multinational corporation.

Manwani attributes the career success he has achieved to a few key leadership lessons he learned along the way. First are what he calls the non-negotiables: value-led and purpose-driven leadership. He wholeheartedly embraces Unilever’s philosophy of “Doing well by doing good” and its model of responsible growth.

This philosophy helps the company define an implicit role for business in society, while becoming a driver for long-term sustainable growth. In addition, the plan emphasises the importance of putting the consumer at the heart of the business. For a global company like Unilever, this means its leaders need to think local and act global, and focus on leveraging the company’s global scale and knowledge to meet the needs of local consumers everywhere. Unilever also see a responsibility to develop, coach and mentor future leaders.

As a role model to many aspiring business leaders, his advice to others is short and simplistic, but no less sincere: “Be yourself. People simply want to see the real you.”