Pankaj R. Patel says the best advice helped us address the growth aspirations of "our people and maximise their talents"

In 1995, soon after the vertical split in Cadila Laboratories, Cadila Healthcare, under the aegis of the Zydus Group, came into being. With a newly restructured organisation, a host of issues had to be addressed. One was how to leverage the large talent resource that we had inherited. We knew this was both a strength and a challenge. With the majority of the people resource from the erstwhile Cadila opting to join us, there was considerable expertise and stability that came in along with them. The leadership, the collective expertise, the shared ethos and culture, were all important as we set out to build a new enterprise.

While the advantages were amply clear, the question remained: how best to effectively and quickly leverage this strength for organisational growth. A large, unwieldy organisation could not be fleet-footed and give us the head start so critical for our future. That's when a piece of advice from a consultant helped us look at the entire issue in a different light. It brought to the fore the opportunity lurking in this challenge. When we did this, an innovative solution emerged. We created a new organisational structure with eight strategic business units. Each unit operated as an autonomous, empowered business with its own senior management team and profit objective. The flatter structure helped decentralise operations, enabled faster decision-making and brought in greater accountability. The structure helped us manage our diversified portfolio more efficiently and cohesively. It also helped us address the growth aspirations of our people and maximise their talents.

The momentum of growth that we set in the early years and the people-driven, talent-rich organisation that we created, continues to script new success stories for the Zydus group.