Professional Talent: The Growth Driver for Family Businesses examines how trust, empowerment and opportunities can help businesses build a great workforce.
Entrepreneurs can build businesses. But building an organisation that continues to grow beyond the founder is a greater challenge. As operations expand, founders need to move from making every decision themselves to empowering their teams and creating systems that sustain long-term growth.
At the India Kitchen Congress 2026, Sonu Bhasin, Founder of FAB – Families and Business, historian and author, discussed with Manoj Tulsian, (former) Joint Managing Director & CEO of Greenply Industries Ltd, how family businesses can attract professional talent, build high-performance teams and create organisations that are ready to scale.
Here are the prescriptions that emerged from this discussion.
SONU: As family businesses grow, building organisational capability becomes essential. In this context, do family businesses really need professional talent? After all, nobody knows the business better than the family members.
MANOJ: When entrepreneurs start a business, they build it from the ground up. They are part of every decision, and that helps the business grow to a certain level. But after a point, if the organisation doesn’t focus on building processes, it becomes leader-centric. Every decision starts coming back to the founder because the leader has not spent enough time building the capability of the team.
I remember speaking to a senior professional from one of the country’s largest IT companies. He told me it took him almost ten years to build the right processes within the organisation. If founders don’t invest that time in building systems and capability, the organisation eventually stops growing, and entrepreneurs themselves begin taking the wrong decisions because they are trying to manage everything.
According to me, people don’t leave organisations only for better salaries. They leave because they don’t have clarity, they don’t have empowerment, and the leadership doesn’t trust them. As they say, ‘people don’t leave organisations, they leave bad bosses.’ Up to a certain level, the entrepreneur-led model works because the founder is the visionary. But as the business grows, the focus has to shift towards building capability.
SONU: Building a high-performance team needs founders to shift their focus from doing everything themselves to building capable teams. Many MSMEs and emerging businesses still hesitate to hire professional talent. What can business owners do to attract good talent?
MANOJ: I would say empowerment. Even entrepreneurs make mistakes. Out of a hundred decisions, maybe only twenty five work, but those are the decisions that build the business.
In the same way, entrepreneurs have to start believing in people, empower them and test them. Maybe once or twice that individual can fail. But we cannot become judgmental. We have to give people adequate time.
Very often, people come back and tell me, ‘Sir, I don’t have any authority, I am unable to make any decision.’ What that reveals is that either the organisation has become so process-oriented that nobody has the right to take decisions, or the promoter is not willing to give up a little of that power.
There have been instances where I introduced policies that even the promoter could not override. But how many promoters are willing to give up a little of their power to empower a CEO, managing director or senior leader? That is the difference between being good and becoming great.
An entrepreneur is a visionary, but after a point, rather than remaining an operator, he has to become an enabler. He has to think about what next. On day-to-day operations, he is not supposed to get involved. The entrepreneur needs to work on his vision, build capability, put processes in place and let people work.
The same applies to technology. Twenty or twenty five years ago, investing in IT was seen as a luxury. Today, no organisation can imagine running without it. I know of a company in the building materials industry that invested in IT nearly forty years ago, at a cost few could imagine then. That investment became one of the biggest reasons for its success over the next three decades.
SONU: Many entrepreneurs want to grow their businesses 3x, 5x or even 10x. To build a larger organisation, shouldn’t founders delegate and trust their teams?
MANOJ: Indeed. If you want to build a large organisation, you have to learn to delegate. Mistakes are inevitable in business. If anyone can say that every decision they have taken has been right, I will bow and salute that person.
If we can make mistakes, why can’t we allow the next generation to make mistakes? Everybody wants to grow their business, but you cannot achieve that unless you have the right team with you.
SONU: Given your very rich and diverse experience of working across industries and different kinds of companies, Manoj, can you talk about the three things entrepreneurs need to focus on, so that they can build a high-performance team and a culture which will enable the business to grow over the next 5 to 10 years?
MANOJ: The first thing is belief in people. When you believe in people, you empower them. When you empower them, they make decisions. Some decisions will be right; some will be wrong. Don’t reprimand them every time they make a mistake. Encourage them. Because if you keep reprimanding, they will go back into their shell.
The second thing is building a culture of ownership. Most entrepreneurs don’t believe in sharing. But if people are helping you create wealth, why would you not share it with them? When people start believing that ‘I am the organisation’, that’s when ownership comes in.
I have also seen good people lose steam. They deliver tremendous value to the organisation, but at the end of the year they receive the same increment as everyone else. That’s where a strong performance appraisal system becomes important. It helps differentiate between the wheat and the chaff. Not everyone will perform equally, so recognise the good people and nurture them.
The third challenge is retention. Hiring good people is one thing; retaining them is even more difficult. As they say, people join organisations but leave their bosses. Handling people is never easy.
For me, every organisation stands on three core pillars—Finance, HR and IT. If these three pillars are strengthened, and the company keeps investing in them consistently, those organisations will always do better than the others.
SONU: One of the first things you spoke about was believing in people and trusting them. In this regard, what is your prescription for business owners and professionals?
MANOJ: Every organisation is built around a culture. Even when we hire people at the leadership level, I spend a lot of time assessing if that person will understand our culture. This is extremely important.
I have often seen leaders join a new organisation and immediately start implementing everything that brought them success in their previous company. But they don’t first look at whether the current organisation is prepared for that change.
There were many things that had given me success in the past. But I never implemented them in my present assignment, because I could see that the organisation was not ready. Had I followed a copybook approach from day one, I would have caused exactly the damage you are talking about.
Whenever you look at a business, the first thing is to understand its culture. The second is to understand its preparedness. Only then should you think about implementing change.
SONU: How can business owners ensure that their trust is not misused?
MANOJ: There is a very thin line. If you want to hand over the baton to someone else, it takes a lot of courage. It is not an easy thing, and it should never be done overnight.
First, bring in someone who understands your culture. Tell that person, ‘Yes, I am empowering you, but at the same time I am keeping a watch.’ There should be a method of review for the first six to twelve months.
When you bring professional talent into the organisation, you have to handhold them for a certain period. You cannot simply leave everything to them. It never works that way.
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