Make excellence a byword, Tata Sons’ Harish Bhat tells graduates of Great Lakes

Excellence is essential to sustained success for organisations and for individuals as well. Excellence in your work also gives one confidence in the workplace and life, said Harish Bhat, Brand Custodian, Tata Sons, addressing the 18^th convocation of the Great Lakes Institute of Management for the batch of 2022 students at the Chennai Trade Centre today.

Bhat urged the students to make excellence their signature hashtag in life. “Each person discovers his or her recipe. For me, excellence has meant constantly pushing for the best in everything I do with an unwavering attention to detail in every task,” he said.

He said he was gifted a plaque thirty years ago with JRD Tata’s quote from his letter to a school teacher in Kolkata which says, “One must forever strive for excellence or even perfection in any task, however small and never be satisfied with the second best.”

Vini Mahajan, Secretary, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, was the Chief Guest for the grand annual event. In her address, she said, “Choose to reach out to the voices that are not heard. As business managers, you must work towards inclusive workspaces. Be aware of what is happening around you. Remain engaged with what is happening in the community and in the society. Focus on reuse and recycle economy.”

Graduates celebrating after they receive their graduation certificate at the 18th convocation of Great Lakes 

As a part of the convocation ceremony, 550 students from the 2022 batch: two full-time and two executive programmes which includes PGPM, PGDM, PGXPM, and PGPM FLEX received their graduation certificates. Cash prizes and Gold medals were announced for meritorious students across the four graduating batches of 2022. 

Read also: Great Lakes’ batch of 2023 achieves 100 per cent placement  

Mohan Lakhamraju, Chairman, Great Lakes, said, “Make time your friend. Plan and act. Let the power of compounding work. Take small steps consistently over a period of time and that will help to build credibility. Do small things right and own up things that happen to you.”

Suresh Ramanathan, Dean, Great Lakes, spoke about the path taken by the institution towards its extraordinary growth over the years. In his address, he said, “We have made progress on all aspects and we are able to achieve excellent placement results with every passing year. Our three-point agenda of strengthening the curriculum, developing job ready skills in students and increasing our footprint by collaborating with companies have put us on the final glide path.”