"The organizational architecture is really that a centipede walks on hundred legs and one or two don't count. So if I lose one or two legs, the process will go on, the organization will go on, the growth will go on"
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Ambani reaches for a centipede because it flatters the scale he wants to project: not a company, a creature with so many moving parts that any single part becomes statistically irrelevant. It is a quietly audacious metaphor. In one sweep, it sells resilience (the body keeps moving), inevitability (growth “will go on”), and a kind of engineered immortality (the organization outlives shocks, rivals, even leadership churn). The image is almost comforting, but the comfort is the point: investors and employees are being asked to believe that Reliance is beyond contingency.
The subtext is harder-edged. “One or two don’t count” is a managerial worldview where individuals are interchangeable units in a system optimized for continuity. It’s meant to read as robustness; it can also read as disposability. In high-growth conglomerates, “process” becomes the moral alibi: decisions, layoffs, or restructures are reframed as the organism’s necessary gait, not anyone’s choice. Ambani is asserting that the machine is what matters, not the leg.
Context matters because Ambani speaks from the position of a titan who has had to convince markets that expansion across telecom, retail, energy, and tech isn’t a risky bet but an infrastructural fact of Indian capitalism. The repetition of “will go on” isn’t accidental; it’s incantation. He’s building a narrative of inevitability that wards off anxiety about succession, disruption, or regulatory headwinds. The centipede is a corporate myth: scale as destiny, complexity as protection, growth as the natural state of the body.
The subtext is harder-edged. “One or two don’t count” is a managerial worldview where individuals are interchangeable units in a system optimized for continuity. It’s meant to read as robustness; it can also read as disposability. In high-growth conglomerates, “process” becomes the moral alibi: decisions, layoffs, or restructures are reframed as the organism’s necessary gait, not anyone’s choice. Ambani is asserting that the machine is what matters, not the leg.
Context matters because Ambani speaks from the position of a titan who has had to convince markets that expansion across telecom, retail, energy, and tech isn’t a risky bet but an infrastructural fact of Indian capitalism. The repetition of “will go on” isn’t accidental; it’s incantation. He’s building a narrative of inevitability that wards off anxiety about succession, disruption, or regulatory headwinds. The centipede is a corporate myth: scale as destiny, complexity as protection, growth as the natural state of the body.
Quote Details
| Topic | Management |
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