Tension

The hardest fall is not from markets but from conviction. The FT just told one such story.

An interesting story with its own twists and echoes of déjà vu appeared recently in the Financial Times. It traced the unravelling of Sanjeev Gupta’s industrial empire, once celebrated for reviving neglected mills, and revealed a deeper conflict between vision and vigilance. According to the FT, companies within his group lent to one another in a desperate attempt to survive, each transaction blurring the line between rescue and risk. What began as solidarity soon became a struggle for breath.

Beneath the numbers lies a familiar drama: the tension between loyalty and judgment. The founder’s impulse to protect every branch, even at the expense of the roots, is noble until it breaks the tree. Devotion becomes duty, duty becomes burden, and what once inspired unity begins to sow fatigue and confusion.

The FT account captures this invisible war, not between creditors and companies, but within the very soul of leadership. When belief hardens into certainty, and certainty resists accountability, conflict is inevitable. The organisation mirrors its founder’s state of mind: generous, restless, and perpetually improvising. Yet goodwill cannot substitute for design, nor can trust refinance discipline.

Families in business will recognise the pattern. In moments of pressure, emotion often overrides structure; help becomes interference; loyalty turns into liability. True governance exists precisely to resolve this tension, ensuring that love of legacy does not smother its future. It offers the calm that ambition alone cannot sustain, transforming attachment into architecture and preserving continuity through clarity.

How often does loyalty blind the very leaders it once defined?

The story told by the Financial Times is not about steel or debt. It is about endurance, how institutions survive when personalities fade, and how rhythm replaces pulse. Legacy, at its best, endures not through rescue, but through the quiet strength of systems built to hold both love and conflict.

W.