Organising an interview with Ashok Baweja, chairman of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), sends his office staff into a tizzy. Calls are made to re-confirm the date, time and venue of the meeting. Reporting time is fixed at half-an-hour before the interview. The helpful staff offers suggestions on what questions to ask the big boss.

Meet the man to unravel the mystery behind the surprisingly efficient government officials. Baweja is a self-confessed no-nonsense boss. ?I believe in being the best,? he says. ?I cannot tolerate half-baked performances.?

Baweja walks the talk. He is the first chairman of HAL who joined the company as a management trainee and rose to the top job. Before him, the chairman had always been inducted from outside.

An Air Force officer?s son, Baweja grew up watching aircraft and choppers flying and landing next to his kitchen garden. That?s when his love affair with aviation began. ?I read everything I could about flying machines,? he says.

Joining the Air Force was his obvious career choice. But a colour vision problem came in the way. Instead, Baweja enrolled for engineering at the Delhi College of Engineering, got an MBA degree from the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), Delhi and prepared to launch himself into a career selling soaps and shampoos.

During campus placement, Baweja was offered two jobs ? one with Tata Power and the other with HAL. No prizes for guessing which job he jumped at. It was an escalator ride to the top at HAL. Baweja started as a management trainee in 1972, then joined the engine division, became marketing head in 1992 and was selected as programme manager for the prestigious Dhruv helicopter project in 1996. While at the engine division he conceptualised the industrial and marine gas turbine business, which is now a full-fledged division of HAL

Baweja says his philosophy of ?Do it now, do it quick? took him places. HAL was looking for his kind of people. ?The company was restructuring. It was looking for young, enthusiastic workers,? recalls Baweja. He fit the bill perfectly.

Baweja became the corporate crusader in the inert PSU. He dressed smartly, worked beyond the nine-to-five hours and introduced the concept of a lean, mean organisation. He encouraged his workers to set stiff targets and meet them.

When Baweja took over as marketing head of HAL, the company was doing business with seven countries. Two years later, the number had increased to 23. ?We had an open charter to push anything in any country. We went all out,? he says.

The Intermediate Jet Trainer (IJT) project came when Baweja was managing director of the design and development department, in 1999. The project was completed in three-and-a-half years flat. ?In record time,? he says.

Baweja took over as chairman of HAL in December last year. He?s got big plans for the Rs 3,600 crore turnover company. The local initiatives are growing apace. But Baweja is also casting his eyes overseas. The defence public sector enterprise is looking at three joint ventures with international aviation majors from Israel, Russia and France. More may be on the cards when these crystallise.

But the first priority is home ? not just India but the organisation itself. Baweja he wants to remove all traces of the great Indian chalta hai attitude from HAL. ?Why should an Indian work with NASA to prove his worth. Why not HAL,? he says.

He wants to train, groom, mentor and motivate fresh recruits to make them the best aviation brains in the world. And last, he wants to remove all waste from the organisation.

Baweja is beginning HAL?s restructuring process with himself. He is turning laptop savvy and does all his official communication himself. ?I like to do my own work,? he says as he walks out of the office to look for a company brochure.

His executive assistant ? and his helpful staff? had better watch out.