Cummins has announced a new Managing Director for India, and before the poor bastard has even found the executive kettle, somebody needs to have a quiet word about boundaries. Gbile Adewunmi will become Managing Director of Cummins India Limited and India Regional Leader on 1 November 2026 while somehow continuing to lead Cummins’ Industrial Markets business at the same time. Mining, defence, marine, oil and gas, rail and aftermarket are therefore not being removed from his plate. Cummins has simply looked at the porcelain, spotted a few exposed square centimetres and added India.
Fair enough. Busy man.
Unfortunately, Gbile has also been using the A-word, and TCAP would quite like its fucking property back.
Welcome To India. Mind The Branding
Adewunmi is not some freshly promoted middle manager being handed a ceremonial lanyard and shown where the PowerPoint templates live. He joined Cummins in 2012 and has since moved through corporate strategy, New and ReCon Parts, Africa and Middle East marketing, leadership of Cummins’ North and West Africa distribution operation from Ghana, Power Systems strategy and, eventually, the Industrial Markets portfolio.
By 2024, Cummins had promoted him to Vice President and given him responsibility for a sprawling industrial collection covering defence, marine, mining, oil and gas, rail and aftermarket. Now India is being bolted onto that lot as well. Cummins describes the country as a strategic growth market and says Adewunmi brings global experience, customer focus and a record of building teams. Meanwhile, Adewunmi says he is honoured to take the expanded role and looks forward to working with employees, customers and stakeholders.
Lovely.
Normal appointment-release stuff.
Then TCAP went rummaging through what the incoming boss has been saying elsewhere and discovered that Gbile has apparently been inside our stationery cupboard.
The A-Word
Back in August, Cummins published a mining discussion marking a century of the company in that industry. During it, Adewunmi talked about dependability, customer relationships, partnerships and what should happen when things go wrong.
That is where the trouble starts.
At one point he spoke about Cummins “owning up to our messes”. More importantly, he then delivered the phrase that caused TCAP’s imaginary intellectual-property department to sit bolt upright:
“We take accountability and responsibility.”
Excuse me?
Accountability?
Gbile, mate.
You have not even moved into the India office yet.
TCAP has spent over a year dragging that word behind Cummins like a badly secured trailer, yet the incoming Managing Director is strolling towards Pune using it as though somebody has not already registered the emotional trademark. Legally, of course, this is not cultural appropriation.
Spiritually?
Fucking outrageous.
Owning Up To Our Messes
The interesting part is not merely the vocabulary. Adewunmi actually sets out quite a demanding standard for the company whose logo will shortly be hanging over his office. In his version, Cummins should stay present when things go wrong, do what it says it will do and admit when it falls short. After that, the company should work towards putting the problem right.
In other words: own the mess, accept accountability, take responsibility and fix the bastard.
Fuck me.
TCAP could save a fortune on hosting if Cummins starts doing that consistently.
There is something almost unsettling about hearing a senior Cummins executive explain accountability without fourteen paragraphs of stakeholder fog, a sustainability diagram and somebody from External Communications hiding behind a ficus. Something went wrong? Admit it. Take responsibility. Sort it out.
Yes.
That.
That is the whole fucking point.
For once, TCAP and a senior Cummins executive appear to have arrived at broadly the same definition without requiring a tribunal bundle, three years of correspondence and somebody explaining why the document everyone needs has mysteriously fallen down the back of a filing cabinet.
The Incoming Accountability Department
Adewunmi therefore arrives in India carrying an unusually useful piece of luggage. It is not the mining portfolio, the rail portfolio or even the heroic diary required to manage India while simultaneously retaining responsibility for Industrial Markets.
The interesting luggage is the standard he has voluntarily set for himself and the company.
If things go wrong, own them. When expectations are missed, admit it. Once Cummins gives its word, do what it said it would do. Where there is a mess, take accountability and responsibility rather than decorating it with corporate vocabulary and hoping nobody notices the smell.
TCAP welcomes this development enthusiastically. Our methodology admittedly contains fewer branded videos, less orchestral background music and considerably more profanity, but the underlying concept is surprisingly compatible.
A Career With Plenty Of TCAP Doorways
There is another reason Adewunmi becomes immediately interesting: the sheer number of TCAP filing cabinets his existing portfolio already touches. Mining is familiar territory. Rail certainly is. Defence, marine, oil and gas and aftermarket all sit comfortably inside sectors the project already follows.
Consequently, his Industrial Markets brief alone could sustain a serious amount of future coverage. India then adds another enormous industrial ecosystem on top, while Cummins says he will continue leading the existing portfolio after taking the regional chair.
That makes this appointment rather more interesting than the usual round of executive musical chairs. Adewunmi is not merely changing title.
He is becoming a recurring character.
The Ghana Chapter
There is another detail worth noting. Adewunmi previously led Cummins’ North and West Africa Regional Distribution Organisation from Ghana after moving there in 2019, having earlier worked in South Africa as an Africa and Middle East marketing director.
Regular TCAP readers may have noticed that Ghana has already wandered through these pages recently carrying 7,200 horsepower and some cumbersome procurement luggage.
Small internet, isn’t it?
That does not make Adewunmi personally responsible for every Cummins engine ever unloaded west of Accra, and TCAP is not going to manufacture a connection merely because two pins happen to occupy the same map. Nevertheless, his career repeatedly intersects with exactly the geographical and industrial territory this site already spends an unreasonable amount of time crawling around.
Africa, mining, rail, marine, defence and now India.
Cummins has effectively introduced a senior executive whose CV looks like somebody fed TCAP’s category list into LinkedIn.
Excellent.
We were worried about running out of material sometime around 2047.
Accountability Has Terms And Conditions
The phrase itself deserves preserving because corporate language generally has the shelf life of cut fruit. Today it is accountability. Tomorrow somebody from communications may discover “authenticity”. By Christmas we could be knee-deep in “purposeful transparency ecosystems”, “values-led stakeholder journeys” and diagrams featuring interconnected circles apparently designed by a management consultant during a ketamine breakthrough.
So TCAP would like to freeze Gbile Adewunmi’s version while it is still fresh.
Own up to the mess. Take accountability. Accept responsibility. Work to fix it.
That is not especially sophisticated. Nor does it require a leadership retreat, a hexagonal diagram or several thousand pounds’ worth of Post-it notes. It is simply the corporate equivalent of knocking over somebody’s pint, admitting you did it and buying another one instead of commissioning Deloitte to determine whether gravity should be classified as an external stakeholder.
Precisely because it is simple, the standard is useful.
Careful What You Put On The Record
Senior executives sometimes speak as though their public remarks evaporate once the event banner comes down and the communications team has extracted enough LinkedIn clips from them.
TCAP operates a slightly different retention policy.
A Cummins Vice President publicly talking about accountability is memorable enough. Once that Vice President becomes Managing Director of one of Cummins’ largest regional businesses while retaining responsibility for mining, rail, marine, defence, oil and gas and aftermarket, the wording becomes substantially more interesting.
At that point, the phrase stops being merely an inspirational soundbite and starts becoming a measuring stick.
Nobody forced Adewunmi to use the word. He chose it, while TCAP merely intends to recycle it responsibly.
Cummins likes circularity.
We are helping.
The A-Word Has History Here
There is also something magnificently funny about watching Cummins executives discover accountability as corporate vocabulary while this website exists.
It is literally in the fucking name.
The Cummins Accountability Project.
Not The Cummins Mild Concern Project.
Not The Cummins Perhaps We Could Circle Back On This Project.
Not The Cummins Stakeholder Engagement And Constructive Dialogue Experience.
Accountability.
For over a year, TCAP has used the term in its least decorative sense: documents, decisions, contradictions, names, dates, what somebody said, what somebody did and whether those two things survive being placed next to each other without requiring emergency structural support.
Now one of Cummins’ most senior industrial executives is publicly describing something remarkably similar.
Own the mess.
Take responsibility.
Fix it.
Welcome aboard, Gbile. Please collect your TCAP induction pack from reception.
An Excellent Word To Borrow
Of course, there is no actual reason Adewunmi cannot use the word. TCAP does not own accountability any more than Cummins owns torque, although both organisations may occasionally behave as though trademark registration is imminent.
In fact, we positively encourage him to keep using it.
Say it in India. Use it in mining. Repeat it in rail. Put it in marine presentations. Write it on the walls. Stick it on the fucking mugs.
The more firmly Cummins embeds accountability into its public language, the more useful that language becomes whenever anyone examines whether the behaviour underneath matches the branding.
That is the delightful trap hidden inside corporate values.
Once you publish the standard, everybody else gets to measure you against it.
Welcome, Gbile
So welcome to the expanding cast of Cummins Confidential, Gbile Adewunmi.
For now, this is an introduction rather than a prosecution. His published record shows a substantial international career, significant operational experience and a remarkably broad industrial remit. Meanwhile, the India appointment makes him considerably more visible, while retaining Industrial Markets leaves him sitting across sectors TCAP already follows closely.
Most helpfully of all, he has supplied his own future editorial standard.
Accountability.
TCAP approves.
We have a small project named after it.
We are delighted Cummins has finally noticed the concept.
Just one request for the incoming Managing Director.
Stop trying to nick our fucking branding.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project