Good evening ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, partners, alumni and friends of soil. My name is Sep Ranjan and it is my privilege to welcome you all to this very special evening as we gather to celebrate the launch of the inspired leader by our founder Mr. Anil Saz. This book is more than a publication. It is a reflection of a lifelong commitment to developing leaders who combine competence with character, purpose with performance and success with significance. We are deeply honored to have with us our chief guest Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys. Can I have a hand? whose leadership and values have inspired generations of professionals and entrepreneurs. We also extend a warm welcome to our distinguished panelist Mr. D. Muturaman, former vice chairman of Tata Steel. Mr. Vir Shetti, vice chairman of Narina Health, Professor Rishiat Krishna, director of IIM, and Miss Na Menon, board adviser and former chair of Accenture India. Thank you all for gracing this occasion with your presence and insights. This evening promises to be an engaging conversation on leadership, purpose, and inner transformation. Topics that are more relevant today than ever before. On behalf of Soil Institute of Management, I thank each one of you for joining us. Your presence makes this celebration truly meaningful. Welcome once again and I wish you all an inspiring and memorable evening. Thank you very much. I hand over the data to Mr. Anil Saz to start the process. Thank you.
I was only five when I met Swami Chananda. So I always begin by expressing my gratitude to my spiritual teacher Mr. Murthy. You have given hope to young generation in India. You have taught our children and our grandchildren that it's possible in this country to make positive impact and create businesses without selling your soul. So I just want to thank you and I want to thank your co-founder. I want to thank your co-founder DH who is here. I want to thank the HR leader who worked with them and so very nice that all of you are here today with Mr. Muturaman ever since I met you in 1999 I started having additional hope about the Tata group the way what I experienced you in Tata Steel was special. I've known you from the time you graduated from XLRI and joined us. Thank you. Venkat is my new friend that I discovered more recently thanks to Mr. Muturaman and Rishi you have known each other for a long time so thank you for doing this. I just want to spend a few minutes about the book. Why this book? See each one of us in our own hearts we have potential. We have the capacity to inspire our own selves but unfortunately the mind gets in the way and we keep thinking we are not good enough. This is a whole conversation. My book is more like you're undertaking a learning journey with me to reach home in your own heart to discover what you are capable of doing. When we look at the leaders sitting here because they chose to source inspiration, they did something extraordinary in their lives. So I believe that it all lies in our hearts. I believe that each one of us has the potential of being the very best in whatever we choose to do provided we don't allow our mind to get in the way. So it begins my book by saying there are two lies of leadership. One that leaders are born. We all know they are not born and we have many leaders here like Shanta Raju who will tell his story later. And then we also know that leadership is about not leading anyone else. You only lead yourself. Others who trust you may choose to come along with you because it is in their interest to lead you. So I learned early in my life that leadership is all about leading yourself and that's what this is about. Then I talk about practices. When you are alone, what's the story you tell yourself about yourself? In that famous Amit quote, what is in your silence? What do you tell yourself about your life when you are alone? And how does that influence the way you lead your life? Some words can empower us and some words can get in the way and make us feel we are imprisoned by our circumstances. Then I say every time you do your happiest work discover something unique about yourself. So what is the way you can learn about your own uniqueness and your own story? What's the song you have come here to sing? So that's a whole chapter on discovering your gifts. Then I say how do you capture the whole process of learning in your life? Mr. Muturaman has a very nice process of how he learns when you learn from the past introspection. When you learn from the present contemplation, when you learn from the unborn future the childlike curiosity, then I say how do you think not just with the rational analytical mind but the power of the more intuitive the feminine part of every man which is to embrace the whole mind. Then I go on to say how do you really build trust? We have people sitting in this audience who have built trusting relationship with so many people. Empathy is the start but authenticity is the second step. How do you build trusting relationship with people? But finally I say it's all very nice to think about something but there is always a knowing doing gap. So how do you take responsibility for living the idea that you stand for? So actually acting on your intent and not just thinking about it. So that's the power of action. Finally, I say all these capacities that I'm talking about the practices, they're empowered by your own larger sense of purpose and the values you deeply care about. And I'm sure you will hear soon from Mr. Murthy what happened in his life when he chose to serve purpose in his life. Last chapter in our own minds there is the other side of our personality. We want to become better versions of ourselves. But there is a hidden part of our own mind that prevents us from changing. So how do you overcome that? By invoking the power of the inner witness. Which is if you in the still silence of your mind. When you invoke the capacity to observe your own actions, thoughts and beliefs, you can give yourself hope of escaping that and starting a new life. So that's the last chapter. So this is just a brief summary of my book. Thank you very much each one of you. There are so many wonderful people, so many senior leaders, some young soil alumni are here. Thank you very much for coming. So this is what it is. Let me begin. So thank you.
Mr. Murthy. May I ask a question right in the beginning to you? And my first question sir to you is that when you were young and you were aspiring for doing something in your life, what's the story you used to tell yourself about your own self to yourself? What was the story you were telling yourself when all those ideas were being born?
I think I came from a lower middle class background. My father was a high school teacher like DH's father. We were eight children probably DH too has around that and then my grandmother. So feeding 11 mouths with the salary of a teacher who wanted to be honest was not an easy one. So I think I would be wrong to claim that we had grandiose vision for us. There was only one thing that both my parents used to tell us and I'm sure D's parents also said exactly the same thing and that is look friend, look son, if you want to escape this orbit of poverty you have to work hard, you have to be disciplined, you have high aspirations. Follow students who are better than you in the class. Learn what they do and listen to your teachers. So our life was very simple. Our orbit was very low. Our aspirations were very low. Those days there was hardly many job opportunities. There was really no private sector to speak of in the same proportion as it is today. Either you could become a civil servant or you could join HMT or ITI one of those BHEL etc. So our aspirations were low. We did not have any graduate education. We were trying to become disciplined, honest and hardworking children whose aspiration was to do well in the class. Beyond that no parent, that's what I would say.
But as you then progressed to the idea of founding Infosys and then growing it with the help of all your colleagues, what were some of the moments that stand out for you when you and your team were at your happiest best? And when you were at your happiest best, what did you discover as your own uniqueness about the special gift of Murthy?
Well, there were a few incidents which tested our value system. I define a value system as the tenets that you follow strictly even when you have to pay a certain cost for your convictions. That is value system. There were several but I'll take at least one. When we had just gone public in 1993. In 1995, a Fortune 10 company came to renegotiate the terms. Number one company signed on the dotted line. Number three, number four, number five did so. We were very small but even we were the only company that was hesitating and all my younger colleagues there was Nandan, there was Kris, there was Mohan, there was Phaneesh, they were all keen on signing on the dotted line but that's when my value system came into picture. I said if we sign on the dotted line, this company was very aggressive in negotiating prices. I said if we accept much lower prices for this company tomorrow my fairness will demand that I accept it for other companies too. And if you did that, you would not have enough money to invest in infrastructure, physical and technological. You would not have enough money to put in quality and productivity initiatives. You will not have enough money in education and research and training etc. So all my colleagues were sitting there. My end colleague Phaneesh had just become the head of sales in 1994 and he had not won a single order from the customer till that time and he was pushing Nandan who he was reporting to that he should make me accept it and Mohan was worried because we had gone public two years before that, less than two years before that. So he was also unhappy that I was simply not willing to sign. So then I realized that these are all excellent people. There's no point in talking to them. So those days there were no mobile nothing. I went out to the Taj Residency public phone. I called my wife and I said look for the next three to five years I will be traveling almost the entire year to bring bigger and bigger revenues. You have already done a very good job of looking after our children. I want you, I hope you will be able to continue this and my absence will not... She's always supportive. She said no, do whatever you think is right. So I came back at 5:00 p.m. on Friday. You know this Fortune 10 company was going from room to room to room and then getting the signature. I told them very respectfully that if I were to agree to your terms, I'll be letting you down later because nothing worthwhile comes cheap. And I have to be fair to our employees who need to be given higher and higher salaries. We need to be fair to you people, the customers, because we have to put money in various initiatives. Therefore I will not accept your term and we will transition the work to anybody that you choose. And they chose number one company. They came to our campus and we transitioned it very courteously, very respectfully, very amicably and I worked very hard because I had taken this decision and I'm very happy to say by 1998 we surpassed our own projections and 1999 we were ready to go public on NASDAQ. Fantastic. That was a tough decision which I had to take myself because everybody else in that room thought that I was being silly. We had just gone public. This customer was forming 25% of our revenue, 25%. Not 2%, 3%, 5%. And unfortunately he was contributing only 8% of the profit. So that was a tough decision that I took. That's why I said value system translates to the readiness to pay a certain cost because of your convictions.
So I think your biggest gift is not only to have the strong values but the courage to live by the values. That's what.
No, I won't make it so grandiose. I'm an ordinary man, average person in every respect. In some cases, less than average because one principle that I followed was to be surrounded by people much smarter than me. We have D, Shima, many others. Almost everybody was smarter than me. But my job was to create an environment where these smart people reached for the stars.
Fantastic. What a nice thing to say. Murthy, this brings me to another question because it's all happening in the mind. You see, some of us think in a very linear analytical way. But there are others who expose themselves to new disciplines who have the curiosity to learn from many other things. What has been your practice of learning to think with the power of the whole mind? I'm very curious to hear your answer to that.
You know it very well and education is about learning to learn. Training is about knowledge. Training is not that important. On the other hand, why we all admire and respect education is because it gives you an instrument to learn new things faster, better etc. So I would say that as a person who focused on learning to learn for example at our education we didn't call it training department right from day one I said I wanted to be called education and research and we focused on teaching our youngsters education about computer science not training. We didn't teach them any specific language. We taught them the principles of concurrency, principles of relational databases, principles of programming, algorithmic thinking, etc. So I think because I focused and I was very lucky to have wonderful people who were no less than me in coming out with new ideas. For example, DH came out with some of the finest ideas in quality. Mohan came out with some of the finest ideas in human resources practices. They did so because we created an environment where nobody was afraid of failure. Nobody was scared of some silly hierarchy. We followed what I term hierarchy of ideas rather than hierarchy of cards. So I would say that if you create that, that's really what the foundation was as far as I was concerned and of course I'm heavily mathematics oriented to appreciate it. We're all engineers here. For everything I would do simulation and simulation will tell me using a certain model what the situation would be if I took this decision versus that decision. So I use simulation wherever necessary and I was also fairly comfortable in finance. Mohan and I we worked very well in finance and I learned how to ask very simple but very critical questions in the balance sheet and the profit and loss statement. So these were some of the things that I used to enhance and learn. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Which brings me to the question about the importance of building trusting relationships. You know, I have seen how you have so many friends in different parts of the world and how you have long-term trusting relationships. Where does that come from? What?
Trust comes out of delivering on your promise. Once you start attempting to deliver your promise even if you fall short a little bit people understand that this is the real world, these people are honest people, they are trying their best etc. I will give you a simple incident which happened in 1993. We had finalized a large contract with a Canadian company. It was part of a conglomerate which is a Fortune 10 company and we were to start the project on a certain Monday. We were small. Our credentials were not substantial. Therefore, the Canadian High Commission was not as impressed with our visa request and therefore they delayed it. I got a call from the CIO of this organization and he said look you know I had committed that we'll start the project etc, you are not able to start the project on Monday however we will get the initial part of the project started by number two company and they are a Canadian company, they would charge a lot more than you have asked for. But that money you had to pay. We agreed. We agreed because the mistake was not the customers. The mistake was not even Canadian High Commission because we had not at that time we were very small, we had not built that credibility with them. So I accepted that and we paid and that built so much trust in them about us. They realized that here is this small company that will walk the talk, that will live by its words and that will not leave you in the lurch. So trust requires you to deliver on your promise. Trust requires you to walk the talk even if that walk is extremely tough and it appears somewhat difficult but when you get used to a certain belief you see right from beginning we said we want to be the most respected software company or technology company whatever it is, that's our vision statement. And you will only get respected if people trust you. Otherwise, they won't respect you. So therefore, having a simple, repeatable and clear vision statement is what will help. In fact, I still remember a Wall Street firm came to us in 1993 and it's a very famous thing I can say Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan at that time and they did a brilliant job of looking at our quality processes etc. They were impressed and then they awarded us the project and I asked the CIO, sir, can you kindly tell us where we were lacking? Yes, you have been very kind, you awarded all of that, but there must be many lacking and was there anything that we did very right by your reckoning. He said you know Mr. Murthy, only one thing that I have not experienced in any other company that we have so far worked with and that is what they did was they asked our vision statement. They went to some mid-level people in quality, they went to a salesperson in California and they went to somebody else doing a project in North Carolina. They all said the same thing and he said we have never, this has never happened in any other company. So that is the power of a simple and effective vision statement.
Fantastic. Thank you very much. I know we are running out of time. Mr. Murthy has guests at home which he is attending to but are there any one or two questions from the audience? Anybody wants to ask some questions?
Okay. I have a story of Mr. Murthy. Many many years ago and I don't think he remembers this. We were a small unfunded software product company. We were one of the few product companies out of India. Tisma. I have one of my colleagues here and I have another ex-colleague here. We were struggling and we were one of the pioneers because everybody else was a software services company. We did have a software services arm for other technologies but this was something we were trying new and we were in Bombay at some conference and the New York Times came to interview Mr. Murthy and Mr. Murthy said don't interview me, that's the future. Go interview these two who are starting to build a software product company out of India and that's the future of India. And because of him, the co-founder and I were on the front page of New York Times.
Yeah, thank you sir for that. So you spoke with hierarchy of ideas and I've recently been working with a few clients and companies from the old school of India and I feel like hierarchies, the traditional hierarchies are still pretty strong there and I think that's true of many. We keep saying that working with Indians is difficult unless they go outside and work, people say that. It feels to me like there's a certain mentorship coaching culture missing in India also the hierarchies that we have today really affect the flow of ideas in companies and I feel like India is at a point where if it doesn't break these parameters, this hierarchy, the flow of ideas will not happen and we'll keep getting stuck where we are, we'll be broken. I think that you've broken the rules a lot. So how you changed the rules? You brought a certain kind of thinking in the way business was done in India.
Why have I? I don't want to say I changed it. I was very lucky to be in the company of people as I said right in the beginning who are smarter than me. And when I invited six other younger people, they hardly had one or two years of experience. I used two criteria. One, they must be highly intelligent. I gave them all a certain test and they all came out with 50 out of 50 marks. Two, I said we must have a team that has complementary skills. I was fairly good in finance and sales. None came with sales. Kris was a technology person. D is probably the best person I have seen in quality and excellence. Shibu was very good in project management. Mr. Rahan was very good in human resources. Ashok used to write programs like poems. I haven't seen anybody better than Ashok in this. Second, I said I want this team to have a common enduring value system. And the only reason why Infosys did well was simply because of a certain principle that we adopted and that is if you put the interest of the company in the short and medium term you will benefit enormously in the long term. If there is one institution that is a classical example of this principle, it is Infosys. Nobody ever used the company's resources for any personal thing. It didn't matter who it was, whether it was the janitor or whether it was the CEO and chairman. Second, coming to the point that you raised, if you create an environment of openness to new ideas, hierarchy of ideas, meritocracy, then an environment of fairness, justice, accountability, speed and excellence in decision making and its execution. For example, of all the leaders India has produced, Mahatma Gandhi is my hero. The reason is one because he led by example. He went with loin cloth because he said I want to represent the poorest Indian. At Infosys, we kept the ratio of the CEO salary to the lowest as 30. No, let me also tell you some people may say no because you are going to have lot of shares, at that time we had no indications that our shares would go well, that we will have so many stock splits or bonuses as happened later in India, but we said that's where my philosophy of compassionate capitalism worked. Second, we had a concept called voice of the youth. Mohan was one of the creators of that. We ensured that in the management council where all decisions were debated, discussed and passed on to the internal board, 35% of the people were below 25 at that time because the organization itself was very young. And by sitting with a young man of 23 sitting with DH or HR or Nandan or anybody and arguing, that raised their confidence, that said in this company if I disagree with my boss it won't be held against me. That is walking the talk. Second, we had a thing called ideation day you might remember. Ideation day was the day when only people below 30 could speak, would make presentations, and all the senior people wrote down their suggestions and those that were good were implemented, without dismissing their ideas. That's how we ensured that. Then there was a third thing. I'm sorry I have to say these things because these are all words. We created the employee stock option because we believed that this company must benefit not just the seven people who founded it but it has to benefit the lowest level janitor. And now I was extremely merit oriented but there were one or two who believed in longevity loyalty. For me loyalty is good but first merit and then loyalty. So we created two lists. There was my list which was the CEO's list or famous list merit list and there was the loyalty list which was anchored by Mr. Rahan and HR. In that merit list it was purely performance. They generally got about three times the number of options that were given to loyalty. So I think it is possible if the leaders were to walk the talk, were to demonstrate through their actions that they do believe in hierarchy of ideas. They do believe in compassionate capitalism. I think it is possible over a period of time. It won't happen overnight. Over a period of time, it is possible. That's what. Thank you very much.
Let's give Mr. Murthy a very good. Thank you sir. Thank you very much.
I'm fine on the side. I'll remove that here. So, thank you very much and now I hand over to my dear friend and colleague Professor Rishies to start moderating the panel discussion of these amazing leaders.
Yeah. So good evening and thank you for being part of this ceremony today. I think Mr. Murthy has made our life incredibly difficult because he's already covered so much and set the bar so high that I think our discussion now has to really challenge to you know he said he's all about merit right now we have to prove our merit here as people who can have a good discussion on leadership but I think we are fortunate that we have very very eminent people with us on the panel so let's jump straight in. Mr. Muturaman, I think you know everyone knows the very amazing role you played in Tata Steel particularly at a very challenging time for the company and I'm sure it was a really tough task at that time to bring about the changes that you did. One thing we'd like to understand a little bit from you is what role does introspection and looking back at things and reflecting on them really play in building a good leader and what has been your experience in this?
Good evening to all of you. In terms of introspection, I just want to begin by saying that learning leadership development takes place in many ways. It takes place through observations, through experiences, through discussions with various people, through formal education, through successes, through failures and many other experiences in life. But I have seen that the most powerful tool that we can have for leadership development is actually very deep introspection reflection action cycle. And I want to give you an example from my personal life. I joined Tata Steel in 1966. Till 1989 for 23 years I had one promotion in the company. I was completely frustrated. I came close to resigning from the company twice at least. Around that time there was a national institute of advanced studies which is now functioning from Bangalore which is an initiative by JRD Tata and the government of India started its first program in 1989 in Pune. My boss was supposed to attend that program, he couldn't go, so I was asked to go. So I attended that six weeks program and I came to know Dr. Raja Ramanna very well because Dr. Raja Ramanna was the first director of that institute. I shared my frustrations with Dr. Raja Ramanna. I told him that this is what is happening to me, I said I'm not getting any promotions. I have had no higher responsibilities over the last many many years in steel. I really don't know what to do. He smiled and he listened to me and then he asked how much time do you spend with yourself. So I said I spend a lot of time. So he said what do you do? So I said you know I shut off everything, I watch only TV or I see newspapers but I don't allow anybody to disturb me. So he laughed and he said look Muturaman that is not the way what I meant about spending time with you. And he said, have you got a written down personal development plan? So I said, yeah, I know generally what I should do. He said, I didn't mean that. Have you given a thought to yourself as to what you're good at? And have you written down what you will do? I said, no, sir. I have not. I have never attempted that, but I have thought about a lot. He said, that is all not enough. I want you to do an exercise and that's how this process that I have adopted for over 25 years started. Every year for about five to six days generally at the end of the year I spend time reflecting as to what I have done over the last one year as to what I have succeeded, where are the areas where I've actually failed. And I started writing down everything on a piece of paper. Writing as many of us know is probably the most powerful way of learning. I used to actually write down let's say if I didn't do a board meeting well, I would actually write down as to what went wrong. Dr. Raja Ramanna told me also one other thing. When you do the exercise, you must put the blame on yourself. It does not matter where the blame belongs. Because normally in life, the blame is always on others. If you don't get good marks in the class, the blame is on the teacher or the guy who set the exam paper or somebody who didn't understand your answers. The blame is never on yourself. If I didn't get a promotion in the company, the blame is on the system or the boss is biased. So Dr. Ramanna said doesn't matter whose fault it is for your self-development plan. Please assume that the fault is entirely yours and you must write down that if the fault is entirely yours, what you would do.
So that my piece of paper every year that I wrote had things like: What will I do if I didn't have a good relationship with my colleague of mine on the board or in a company? What went wrong? What will I do next year? And every year I used to sit down for that four or five days in absolute seclusion, thinking and talking to my mind as to what actions I will take, everything in it. If I didn't get along well with my boss, if I didn't do a port meeting properly, if I had a fight with Mr. Data, or if I had a disagreement with one of my colleagues, or if I didn't conduct a meeting properly. It is an exhaustive piece of paper where I used to write down as to what I will do next year to correct the situation, and I review it over the next year. I have done this exercise over a 20-year period. I have found absolutely enormous amount of benefit from this exercise because it makes you—in fact, let me tell you also that in the first three or four years I found it extremely difficult to write them because you don't write—you cannot imagine that the mistake is yours. So you don't write in real honesty. For honesty to come it took about three to four years, quite frankly, let me tell you that. But out of everything that I have done in terms of developing oneself, this is the single most powerful factor that I've seen. And I know that Anil has referred to it in his book, in fact he's referring to a cricket scenario where Virat Kohli and—who was the manager? Ravi Shastri had just stepped down and Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid had taken over as captain and manager, and they had this introspection session. I sometimes feel, coming from what has happened in the last couple of days, they probably need another... but a writer. But I must tell you one thing: this has given—I often tell my younger colleagues in the company and I show them my papers. I said this is what it is because I have kept those papers even till today. And the most powerful thing that you can do—often people say that the blame is not on you, where you are, why are you putting the blame on yourself? I'm not putting the blame on myself to the outside world. I'm putting the blame on myself to me, to my mind, that if I were to improve, I need to put the blame on myself or do it because it may overdo, but there's no harm in doing something overdoing a correction rather than assuming that the fault is not yours. So it's been an amazing experience, and I must tell you that that is what I have gone in the direction I should say.
Thank you very much, Mr. Mutram. If I can just turn to you, Ra, when you read 'Inspire the Inspired Leader,' what is it that really resonated with you? I mean, and are there some practices that you follow that in a way reinforce some of the powerful ideas that...
Well, I can say the whole book resonated, and just to add on to what [N. Murthy] said, I absolutely agree with the introspection point. I've been doing a private retreat for years where I step away once a year and I give myself a scorecard and write down on all kinds of stuff, and I journal regularly, and I practice that, and that's what kept me grounded. But the story I want to talk about is really what you said in the book: what is the story you tell yourself when no one was looking? Because growing up—and my gray hair testifies to the fact that many, many years ago—women were told very many different stories, what was narrated to us. So the stories are not just what you tell yourself but the stories you absorb from your parents and everybody around you. Women of my era, the story was told: you would be a good girl, study hard, get married right. My parents told me a very different story, which was a typical Indian middle-class story that they told to theirs, but my parents told their daughters: work hard, study hard because that was the only way out, and always be honest, and then you can do whatever you want. And therefore when I went to XLRI, I had to do an MBA, and at that time very few women were there. I was a gold medalist, yet the top multinationals would not hire me because I wanted to be in the front field or on the shop floor, because the stories they were telling themselves—the men in the room were telling themselves—women can't do it right. There was one exceptional small company called Aisha, and Anil came by and said, 'You want to be on the shop floor? There are no other women there.' And I said, 'That's fine.' And he said, 'Fine, go.' And so he started me off in Parano because the story this man told himself was women can do it right. So it is not just the story you tell yourself but what stories are being told around you, and therefore what you believe. And similarly, you know, I talk about my software startup, the software product startup. When that failed—or it didn't fail, actually we were fired, the founders were fired in our own offices in Seattle—yes, that's a different story. It was: what story am I going to tell myself? Am I a failure after seven years, which was a logical conclusion? And what am I going to do next? And it was interesting to see how there were four of us, how each of us from the same action took away different stories. And I said, how do I use this to learn, to make a difference, and provide an opportunity and use my skills in the community? And so I use that to do another startup, but it was in the not-for-profit space. So Plum Books and stories, which are wildly successful, started from there. So it is the stories that tell us.
