Murthy: What it Takes to Run the Marathon
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| Murthy admits, "not every leader has the energy to run this huge marathon." | |
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On the leadership challenges facing founder-led companies like Infosys
The best index of success of an organisation is its longevity. I have tremendous respect for IBM, GE and Philips of the world. If you have demonstrated longevity then you have gone through difficult days and made sacrifices. You have controlled costs and essentially you have built up character — it helps you to survive difficult days. For one organisation to demonstrate longevity, it has to regenerate the leadership layer periodically.
This is a huge challenge for all corporations, and not every leader has the energy to run this huge marathon. I have seen people who have discontinued the marathon at Infosys. They were extraordinary people at a certain age, [had] great energy and passion, but time is a great leveller. It is difficult to say whether it is five,10 or 15 years…
It is an acid test for a very important reason. For the founders there are two reasons why they will make serious adjustments. One, they have succeeded in one dimension which is money. Second, it is their child and it is easy to make any adjustments, whereas if you are not a mother it is not that easy. It is an easier task for a founder turned CEO in some ways. I can give any theory, but it has no value, because I don’t have any data…
When there is an extraordinary individual within the company it is very important to give that individual an opportunity after ascertaining that the individual can deliver.
So you have to give opportunity to internal people and have to evaluate them before going outside. It should not be a fashion to go outside. There is so much of organisational memory here and so much of institutional memory and culture here and it is very important.
Look at Philips or Unilever, just to give two examples. I don’t know about India, somehow my focus is not on India so it is difficult to comment, but on the international scene I think there are enough examples. Take Lafarge, the number two cement company in the world. I serve on their advisory board. It was founded and then the founders held shares till a few years ago. Now they don’t even hold any shares there.
The problem could be if we select somebody who is new to the culture of Infosys, who is not willing to make the kind of adjustments that the CEOs so far could have made. It is not founder or non-founder. It is whether the person has the attribute such a large company [needs] and whether he is generous [enough] to make adjustments etc.
On relationship with and role of independent directors
None of us will insist on our views prevailing, because this is an organisation which was founded on the basis of discussion and debate. I keep telling people that this is the world’s greatest debating society. As long as you use data and argument and as long as your data is better than mine, we accept your point. It is the data and the facts that you bring to the table.
Our independent directors are extremely capable people and are very open minded. Right now, Jeff Lehman is the chairman of the Nominations committee. Jeff was the dean of the law school of Michigan. He is an extraordinary fellow. My personal feeling is that if we put up proper data and facts they generally value it. So I have no worry on that account.
After August 20, 2011, I have no role. We are free to leave the company between 57 and 60. At 60 we have to leave, unless we become non-exceutive directors. My colleagues were kind to me and wanted me to continue but it will not be the case with everyone. For example, Mr Ragahavan didn’t continue after 57. So if the independent directors were to request anyone to continue beyond 60 they will continue, otherwise all these people they must leave in five-six years.
On the recent induction of ICICI Bank’s K.V. Kamath into the board
I have known K.V. for 38 years when he just finished his MBA at IIM-A. I have seen him play cricket. I worked with him; I was on the board of ICICI. He is one the real leaders who created a vision of ICICI Bank — the universal bank. It was on the drawing board the white board and he implemented it. That’s a rare quality, that’s more than what most people can think of.
Remember, Claude Smadja is leaving the board in 2010 and I and Marti [G. Subrahmanyam] are leaving the board [by] 2011. Then most probably Deepak [M. Satwalekar] is leaving in 2012-2013, Rama [Bijapurkar] is leaving, Omkar [Goswami] is leaving. They are all completing nine years. And if they continue after nine years they will not be considered independent directors. So we want independent directors, we have enough internal directors. We need 50 percent independent directors. Kamath also will retire in 2012 when he reaches [the age of] 65. He has had good experience in transitioning and that will come in handy.
Single Page View
It's obvious he doesn't mix much with the rank and file; how many people have the guts to question their bosses in Infosys in this day and age?
Very few.
It's all very well to project an image but Forbes should have at least tried to talk to a cross section of the employees, vendors and customers of Infosys to get a 360 degree view of the situation instead of just depending on the public utterances of three board members to publish the story.
