Ok! So I had an interesting thought. I haven’t read too much about NRN’s style of leadership or any of his books. Here’s my question to all the Rodinhooder’s, Would you say NRN has failed as a leader? From all the gyaan I’ve got about building organizations the first was to build an organization that would run without the entrepreneur himself.
Has NRN been able to create an organization like that? If so, then why is he coming back to Infy? If No, then again how can one build such an organization.
PS: No offenses to NRN, he is a role model for many.
Divyesh Panchal
Hello Sirji,
I am sailing the same boat with hardly few words read about Mr. Murthy but the kind of question you have raised should get us contemplating to think about the organization that we all young entrepreneurs strive to build.
When we all think about out start-up, almost everyone (at least me) want to persevere as Steve Jobs and build a massive giant as Apple in the respective industry that we are serving. The first step is toward building such organization. When we talk about organization its not just consumers or the products we offer. Of course that is pivotal to all business that we start. We would all have obsession for perfection like Jobs while building the products. But remember, we are the founders of the company and would care the maximum to build finest products to offer. What happens at the next step? When the same products in which you mastered the art like an artist to crave out every single piece of your product (or every single Moodles in case of Hitesh Bhatia or every single Salad in my case) is now going to be delegated to be made by “your employees”. Now from being a fine artist your role shifts overnight to be the best manager with best man power handling skills! How do we get this paradigm shift working in our favor?
If you have closely experienced, its just not about what you delegate but how you delegate is equally important. Cause that is what becomes foundation for the ‘culture’ of your company, core ethics, values etc etc. How do we strive to do this when our start-up is dwindling between struggling revenue, rising cost, frequent customer complaints etc. Culture is even manifested through the way you talk to your employees or joke around with them.
Now coming back to the broader picture about co-founders exiting the company, today or tomorrow; the age would take a toll and willingly or non-willingly the co-founders will no more be a part of the company. Steve Jobs came back to Apple and turned it around to make the world’s most valuable company. What now when he is no more there? Over years to come we all would not be a part of our own company we all started cause as Steve Jobs said, “Death is the destiny we all share”
Building and organization, setting its culture “right” and knowing that you would no more be a part of it some years down the line is a different ball game all together of the business and would personally become sensitive to you if you want to leave behind the legacy and want generations to remember you and the insurmountable effort you have put forth to change the world!
Aparna
Of course he hasn’t failed as a leader.
That’s true, an organization has to run without the entrepreneur himself. But when you look at Infosys, it was founded by 7 people When Murthy stepped down, the other founders took control of the company. Question is why Infy didn’t do well when he stepped down – for everything you can tell, when Murthy Stepped down three things happened.
a) Market was going through a slope. Europe, America, so people started less outsourcing.
b) World was changing really fast – cloud and mobile revolution. (Nah, i don’t suppose anybody predicted this would happen this quickly).
c) World is trending towards products not services.
It was simply the wrong time to exit because its really difficult to sail through the turbulent waters when you aren’t expecting a storm. Though the culture was preserved, it wasn’t redesigned to evolve.(talk about higher attrition rate)
Nikunj Bubna
Hi Hitesh,
Companies do make hiring mistakes by going for an unsuitable CEO who is perhaps so conservative or entrenched in legacies that he cannot make the organization nimbly adapt to changing market realities the way competition is embracing them. In the case of listed large professional companies like Infy, its the Board of Directors who got to be blamed for making a wrong selection by being biased and not finding a relatively more competent & dynamic CEO (who may or may not be a co-founder).
NRN deserves all the accolades for doing 9 out of 10 things right & leading the poster-boy in a sun-rise sector. NRN was the one who set quite a few good precedents which were lacking in a nascent economy. A giant like Infy is not an easy animal to manage & it needs a great CEO (which the Board couldn’t find probably so they found an easy way out by turning back to NRN). That doesn’t imply that NRN couldn’t create a co which could run on auto-pilot.