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Empowering Workers Is the Key, Say Infosys Executives
May 2006
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STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—N.R. Narayana Murthy, named one of the Economist's top 15 most-admired global leaders, takes one of his most important business lessons from Mahatma Gandhi. Quoting the famous leader in a talk at Stanford, Murthy told listeners: "Be the change you want to see in the world."
Murthy, the founder who served for 21-years as CEO of India's Infosys Technologies Limited, said in his May 4 talk that executives who want innovation and commitment from employees must model risk-taking and personal sacrifice. "It's the only way to gain the credibility necessary to motivate people to give their best," he said. "And," he stressed, "your people are your most important asset."
Having led his own corporation to revenues of $2.15 billion last year, and a present market capitalization of $20 billion, Murthy indeed has a great deal to say about what it takes to succeed in global business. He and his wife Sudha Murty, one of India's first female technology engineers and chairperson of the Infoys Foundation, shared their wisdom on how best to help a company generate profits—and give them back to the community—at the Stanford View from the Top speaker series.
"The task of the leader," Murthy stressed, "is to change the mind-set of your people to become positive, confident, enthusiastic, daring, and open-minded to change." Staying relevant in the market means not holding on to innovations, but "rendering them obsolete" and disseminating them as soon as their value has been extracted. Infosys, which provides consulting and IT services in the areas of banking, capital markets, retail, and high-tech manufacturing, he said, keeps moving ahead by continually turning constraints into opportunities. Our motto is "A plausible impossibility is better than a convincing possibility," he said.
At Infosys, Murthy noted, employee morale and the entrepreneurial spirit are supported through a system in which ideas are accepted on their own merit, regardless of where on the totem pole they originate. "In God we trust—everybody else brings data to the table," Murthy quipped. The company also rewards people through recognition, time off to pursue interests, and financial incentives. It builds trust with customers as well by "under-promising and over-delivering," and with investors by delivering bad news up front and sticking to a policy of disclosure and transparency.
Finally, said Murthy, "you must earn the good will of society by living in harmony with the environment and making a difference." Toward that end, the Infosys Foundation gives back to the "poorest of the poor" of India—frequently women—through micro-lending, counseling, and educational efforts. "We make them aware of their potential and lead them to opportunities," said Sudha Murty. And, she stressed, "we never give anything for free, because I've learned that when you do, it is treated as though it has no value."
For Murty, compassion and generosity are also critical qualities for any leader. A person who makes money without giving some of it back to enrich society, she said, "ends up with a flower made of gold—you can't smell it."
—Marguerite Rigoglioso
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