The only real question many of us had in our minds last month was the designation the Board of Infosys would finally confer on Kris Gopalakrishnan. An entire nation, or maybe just the entire Press corps had created such a huge frenzy of expectation that when the inevitable vote for continuity happened, hundreds of questions asked in myriad different ways, failed to elicit anything except the expected non-committal responses. Getting KV Kamath, one of corporate India?s biggest success stories to chair the board and Kris to continue his watch as co-chairman will certainly assuage the feelings of both the change faction and the traditionalists who were afraid that too many changes would rock the corporate boat and trigger some departures. However the challenge for Infosys has only just begun.
The industry is seeing a definite reorganisation and in the next two years, the pecking order in the top six?IBM, Accenture, TCS, Cognizant, Wipro and Infosys?is likely to see some changes, while in the next tier, HCL, Mahindra, iGate-Patni, Hexaware, Zensar, L&T Infotech and a few others will look for ways to differentiate and successfully compete for a larger share of the trillion dollar plus outsourcing pie. What one would expect to see in Infosys is the hunger for quick growth, entrepreneurial risk taking in acquisitions as well as large deal signups and a new energy emanating from the new CEO and whichever members of the team make it to the Board. And as the last quarter results show, nobody is standing still and there will be a heady mix of new ideas that global customers will get as the top 20 players jockey for new positions in the global outsourcing business.
Responding to the predictable television channel questions after the announcements at Infosys on the last day of April, one query generated some introspection. In a company with a chairman emeritus, chairman, executive co-chairman, executive and non executive Board directors, how exactly do decisions get taken? Will this extensive hierarchy result in what business process reengineering practitioners call orthogonals where decision making is a vertical multi-stage process that impedes the horizontal work flow? The answer to this largely lies in the extent of empowerment provided to the chief executive officer and the core management team.
The role of a successful CEO has often been expanded to read ?Clairvoyant, Evangelist and Orator? which means the onus is on the new incumbent to build a vision for the future, share it widely to elicit a sense of commitment among the manage-ment and get the entire organisation to buy in and sing from the same hymn sheet.
Successful chief executives are not afraid to choose the path less traveled and build a clear differentiation pitch which is articulated and practiced by distributed marketing and execution teams. When I was asked to take over the reins of Aptech in 1991, we identified the need of the hour to be rapid expansion and through a well crafted franchising strategy, took a motley set of training institutes in a dozen Indian cities to a 50,000 centre mega training company by the end of the decade. Similarly the management council and the vision communities of Zensar crafted a strategy of innovation that enabled us to invest in new architecture and disruptive business model innovation while fostering a climate of intrapreneurship and continuous innovation in all geographies and business units. The resultant growth in prestigious customers, associates and revenues have seen us power into the Nasscom Top 20 list and Forbes Top 100 with a lot of ambition still there to climb higher peaks.
If a strong focus on growth and innovation is the path one would advocate for Infosys, Wipro. LTITL which have embarked on new leadership moves this year, what should be the role of the other luminaries who have been given key roles? The company has already mentioned that the role of KV Kamath as chairman would be to manage the Board and continue the high standards of corporate governance that Narayana Murthy has advocated and demonstrated in such abundance over three decades of impeccable leadership. Murthy himself has a continuing value to add in dealing with multiple external constituencies and Kris has a substantial role to play in raising the bar for customer and employee connect, while he takes CII and other associations he is involved with to higher levels.
In smaller organisations, many of these roles are combined into the two roles of chairman and CEO but if each member of the top team plays their roles and defines clear responsibility and accountability limits, we can expect to see a new sense of purpose and alacrity of thought and action in Infosys and a return to the glorious days when it was the benchmark for every parameter of success in the industry.
The writer is vice-chairman & managing director of Zensar Technologies and a member of Nasscom?s Chairmen?s Council