For someone who admits to being a reluctant CEO, Vineet Nayar has truly earned his stripes. A HCL Technologies lifer, well almost, he led a remarkable turnaround of the company that had almost become ?irrelevant? just five years ago. The lessons from that transformation, now also a much acclaimed business book, Employees First, Customers Second, can be successfully adopted by any company in any industry anywhere in the world with similar results, he tells Sudhir Chowdhary & Shailesh Dobhal

Vineet Nayar is a simple, yet surprisingly powerful leader. As the chief executive officer and VC-elect, and whole-time board director of the $2.7-billion HCL Technologies (HCLT), he has charted a defining growth path for the IT services company. His contribution is notable for reviving the fortunes of the company when it was in the doldrums in 2005, threatened by global shifts in the IT services market that left HCL Technologies struggling to keep up with its bigger rivals. But from then on, Nayar led a remarkable turnaround that saw the company quadruple its customer base, triple its revenues and income growth and double the company’s market cap. HCL Technologies was one of the few companies in the world to grow during the 2008-2009 recession; revenue grew by 23.5% in 2009, and the company added head count in both the USA and Europe during the downturn.

Today, HCL Technologies has become one of the fastest growing IT services company, with 70,000-odd professionals spread across 26 countries.

No wonder, the London Business School calls him ‘the leader of organisational innovation’, and the Harvard Business School (HBS) has written a case study on the transformation at HCL Technologies, based on his innovative and radical leadership. The case study is being taught in the strategy and leadership classes at HBS. IT consulting firm IDC recognises Nayar as having ?the most cohesive and articulate vision? in the IT services sector. Tom Peters is even more generous in his praise and reckons that Nayar could be the next Peter Drucker.

However, the man at the top remains unfazed by the laurels and maintains composure when his attention is drawn to the global recognitions. Yet, the million-dollar question remains: what did HCL Technologies do to effect such a transformation? ?I had a simple mantra: employees first, especially those working in the value zone?the interface between the customer and HCL Technologies. Employees are the heart and soul of every company and by putting them first, encourages extraordinary contribution from everyone, everyday,? says Nayar.

Nayar describes his radical programmes that began a quiet transformation across the organisation in his first-person narrative Employees First, Customers Second. The best-seller has literally turned conventional management upside down. Being modest in his approach, he insists that he alone should not get the credit for the philosophy. ?I could not have undertaken this alone. People throughout the company had ideas and they put the concepts into practice in ways that amazed and delighted me.?

Nevertheless, a hour-and-half meeting provides a rare glimpse into the simple thinking of this 25-year HCL veteran, who is candid in his admissions without being embarrassed one bit. ?I joined HCL as a senior management trainee in 1985. I had just gotten my MBA from XLRI and I wanted to join a small company so I could have an impact on its results sooner. After three weeks of training, however, I was approached by a senior executive who took me aside and told me that I probably did not have a future with HCL. I was shocked and asked him why? He told me that I haven?t paid enough attention to the company?s products and that I only cared for the strategy.? Narrating the unforgettable incident, Nayar recalls how he almost got sacked in the first month of service.

Here?s another game-changing incident from the past. ?It was in late 2004 that I got a call from Shiv Nadar, founder and chairman of the company, to consider coming on board to head HCL Technologies. I was not sure I wanted the job. I was happy at Comnet, the company that I, along with my team, had built from the ground up into a global enterprise. I guess that I had brought the situation onto myself. I had been a vocal critic of some of the strategies being employed at HCL Technologies. But I had never said that I wanted to climb into the driver?s seat. I had no experience of turning around companies. I was not confident; you can say that I was a reluctant CEO,? admits Nayar.

Recollecting the Comnet days, he says, ?We got the first opportunity to create the NSE. It was tough because we didn?t have the skills nor people and there was a huge amount of hardship involved. It was 24/7 work schedule and I was trying to set up an iconic company, just seven years out of college. We had an office in Nehru Place and I hired most of the people over a bonfire.?

It is pertinent to note that when Nayar took over the helm of HCL Technologies in 2005, the company?s legacy of success was under serious threat. ?We were in our glorious past. In 2000, we were the world?s biggest R&D outsourcing company, but R&D went out of fashion. Application and body shopping came into fashion. We did not apply our strategic thinking and did not venture into application or body shopping. As a result, the market bypassed us. By the time we discovered it, we had become irrelevant. It takes just two-three years for a company to become irrelevant. It was in 2005 that the spark went down the spine of HCL and we said that we want to break free. And that is the reason that from 2005 to 2010, HCL was one of the most exciting companies to work for,? says Nayar.

The story behind the genesis of his book, simply put as EFCS, is equally interesting. ?In 2007, Gary Hamel invited me to a workshop of CEOs in San Francisco after he heard of some of the experiments we were doing in HCL. I spoke about what we were trying to do and that is where CK (Prahalad) and Gary convinced me that I was making a mistake in not articulating it the way I wanted it to be presented. I kept quiet about it and suddenly a lot of articles started appearing as chapters in various books and in the way they think about EFCS. But I saw it as an experiment, as a journey. It was at that time that I thought that before anyone else takes ownership of the concept, let me write it the way it should be presented,? he says.

The protectionist measures taken by the US government with regard to outsourcing might have created uncertainty about India’s future as the leading outsourcing destination globally, but Nayar has a different take on the entire issue. ?If winds of change do not flow through business, then why are we here? I am glad these shifts and moments are there. The China-Japan equation is making the Japanese look at India very differently than they looked a year ago. One instance and Japan is suddenly a hot market. While Japan has become a hot market, the US has become a challenge market.?

With a dynamic approach, Nayar has infused HCL with his own brand of energetic leadership, vision and spirit over the years. And he has not restricted his value-driven leadership to the corporate world. Nayar has also established a non-profit organisation called Sampark in 2004, which has a vision of ‘creating a million smiles’. The primary focus of Sampark is to create smiles through improving the quality, infrastructure and opportunity for education of the underprivileged.

Going forward, he feels that businesses are going to become more complex. ?Therefore, we (HCL Technologies) have to reinvent ourselves so that when we emerge from 2020, we are shining and feeling good about ourselves as we are feeling today,? he summarises.