A year after taking charge of Wipro IT Services, the firm?s CEO TK Kurien feels that it is still ?neither lean nor mean enough?. Culturally, Wipro is at least a year away from being the aggressive, ambitious organisation Kurien wants it to be, and it is just getting started on all the ?cool? technology work. In a candid conversation with FE?s Shreya Roy and Debojyoti Ghosh, Kurien talks about what the IT major is transforming into, and what he is willing to do to ensure it goes the distance. Excerpts:
What was the scenario with Wipro when you took over, and where is it now?
This business was not as messed up as people think it was when I got it a year ago. Several parts of the organisation were not working in unison. All we have done in the past year is to realign it and get people working together. What we have now finished is the easy part. The more difficult part is yet to come, which is the culture change.
Culturally, what are the points you are trying to drive home? And how far are you from getting there?
Fundamentally, what we have done is that we have redefined our values. The personal energy of every individual is important; nobody likes it if you are dead in office. Ambition is important. The ability to energise people is important. Ability to communicate and collaborate is critical. We are now getting people aligned around these qualities. I think the journey for cultural transformation will take us another year.
And how do you make the change happen?
Talk to millions of people, drive behaviour through promotions. To change human behaviour, the reward system is very important. The recognition part is even more important. And a driving culture has a lot to do with leadership behaviour. We are also trying to get more transparency in the system. We are not there yet. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would put myself at 5 now.
There is a perception that one of the changes under your leadership has been the creation of a ?leaner? organisational structure. How have you done that?
We haven?t become leaner, no way. We are still neither lean enough, nor mean enough. We are not aggressive enough. Those are the very traits we are now imbibing.
You mentioned earlier today, that to be successful, your clients should love you, and your employees should like you. Is that a conscious statement?
Very conscious. We have been saying that for the past year now. Your employees don?t have to love you. They have to like working for you, and you have to keep them excited to keep liking their job.
Involuntary attrition has declined in the past two quarters. Does that indicate a lot of restructuring has been settled?
Involuntary attrition is not something we should look at, it will move up and down. But we are becoming a more performance oriented company, there is no doubt about that.
Wipro is currently the number three player. What is your vision?
Today, we are trying to drive sustainable growth. What we are going for is technology that can be used to disintermediate business processes. What we do now is clunky, and crude. We employ a bunch of people to do stuff which is really not value adding. And that?s how process change is going to be enabled. Our play will be on cloud, mobility and analytics. We are not looking at acquisitions, but we are creating frameworks.
In July, you had said that the company was planning a agriculture vertical. Are you on track with the plan?
That is going to happen in April. It will be part of our natural resources vertical. The growth is going to be slow to begin with, but it is a business that is going to remain for a long time. Food is going to become a big issue across the world. We have not yet started marketing this to clients. We are building a whole bunch of solutions around it.
