Empowerment – Incredible Leadership Stories

After two gruelling years of MBA from Christ College, one of the prestigious institutions in then Bangalore, I took my baby steps into the corporate world with Mindtree Consulting, the name by which the company was known those days. It was a mid-size IT company compared to the likes of giants in Indian IT diaspora such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro etc. My staff ID was just 4299.

I joined the Staff Operations department of Mindtree which was entrusted with the critical task of finding the right person for a job. Those days, Staff Ops department of Mindtree was designed to have regional teams taking care of staffing requirements of clients in their respective geographical areas with US being the biggest, followed by Europe, Asia Pacific etc. There was a Central Operations team as well to co-ordinate with these different regional teams to ensure that staff utilisation is effective and optimized. My boss and I were part of the latter.

While the structure worked, there were already talks about this model to be redesigned to match the planned growth of the organization. To facilitate this, the management decided to get a seasoned Mindtree Mind, how the staff was addressed in Mindtree, who managed a large client in the US.

The word got out and all of us in Staff Ops team were quite excited, as this man was to be our new boss. What was even more interesting was the rumour that he was going to consolidate Staff Ops function to achieve more synergies. Lot of improvements were expected. Little did we know that along with him a sea of changes were to follow, some of them we did not even anticipate. The man's reputation preceded him.

Dats, that was how our new boss was affectionately known in Mindtree circles. As soon as he took charge, he called for a combined meeting of all Staff Ops teams. We were quite surprised with his demeanour. The man who ran one of the biggest accounts of Mindtree in US, the man who had been tasked to consolidate the entire Staff Operations for the company had a remarkably calm way of going about with his business. We were impressed on day one itself.

The action then started!

His first ask was to get all the leads list down daily activities we carried out as a team. He reviewed the list and identified all those activities that did not strictly belong to Staff Ops. There were a bunch of tasks that our team performed on daily basis which in fact belonged to other functions in the organization such as HR, Quality, Recruitment etc. This was quite typical of young organizations, a learning that was applied over the period of growth. Dats immediately scheduled meetings with his counterparts in those departments and agreed with them to own their respective activities thereby freeing our valuable time to do more meaningful staff allocation specific activities.

We thought we were all set to start with our new life. That was when Dats broke the biggest surprise. It must be either the work culture he picked up from US or his methodical approach to everything that we came to appreciate in the days ahead or both. Dats noticed that some of the team members worked late in the evening in office for multiple reasons. He called the entire team into a meeting room one day and made a statement that still echoes in my head even after almost two decades of the incident. He said, ‘None of us are doctors and no one is going to die if you stop working at the prescribed end time of the day. I do not want to see any one of you staying back in office unless there is an emergency that you will be able to justify to me’!

Those were golden words, teams across the corporate world would love to hear from their bosses! He was incredible in not just saying that but to live a life and showed us how to really have a work-life balance. God bless bosses like you Dats! You are indeed a rare breed! 

The Tea Team!

Year 2006. I joined my first corporate job with Mindtree in Bangalore. Soon after my induction days, I was taken to my seat and in a matter of time I got settled at my desk.

I started going through some of the documents provided to me to understand the process in place for the department I joined. A few minutes later, I heard a friendly voice from behind saying ‘Tea’. I turned around and saw a young man holding a large tray with a bunch of white porcelain cups rimmed with golden paint and filled with piping hot tea. With a smile, full of genuine care, he placed one cup carefully on my desk and went ahead with his job of serving tea for the rest of the staff.  

That was the day I learned the wonderful story behind the team who served tea on the various floors in our office.

Apparently, when the new campus came up where we were placed, there was a proposal to install vending machines at the pantry which could make coffee or tea for the staff. That was when one of the founders of Mindtree intervened and said that was not a people friendly decision. Instead, he wanted to employ a bunch of young people who will work as a team of tea makers whose job was to make fresh tea during morning and afternoon and deliver them at the desks, of course with a smile!

As a person who experienced this first hand, I must say it was possibly one of the best decisions taken by the management. It not only provided job opportunities for scores of people, but also brought in the much-needed people touch in an industry where tremendous amount of brain power was consumed daily. You really needed the human touch to bring the balance.

True leadership is not only about targets or profits. It is also when we learn to realize that businesses exist because of people. We need to do our part to give back to the community we benefit from.

Let me also reiterate that great experiences gained from organizations leave a lasting impression on employees. These will be fondly remembered and most importantly reflect on them in their interactions with colleagues in the same organization and in future as well.

I do remember with gratitude the truly amazing leadership team we were blessed with at Mindtree!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for not just giving me a job, but empowering me with an experience of a lifetime!

Come in, we are open!

Seventeen years ago, I stepped into my first corporate experience as a Business Analyst associated to Staff Operations of Mindtree in Bangalore. After the initial induction, I found myself seated among the elite company of Staffing, HR and Finance teams. Mindtree was already a known brand by then in the Indian IT industry for being a people friendly organization. Having said that I was in for many surprises as Mindtree did break a few cliches associated with typical corporates.

Right next to where the HR head sat, there was a table like what was used by most of the manager’s in Mindtree where you could walk in and talk to the occupant anytime. This one was busy most of the times and the person who occupied the desk made the conversations quite lively.

I was not sure who that dynamic person was and the curious cat in me wouldn’t sleep longer. I promptly asked my boss who he was. I was stunned, will be an understatement, with the answer he gave me. He was none other than Partha, one of the co-founders of Mindtree. All the management jargons, the corporate biographies I read and every other theory that spoke of the typical ways of working of a company took a bow at that moment. It was indeed a moment of awakening. It was a tremendous realization that these founders are indeed human beings, and you could talk to them without an appointment!

That day taught me a big lesson. Not everything about a corporate culture can be understood in the induction classes. Quite a few facts about an organization will be revealed to you in due course and that could even hold a few surprises for you, some pleasant and others not so.

The culture that was displayed by the executive management of Mindtree was truly one which screamed openness. None of the senior management had to announce this every now and then. They lived and worked with this mindset. You were free to walk in anytime to anyone’s desk irrespective of their designation and ask anything professional that you have in your mind. There won’t be any judgements or reservations about your questions, ever!

It really should be an alarm bell for the senior management of any organization when your staff does not feel comfortable raising questions. It displays a culture of scepticism and lack of trust in the management. Any staff meeting that ends up with a Q&A session which is not utilized must be a cause of concern for a good leader. If you end up ignoring these signals, rest assured, the organization you head will soon experience a derailment. Hence watch out for these signals and correct your course of action.

If you are heading an organization or a department and next time you call for a staff meeting, watch out for the Q&A session. If your people do not raise enough questions, do understand that you are in for trouble, sooner or later. It is also imperative you identify genuine questions vs tick-in-the-box questions. You should welcome the former with both hands and deal with the latter with the kind of respect it deserves including diplomatically discarding if required.

Management is an art, a science and many more. It isn’t something you learn only by reading a bunch of books or doing a Masters from an outstanding university. It is something you need to approach with the warmth of a heart that beats and the swiftness of a brain that pulsates so that you know your people and give them what they need the way they understand.

Here is a toast to all the ‘real’ great managers we know around the world!

My First Corporate Lesson

Two days ago, LinkedIn woke up along with me announcing a dear friend celebrating 16 years with Mindtree, my previous organization. It was quite a moment and obviously I sent him a congratulations note. A few minutes later it dawned on me that it was the same guy with whom I joined Mindtree 16 years back!

Fresh out of college, I had stepped into the lovely Global Village campus of Mindtree in the then Bangalore, with dreams as high as Everest and a resolve as deep rooted as the Pacific. Equipped with a Masters in Management, I couldn’t have asked for a better start than to analyse the Staff Operations of a budding company. Mindtree had spread its wings globally and was getting ready for an even major expansion.

Soon enough I learned that Staff Operations in Mindtree was working in a manner where you had multiple teams managing various geographies. All these teams where co-ordinated by a Central Operations team which at that time was a team of two, my boss and me. Among the plethora of activities, a major task was to get an update on staff engagement from each of the geographies every Monday and consolidate them to present a utilization report on Tuesdays.

This was a time when automation of operations was still on the cards and hence this consolidation was quite a time consuming process. I was tasked to follow-up with all the geography heads and ensure that all the required inputs were available by end of day Monday. By noon Tuesday all the analysis were to be completed and report was to be released.

It was a heavy number crunching exercise on an extremely complex Excel worksheet laden with macros and formulas. Having said that, the direction from my boss was quite clear. Rain or shine, the report must hit the mailbox of all recipients by Tuesday twelve o’ clock. Late by a minute, I’ll be dead!

It wasn’t an exaggeration, as I realized with horror on the first week itself that the mail was addressed to the Chairman of the company himself and copied to all senior managers. As soon as I figured this out, I had a weird sensation of equally feeling elevated in my stature while at the same time being pulled down with fear. What if something goes wrong? I didn’t even want to think of a day when the mail was received late by the leaders of the organization due to a delay from my end directly affecting critical decisions taken in the company.

Initially though the mail was sent by my boss, as days passed, he let me sent it from my mailbox itself. It further brought a huge load of confidence in me. I remember having a glow on face especially on Tuesdays with the sheer thought that the Chairman of the company along with the who’s who of the organization were awaiting the most important mail of the week from me!

The feeling of empowerment was reaching its pinnacle when one day it happened. One of the geo heads, who was a recipient of these mails came over to meet my boss on a Tuesday afternoon soon after the report was released. I was sitting next to him and heard them talk about Utilization Report. I was beaming with pride and was expecting him to praise our small team on how much value do we bring to the organization. Instead he said, ‘It is absolutely rubbish a report and it directly goes into my trash!’

Speechless would be an understatement and what made it worse was when I got to know that his view was subscribed by a few other managers as well. My motivation levels took a major hit. My boss noticed the change, but said nothing. The week went by without any other incident. Next Tuesday came and the Utilization Report went out as usual. A couple of hours later my boss showed me a mail. It was a mail asking for a few additional information on what was reported and the response went back promptly. It was from none other than the Chairman himself!

That’s when my boss spoke for the first time about the incident the other day. He said, ‘Quality, not quantity matters’.

When I told the Indian High Commissioner to go away!

A not so small question-mark with a bright halo formed right above my head when I got a call from Dats, my boss, one fine morning. He wanted me to come down to Phase 1 to Faculty room immediately! Though it had been two years after I passed out of college, this suddenly reminded me of the many occasions such calls came from professors in my department. Imagine my plight when Dats added the statement that Subroto wanted to meet me! My first ever personal encounter with the man who made MindTree!

It turned out to be a very interesting request from Subroto which I grabbed even before giving him an option to think again. The Indian High Commissioner to Malaysia was visiting West Campus along with his family and Subroto wanted me to give them a Campus-tour. He also told me about a leadership session he'll be involved in, till 5 PM and wanted me to bring the High Commissioner and family to him sharp at 5. I was all thrilled and made the necessary arrangements to welcome the high profile delegate and his family.

The hot afternoon sun gave way to a much pleasant weather. The High Commissioner arrived with his wife and two children. They were given a good reception and the Campus-walk plan was put into action. As it was usually done, we started at the Living Logo, proceeded to the History Wall and gave them a glimpse of what made MindTree as it stands today. They were further escorted to one of the most happening locations in the campus, The Orchard! I took them around to various other attractions in the campus all the while being conscious of the time limit which was soon approaching.

Quarter to 5 we were at the fag end of our campus-walk. With the successful completion of the visit I took them back to Kalpavriksha and reached there exactly at 5. Subroto seemed to be in his charismatic best having a bunch of top leaders as his audience. Since it didn't look like he was going to wind up the session any time soon, I decided to show up myself and informed that the High Commissioner and family was outside, waiting for him! He said something which I could not comprehend even with the remotest possible logical sense, at least at that moment! He just told me to ask them to go away! I stood there for a couple of seconds genuinely hoping that he would have an after thought. Neither did he have nor did he seem to be concerned about repeating the same words to me!

I got out and tried to mask all the embarrassment on my face and told the Indian High Commissioner to go away! I don't recollect even a single other instance in my life when I felt so weird. The feeling became all the more intense with the delegate and family taking it very lightly and thanked me for giving them a tour. We exchanged our cards and then they were gone.

While Subroto continued with his leadership-team session, I walked back with a bunch of much larger sized question-marks, minus the halo, all over my head. I met Sachin Joshi who earlier gave me some ideas on the campus-walk and told him about how it went and especially the dramatic ending. I still remember the smile he had in his face when he made a statement that made my initial embarrassment practically insignificant.

He said, "The High Commissioner is Subroto's brother-in-law"!