Leadership is
What leadership Does
By Harish
Bijoor
Are leaders born? Or are they
made? Are they crafted by the environment they live within and shaped by the
experiences they face through their careers in particular and life at large? Or
is leadership just genetic? A trait passed on from Mr. Hitler to Master Hitler?
Or for that matter, from Mr. Hitler to Ms.Hitler?
The answer to this one big
question is really floating in the wind. Floating in the wind as the very
definition of leadership is undergoing change. As one grapples with systemic
definitions that tell you what leadership really is, the single best definition
of leadership I will arrive at is a take-off from the definition of money
itself. Let me morph it to leadership: Leadership is what leadership does.
If leadership is what leadership
does, the guys at Infosys must be great, if not good leaders for sure. Look at
what it has done for a start. The company is today a USD 4 Billion plus
enterprise, enjoys a market capitalization 8 times that multiple, employs
1,30,000 plus people (and threatens to grow continuously on this count),
manages mass recruitment of a scale unheard of in other categories, manages
mass sets of final settlements as well, faces attrition from every entity around
waiting to poach its ready-made leaders, and manages one of the world’s most
exciting leadership and training facility as well.
In such an environment of scale,
multiple layers of fulfillment, a global work-force that covers literally every
nationality there is to embrace, and a completely dynamic set of expectations
forever on the morph in the tapestry of the work environment at large in the
space of end to end services delivery in the IT sector, leadership is most
certainly a buzz-word that delivers just more than the buzz.
Leadership @ Infosys, edited by
Matt Barney with a foreword by NR Narayana Murthy and S Gopalakrishnan and an
epilogue by TV Mohandas Pai, is an academic, nice and solid effort at documenting the leadership style
that has made Infosys what it is today. Powered by intellect, and driven by
values. For sure.
This 226-page book is surely
powered by intellect. While the introduction by Matt Barney, PhD, the
Vice-President and Director of the Infosys Leadership Institute adds the academic
focus in documenting the leadership ethos, as it has emerged at Infosys, a host
of leader biographies contributed by names you and I don’t know, but names that
mean a lot within the Infosys context of internal employees, vendors and
clients give it a back-bone and context.
These leader biographies come
from different realms. And not necessarily from the verticals that manage human
resources. And that indeed is the joy of this book. There are rich nuggets that
emerge as solutions in the realm of leadership from people who work in the
realm of Product innovation consulting, Quality and productivity, Client
solutions and in verticals that face retail, consumer and packaged goods, Life
Sciences, media and entertainment and more.
This tome on leadership is
therefore much more than a book that explores theory and routes to leadership.
Instead it is a book that explores life from a practitioner’s narrow gully as
well.
The book is for sure peppered
with the academic rigour that such books, and more importantly academic papers
that HR scientists present at seminars and forward to publications that respect
the oblique word and phrase that makes it that much more academic. Porter’s
Generic value chain is not only explained but illustrated as well copiously, just
as names such as Hugo Munsterberg will explain theories that many will find it
a bit tedious to explore.
Infosys emerges out of this book
as a scientific laboratory that believes leadership to be something that is a
science of sorts. A science that can be studied, distilled, watched empirically
in the behaviour of people, and isolated for its individual elements which can
contribute to re-create behaviour and ultimately leadership. Leadership that is
consistent in its policy, its ethics and more importantly in what results it
achieves.
Companies of the type and size
and ethos of Infosys do surely believe that leadership cannot lay centric in
the hands of a few. In a very inclusive manner of speaking, leadership lies at
every level. The more you notice it, the more you show-case it, and the more
you democratize its use, the more it benefits a company.
In many ways the mantle of
leadership that has seamlessly passed on from founding leader to leader, be it
from NR Narayana Murthy to Nandan Nilekini and now to Kris Gopalakrishnan,
defines the ethos of the founding leaders of this company. This leadership
mantle is right at the top. One now waits with bated breath as this leadership
mantle, hitherto in the hands of the founders, gets readied to move beyond the founding fathers. Seamlessly
again.
In many ways Infosys recognizes
through this book the fact that leadership lies all over. Lies at every level.
And in many ways the leadership that lies at the level of delivery is that much
more precious to organization than leadership that resides only at the top.
If I worked for Infosys at the
bottom or middle-rung, I would feel very good about this book and the ethos it
represents. If I worked in a competing company, I would ask questions of my own
company’s style of leadership. If I were an academic, I would look at the signs
of the times, as painted by Infosys as the signs to embrace and move ahead
with. If I were the type who believed that leadership was a trait one was born
with or without, I wouldn’t read this book at all!
The book,
to that extent is a nice piece to have in place in the process of documenting
the modern practice of leadership, in a company that wants to see itself to be
as modern as it gets, as contemporary as it can afford to be, and indeed as
inclusive in its leadership style as it must be, to face the future as it
unravels.
Harish Bijoor is a
brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. with a
presence in the markets of Hong Kong, UK, Dubai and the Indian sub-continent.
Twitter.com/harishbijoor
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