guru murthy

Vinay Kamat

N R Narayana Murthy never appears in the league of management gurus: people who successfully mix vision, concept, and experience to provide route-maps to business. Yet the chairman and chief mentor of Infosys has enough experience, and ability to distill that experience into simple do’s and don’ts, to be part of the guru club.

Like Bill Gates, Lou Gerstner, Jack Welch and Ricardo Semler, Murthy has not only created an institution, he has consistently passed the severest global tests of scale, strategy, and (customer) satisfaction. If Murthy—who ranks among the world’s 10 most admired CEOs in a survey by Economist Inteligence Unit and Burson-Marsteller—were to write a book, he would surely give a new zing to management literature—a discipline that thirsts for plain truths.

Although the story of Infosys is now part of business folklore, the intricate details of process creation, talent management, succession planning, brand-building, inflections points, and genuine Indian leadership, can only be captured in a management book. By writing about his company in Maverick, Brazilian entrepreneur Ricardo Semler opened a new chapter in management, by redefining empowerment.

But what would Murthy write on? Maybe about the heart, not the mind alone. As William Henderson, former CEO, US Postal Service, explains, in Wisdom of the CEO: “Organizations do not thrive on mind alone. They need heart. Their systems may be great, their strategy cunning, their incentives world-class, but without heart an organization can never reach or go beyond its limits.”

Most Murthy-isms are about the heart. They turn management into a set of values that one must practice to inspire oneself. Here’s a short-list of Murthy’s defining moments:

On values: “The Infosys value system can be captured in one line: the softest pillow is a clear conscience.” [In a lecture at Wharton School]

On vision: “I have realized, over the years, that a powerful vision expressed as a simple sentence, capturing the core of our values and aspirations, enthuses generation after generation of employees in the company.” [Lecture at Wharton School]

On self-esteem: “We have to create a grand, noble vision which elevates energy, enthusiasm and self-esteem of everyone in the company while ensuring that everybody sees a benefit in following the vision.” [At a meeting of the World Economic Forum]

On people: Work hard and smart for eight or nine hours…Being in the office for long hours, over long periods of time, makes way for potential errors.” [Figures frequently in discussions on the web]

Jim Collins, a management guru Narayana Murthy often likes to quote, gives an interesting insight into greatness, in Built To Last: “Everyone would like to be the best, but most organizations lack the discipline to figure out with egoless clarity what they can be the best at and the will to do whatever it takes to turn that potential into reality.”

Indeed, management literature requires an egoless simplicity to clear the thicket of jargon that fills its pages and fogs its messages. Like Semler, mentors like Murthy can create a new discipline in management literature: pure simplicity. It’s a language that readers of management sorely miss.