TO EXCEL AT XLRI
An alumnus recounts his time at the B-school, how it changed him, shaped his ideology and made conversations on the ethics of how to do business personal, rather than purely intellectual
It was my first day at XLRI— Xavier School of Management in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. A scorcher of a day, the hot winds were making the windows rattle and bang, and sweat was streaming down my face. As our American professor, Father E.H. Mcgrath, addressed our classroom full of 36 students, not particularly bothered by the heat, I could only think: “where the hell am I and why?”
I had left my small, beautiful town of Pantnagar in the foothills of the Himalayas with its cool breeze and view of the mountains to pursue my ambition of doing an MBA (Master of Business Administration). Sitting in that classroom that day, I was regretting everything!
Just as I was dozing off, all hell broke loose. About 30 tribals had barged into the classroom, stabbed Father McGrath and were attacking the students in the front row.
I, brave as ever, dived under my chair and shut my eyes. I emerged only when a silence fell over the classroom. Father McGrath was standing and calmly telling us that what we had witnessed was a performance. He asked us, now wide awake, to write an account of what we had just seen. Each version was different. The exercise, he said, was meant to demonstrate why we should not believe everything we see in times of stress. My takeaway was a little different: if you want to say something important, say it in a way that people will never forget, the Father McGrath way! With that, my two-year journey at XLRI began.
Fast forward to the summer of 2005, I had just been given charge of transforming HCL Technologies and was standing in front of 2,000 employees in Chennai, fumbling for the right words to say about what lay ahead. Remembering Father McGrath’s lesson from 20 years ago, I put on some Bollywood music and started dancing. At first people thought I was crazy, but slowly everyone joined in. When the music stopped, the conversations began. That was the birth of the ‘Employees first, customer second’ idea that
energised HCL to outperform others in the industry over the next seven years.
Great institutions like XLRI don’t see themselves as being in the business of imparting knowledge, but of changing mindsets. That is because leaders of tomorrow who are unafraid to experiment, who stand firm on values and believe in bringing about a social change, are not created by teaching organisational theory. They are created through unique experiences co-created by freethinking teachers and open-minded friends. I am often asked, “Where the hell is XLRI?” My answer: It is in your mind! If India truly wishes to be a $5 trillion economy, it needs such valuedriven, disruptive thinkers, innovators and leaders.
The students and faculty at XLRI understand that while the Industrial age was about quality, process and efficiency, the digital age is about innovation, creativity and taking calculated risks to explore the unexplored. Any innovative or creative pursuit is based on the premise that you must do things that have not been done before or in ways never attempted before. This drove my first start-up, Comnet, launched a few years after graduating from XLRI. Freespirited thinking combined with a pursuit of a disruptive idea led to the creation of Remote Infrastructure Management, a multi-billion dollar success.
The country is in dire need of leaders with strong ethical and moral values. That a strong value system is the only way to build great institutions that outlast their leaders was a very important part of our conversations at XLRI. Ethics was discussed as a more personal, rather than a purely intellectual topic. This core value has come to my rescue during many turbulent times in my life.
During the 2008 recession, while layoffs were happening in every company, we at HCL, wanting to do right by our employees, announced the policy of “No
INDIA IS IN DIRE NEED OF LEADERS WITH STRONG ETHICAL AND MORAL VALUES. THAT HAVING A STRONG VALUE SYSTEM IS THE ONLY WAY TO BUILD GREAT INSTITUTIONS THAT OUTLAST THEIR LEADERS WAS A VERY IMPORTANT PART OF CONVERSATIONS AT XLRI
HCLITE left behind”. That decision, I believe, charged up the employees and HCL came out ahead even during the recession. People before profit or profit before people has never been a dilemma for me. XLRI taught us the power of profit with people.
An institution’s greatness, I feel, can be measured by the kind of leaders it creates, and India, in order to become a great nation, needs leaders who are socially responsible, are willing to give back to society, have the guts to give up their cushy jobs to bring about social transformation and are not afraid of taking a lesser-known path. I believe that the courage I mustered seven years ago to give up my luxurious life as a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company and begin a journey of social transformation through Sampark Foundation, an organisation dedicated to advancing the cause of primary education in India, was thanks to my time at XLRI. Since its founding, Sampark has helped seven million children in 76,000 rural schools. XLRI was an institute of the future in 1983 when I joined, and it is an institute of the future in 2019. ■