Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Who runs your company?

It took me a long time to recover from my catastrophic last (deleted) Blog :-).A lot has happened since then and a lot is happening right now.

Amidst all these happenings and non happenings there were a few things that i wanted to share.

One of them was the following......

Nandan Nilekani (Infy co founder and at present Chairman Unique Id project) was asked that when you leave Infosys what damage it will have on Infy.How will Infosys function without you?

Nandan--" Infosys is not a individual driven Company it's a values driven company and when something is value driven you need not worry about it's functioning."

At first it seemed like just another cliched management funda but slowly it got big on me.The more i thought about it the bigger it got and more i could relate it to our day to day life.

Analogy from day to day life is like parents try and teach there child some values which he should adhere in his life. A few fortunate parents can say with pride that "I don't need to worry about my child ,i know he'll do well".These are the ones who know there child is now values driven and not individual driven.

A child remains "individual driven" or "values driven" depends on a few metrics such as

Do we force our decision on our child or Do we let him think independently ?
Do we treat him as a nobody or Do we let him have a sense of ownership ?
Do we let him learn from his mistakes or Do we force our burden of expectations on him?

A company is also like a child , it needs the same values as we give our child.

Think of a values driven relation where you remain loyal even when your other half is not monitoring.

Think of a values driven classroom which sits quietly and does its work very very diligently even if the teacher is not there.(I know it would be very boring but still think of it :-))

Think of a values driven company where employees work honestly and with integrity even when your lead is not there.

It's a very simple concept to listen yet very complex to comprehend and even more difficult to execute.

Think about it and answer......

Who runs your company??
or more relevant.......

Who runs you ??