Introduction:
N. R. Narayana Murthy is an Indian industrialist, software engineer by profession and one of the seven founders of Infosys Technologies. He is serving as a non-executive Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys. He remained on the post of CEO of the company for 21 years, from year 1981 to 2002. Mr. Murthy was born in India on 20 August 1946. He is an Electrical Engineering graduate from the National Institute of Engineering and achieved his masters degree from IIT Kanpur in the year 1969
N.R. Narayana Murthy initially worked as a Chief Systems Programmer with IIM Ahmadabad; He had lot of job offers from companies like ECIL, HMT, Air India and Telco. Later he joined Patni Computers. In year 1981 he laid the foundational stone of Infosys along with his 6 other colleagues. Infosys is global technology firm that describe, depict and deliver IT accredit business solution to its clients or customers. From the year 1992 to 1994 he served as the president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies, India
He has received numerous awards and honors in his professional life. He is one among few who has guided India to emerge as a super power in the domain of IT.
SECTION – I
Overview
Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy better known as N. R. Narayana Murthy, is one of the top Indian industrialist, software engineer and one among the seven founders of Infosys Technologies Limited. Infosys was founded in the year 1981. Infosys is a global consulting and IT services company situated in Bangalore, India and is acknowledged as one of the reckon IT Company situated in India. He is currently Chief Mentor and the non-executive Chairman of Infosys. He remained as the CEO of the company for 21 years, beginning from the year 1981 to 2002. After resigning from the post of CEO in 2002, Mr. Murthy enlarged his scope of activities not only to social services but also for promoting India globally.
Mr. Murthy is not only well known for setting up the biggest IT Empire in India but also known for his greatest quality that is his simplicity. Whenever a dignitary visit India, never forget to tour Infosys campus. The case ‘Narayana Murthy and Infosys’
states the characteristics of how Narayana Murthy, build up India’s driving software company – Infosys. He is a person who turned a small development venture that he compelled with his 6 other colleagues in 1981, into one of the top most leading companies of the country. In 1990’s market for Infosys grew rapidly.
Mr. Murthy linked, outlined and applied the Global Delivery Model which emerged as a disruptive force in the industry encouraging to the rise of offshore outsourcing and accomplished SEI-CMMI Level 5 certification for offshore and onsite operations. 25 years ago, India had hardly any eminence in domains of Information technology and outsourcing. Long time before Indian government pursued a closed type of economic policy and dampen IT sector. Among one of the pioneers in India, N R Narayana Murthy was the one who guided and shaped India to become an IT super power. He is an IT advisor to several Asian countries and initiated key corporate governance in India. NR Narayana Murthy took Infosys to new heights.
Contribution to organization and industry
Murthy believes that even though there is a huge competitors and competition in the market, one should think of becoming unique in the competitive market and making sure that you are the first mover. Understand the need of the customer and revert them with more than they expect, so that they believe more value is given to them than any other company in the market. Stakeholders should believe you are more and more valuable to them rather than the competitors in the market.
Giving value to customer is what Mr. Murthy believes. Transparency in working and being fair to people are the personal code of conducts that should be adopted in working culture. NR Narayana Murthy express that “Growth comes from repeat business, repeat business comes from relationships, and relationships with customers are built on trust and trust is built by delivering quality products”.
Mr. Murthy thinks, to befit in the marketplace, all you need is to work hard. For 67,500 people in Infosys to attune voluntarily to enact to hard work, they should have trust on the leader. According to Murthy’s vision, to be a leader, leader has to have followers. That is why NR Narayana Murthy conform to his controversial decision on CEO’s payroll being allied to company’s earnings. For building up the trust of employees towards leader, the leadership of the company has to administer itself in a manner that embellishes trust.
It was Narayana Murthy business strategy in which the company’s profit is distributed among the employees through a stock-option program called as ESOP (Employee stock option plan) and the best corporate governance practices were taken over. This bought lot of admiration and respect for Mr. Narayana Murthy. Infosys became the first Indian company to get placed in the American stock exchange "NASDAQ" (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) in the year 1999 [http://www.infosys.com/about/who-we-are/Pages/index.aspx
Mr. Murthy undertook ESOP as medium for retaining the company employee’s talent, but it made ways for “democratization of wealth”. This was a risk, much in the great gain, but it paid off in real terms indeed and Infosys got benchmarked in corporate world globally.
A Leadership Institute in Mysore, India was setup by Mr. Narayana Murthy to succeed in achieving future growth of Infosys. The main objective of the institute was to train the Infosys employees and develop interpersonal skills so as to counter the complexities of hastily marketplace and to bring revolution in the working culture by inheriting impressive leadership qualities. Mr. Murthy commenting on the institute says that his vision is to create world-class leaders which will be at forefront of competitive business and technology in today’s cutthroat market
Murthy’s leadership devlopment method adopted in his Training center.
SECTION II
Narayana Murthy on Infosys Value System and Social vision
Infosys is a company which is being powered by intellect and driven by values. In Infosys size, revenue and profits were never dreamt. There was only one dream that existed since day one; that was of building corporation above all things. Narayana Murthy inherited Transformational Leadership quality in which leader and its follower boost each other to higher altitude of morality and motivation.
From beginning, their company was one of a kind where commitment is considered as a strong value system. Mr. Narayana Murthy always believed in putting organizations interest ahead rather than own interest. He always believed in executing legal and ethical business in company. According to him a leader should endorse to a value system, which design the protocol for conduct and behavior that embellish the commitment, confidence, enthusiasm and joy of other in the community
A long term player gets differentiated from others only by having a sound Value system. Putting the corporation’s interest ahead of our own personal interest will help to pursue personal goals in the long term.
From Murthy’s point of view no individual is indispensable. It is necessary that that you give challenging arrangements to well deserving people, whether they are adolescent or new in the organization. Youth and empowerment are the two important key aspects to scalability and longevity.
He express that being co-operative to a value system builds a great atmosphere for the people so as to have high aspirations, persuasion in fundamental values , self satisfactions, confidence in the future and the zeal necessary to undertake ostensibly difficult tasks. Mr. Murthy’s outlook says that a leader has to walk the talk and show evince of their pledge towards the value system.
According to his perspective, even under the most diminishing external pressures, a dedication towards values and ethics should always be the directing principle of any company, and that should be considered above profit and the need for growth.
Mr. Narayana Murthy is a man who "prefers action any time". Murthy has constantly gone out with trouble considering his firm adherence towards value systems which he never adjusts on. Recently he has been entitled with "angry, young man" accompanying his controversy with Mr. Deve Gowda the former Prime Minister of India over the Bangalore’s International Airport project. He is strongly committed towards the cause of education. But he is strictly not in the favor of job reservations for the people in private sector and explores that to get a job, caste should not be consider as a criteria.
Narayana Murthy’s Views
Narayana Murthy says that sacrifices and hard work are qualities that Leaders have to prove in their belief. Such manner of conducting will drool the employees to make great sacrifices. This will pursue to achieve the team’s determination, guide leaders to become credible, and create trust in their theories.
Narayana Murthy spoke on enhancing trust, that if there is an excellence on transparency then only trust and confidence exists. He believes that a healthy working atmosphere should be created by the leader as it helps a person to unveil his or her mistakes and undertake methods to improve. Investor gives admiration to such organizations. Investors are aware that there will be up’s and down’s in the business. What investors expect from the company is to level with them at all extent. On proactive basis investors need you to disclose the bad news. But Mr. Narayana Murthy at Infosys always followed the philosophy
‘When in doubt, disclose.’ [Indian Express 2003]
Mr. Murthy the real communist always believed in sharing his wealth with his colleagues. From his perspective good corporate governance is about enlarging value of shareholder viable basis while ensuring rightfulness among all the stakeholders: vendor-partners, venture capitalist, customers, employees, society and government.
A triumphant organization had to undergo over numerous downturns, where the optimum index of success reflects the organizations longevity. This is predicated on maintaining the finest altitudes of corporate governance.
Even before the law mandated transparency and disclosure standards in the organization, Mr. Narayana Murthy in Infosys consistently adopted the stringent of all these standards. Infosys suffered losses in secondary market in the year 1995. This information was published in the Annual report of Infosys. But according to the Indian GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles), it was not required to make this information widespread.
It was Mr. Murthy’s vision not to venture into dotcom domain even though Infosys had so many talented professionals. This proved to be the success factor during the period of Dotcom downfall. The business at Infosys was not much affected by the downfall of Dotcom. Narayana Murthy along with his 6 colleagues vision to establish first Indian software company which followed the democratic principle which was: for the professionals, of the professionals, by the professionals, and because of Murthy’s this farsightedness Infosys benchmarked globally and proved to be a vanquisher
SECTION – III
Advice:
Since from establishment of Infosys, Narayana Murthy aimed the most challenging market of the world; the US market. There were two reasons for him to choose it, first in India there was no market for software companies and secondly he believed that software companies in India should focus on exporting products in which they had a better competitive advantage. According to my research Infosys generates majority of its revenue in terms of dollar. Any inflation in dollar will prove beneficial for Infosys from recuperating its margin. Somehow the loss incurred in any value of US dollar will make Infosys vulnerable to loss. This will exists for the reason that if dollar depreciates against Indian currency rupee (or vice versa rupee appreciates in oppose to dollar), Infosys will gain lesser rupee earned per dollar, which in turn will influence the Infosys margin. Considering on an average, every 1 percent rise in value of the rupee against dollar causes shrinkage of margin by 30 to 40 basis point.
Mr. Murthy should focus on scalability of Infosys as a software service company so as to achieve scalability in quality and productivity, scalability in developing more and more clients worldwide and also focus on scalability of training as “learn ability “are the key components for Infosys and should grow its clients or customers based in countries like India and china, because in these countries the impact of rupee on foreign exchange is negligent.
Mr. Narayana Murthy should enhance his visionary leadership towards R&D. As per my research Infosys is one Indian company who spend very little in the sector of R &D. The figure indicates expenditures on R&D in 2009 in India by IT companies
In Infosys Mr. Murthy believe in developing Democratic leaders which follow the principle of; by the professional, for the professional and of the professional, but from my perspective a leader should also have Autocratic leadership in them. When a leader is in democracy he/she has to undergo trade off. Number of people participates which have different opinions and then it’s the duty of the leader to come out with a general agreement. Democratic leader authorize the team to contribute input before making decision even though the degree of input can differ from leader to leader. This becomes difficult to manage when there are lot of different opinion and ideas. By practicing autocratic leadership where decision of team is not consider, proves to be beneficial in case where decisions are genuinely to be taken instantly and when there is no need of the input and team agreement for a successful outcome
Considering Infosys as a giant in IT sector , I believe they should start developing many software products in India rather than just having glorifying BPOs in the country.
Narayana Murthy gave a speech on late sitting of employees in office stating that “IT’S A TYPICAL INDIAN MENTALITY THAT WORKING FOR LONG HOURS MEANS VERY HARD WORKING & 100% COMMITMENT ETC.
PEOPLE WHO REGULARLY SIT LATE IN THE OFFICE DON’T KNOW TO MANAGE THEIR TIME. SIMPLE!”
I would suggest that there should not be any restriction for an employee to work in the office. Such restrictive working atmosphere permits very little freedom for the employees to work. I think that the real convivial of working in a technology industry is to provide one a freedom to acquire more knowledge, change career in middle way, switch your profession midway, get into recent area and attain as much knowledge he/she can along the way. Innovational leadership should be practiced, so that engineers working in Infosys do not have to work in the same sectors, execute same job and continue to handle same clients for years and years. An employee cannot give 100% of them in such an environment, which indirectly hampers the attitude and productivity towards the company. Employee satisfaction should be a prime concern to company.
As Chairman of renowned Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad(IIM-A) Mr. Murthy expressed his thoughts on the Human Resource Development Ministry’s action to reduce admission fee as well as the move to decline permission to the institute for setting up of global campus as well as increasing more IIM campuses in India. In both cases, the HRD ministers had to concede to Murthy after public spats. I personally think that by increasing admission fees of IIM’s (Indian Institute of Management) as suggested by Mr. Narayana Murthy was certainly not favorable , since these issues are moreover controlled by government HR ministers. And if we talk about fees of any IIM’s then it is already quite high and is in the range of 8 lakh to 9 lakh Rupees, which is approximately equal to 12000 to 14000 Euros for two years. (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata-/From-this-year-IIM-C-fees-will-be-Rs-9-lakh/articleshow/4164391.cms).
I think students whose average family income in less than Rupees 2 to 3 lakhs and have the indubitable talent to get selected on the campuses of any one IIM’s out of six will not be able to afford such huge expenses. Even though IIM will assist students to get scholarships and loans, but the Indian Government HR decision on fees cut was right decision which definitely changed due to Mr. Murthy’s voice.
Many a times Mr. Murthy’s trait of plain-speak and honesty has landed him in many wrangles with political leaders. While the political leaders insist that Mr. Murthy was eyeing India’s presidential nomination, he has repeated many times that he has no interest in politics. But on the contrary I would like to take an opportunity advice him that he must give a thought on this as he is one of the most suitable and prominent candidate for this honor. He can develop his political interest so that one day he can really change a picture of India from so called developing country to ‘Developed Country’. I think he has immense talent not just in IT sector but other non-technological aspects as well. And at this stage of his career where he just assists Infosys as a chief Mentor, he can his valuable time to politics as well which will definitely add to India’s progress in future.