Nurturing leaders: Mentor-in-chief N.R. Narayana Murthy addressing Infoscions

Hang on, doesn't Infosys already have a 'campus' in Bangalore? So what's this? And in Mysore, of all places-a Karnataka town known more for its thread-looped chests than internet-looped guests.

Bangalore is where computer software is crunched out. This is for business brainware. Give it a few years, and this 225-acre patch of greenery in Mysore's Hebbal Electronics City, also called the Infosys Leadership Institute (ILI), could transform the town's image beyond all recognition. As for transformation agents, you won't get anything better than a company that's gone from Rs 5 crore to over Rs 3,400 crore, and from 200 people to some 15,000-in just over a decade.

Explosive stuff. "The company is experiencing phenomenal growth," reasons Nandan Mohan Nilekani, CEO, Infosys Technologies. "We need to create and nurture a large number of high-quality leaders with a global perspective, and it has to be done in a systematic manner." True to form, Infosys is tackling the challenge in an algorithmic manner-through the creation of a virtual system "that aims to deliver leadership development to all corners of the globe where Infoscions are working", in the words of its mentor-in-chief N.R. Narayana Murthy.

In a sense, ILI is Mission Control. And the actual business 'mission', in accordance with its 'Infy Plus' vision, is to chase the big dollars at the upper-end of the global business services market (See Infosys 2.0, BT, September 1, 2002). This requires Infosys to metamorphose itself from a company of code jocks, creating software, into a company of business consultants, helping clients deploy technology to meet strategic goals.

Company As Campus

To understand how any of that will happen, meet Gramma Kasturi Jayaram, Director, ILI. "The meta issue, in the Infy Plus context, is that Infosys needs a more rigorous model of leadership development," says the man who has been handed the task of taking the company's DNA apart and recombining it to go beyond all those 0s and 1s...far beyond, into strategic leadership.

Infosys' basic success mantras, be assured, will remain intact. "Success is not by mere chance, it is a conscious choice. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit," adumbrates Jayaram, an IIM-A Gold Medallist. At 62, the genial prof has spanned a career of academia and consultancy, with stints at Arthur D. Little, Coopers & Lybrand, Stanford and UCLA. Less known is his link with Wipro, which owes him one for setting up its first unit in America, Xiton Inc, under the aegis of his own outfit, Gramma Inc.

Awesome credentials indeed. But the challenge is no less daunting. After all, Infosys wants to compete with the likes of IBM and Accenture. In the old days, lots of Infoscions had access to Narayana Murthy, Nilekani and others, and the rub-off was instant. Today's Infosys has thousands of employees, of 37 different nationalities, and operates from 30 locations across the world. The best the company can do is identify 400 people, whisk them off periodically to ILI for two-to-three day workshops.

Broadly, ILI operates on a structure that slots the NextGen leaders into three tiers. Heads of business units and business-enabling functions (45 in all) have the privilege of direct mentorship by Infosys gurus. "The intention is to distil wisdom and ensure transfer of knowledge and skills," says Hema Ravichander, Vice President, hr, Infosys. Tier I, in turn, must mentor the next tier (some 90 people), the folk who could graduate to Tier I in three-to-five years. The 270 people in Tier III are the young potentials, under Tier II guidance.

Business As Curriculum

So, what's on offer? A series of workshops. The themes? Narayana Murthy's very first session (in his favourite Nehru room in November 2001), for example, focused on 'Leadership and the future of Infosys'. Nilekani undertook a 'Strategy' workshop. The coo Kris Gopalkrishnan handled 'Thought leadership and technology'; Chief of customer delivery, S.D. Shibulal, took 'Management of change'; and the HRD Chief, K. Dinesh, 'Systemic process learning'.

Sounds like any B-school curriculum. But it's not. The mentorship, remember, is being done by leaders at the world's cutting edge, in live-wire touch with their clients' imperatives. That's as close as it gets to the hurly-burly of real-time business dynamics.

ILD Director Gramma Kasturi: Addressing business risk

The eventual vision, though, is to create an institution that could survive Infosys. That involves the crafting of timeless leadership principles. After all, the binary nature of basic yes/no decision-making is likely to hold good, regardless of the increasing complexity of the context.

Jayaram already has reason to be proud. Michael Lee-Chin, CEO of Canada's AIC Group, was so impressed on his visit to ILI, that he sought help in integrating a bank his group had bought in Jamaica. "We agreed reluctantly," says Jayaram, "as we do not have the bandwidth at ILI currently to share with external customers. The one assignment alone helped cover our budget, as our charges were $500 per hour. In that sense, ILI can stand on its own." Indeed.

ILI has a Rs 4.8-crore budget from Infosys for the year, but Jayaram is pondering the option of turning it into a profit centre. Revenue diversification. Or 'de-risking'. "Leadership development should be done to address business risk," says Jayaram, "especially in terms of succession planning and having a holistic outlook.''

Yet, Tier I candidates might have quite a wait for the top job. Nilekani is barely 47. As for the holistic outlook, the very establishment of ILI is a clear sign that Infosys will have it no other way.