People at Work & Play

We were chatting about what’s happening in the Indian IT industry when some one showed us a recent headline. It said that one of India’s leading IT organizations, TCS, has asked 500 people to leave.

Many issues came up. The recent plunge in the Sensex. Talk of an imminent recession in the US. The news that recently IBM had sacked 700 fresh employees in India. Falling profit levels. Tighter budgets. More difficulty in attracting ( and paying for) best talent etc etc.

Listen, the IBM and the TCS cases are different. Firstly, TCS has fired 500 people for poor performance. They were relatively at the bottom of the pile following the performance review process. Secondly, they aren’t a relatively small company which has fired 500 out of 1000 people. These 500 constitute 0.5 % of their huge ( and growing) employee strength of 1,08,000 people worldwide.

Things have got compounded because recently TCS announced a 1.5 % reduction in employees pay since as an organization, they fell short of their Economic Value Add target.

In the mean time, and there probably is no connection whatsoever because I think he did a great job in TCS, “Paddy” Padmanabhan, Global Head for HR moves to Tata Power as the Executive Director, Operations. His replacement in TCS as Global Head of HR : Ajoyendra Mukherjee, VP and Head of Operations for the Eastern Region.

The Economic Times carries an interesting interview with Samuel A. DiPiazza Jr, who has been with PriceWaterhouseCoopers for the last 34 years and been CEO since 2002.

Mr. DiPiazza spoke of the challenges faced by organizations in developing countries as they seek to be more global. For firms like his, the fast growing developing economies like India and China represent a high growth segment as compared to the developed countries.

Says Mr. DiPiazza “The developed world is slowing down. But the developing world is accelerating. So there is movement of capital, movement of business. It is clear and irreversible”.

What Mr. DiPiazza had to say about inclusive growth was very telling. He said :” Business cannot succeed in a society that fails. When we say sustainable it means business is not going to live for a year but decades. Responsible businesses have to be committed, not just around the environment but education and health. Its not about charity. It’s about building businesses that get strategic advantage by making sustainable communities. “

He concluded by saying that responsible companies around the world support regulation and compliance, voluntary and imposed, to take business to a more responsible level, otherwise societies will not succeed.

One naturally wishes to see what PWC itself does. Have a look at their section on Corporate Social Responsibility.

Kris Gopalakrishnan had to pay a fine of Rs. 500000 recently says the Economic Times. Infosys informed the US SEC that their CEO had inadvertently failed to notify the company within one business day of the fact that he had inherited 12,800 equity shares of the company following the demise of his mother. According to Infosys, this amounted to a violation of its insider trading rules.

Mr. Gopalakrishnan was directed to pay the fine amount to a charitable organization of his choice.    
Acts like these re-inforce the very high reputation Infosys enjoys in corporate circles. An example of living by their values.

The values of Infosys ( and I quote from their website)

• We believe that the softest pillow is a clear conscience. The values that drive us underscore our commitment to:
• Customer Delight: To surpass customer expectations consistently
• Leadership by Example: To set standards in our business and transactions and be an exemplar for the industry and ourselves
• Integrity and Transparency: To be ethical, sincere and open in all our transactions
• Fairness: To be objective and transaction-oriented, and thereby earn trust and respect
• Pursuit of Excellence: To strive relentlessly, constantly improve ourselves, our teams, our services and products to become the best

Not just articulating values but living by them embodies excellent organizations like Infosys.

Read an interesting article about an innovative practice in Texas Instuments which seems to be working well. The Technical track. For decades, Texas Instruments has been a world wide leader in the dynamic world of semiconductors. Way back in 1985, it commenced operations in Bangalore, India becoming the first multinational to set up an R&D facility here. With superior technology, products and a skilled and motivated workforce, Texas Instruments continues to augment its position worldwide and in India.

At every technology company, those in the technical role — engineers, science graduates and doctorates — have to make a difficult choice at some point in their careers. Should they stay focused on technology or should they move into a managerial role?

A managerial role means more opportunities, both within and outside the company, faster promotions and better remuneration.

One company, Texas Instruments (TI), winner of the Great Place to Work survey in 2003 and 2004, seems to have found a solution to solve this dilemma.

Through a tool called the Technical Ladder, TI provides a parallel growth track for its engineers who get recognised for their technical contributions and receive mentoring and support to grow into technical leadership roles. TI’s technical ladder is not unique, others like Bell Labs, Intel and IBM offer similar career progressions, but it is the best implemented. In the last 3 years, over 70 per cent of 200 patents filed from TI India have been contributed by people on the tech ladder.

The article speaks of the advantages of such a technical career option but points out that it is no easy path either. The onus of constantly learning, developing and staying on top of frequently changing technology trends is very much a challenge.

A must read for techies.

The much hyped Rs. 100,000 car is finally here. The Tata Nano was formally launched at the Auto Expo today by Mr. Ratan Tata, Chairman of the Tata Group. It is a big day for Tata Motors - for nowhere else in the world, is such a vehicle being launched at such a price point.

The car is smaller than a Maruti from Suzuki, but has 21 per cent more volume or space inside than the Maruti 800. The dealer price of the car will be Rs 1 lakh, ( Rs. 100000* plus value-added tax (VAT) plus transport charges. It is to Tata’s credit that they kept up to their word. As Mr. Tata said in his speech ” A promise is a promise”.

The car will have a 624-cc petrol engine generating 33 bhp of power. It will sport a 30-litre fuel tank and 4-speed manual gearshift. The car will come with air conditioning, but will have no power steering. It will have front disk and rear drum brakes. The company claims mileage of 23 km per litre.

The Nano is expected to be commercially launched in the second half of 2008.

I am sure this car will have tremendous demand in India when it is launched. It is akin to the first Maruti launch in 1983.

Have a look at the new site for the car: Tata Motors People’s car.

IBM rides on a current rate of growth of  39 % and expects revenues from its India operations to reach $ 1 billion by the end of December 2007.

IBM’s Vice-President (Financial Management) Jesse Green said that revenues are expected to grow from $ 700 million in 2006. Growth of over 39 % has been reported in the first three quarters of the current fiscal year.

The $ 1 billion figure would include revenues from services and solutions provided by IBM to its domestic customers and other global corporates operating in India. The figure includes revenues from IBM Daksh, its business process outsourcing unit.

IBM has over 50,000 employees in India, making it one of the biggest centers for the company’s human capital.

Subroto Bagchi, COO of MindTree Consulting is to my mind an example of today’s successful executive.

He is the author of “The High Performance Entreprenuer” . This book has excellent and highly practical insights to offer to those who wish to pursue the entrepreneurial path.

Today’s newspapers carry the announcement of his assuming a new position and- almost definitely an unique title -within MindTree , that of “Gardener”.

In the old days, we used to say of those who were good with people development that they had “‘green fingers”. An analogy from gardening where some have the knack of making plants bloom in almost any circumstance.

Knowing Subroto as I do, I am sure this investment being made by MindTree (and it is a big investment, make no mistake about that) will pay off manifold.

He is excellent with people - be they employees or customers and that makes him one of the best leaders I have come across.

Google, the Internet company with a seemingly limitless source of revenue, plans to get into the business of finding limitless sources of energy.

The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., announced Tuesday that it intended to develop and help stimulate the creation of renewable energy technologies that are cheaper than coal-generated power.

Google said it would spend hundreds of millions of dollars, part of that to hire engineers and energy experts to investigate alternative energies like solar, geothermal and wind power. The effort is aimed at reducing Google’s own mounting energy costs to run its vast data centers, while also fighting climate change and helping to reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.

The company also said that Google.org, the philanthropic for-profit subsidiary that Google seeded in 2004 with three million shares of its stock, would invest in energy start-ups.

Google says its goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy — enough to power the city of San Francisco — more cheaply than coal-generated electricity. The company predicted that this can be accomplished in “years, not decades.”

Idealism is hardly new at Google. In their Letter From the Founders before the company’s 2004 initial public stock offering, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin wrote: “Our goal is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. In pursuing this goal, we may do things that we believe have a positive impact on the world, even if the near-term financial returns are not obvious.”

Amongst many other grants made by Google.org. ,beneficiaries include:-

• Acumen Fund: $ 5,200,000 to support Acumen’s entrepreneurial approaches to address global poverty and services for the poor
• PlanetRead: $345,000 to support Same Language Subtitling (SLS) programs in India.
• Seva Fund: $2,000,000 to support programs to prevent blindness and restore eyesight in India, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Tanzania and Guatemala

A recent story that caught my attention , as I am sure, it did of many, many people was that of Lakshmana Kailas. This Bangalore based techie who works for HCL had to spend 50 days in jail because of mistaken identity.

The supreme irony was that two days after he returned to Bangalore, Airtel - the company responsible for the blunder -got in touch. But it wasn’t about the arrest. They sent him a text message reminding him to pay his bill. The text message was followed up by a visit from a collection agent. “I told them it’s all because of you that I haven’t paid,’’ says Lakshmana. “We can’t pay bills from jail.”

Shocking to say the least. Don’t large companies like Airtel have a sense of responsibility? Nothing they do can wash away the hardship and humiliation he faced.

Cisco unveiled its state-of-the-art Globalisation Centre East campus in Bangalore on October 31. The opening ceremony was presided over by former Indian President Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and John Chambers, Cisco chairman and CEO.

The Company announced that it is extending venture investment initiative in India by another $100 million to drive growth with high-potential Indian companies This is consistent with Cisco’s long track record of driving growth in the information technology market through investment in the innovation economy. In 2005, Cisco designated an initial $100 million in venture funding for this purpose as part of its overall $1.1bn investment plan for India.

Said Wim Elfrink, chief globalisation officer for Cisco. “India is at the heart of our globalisation vision and provides a platform for Cisco to capitalise on the growth potential and lead market transitions in the emerging world. The commitment we are making to truly globalise our business is reflective of the changing business models of our customers and partners. We will develop products and services here that will fully support the goal of services-led solutions-oriented models for customers in this part of the world”.

At the event, Cisco TelePresence was used to project full life-size images of Cisco executives in California onto the stage in Bangalore, as if they were there in person. The demonstration of an on-stage Cisco TelePresence experience integrated a next-generation display technology with Cisco TelePresence technology.

The Bangalore opening ceremony was also the first time Cisco TelePresence and the Cisco Digital Media System were used to publicly broadcast live content to desktop users via the Cisco Video Portal and participants on campus viewing Cisco Digital Signage. As part of the event, Cisco also demonstrated Cisco TelePresence interoperability with existing video conferencing equipment.