Team builder

He started his career selling engineering equipment, excavators and cranes. Today, Karthik Sarma is the Chief People Officer of WNS—a talent scout and organisational catalyst.

"My aim is to be able to deliver superior organisational performance through organisation design, team construction and creating cultures," says Sarma. An energetic and jovial individual even at work, Sarma is very clear that his team should be better than him. With the entry of Sarma into WNS, the HR function has reinvented itself. Apart from a whole lot of changes, Sarma has also brought in technology to enable accuracy, speed and efficiency.

Sarma says the toughest challenge is to be able to enable people to do their best in their organisation. Remembering what one of his senior colleagues once told him at Infosys, he says: "If you focus on the person's strengths, the strengths will double."

From then on, Sarma says he has consciously tried to work hard to find out what is it that one can do to enable people within the company to do their best and continuously keep doing the same.

Karthik N. Sarma, 40, Chief People Officer, WNS

• EDUCATION: BE, MBA (XLRI).
• EXPERIENCE: ICI India, Infosys.
• 'AHA' MOMENT: The HR department coming out with flying colours at an annual business review without his presence.
• MANAGEMENT STYLE: Like to work in the background and enable the team to succeed.