We are full of Ninjas, we need more rainmakers: Subroto Bagchi

Subroto Bagchi, MindTree's chairman, is the company's most visible face. He is not merely an entrepreneur, but also a thinker, and bestselling author of several books. Sitting in his cabin at MindTree's colourful headquarters off Mysore Road in Bangalore, with two black and white photographs of Saint Teresa on the wall behind him, he talks about his role as the "Gardener" of the company (as he has re-designated himself). He often jots down a few lines on a large pad with a fountain pen while making a point. At one moment during the interview with BT, he leans forward in his chair to murmur: "There is a desire to make MindTree a remarkable company." Edited excerpts from the interview:

Tell us about the initial idea behind MindTree and whether that idea is changing as the company grows.
Flash back to 1998. K.K. (CEO Krishnakumar Natarajan), Partha (N.S. Parthasarathy), Rostow (Rostow Ravanan) and I were the first foursome. We were in my apartment after work. We said there are three things worth doing. Build a company that will do aspirational work, build a company that will create shared wealth and third, build a company with a social conscience. The idea of MindTree continues to grow along those lines. Our work and inclusion taken together is the idea of MindTree. Will this idea change? We need to build a company which is future backward. We have a 2020 view of the industry and the possibilities within that, and then we pace ourselves organisation towards it. It may or may not look like the organisations of today. I think in our context the idea will have to be made more relevant, more sharply defined. What does it mean to be an aspirational company? What it was 10 years back, and what it will take to be seen as aspirational in 2020 are two different things. The view of MindTree was that it was a culture-led company. If there was a Fortune 500 prospect and we are in hot competition, and if that prospect visited any of our physical locations and listened to our people on the ground, 98 per cent, we would get the deal. When we ask the prospect why he gave MindTree the business, he would say, "Can't tell you specifically, but you came across as a different company." That is a soft difference, the difference is about culture. We came across as fair people, authentic people, what you see is what you get, trustworthy people. The MindTree we have to build for 2020 will have to be a company led by expertise and backed by culture. Not led by culture. People must come to us for expertise and stay with us for our culture. It is a very important transition.

MindTree is going through a rebranding exercise. How does this exercise fit in with the transition?
The reason for relooking at the brand is the following. Few people knew us in the world. Those who knew us thought that we are good people. It is a very introspective, comfortable, inward looking view. We need to shift to a situation where lot more people know us. Most of the people who are important and relevant to the future don't know us. In India, we have reputational capital and probably more people know us. But we should not kid ourselves about that being the global reality. When you talk about people, it is not just about customers. It is about future employees.  We need to relook at the relevance of the brand from the point of view of the customer of 2020 and the employee of 2020, not restricted to India but looking at it from the prospect of markets in which we seek business and seek people. The other thing is that 13 years is a long time for a brand to stay put where it was. If you are looking at a brand that is good today, you are dead. If in 2020, MindTree is part of the consideration set of a future large deal prospect and a fresh graduate coming out of college, then it is a good brand.

When MindTree was celebrating a decade of existence, you said that the first 10 years belonged to the founders and the next 10 to the non-founders. Tell us about your succession planning.
That's the philosophy. It doesn't have to be part of the succession plan. It is a philosophy that one absolutely stands by. It is not a question of who will replace me or K.K. It is a question of who are the top 10 to 15 people. If you look at the top 10 people who contribute to strategy and decision making, are they in-bred or do we have the right diversity? If you look at the inclusion of people like Greg (Greg Blount, head of large deals), Ravi Shankar (People Function head), George (George Zacharias, head of strategy), these are not internally bred people. We have a great management team but the question is do we stand out as a diverse team? The answer is no. I want diversity of age and experience. The first item on the agenda was to do it at the board level. That's how I convinced Pankaj (Pankaj Chandra, director of IIM Bangalore) to join. Pankaj is not on the board of any other company. I wanted an academic because if you want to be expertise-led as seen by those two constituencies, then you need somebody who bridges both worlds. He is a manufacturing expert and manufacturing is a big deal for us.

Secondly, he has connections to the academic world.  Similarly, we wanted to bring in people who were excellent in right brain and left brain thinking. You have somebody like Ramesh Ramanathan coming in. We began at a board level but we are now pushing it down at a CXO level. When I said that the decade ahead will see the non-founders play an equally important role that is the crux of it. It is not who will take over from K.K. and me. Fortunately, both of us are 55 and the retirement age is 60. All executives must step out at 60. We have five years to take the company to the next level.

Beyond the nine founders, do you have enough depth in your leadership to take the company forward?
Of course. There is a very deep leadership funnel and that is what I was working on for the last three to four years as the 'Gardener' of the company. There are 111 people in that funnel. A year back, we brought in Korn/Ferry, one of the top three leadership assessment companies in the world. It put all of us, including K.K. and me, through formal leadership assessment. The exercise identified what would it take to lead this company to the future in a structured sense. We identified four attributes. We said a leader must have a primary capability in one of the four and a secondary capability in another. If a person is not showing up in any of those four, then that person cannot lead this company. The four attributes were Rainmaking, Thought leadership, Coach and a Ninja.  A rainmaker is a guy who creates something out of nothing. Thought leaders are able to anticipate tomorrow. The third is Coach, where you are not the best guy but help build the best guy. Ninja is a guy who is a dream follower, highly dependable on execution.  I know exactly where the 111 executives are vis-a vis these four attributes. The current personality of the company is that we are full of Ninjas. We have some coaches and also thought leaders. But we need a lot more rainmakers.

We see the abstracted personality of the company as what is called 'complex creative' - highly intellectual people, highly creative, they love to deal with complexities. These are the people who will create the UID platform for you while the rest of the industry laughs all the way to the bank doing far less complex work. When you have a complex creative organisation, we will have to build into top management a higher degree of action orientation. Our job would be to do three to four things.  Now that we know who is where, our job is not to work in a start-up mode where everybody does everything. Our objective would be to have this square peg in this square hole. Where there is some mismatch, our job would be to do rotations. Where there are some gaping holes, our job would be to bring in diversity. So the pipeline is very strong. If we have to start a company all over again, I have all the people I need internally.

I remember you telling me an organization should not have more than two generations of people separating the bottom of the pyramid from the top. What about bringing down the average age of your company?
Currently in many IT companies, there are three generations at work. We will have to push it further down, no questions about that. If you look at the average age of the 111 people, they would be in their late 30s, early 40s. These are people who have 20 years ahead of them.   

Can you compare MindTree in terms of organisational maturity versus your peers when they were at a similar revenue or age level?  
We will look nicer than them - if you look at a TCS, Wipro and Infosys at 13. If you look back at their 13th year and us, you will give us full marks but it is also misleading. I personally believe that we walk in the shadow of giants. These are non-trivial companies. Let's not forget that today, what it means to be Indian is defined by these companies. One must be very respectful towards them.  But we have done well. Thirteen straight years of growth, good management pipeline, aspiration for the future, good work behind us. But we shouldn't get carried away and realise that the future may call for a very different application of mind.  We should not get into the trap of false comparison.