Rajat Gupta as ISB students knew him

"Karmanye adhikarastu maa faleshu kadaachan. Maa karma fala hethurbhur maa sangostva karmani."
(You have the right to work, but never to the fruits thereof. Not only should you do your very best, you have to do it with your best intention)

Each time he addressed students of Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, on the "work ethic", Rajat Gupta would end by quoting this verse from the Bhagavad Gita. Gupta, who was instrumental in setting up ISB, did this for ten years, from the founding of the school in 2001 until March 2011, when he quit the B-school's board.



Interestingly, when the Satyam scam broke in January 2009, ISB Dean M.R. Rao (at that time an independent director on the Satyam Computer board) resigned both from the Satyam board and as the Dean of ISB. Rajat Gupta, who was then the Chairman of the ISB board, gave a stirring speech to students graduating that year, sharing lessons from "my learning from a long journey". This is what he said to the Class of 2009, on April 4 that year:

First: "I was in your shoes roughly 35 years ago. And if I reflect on that time and I reflect on the early years… the first (lesson) was: you can learn from every experience and everything that you do. I remember when I came out of business school I said I must have the right job and the right experience and so on and so forth. I soon realised that if you have a learning mindset you will learn from everything and in fact you learn from unexpected things. And things that you thought would teach you a lot sometimes don't and vice versa. If you go with a learning mindset you will learn from pretty much everything that you do."

Second: "The second lesson that I learnt was that whatever you are doing, you should think a little bit outside its boundaries. Don't contain yourself to doing your job well or even excellently. That is, in fact, not fully sufficient. You have got to look outside the boundaries; you have got to look at what is good for the institution, beyond your immediate job and that is how you will learn a lot and develop your leadership capabilities."

Third: "The third interesting observation is to try to work with people but even more than that to try to make them successful. If you try to make others successful, they, in turn, will try to make you successful. No matter how brilliant you are, no matter how good you are, no matter how hard you work, if you rely only on yourself and believe you don't need the help of others, you are sadly mistaken. If you engage everybody around you by helping them, they will help you, in turn. And you will be more successful than you ever dreamed of."

Grim reminders of Gupta's illustrious past as he awaits sentencing on October 24.