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Tiger Tyagarajan to take over as Genpact CEO in June

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: Tiger, tiger, burning bright - these are lines from poet William Blake who wrote the short poem ‘The Tiger’, one of my favorites as a child.

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The recent announcement that Tiger Tyagarajan would be taking over as Genpact’s CEO brought this poem back to my mind, partly because of the name and partly because of the revered nature of the character. Tiger’s appointment is a thumbs up for Genpact.

Also Read: Pramod Bhasin steps down as Genpact CEO 

Just a few hours back, I listened to an enrapturing keynote by Michael Eisner, the former CEO of Walt Disney, at SAP Sapphire Now event at Orlando. The keynote dwelt on the value of successful partnerships in business; partnerships not between organizations, but between two senior leaders in an enterprise.

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Like the Warren Buffett- Charles Munger variety or closer home, the Kalyanji-Anandji types. Eisner has even written a book on it- Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Succeed (2010)

According to Eisner, such partnerships are built on extreme compatibility, trust, and complementarity between two people.

Pramod Bhasin-Tiger Tyagarajan is one example of such great partnership. Yesterday Pramod Bhasin, the man credited to creating one of the finest BPO companies and fathering the BPO revolution in India, announced that he was passing over the baton to VN Tiger Tyagarajan next month.

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While Pramod’s move came as a surprise, it was always known that Tiger would succeed him, unless Tiger would have left to head some other organization.

Tiger carries a fantastic reputation and boasts a successful track record at Genpact. He was Genpact’s public face outside the country, especially in the US and Europe. He has intimate relationships with clients and this would help him in the new role.

Tiger is a demon at sales and marketing; he was Genpact’s rainmaker who signed on big ticket clients. Tiger has also ably demonstrated his ability to manage global operations and is perceived to be closer to Genpact’s global delivery centers than Pramod is. Here again the face of Tiger would help him in his CEO role.

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Pramod built Genpact into an envied BPO company, hence the expectations from Genpact are huge. This is the basic challenge for Tiger: how should he transform Genpact into the next orbit? If Pramod scaled up Genpact to a $ 1 B plus, Tiger should be able to increase the momentum of growth towards the next several billion dollars.

Given that the very nature of BPO industry is changing from one being a manpower-driven process cranking job to one that is more integrated with technology and coded process IP, Tiger’s job is to vault Genpact into sizeable leaps in this area. The journey was begun well by Pramod, but Tiger has to charter the plane at the right speed and altitude.

It is good that Genpact didn’t have to seek a CEO from outside. That would have disturbed the DNA of the organization and the path that it has already been set upon. Now Tiger needs to ensure that the continuity is maintained.

Genpact has a strong set of leaders in the second and third layers, but it is important to groom a select few for the top job when it comes up. Or following Eisner’s advice, Tiger can now choose his right partner.

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