What matters most, the company or leader?

BANGALORE, INDIA: There are certain questions that are tough to answer. And there are some questions that are tough to crack too, logically. The question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”, becomes a philosophical maze not because of its absurdity but because it is a question on the linearity of time.

In a similar manner, the question as to “ What matters most, the company or the leader?” too, leads us to the same level of confusion?

And, in a way, it is this leadership confusion that haunts Indian IT too, as the future course of the established firms like Infosys, Wipro, MindTree is under question.

It is the time, when industry overall, should look at similar examples from the past and take the clue that be it Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer for Microsoft, Steve Jobs or Timothy D. Cook at Apple Inc, Léo Apotheker head SAP or HP. And, here in India, Shiv Nadar, who founded HCL empire has graduated to philanthropy.

High level exits from Indian IT industry

Indian IT industry saw a few high executive departures like the exit of Jt-CEOs at Wipro (Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjape), chairman of MindTree (Ashok Soota), Member of Board and former CFO at Infosys (Mohandas Pai).

Interestingly, all these departures had an element of rift in it. While MindTree is hell bent to convince investors that Soota's 'Happiest Mind' would not affect its peace of mind, Pai did not use any euphemism to blast Infosys leadership. And then there is the expected retirement of one of the key founders of Infosys (Narayana Murthy) and yet all.

And here we have to ask ourselves, why we are concerned about the leaders? An entity becomes successful when it grows beyond the leaders. And, only successful leaders have the courage to quit the company.

General Electric was founded in 1890 by Thomas Edison as Edison General Electric Company, but much credit goes to Jack Welch (Chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981-2001) for taking GE to where it is today.

As observed by Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies Ltd., over the years the role of the CEO has changed; it is more about employee engagement so for a new CEO , the priority is building rapport and influence among its employees as a leader, and then as a businessman.

He wrote in Harvard Business Review, “Gone are the days when the CEO's role was to lead from the front or direct the march forward. Granted, you can't escape the hype that surrounds a leader. But the onus is on us to find the balance between hype and responsibility; between leading with the power of position and that of ideas; between being the external voice of the company and being the value zone's voice within the organization.”

Tata Consultancy Services, for example, falls in the same category which has gone through the transition from the unit founder to a new CEO. In 2009, Natarajan Chandrasekaran (Chandra), took charge as CEO and managing director of the company.

TCS claimed in a press note that a well-planned and seamless succession has occurred in the company, with S. Ramadorai, chief executive since 1996, handing over charge to its COO N. Chandrasekaran. Chandra, as he's referred to at TCS, took the top job after 22 years at the company.

And the Tata Group itself is in the lookout for a new chairman. Chronic bachelor Ratan Tata knows the entity founded Jamsetji Tata can grow beyond JRD Tata and even himself. Similarly Murthy is sure he can grow beyond Infosys. But, can Infosys grow beyond Murthy?

The discussion kick-started by the sudden exit of Pai compels us to believe that there is some dilemma.

When will we get the answer to the age old question — which is older, the chicken or the egg? Only the leaders can say.