May a million lights illuminate a new way forward

An inspiring experiment by two young men is finding resonance among youth today. Mathew Cherian and Tushar Vashisht, both 26 years old, are trying to experience the constraints of living on India’s average monthly income by subsisting on just Rs. 100 ($ 2.00) a day for a month. They took the journey even further last week by cutting their expenses to just Rs 32 (65 cents) a day – India’s official poverty line!

Mathew is a computer science graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tushar, a former investment banker with Deutsche Bank in San Francisco and Singapore. Asked why they decided to live the challenge rather than just study it, their response was simple: “So we can appreciate life at the grassroots in India better.” Their Rs 100 a day blog and Facebook page where they reported on their experiment have been flooded by appreciation, respect and commendations!

Think about it. This is the way of today’s generation. Getting into the skin of the problem, setting sail on the ocean rather than listen to old sailors’ tales. So as we navigate new economic waters, how do you “teach” our young employees about the new problems facing business? You don’t. You allow them to imbibe the learning by immersing themselves in the experience. You allow them to face and rise above the business challenges in all their complexity and dimensions.

This has been the philosophy of Employee First Customer Second and this ‘bring it on’ attitude of today’s youth has been the corner stone of its early success.

EFCS is now moving into Version 2.0. The core difference from its earlier avatar is that what was earlier driven by management and embraced by employees, is now driven by employees themselves. As earlier, the role of the management continues to be enabling, enthusing and encouraging the employees in the value zone to create differentiated value. But as the young employees begin to own change, it is imperative to instil entrepreneurship in this next generation of leaders so they have the confidence to think and act like entrepreneurs with an ability to create a high growth, high performance culture.

As Ernst & Young concluded in their recent study Nature or nurture: Decoding the entrepreneur, entrepreneurial leaders are made, not born. I totally agree and believe there are two parts to this.

The first is to nurture their entrepreneurship skills. This begins with providing an opportunity to imbibe the right organisational skills along with technical expertise as early as in school. We at HCL are partnering with colleges and universities to incorporate business values that align with our philosophy into the existing curriculum. We are committed to hiring from these institutions so these students then form a potent talent pool of future leaders.

The next stage is empowerment. Over the years, the Employees First philosophy at HCL has been a journey of experiments to empower teams and employees to learn and grow by self-initiative and by creating unique value for customers. Every step along the way has strengthened our belief that we are on the right path.

EFCS 2.0 is a logical sequence and involves a handing over of the baton. Therefore, it also implies leadership. And leadership is an increasingly complex and multifaceted term. As Harvard Business School Professor Das Narayandas points out: “You can lead at so many levels...It's just not a question of leading a small team. It's about leadership in ideas, in actions.”

With EFCS, we are seeing leadership at work at every level. As young employees at the grassroots experience the challenges facing the organisation, they come up with solutions that display leadership in teams, firm, industry, even society.

As we nurture and empower this next generation leaders, they display the courage, conviction and competence to convert every looming threat into opportunities. What to us is a management philosophy becomes life itself to these hundreds, thousands, even millions of transformers.

On this festival of lights, my sincere wish is for a million such lights to illuminate a new way forward.