Infosys top brass to go back to school

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, AUG. 1. Mr. N.R.Narayana Murthy, Chairman, Infosys Technologies, and his top management will go back to school this October as part of the first batch of students of the Infosys Leadership Institute.

They will go back in style as the institute coming up on a 217- acre plot of land in Mysore will also have a helipad, to be built "later in the fall," Dr. Jayaram, Director of the institute told The Hindu.

In the first batch this year, there were 150 high-potential "Infoscions" who were chosen for leadership development, Dr. Jayaram said. The candidates represented a vertical cross section of the organisation including the Chairman and the President of Infosys. "All the top management. All of them are developmental candidates... Narayana Murthy, Nandan, all the directors and all members of the management council at Infosys are part of the first group," he said.

Choosing candidates

Dr. Jayaram said a steering committee comprising the top management invited the next top 50 executives to recommend potential candidates from the groups they headed. The recommendations were vetted by the H.R. Department. Each senior manager had then would championed the candidature of the person he or she had recommended in a "sit-together" discussion. Out of this process had emerged the 150 candidates.

A "360-degree" feedback involving the people who had the most interactions with the potential candidate was used. They answered 52 questions questionnaire on how they perceived the candidate on eight competencies including performance focus, quality (of work), technology, relationship management, customer partnering and so on. Each competency was further divided into six components. Benchmarking was done by determining for each competency, what behaviour would represent leadership, Mr. Jayaram added.

Course content

Dr. Jayaram said "Ideally, we think that once chosen, the candidates will be on a developmental journey for three years. In the first year, the first group will be the focus of attention of nine permanent faculty members and a host of experts who will provide inputs from all over the globe." How do they reconcile the fact that the institute is wholly residential and that the chosen ones are extremely busy people. "Well, they will spend short durations, as short as a week or less, at the institute. Further, they will brainstorm, strategise and engage in a host of activities that has a direct bearing on their business."

The next year, a new group would take that place while each candidate of the first group would go on to formulate his/her own personal development plan with support from the institute and a 360 degree feedback process, Dr.Jayaram said.

The course comprisesd "nine pillars of wisdom," or developmental elements. There would be a programme on Infosys culture - in which candidates would discuss with senior management norms, values, beliefs, best practices and so on. A set of generic courses would be created which the director thought were crucial for every leadership candidate today. These would be a series of modules, called "say leadership 101, 102 and so on," which would include systems thinking, managemental change, organisational design and structure, creativity and innovation, which would form five or six fundamental courses. Then, there would a course called "systemic processes learning," "where the candidates will be exposed to systems and processes in their organisation so that they can create a culture of processes".

Next, there would be developmental assignments where "certain candidates will be moved into certain grooves, which will help them bridge the gaps in their development". The bridge would set the candidates up for their developmental relationships; "internally, certain people will be chosen as mentors and such people will have formal relationships with three other candidates".

Then there would be feedback intensive learning, "which is really personal growth". Finally, each candidate would be exposed to what the institute termed "community empathy," meaning exposure to social causes.

The fundamental assumption here is that the kind of leadership development we are attempting really grows growers (of the organisation -- those with an eye to the future). We believe, that while we do have growers, they are the ones who are naturally that way. Infosys has excellent managers, and all done of course at the institute is turning them into leaders by challenging all their notions about the present and the future.

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