 Good afternoon, good evening, good morning wherever you are joining us from and we are all set to go live with the one and only Suresh Narayanan and so let's get started. Hey Suresh, lovely to have you, thank you so much for joining. Thank you, thank you Abhijit, always a pleasure chatting with a dear friend of many years, I look forward to our conversation. We should just leave the many years part of it out of the equation because that's a dead giveaway. I didn't venture forth on that, fully realizing that there are probably many people who are joining on this conversation who probably don't have a number of years on the planet as what I have in terms of work experience or what you have in terms of work experience. Completely, so that's why I'm going to start with this whole thing that I wanted to get a view on your early years where you went to school and what are some of the choices you've made which will prepare you in your career. So just let's do a quick version of that. Yeah, I'm happy to share Abhijit, I come from a very middle-class background. My father was a government servant, he was working in the in an organization that is known for building roads in the borders and the border roads organization. So I've had very happy childhood in places like Nagaland and Rishikesh and Joshi Mark and Bhutan and Sikkim and these kinds of places, Andaman. So these are some of the places I've been to as a young boy. As you would realize, my education probably was getting ruined because of the fact that schooling then in some of these places was quite scarce. So my parents sent me to, I think the best decision they took in their lives for me was to send me to Rishi valley. Rishi valley school is a school about 80 kilometers from Bangalore. It's a valley, it's a 200 acre of valley with about 300 odd students founded by the philosopher Jay Krishnamurti. So it's a very, it's a school where building of values, nurturing of purpose, looking at character and building character is done very gently, but very, very in a very determined fashion for young children. And my father and my parents sacrificed almost half their salary to educate me, but I think that was the greatest gift that they gave me. So five years of a beautiful residential campus, we have our own streams, we have our own dairy farm, we have our own hills and it was a very idyllic education under banyan trees and in the outdoor getting taught of dramatics by famous people, Roshan Seth was one of the visiting faculty in the dramatics department. So it was a very idyllic, very nice, very, very, I think it's great for a kid to be brought up in a place like this. And then I went on, my father wanted me to be an engineer, he was an engineer himself. So IIT would have been the kind of logical next stop. Also being a South Indian Brahmin, I think that's the way the ethos is, you either go to Ames or Jitmayar or you go to IIT, but I was not capable of either of those. So instead I chose to join the economics owners and that's where we are both from the same college SRCC. So that's where I did my economics owners determined to be an IAS officer. So that I said, the next best thing to not being an IIT engineer is to be an IAS officer. So I said, let me do that. So that was really how I got my early years and my bachelor's degree in economics from SRCC. And then in SRCC, after you've done economics, you had, gosh, I can see there's subtle Nescafe branding that is happening with that. Well, it's the drink that starts my day. So therefore, I hope it does for many people on this call. This part of the program has been sponsored by Nescafe. Thank you very much. But on a more serious note, Suresh, most people in SRCC after they did their undergrad would have wanted to go to do their MBA. And you were an exception to that rule, you decided to not do an MBA. And you are probably a terrific example of the fact that in the corporate world, to achieve success, and to reach the heights of an organization, you do not need an MBA. Is that a valid statement to make? Or would you disagree? Well, I can say, Avijit, there are thousands of people who have MBAs who have succeeded very well in the business world. And there are some like us who have not done an MBA and neither a chartered accountant, nor an engineer, nor an MBA. So therefore, I really don't have any of the usual disciplines that makes one entitled to succeed in the corporate world. But I was very clear in my mind that I wanted to join to be a civil servant. And my father also being a government servant encouraged me. He said, good idea to do that. So I never gave the CAT exam. I never gave any of the MBA exams, entrance exams in those days, and instead applied to the Delhi School of Economics. And I got admitted to my master's degree at the Delhi School of Economics, fully, fully preparing myself that I would give the service services exam. In fact, you know, sometimes in life, and that's what I really, there's a message that I would like to leave is that don't plan your careers and your next moves to the team, because sometimes accidents happen. And you go on a path that is very different from what you set out to do. So I was wanting to be a civil servant, you know, Hindustan Lever, which was then present day Hindustan Lever was then called Hindustan Lever, came to the Delhi School of Economics. It did not come for many, many years. But I don't know, some decision by someone to go to the school and they came and they asked, I know, I was doing reasonably well in my master's degree. So they said, you know, you are eligible to apply for this company. And I checked with my, I was really not interested. I checked with my father. I said, look, should I apply for this role of management is what they are saying that recruiting for. And my father said, look, I really don't know, because I have no idea about, about companies that make soap and Dalda and, you know, I know about the government, but I don't know about the private sector. You know, how the old old school bureaucrats work, they had a very clear watertight compartment. So he said, I'll ask an uncle of yours who's in the IAS and check with him, it's a good idea to apply. So I checked with this uncle of mine who's in the IAS. And he told me, no, no, go for the, go for the interview, because, you know, the interview is very good. And, you know, the selection process is quite competitive. And it'll give you a good practice for your IAS interview. So the idea was that, you know, look at the way in which I planted that, you know, when I get into the, get the UPSC interview, you know, there, this experience could be of some use. So that's how I went ahead and applied to this year. You know, the second lesson in life is that you are very big mess about something. You really are not, you know, you really don't attach your self-worths to the outcome of a particular incident or an event or a participation that you do. Sometimes you turn out to do your best. And I guess that's what in this case happened to me. And lo and behold, I landed the job of a marathon training at Indusan. And when I called up, my dad was posted those days in Bandar. And I called him, I said, look, dad, I've got this job. And he asked me, what is your salary? I gave him my salary. I don't want to talk about it these days, because people might quite wonder, how could you subsist on a salary of that kind? But anyway, I mentioned the salary and he told me, yeah, it's not very far away from my salary, because his salary has a government salary. And he said, you talk to your uncle again in the IAS and check with him whether it's a good idea. But I called up this uncle of mine and I said, look, I've got this Indusan, the marathon training position. He said, yeah, yeah, you know, take it, take it young man, take it, don't, don't, don't, don't leave it. Because one of my classmates from St. Stephen's College is doing very well in Indusan. He's got an air condition car, you know, so he's doing very, he's doing very well. And, you know, the other thing is, you might think that you want to join the IAS, that's only 150 odd people who get selected for it out of the 700, 800 people who get shortlisted every year. You might land up with a service that you're not interested in. So what are you going to do then? You will have given up this and gone to a service that doesn't interest you. So he says, take it. And that's how I landed in the corporate world and completed 40 years on the 8th of June this year. My God. One interesting aspect that, you know, today when I heard you, one penny dropped. The reason I got through to an MBA program is because you never wrote the MBA. That explains how things started. So very clearly, now I'm very clear. Now I always thought that there has to be some reason, but what a lovely story about that. You know, this is one of the big myths that I think that gets debunked with your success that sometimes, you know, the background, the education, the kind of opportunities, a lot of it there is an element of serendipity, chance, you know, which you cannot discount. And you just make the most of it just through sheer hard work and all of that. Is there any other myths that which you would have sort of said that, you know, like for example, when I started my career, I remember in Aishwarya, one of the first things was, you know, so we had hired women in the factory and it was like a really big deal. Because in those days, it was always said that women can't do, you know, jobs in the factory. And it was such a myth. And Aishwarya was, you know, one of the first places where I experienced that I was lucky to work in a place which didn't hold any of these biases. And I was very pleasantly surprised. And, you know, those people did really, really well. And so I think those are some of the myths that need to be debunked. What do you say? No, I completely agree with you. And I think very sadly, Abhijit, the world has dawned on diversity very, very late. Very, very late. I mean, it's a travesty of any form of fairness or justice or equitable behavior to think that half of humankind, which is women, cannot be, should not be and are doubted upon to be capable of doing productive, decent, sustainable and high quality management jobs or indeed any jobs in the economic sector is, I think, a travesty of the basic fact of humankind that, you know, we are all created equal. And we all have the same kind of capabilities. And, you know, this has remained with me for a long time and I'm really delighted. I think one of the advantages of being at a pivotal position of leadership in a company is that you are able to push the agenda for some of these things that is important for not only your organization, but also for society. You know, we have been on the diversity journey for long in Nestle, Abhijit. And, you know, in the last three, four years, we have improved our proportion of women in the entire organization by almost 40%. We were at about 16% a couple of years ago. We are now at about 22% in terms of the total staff of the company. In terms of the field force, I am one of the, one of the best in class, almost a fourth of my field force field force. And especially on the nutrition and the sales part of it are women. And I think I think it has worked brilliantly. It's worked extremely well. I think we took it a step further. One of the areas that we that we saw was that manufacturing, you know, and then all through my career, I've heard the word that, you know, women can't be good factory managers, women can't be good this, women can't be good that factory cultures are different, safety is not there. There is, there are problems and issues in deployment. I was at a stage in my career when I could, I could voice it, but I could not influence it. So therefore, I had to wait for a while. And, and about two years ago, we year and a half ago, we started putting up our ninth factory in India in Sanand, in Gujarat. And one of the discussions that I had with my team was I said, look, what the sake of proving to Indian society for the sake of proving to Indian manufacturing for the sake of proving to global manufacturing of Nestle. Why don't we set up this factory with majority women operators who will run this factory? And that's what that's what we've done. And hopefully, in the last quarter of this year, we will have this factory up and running. I'm delighted that 65% of Sanand factory are women starting from the security guard at the gate would be a woman. The factory manager is a woman, part of a team are women. And I think, why am I doing this? I'm doing this because it is one thing to say diversity in white college jobs. And let's face it, in Nestle today, amongst technical management trainees, in the last two to three years, 50 to 60% of the intake have been women. In management trainees, in the rest of the organization, in commercial, in supply chain, et cetera, it's about 50%, 50 to 55%. So we are getting a good number of bright and extremely competent women joining us in the white collar jobs. But my challenge was blue collar jobs. I said, look, it's all nice. You know, it's all fair. You have you have the brightest candidates coming out of out of IMS and and the IITs and and the XLR and various other places. And then many of them are women. That's very good. But what about getting blue collar jobs with women? So I'm delighted that blue collar jobs in the saran factory will be women. And I think that will, I hope it sets a benchmark. And it breaks this myth that women cannot be competent, productive, and capable operators in factories. That factory will also be digitally the most sophisticated factory. We said we will make it, we'll have majority women. Number two, we said we will make it paperless. So it's a paperless factory. We said, look, no more cutting of trees in order to take photocopies. Let it be paperless and also environmentally the most friendly. So all the energy requirements are largely sourced from solar and other environmentally friendly power sources. They've got biogas, digesters in the factory producing energy and steam requirements for the factory. So I think we really want to and in a country where, as you know, a women's participation in the workforce is 25% or lower. I think there have to be more examples that are created. And I want my organization to be able to create that example to be able to make that mindset shift that, yes, it is possible to run a sophisticated Maggie plant. It's going to be making a Maggie. So a Maggie plant run majority by women and make a success. So I think that's a big myth that I do hope that we can, by the grace of God and by the blessings and good wishes of everyone, make it happen. So a lot of people who come in, people are really applauding that. I want to sort of, you talked about Maggie and sort of really talk to you about something which was, you know, a little uneasy, which is you came in and started your stint in India during that huge Maggie crisis. And you had zero preparation time somewhere, you know, if I would say, and I remember conversation with you at that point of time. And one thing I wanted to do was, when you look back today, now it's all done and dusted, you sorted that out, it's all over. How do you look back at that? Can you reconstruct, you know, what happened on the day when you suddenly were dropped into this particular scenario? Pretty much as they say, asmaan se gana khajur mein atke, you know, so you were dropped into this incredible situation. Talk to me about that evening when you first learned about this. Well, you know, it is coincidentally, I was at that stage having my wife Rajika and I were having dinner with dear friends in Manila. And suddenly my phone rings and the director in charge of Asia, Oceania and Africa, my direct boss, that's the lady called one name, came on the line. So first I said, look, I mean, this is a Saturday evening. And why would she call me up at this time? So I ignored the call and then again, the call came. So then I, I answered it and I said, you know, anything urgent? She said, you know, can you give me two minutes of time, you know, can you just go to a place which is less noisy? Because, you know, yes, I didn't ask. And she said, you know, I was that I'm hearing about this, I was posted in the Philippines, you know, after having spent five years in North Africa, and I was very much an Arab spring man, you know, I mean, having worked in Egypt. Yes, I was there. I was there. You know, I am I am a visit, you know, I am a case study for, for, for leadership on how to keep, you know, is it creating a crisis or getting thrown into a crisis? I mean, I'm a classic example of that. And I've never had an easy assignment in my, in my career. And I'm happy for it. I think I've learned a lot from that. So she said, look, there is a problem in India. And the CEO and I would like you to go to India. So I mean, okay, there went my dinner because I said, my God, you know, I'm quite happy here in the Philippines. And what is, you know, the first thought that came to mind, mine was, there are 320,000 employees in Nestle. And I said, why is it that I am the fellow who's picked for this particular pro, I mean, or Queen Milani can send to this. So what was that time? Why do you think they're picking? Look, I think, I think a few things. One is, one is a familiarity with the topography. I think that is, that is something that is, that is important. Because it was a, it was a fire on all sides. So they needed somebody who knows the topography well. They needed a leader who was tried and tested in crisis. And I had been tested in a different kind of crisis. The Arab Spring was a very different kind of crisis, but tested in a crisis. And I think, you know, by the grace of God, of my work at Nestle, I've developed a certain credibility with the leadership. So they said, you know, as my father told me then when I called him up and I said, I'm coming back to India and you know, leaving the Philippines. So he said, you know, duty, duty is your most important. And the second thing he told me was remember that you put your most trustworthy people into a crisis. You don't put your biggest idiot into the crisis. So you must be trusted in the company to decide back to India. So I mean, and also Abhijit, I think the third thing that's important is important for the stage of life. You know, I was, I was approaching my mid 50s. And I was in a stage in life that said, you know, you're grateful. Gratitude is a very important emotion in my, in my dictionary. I said, I'm very grateful for the glorious career that I've enjoyed in this company, the trust and respect of people that I've enjoyed. The team in India was a team that gave me that platform. They were the, the giants on whose shoulders I stood to look apart. So I said, if they are in trouble, I think it, it behoves me. It is a call of responsibility. It is a call of duty is a call of, of the conscience to come back and do the best that you can do. And I think that's what do me. Suppose I was a young, let's say 35, 40 year old being given this assignment. My first thought would have been, my God, if you fail, your career is finished. My thought this time was, I said, God forbid if it goes horribly wrong. As I told my dad, I said, look, I'll come to Chennai. I will sit in the veranda with you. We will both read the Hindu newspaper and we will drink cups of coffee. That's the worst that can be what you can't take my life. You can't take what I am. All you can do is to raise the iron and will not be go down in the history of leadership of companies in India as having been modestly successful in what he did, but you go down as the biggest failure. It's fine. I mean, there are many people who have not succeeded very much in their lives who still lead fairly good lives. And I will be one of those. So I think when you look at it, when you don't look at a challenge as consequences for yourself, but look at it more from what it can do to help your team and your people. I know it sounds philosophical, but it is important to have that philosophy because if you look at how it can affect others, you will land up doing things that are more open, that are more holistic, that are more important rather than worrying about you yourself. My next move, honestly, you are a microcosm. You are one small person in the whole equation and I don't think you should get worried about it. So I think that was the approach that I took and that's what kept me going strong. So as you said, it was a call of the conscience, not so much of, here is my chance to really create. Was it tough or the moments when you just were lost or did you really have a very clear view of what you would do? No, I don't think. What was the first thing? How did you go about addressing the crisis? How did you think through it? The way I looked at it when I came back and almost it is, I'll be celebrating my sixth year of coming back, 24th of July is when I came back to India from the 1st of August, I became the manager of the company. I think when I came back, there were three important things on my mind. Number one is state of the team. Number two is state of the crisis. And number three is a determination that we will survive. We will come out of this and we will find a way. I don't have all the answers, but I have the questions. And I think leadership is about asking the right questions rather than being the teacher and giving all the answers as well. So I think it was, to me, the state of the people and I've always believed that people are the center of the organization. I don't say this because I'm talking to a very respected and a very well-regarded human resource leader. But I'm talking because I'm a bit of a pain to my HR head because I keep interfering on people-related issues. How are they being treated? During this whole pandemic, my concern is about the safety and security and well-being of my people. You might think that you're running a successful company, so you should be all about plans and this and that and the other. It's about safety, it's about well-being, it's about them feeling comfortable. It is the concern that I have that how will I feel if I am left adrift at this point in time? And I think when I came back during the crisis, my first address to my people, I found people with sad eyes. I looked around and saw people who looked defeated, people who looked for law. Nestle is a very special culture. We have people in this company who spend 20, 25, 30, 35 years. Every year I used to till two years ago, I used to go to Moga, for example, and this is a factory. And I used to give long service awards, 30-year awards, 35-year awards. You won't believe it, Abhijeet. The suit of the Sikh operator, the salwar of his wife, his shoes will all be color coordinated. And I once asked them, I said, Paji, why do you give so much importance to him? He said, sir, there are two reasons. One is that in my generation, the blood of this company runs. So I am very proud to have been working in Nestle for this long. And secondly, after my marriage date, this is the most important day of my life. So I dress up as I dress up for my wedding. These are cultural values of loyalty, of love, of respect that money can't buy. I can throw at you BMW cars and I can give you Mercedes Benz and I can give you the biggest apartment in the city and I can give you stock options. We are both referring to the same set of organizations when we say all this. I can give you millions and millions and millions of rupees. But I think Larry Bossidy said it well, as the chairman of Honeywell. He once said, you will never be remembered for the growth you delivered or the profits you delivered. But you will be remembered for how you made the other man feel. Our lives are all about how we make the other man feel. I am now at a stage of life when I have less of the runway than what many of the listeners on the call would be. My legacy has to be a legacy of creating decent, value-based, purposeful leaders. And of leaving this organization whenever I retire, with dignity and respect, so that when I come back one day to visit my colleagues, the receptionist allows me to go up to meet whoever I need to meet and doesn't keep me waiting in the reception for two hours, saying people are busy. And that will happen if she or he doesn't feel good about the way in which you've treated them. And I think we don't teach this in business schools. We don't teach it in many parts of the organization because we are in this very competitive culture that it's a dog eat dog. Suresh Narayan has to prove that he's brilliant and brighter than Abhijit Baderi to become a top man. Leadership is measured by KPIs of quantitative achievements, not by the yardstick of decency, compassion, empathy, and inspiration. Until you have leadership that gets measured in this way, in the post-COVID era, you will have problems because we are still talking about pre-COVID paradigms of competence and confidence in an era where compassion is going to be the most important element of leadership. Beautifully said. You know, it just struck me all the things that you mentioned, whether it was empathy, compassion, etc., all of that. I mean, gratitude. You seem to be a person who doesn't really care about numbers. I mean, it's all intangible things. It's a different matter. I also believe that we are in an era, in my book Grimers and Unicorns, I talk about the fact that today 85 to 90% of the value of the firm comes from intangibles, whether it is all the things that you mentioned. What happens to all those? I mean, does it mean that those things will no longer be important? No, I think on the contrary, I've always believed. Since I've spent a fair amount of time in areas like sales, and you know it, I am a fiend as far as targets are concerned. I don't like to miss targets. I never miss targets. It's an integral part of my being. All I can say is, authority, respect, and humility are not mutually exclusive. You can hire the authority. I run a company. I run a very successful company. My company has been doing well during all these years. And you know, it's one of India's top listed companies performing very well. It's got a lot of acolytes in terms of its various practices. So it is not by being namby pamby. It's not by being only emotions without substance. I think it is important for an organization's purpose to do good happens only when it does well in business. If I do well as a company, I can participate in in building this nation. I can participate in building society. But if I'm miserable, if my health is miserable, then I cannot participate in that. I may have the intention, but I can't participate in that. So I think wielding authority with respect, with dignity, with compassion, and with trust is possible. And I have tried to emulate that wherever I've been. So my team knows that Suresh will not compromise on the goals that are set. But they also know, I hope, that Suresh will become compassionate the minute he realizes that there is something that he needs to do to reach out to you and reach out to you as a human being, not reach out to you for, you know, leadership can be of two kinds. It can be servant leadership, or it can be transactional leadership. Transactional leadership is what we practice in most organizations. I am the boss. I'm giving it to you. You do it. If you don't do it, then I'll reach out to you and say, I'll give you a dollar, I'll give you an extra something in order for you to do it. The other is servant leadership. Servant leadership is a little bit like following your team. It's a little bit like a shepherd. Look at a shepherd. The flock is ahead of him and he's walking behind. The flock knows exactly what the mind of the leader is. But the leader is not imposing himself all the time on the people saying, you know, this is the way it is. This is what I need to do. This is what you need to do. I think when you do it in a servant leadership model, things become even more powerful in your organization. It's contra-intuitive because we have been taught that we have to be type A managers. Right. So with all these kind of typesets that you have in building a career, if you follow a contra-intuitive path, and I would suggest that. I think my only advice to young people today is don't forsake your purpose and your values, your decency, your compassion, your respect for people. Don't forsake it. For God's sake. Earn millions, live happily. I bless you with enormous success. But don't walk away from the people who made that happen. And I think many times we tend to forget that as we go forward. When you think about organizations, one of the big dilemmas is that if you are going to be collaborative, then it's very difficult to be competitive. If you're competitive, then you can't be collaborative. So make up your mind, which one would that be? I'm sure you've had those kind of dilemmas, the polarities. How have you managed those? If people were to ask you, what should I focus on? And does it change when you're at the entry level or middle level or at the senior level? I think collaboration and competitiveness are contextual. It is not that these are mutually exclusive. These do happen in a business context. And leadership needs to leverage it. Firstly, needs to identify and needs to leverage it astutely. And that is why you're paid to be a leader. Now, I keep telling people, you're paid to be a leader for bad times. You're not paid to be a leader in good times. You need, you are paid. What you're paid is only to navigate the company through difficult stormy waters, not for easy times. And I think that that is where any collaboration is, you know, I put collaboration differently. Collaboration is if you give a man purpose, magic happens. Magic happens. I saw that happening on two big instances. When I was in Egypt in the Arab Spring, I remember that, you know, after 11 days of protests in Tahrir Square, finally Vasni Mubarak decided to go to Sharmonship and we decided to open our factory and which was surrounded by tanks and various other things. So I told my technical director who was a Swiss Italian, he was driving to the factory and I told him, maybe five people will come. If five people come, I'll be very happy in the factory. And the factory had 1500 workers and 10% of them were women workers, 150 were female workers. I said, look, it's impossible because there's a lot of turmoil in the city and Cairo is. And this is when you are a stranger, so to say. Yes, I'm a stranger. I don't speak a word of Arabic. I'm an Indian leading a multinational team of people there. So when I go to the factory, I still can't forget it and it gets me emotional. The whole factory was there. The whole factory. And I didn't speak Arabic. The union leaders spoke a bit of English. So I called the union leader and I asked him, I asked him, Hassan, how come all the people have come? You know, I'm really touched because the whole city is in flames. And yet people have come here to work. He said, sir, remember two things. Number one, this company has given us our break, has fed our families, has brought up and then nourished us in all the years that we have been with it. For us, we call it um, um is mother. For us, Nestle is um, Nestle is mother. And we will not forsake the mother for anything. Number one, number two, during this crisis, most company leaders, they left Canada. They went off to London, they went off to Dubai, they went off with their teams. Now management teams were fully evacuated at that time, along with families because of the difficult circumstance. But sir, you stayed here and your team stayed here. So when you have not left us, why will we leave you? You can say that this is again something that is very, very different from the kind of reaction that you would expect from blue-collar people. But this is what you get. When culture nurtures collaboration, inspiration happens. And it is this that is collaboration. Collaboration is not forced yoking of animals and making them go around. Quality well, it is not Koloka well. It is to get people to voluntarily come together, do the task and do it with inspiration and with purpose. And I think that is the meaning of collaboration. Competitiveness, yes, all of us in our early stages of career. And I think that's also a deficiency of the leadership evaluation model. You and I will recall Abhijeet that for maybe 20, 25 years of our career, we were measured by individual KPIs. How much of, you know, in my case, since I was a sales or marketing person, what is your market share, what was this, what is that, what is revenue, what is profits, etc. You were never measured by your leadership competence. How many leaders have you groomed? How many people have you coached? How many leaders have you nurtured? How does your team feel about working with you? You know, the concept of 360, while it is, you can say as old as the hills, it is still being debated in many boardrooms. Should we apply it? Should we not apply it? What happens if people get upset about it? I remember many years ago, I attended a program at London Business School and we all had to do a 360 and the 360 was was anonymously given to the coach at London Business School. 50% of my cohort Abhijeet were in tears when they saw the 360. They said, I didn't know I was so bad and they were successful leaders. They were successful leaders. So I think this whole sensitization of the fact that leadership, performance, context and outcomes go together. This is something that we need to to work on very, very sharply, especially in the post political context. Because the world is going to be different. When people want to work from home and work from the office, you have to understand as a leader that your paradigm, my paradigm of work was, I have been brought up for 38 out of the 40 years working from an office. Office is power. Office is control. Office is micro management. Office is controlling the lives of people extensively. Work from home is empowerment. Work from home is enrichment. Work from home is enablement. And that's difficult for many leaders. It's a very difficult thought. I'm letting many reason to exist has now gone. And I think the old paradigm of leadership therefore, start getting redefined. And therefore, the whole collaboration versus competitiveness versus leadership will also start getting defined. Suresh, when we are in the last 15 minutes of our conversation, I want to draw a couple of lessons from you as a person in terms of the choices you make, how you spend your day, the kind of things you read. I want to learn about that. What's your typical workday like and what is your typical weekend like? How do you spend your vacation time on, free time when you're in the office or not in the office? I can tell you, my workdays have been very, you might think that I will be a 16-hour, 18-hour kind of workaholic. I have never believed in that. I've gotten into the office by whatever 8.30, 9 o'clock in the morning. And by 6, half past 6, I mean out of the door. Out of the door. Even when I was a sales director of this company, I was out of the door at half past 6. And my team knew it. They said, Suresh will be out of the door at half past 6. Because I said there is a rest of the life, which is with my family, with my daughter, that is important. And I cannot forsake it. I don't want to because I've seen some of my colleagues bemoan saying that, oh, the graduation ceremony of my daughter I had to miss, or the graduation ceremony of my son I had to miss. And I say, I think to myself, who was to blame? Who was to blame? Isn't it you? I think as the founder of my school, J. Krishnamurti used to say, the Guru is within you. You are managing yourself. And that is managing your life. So I think it is important. So I've always kept a fairly disciplined workshop. Except of course during these crisis times, when I was in Egypt for the first couple of months, or during the Maggie crisis, it was 24-7. And then I realized, I realized that look, I cannot be a hands-off leader saying, I have to go to the gym or I have to go and have dinner. And I will not work what I need to work. So when there is a need, I will work, but I will ensure that also my team, I try and ensure that I don't call in my team on weekends. Not because I don't want to talk to them, but because I respect their time. It's only in an emergency or a difficult situation that I would need to follow. My vacations typically are, I used to either go back to meet family in Chennai or wherever when I was overseas. That is what I used to do, or go on short holidays to the mountains. I love the mountains. That's where I have the fondest memories of my childhood. My reading is, I know I don't read big texts on strategy or on digital marketing or any of those. I believe there are much, much cleverer people in my organization who know a lot about this. But I read books on leadership. I read books on purpose, values, improving myself. Read books on, for example, the Bhagavad Gita and the meaning that it has. I know the importance of being good, for example, of Kucharan Das is one of the books that I was very happy to read. I'm at the stage of life where I think it's payback time. I realize it, that I need to give back whatever great benefits and blessings I have received in my life. I know that I've lived more than half my life. I know that I have less time on the planet than what I've lived. If I can do good for people, contribute to their thinking, contribute to their wellness, contribute to their thought, I'll be a very happy one. I'm not seeking anything more in my career. I don't want to become bigger than what I am. But I'm very happy. I'm very, for a middle-class boy with no great skills to have come this far. I think my parents have done a lot of good and a lot of punya. And their karmas have clearly translated into whatever I've had. My philosophy has always been, I am very fond of Doha's, as you might know. Kabir Doha is our very dear friend. For 700 years, this man said things that are amazingly true today. And the first Doha that comes to my mind is, he said, Doha khoja aap na mucse burana koi. Right, so it's important to not think of yourself as being all-powerful and all-encompassing. And the second one he said was, he said, Jab mai tha, mai as in hankar, as in ego, jab mai tha tabhari hai, tabhari nahi. So when hankar was there, there was no spirituality, there was no godliness. All my darkness has gone when I look at the light within myself. So I think it's important, and Dalai Lama said it beautifully, he said, When you speak, you repeat what you know. When you hear, you hear different things. And that's why humility is important. Humility is important not as a management weapon. It is important as a life tool. Humility allows you to be accessible. Humility allows you to listen. And humility allows you to never think that you are invincible. Look at the situation in the world today. All the virus can be put into a can of product. And it has brought mankind to its knees, not only now, but I don't know for how many more decades. So apne aapko kya samashti over? What have you? I mean you are one speck, you are here today, gone tomorrow. So if you live your life, I think realizing that you have a lot to be grateful for, you have a lot to give. And especially at this time of the pandemic, the pain has been enormous. I mean, when I see the suffering around, it's just hard to endure. So if I can do something to improve the life of even one human being, I think that is a, that is, my life is well lived. There's nothing more that I can ask for. You know, when you look at anyone who hears you for a while and you know, obviously, I have known you for a long time, I kind of had that privilege. One of the questions I always have had about you, Suresh, is humility something that can be taught? Or is it something that is just there? And you know, so I know it's very much a part of you. And it's something that I've seen over years now, you know, so I've seen you in multiple situations. And this is something which is extremely authentic. And my question is, can this be taught? Because you know, management lessons very, very often, the nicest things which should be lessons that you hold in life, you know, whether it's having a balanced life, leisure, caring for people, compassion, empathy, everything has now become a management tool, which sometimes fills me with deep disgust to be asked me. But can humility be taught? Look, I think Avijit's humility is to be felt. It cannot be taught. It cannot be taught. I think, you know, for me, humility is, it keeps me stress free. It keeps me with my feet on the ground. It keeps me with a preparedness, Avijit, that all of us have to face one day that all this power, all this position, all this Shan or Shaukat will go. It will go one day. You know, I will no longer be the chairman and managing director. I'll be former chairman and managing director. You will call me as somebody who has been a leader, who has been a leader and is not a leader. I think giving up and letting go becomes much easier if you are humble. Because then you say, I do something else in my life. And I think if you adopt that kind of attitude in your life, you know, it is an interesting piece that I've read between being a pragmatist and being a perfectionist. You know, we sometimes wrongly teach our children, be a perfectionist. You are 100 on 100. You are a good Bengali, I am a good South Indian. Our fathers have always said, 95, that five mark on kagya. But the materialistic name will I have. No, in my case, my parents gave up asking me that question because it was so often that they had to ask. We teach our children to be perfectionists and what do we do with their lives? It becomes stressful. They get a huge amount of mental and physical illness. They get depression. They lose out in life because you can't be successful in everything that you do. You start feeling as a sense of loss of self-worth. So what are we propagating? We are propagating a generation of people, youngsters who are going to talk about the word lose even before they have become. And I think some of these emotions can be managed well. And we all know in life, Avijit, that sometimes your CGPA and your professional success are in inverse proportion. And it is not because you have suddenly become dull. It is because there are other factors that are becoming important in making your career, in making a life. Some of it is around emotional issues. Some of it is around opportunities, right place, right time, luck. Doors opening when it is closed for many people now. There are so many imponderables in our lives. And I think if we look at our lives with a sense of gratitude, of humility, of compassion, of sharing whatever we have learned with our younger generation. My purpose of chatting with you, Avijit, is if as a result of my 40 years, there are at least a few insights and reflections that could help a 25-year-old who's starting his journey with less angst and with a few more examples of what he could do, then I think it will be a better life. Because today, our kids, you have to get 100 on 100 in our alma mater origins. I was flattered two years back or three years back to read that economics, honors, cut-off was 100%. So I told my father, I told him, I said your son would never have gotten to SRCC with the marks that he got, because your cut-off is 100%. So you're building a culture of 100% and expecting them to be 100% all their lives, it'll never happen. It'll never happen. Yeah, and I think these are, I fully agree, I think these are artificial kind of things that everything has to be gold medal, everybody gets those kind of things, I think sort of lead people to feel disappointed very quickly. You have not experienced what it feels to get 60. Therefore, this whole business of 99 can be devastating. I see this and I sometimes interact with youngsters who have got their startups and before COVID, some of them used to come and meet me and take my advice on whatever, and I've always told them, I said, my advice is free, my bad guy, I'm not going to monetize this whole thing, because face of God, I'm okay, I don't need to beat up your efforts. What I find is brilliant young minds with tremendous ideas, but they fall flat on their face, because they don't know how to lead themselves and a team of two people, or a team of 20 people. And this is where the rubber hits the road. The question is, nobody cares whether you are the gold medalist at IIT, you probably are. The question is, can I get three other people to participate in my venture, to give the results that I think are important to sustain the business? And that needs other skills, which unfortunately, maybe they teach it in Harvard Business School, but they don't teach it in many of our businesses. Thank you. Thank you so very much. We are at the top of the hour. And Suresh, I think I'm going to take this conversation offline and continue the discussion, but it's been such a privilege. What can I say that you left not just me inspired, as always, I've always talked to you as an incredible person of our generation who we look up to. I certainly look up to you and thank you. Thank you for being here and much appreciated. Goodbye.