Wipro's new poster boy, Mr T.K. Kurien, Chief Executive Officer for IT Business and Executive Director, in an interview with Business Line says the ‘new' Wipro will mean a big generation shift for its employees. But it won't happen in one quarter and will take several quarters; it would also be one of the toughest phases for the company as it moves ahead:

When will the recent organisational changes start showing results? How will the Wipro of tomorrow look?

See, I have a slightly radical point of view. Our belief is that the IT spend has gone through three cycles: In the first cycle (1994 – 2000); we had Y2K and we had businesses getting onto the Internet and the IT spend actually boomedabout 60 per cent of the money was spent on hardware and the rest on software. After 9/11, there was a significant shift in terms of business. IT spends came down and CIOs were forced to look for more value for their budgets.

All of us were sitting at the end of the pipe and then offshoring happened and we got a share of the business. When recession happened 2008-09, there was another shift. Customers consolidated budgets. The next big shift happened in 2009-10 when there was more business expense.

The shift for tomorrow is going to be very difficult. The whole concept of IT will be around managing scarcity. Scarcity in national resources, in people and in processes. There is no other country which is better equipped than India because we have always lived in a ‘scarce' environment. That's where the benefit is and that's where the value would be.

I think Wipro of tomorrow will be a very different Wipro where we assume the responsibility for clients' problems rather than customers telling us what to do; which means a big generational shift, in self confidence, in the speed (of delivery) and the way you work. Softer features of culture are going to come into play for us to be effective.

Have you identified the next set of leaders to whom the baton can be passed on?

Absolutely. If the Wipro of tomorrow depends upon people like us, then I will be failing myself. We need to get a fresh set of leaders. It is my job to lay the foundation for the next set of leaders. It doesn't matter where the person comes from. If the person has the customer focus, believes that he can really make an impact, and can execute the vision, that person will be the future leader of Wipro.

We had a first list of 100 leaders and we are finishing the performance review by the end of May. And then we go out and meet each one of them. And those will be our guys who will be given different responsibilities to take us through the path. Leadership is a funny state. As a leader you can succeed in one and fail in the other role. For me, leadership is all about winners. And you need to have that deep instinct to say I want to be better than somebody else. And if you don't have that, you are not probably the leader for tomorrow.

Are these organisational changes, which you have ushered in, happening at the right time?

We have messaged the change. Like any change it is a cultural change. Cultural change starts with me and goes to goes down to my director who reports to me one level below. That's the way cultural changes are driven. Right now,the director and I are talking about it. It will take time. But it is a place for opportunity and not redundancies. It is a question of who can make the change. The existing business will continue. It is the new business that we want the message to go.

How does one respond to these changes?

Number one is change the way we work. For, traditionally, the sales guy makes a call to the customer who asks him whether he can do a certain task. The sales guy raises his hand, so do a few others and then one goes through the bidding process and the person who gets the business is the one whom the customer believes has more competence. But this model will not work for long. We think we have to be shaping the demand and not responding to the demand. It needs a different kind of mindset, the way we sell; we need to empower people. It is a different game. Control is no longer going to be the buzz word. The buzzword is going to be empowerment. It means letting go, but having enough controls in place to make sure that we don't commit mistakes.

How do you carry along all your employees?

No idea. I just believe that we need to be honest with them, we tell them what the end point is. If you are honest with them, they will respond. If you hide, they won't respond. That's a very, very key thing.

You are known as an aggressive person and a hard task master. So, will Wipro see aggressive results as well from now on?

Aggression, if not translated into results, will not count for anything. I can be nice and not get results and I can be aggressive and not get results. That will be worse.

If one looks at Wipro's performance over the past few quarters, it is dangerously close to losing its position as the third largest domestic IT company.

It doesn't bother me at all. My competitor was number four yesterday or even today.

But why shouldn't it bother you?

What really would bother me is if my customer came and told me you are losing out on delivering value to us. That would really bother me.

So you don't really believe in the pecking order?

If I acquire a company with a topline of $2 billion at a throwaway price it will not make me feel better. The question is: are we creating enough services for tomorrow? Are we creating real differentiators for tomorrow? That's what we are looking at.

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