Of Inspiring leaders

Photo taken from GT's LinkedIn account

Accenture: my first job at a MNC. I hadn’t even heard of Accenture until my college peer (who studied HR) was hired with a stunning salary. Then one day, I found myself in a face to face interview with Girish Tutakne. 

Somewhere in the interview, “my last name must sound very funny to you,” Girish said.

“No, not at all. My university’s vice chancellor’s last name is Tutakne,” I told him.

“Oh, he is my father.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

I smiled and so did he. 

This was my first interaction with a man who is responsible for 50% of the leadership imprints I have of Accenture. The other 50% is Sarah Thomas who I will write about at a later time. I am very fortunate to have been graced under the influence of their leadership. I am not sure how many people really find great leaders to revere – the one’s that they stay for in the organization – but I was lucky to have found these two in Accenture. Otherwise, Accenture would have been another fling until somebody serious came along.

After that interview, I never really had to interface with him regularly until a promotion opportunity beckoned in Resource Management Group (RMG) at Accenture BPO. He spearheaded the RMG. This time, he did not interview me but asked Sanjay Kalra to conduct it – because that would have been a more neutral means for the selection of the right candidate (probably). 

I became the first internal hire with RMG which consequently opened up a world of excel sheets that I had zero experience working with. I prayed I never have to work with that green devil. One day Girish asked me, “Jeevan, how much excel do you know?”

“Zero,” I said. 

“Pull a chair. Let’s learn some excel.”

For a person who came from that caliber of leadership, he didn’t seem offended to get his hands dirty with excel and teach a new team member while he was at it. He was a “lead by example” sort of fellow. I still remember, Alt E S V Transpose was the most used command on my worksheets. Writing comes to me naturally, number crunching doesn’t. However, his enthusiasm and my willingness to learn made me proficient at a skill that I had no interest in before. 

Since RMG was a new function, there was lots of work. I have spent an average of 14 hours at work for almost a year with challenges and bottlenecks waiting for me and Chethan (who joined RMG two months later) the next morning. Funnily enough, I remember this one time when I sent across a task to him at 11:30 pm and received his response at 12:01 am. He said, “I don’t want to sound too pedantic” in his email and wanted me to make some miniscule changes to the worksheet I had sent him earlier. He wanted each one to do their best, even himself. If there was scope to make anything better, he wanted each one of his team members to work towards it. Nothing less would do.

I pretended to not have read the email and resent him the modified worksheet next day. I was exhausted. The perfect 10 could wait, I thought :-). 

 

One time, I was asked to work on a presentation to be delivered by the center lead. The resource responsible for this was unavailable and I was told, “Simply copy paste the previous presentation and you are good to go.” So I did. When Girish called upon me to review the presentation, hell broke loose. He started asking me questions on the content. I said, “I do not know. I simply copied the previous presentation.”

“Jeevan,” he said, “Never ever in your life put anything in a document that you don’t understand. You first understand and then include.” I have taken this life lesson from him very seriously. I have amalgamated this pearl of wisdom to my professional DNA. Coming to think of it what do words like 'state of the art' or 'world class' even mean? Are they accurately defined? Do they have certain prerequisites to be met before they become what they promise to become? Do they really make any sense?

I removed everything I couldn’t make sense of in the presentation, included those as back up slides, and we started making the presentation from scratch. Working with him will consume time, I learned that. But in the process, I will have learned something too. I would make my day count – that was the glory. 

Those two years (March 2007-March 2009) at RMG have been the exponential learning years of my professional life. I would do it again but only for thrice as much salary. Why exponential? I remember this one time my manager was supposed to give a presentation to PG Raghuraman, Accenture BPO center lead – not sure what exactly it was – either campus recruits, deployment, or H&LS skilled resources. I was asked to build some case scenarios and the presentation was due Friday. Mid week we were told that the presentation was cancelled and PG didn’t have time but a voice inside of me said, “Be ready with the numbers. One never knows with leaders.” The following things ensued: Friday came. My manager was out on personal emergency. I found myself in a grand conference room with PG and Girish asking me to make the presentation that my manager was supposed to do. I sailed through, rather well, presenting the cases with quantification and with Girish’s mediation wherever necessary. After that meeting, the need to seek approval for my work from whomsoever died. I had become a ROCKSTAR.

Accenture gave me two leadership imprints – Sarah Thomas and Girish Tutakne. And with them came extensive fondness and monumental gratitude for the organization.

I had referenced them in my post The Conspiring Universe dated October 18, 2010 and decided to write about them later. Unfortunately, I write this post at a very sad time when I heard the news that Girish passed away in a car accident last weekend in Australia. May he rest in peace! With him, a great leader is gone but his kindness will always stay with the knowledge he has shared.