Photo taken from GT's LinkedIn account |
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.