Soul n Peace

They believed in putting the interest of the company ahead of their own interest.

In mathematics, one plus one is two but when one human merges his ego with others ego then it becomes eleven.

They were seven , so their combined force was equaling to 1111111

They were short of one thing, money. They managed to put together just $250 in seed capital.

They never dreamt about size, revenues and profits. Their dream, right from day one, was to build a corporation that was, above all things, respected.

The next step, they took was to form a strong value system (belief) of the company.

From the beginning, their team was unique in their commitment to a strong value system. They believed in legal and ethical business. They believed in respect and long-term gratification. And each of them brought complementary strengths to the company.

A sound value system is what differentiates long-term players from others. Putting the corporation's interest ahead of personal interest will advance personal goals in the long term.

No single person is indispensable. It is important that you give challenging engagements to deserving people, whether they are young or new in the organization. Youth and empowerment are the keys to scalability and longevity.

Every situation is what you make it to be. Confidence is half the battle, and leadership is making the impossible look possible. Speed, imagination and excellence in execution are the only three context-invariant and time-invariant attributes for success.

Once their own value system was established, then they moved on to win the trust of their employs, shareholders and clients.

Strong value system (belief) ensured a strong emotional bond among themselves as well as their employees, shareholders and clients.

They have realized that if you want to look smarter, you must surround yourself with people smarter than you.

Everybody needs incentives to perform. Money is not the only motivator; respect, dignity, fairness and inclusiveness are essential to get the best out of employees. Every employee must feel an inch taller when talking about the company.

Winning the trust of employees is the most important ingredient for successful leadership. To gain the trust of people, there is no more powerful leadership style than leadership by example. The world respects performance and action, not rhetoric.

Out of this strong base came the strong vision and mission (goals). Plans to turn the company into a bigger, stronger, and global player.

This is what their chairman once said in a interview to a news paper  

“We have realized that we should never take any decision with the stock price in mind. The day we do this, we will ruin the company. Finally, we have realized that we can shortchange investors if we want to make Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million), but if we want to make Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion), we have to play the game straight and honest.

We have realized that longevity requires that we follow every law of the land, even if we do not agree with it. We should work hard to change laws that hurt the progress of the corporation.

Unless we make a difference to the society and earn their trust, we cannot be long-term players. Therefore, in everything we do, we must ask ourselves whether we are adding value to the society around us, regardless of where we are -- US or India.”

Then they executed the plans based on the above factor

They believed that the key to a successful corporation is longevity – their heroes are companies like IBM, Levers, and GE. These firms have shown growth in earnings quarter after quarter, for a long time.

Infosys itself has seen consistent growth in revenue and profitability for over 49 quarters, since it got listed in India. They have institutionalized performance and accountability in their systems and processes, and through the empowerment of employees.

In 2007 their combined force has scaled it to a company with a valuation of $28 bn.

The same model can be followed to create any new company.

In one more interview , the chairman was asked

What has kept the Infosys team together through all these years?

How do we stay together? We have unwritten rules. Everybody knows that if we want to work as a team we have to be transaction based. We start every transaction on a zero base. It is perfectly feasible for us to disagree on a transaction but we start the next transaction without any bias. Only an argument that has merit wins; it has nothing to do with hierarchy. Disagreeing is in the nature of things. When you bring a set of people who have respect for each others’ competence in certain areas and you’re transaction-oriented then it can work as it has in our case.

Our value system was like the British Constitution – it was all unwritten but extremely well practiced. If I were to have another opportunity to found another company, I would never ask for anyone else – these are truly remarkable people.

Our value system is the true strength of Infosys. Besides, we have complementary skills. For example, I have an eye for detail and am comfortable with balance sheets and numbers. Then I can also get into the big picture. Nandan has a great ability to communicate and get himself connected to networks; his thinking is very strategic. Raghavan is a good people manager. Gopal is the best among us in technology. Shibulal and Dinesh are great on projects – so there’s a complimentary of skills

The fountainhead of their success is power of combined ego into a bigger and powerful entity.