Mint: Cognizant’s President Speaks About the Challenges of Managing Cognizant and its Next Set of Leaders

“As far as demand for our services is concerned, what we’re seeing is clients are looking to solve two problems at once—they have to become more efficient from a cost perspective in all of their core businesses, while at the same time invest in innovation and grow their topline,” says Gordon Coburn. “We are in that sweet spot where we can help them do both. We can help them in running their business, and also innovate and grow.”

He adds, “We’re laser-focused on constantly re-inventing ourselves. We have a structure that is very well-positioned to handle the quick changes in technology and quick changes in economic conditions. At the same time, I think we have a world-class management team. We have people who know how to navigate changes while putting the customer first, so I think we are extraordinarily well-placed to navigate the opportunities and challenges in the market.”

Coburn says that the company spends a lot of time and resources on leadership development and recruiting future leaders. “That’ll be a combination of people internally as well as people recruited from outside, as we’ve done for years and years. And that combination has been effective,” he says. “One of the great things about Cognizant is that we identify our leaders very early. We have a system of meritocracy that has the best and the brightest, and that attracts the best and the brightest. We’re as well-positioned as we’ve ever been in our history in terms of our pool of talent.”

Cognizant, he says, is a much more complex organization today and has done a great job in building the systems and leadership to manage that. “Part of my time is spent on making sure we become larger and more diverse, while retaining the culture and the DNA of the company and keep client needs first. So, far we’ve been very successful in doing that.”

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