Outlook Business: Cognizant’s Vice-Chairman on the Wisdom of Leaving Employees Alone

“In the initial days,” recalls Lakshmi Narayanan, “we realized we needed to encourage our employes to grow the business independently, which is where the philosophy of empowerment came in. Strategically, that was a good thing to do—building an organization top down. We built a management-heavy team before we went in for campus hires and management graduates. Each member of the senior team was challenged to do things big, because that’s what they were used to. People often say one has to move out of their comfort zone. We tell our people it is very important to remain comfortable, but we want you to have multiple comfort zones."

" We encourage our people to move on to different things after every three years," adds Narayanan. "The key is to leave them alone and not sit in judgment: you let them know that it’s not the end of the world if an idea fails. That allows them to try new ideas.” He says, “One of our key learnings over the years has been that strategy is not always about doing something; it is also about not doing things that are not right for you. You need to think ahead, so that you make the right decisions.”

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