Meeting with Mr. Ashok Soota

Meeting with Mr. Ashok Soota

Greetings!!

Dear Friends,

I should say this is one of my greatest achievements that Mr. Ashok Soota has shown interest to meet me! Being merely a Lead in MindTree I had not even dreamed about this opportunity. I stood enthralled; astonished by the invitation received from Viji (Mr. Soota’s loyal secretary) saying “Mr. Soota wants to meet you. This is regarding your reply to his article published in Outlook Business. Please let me know if and when you are in Bangalore”.

What was my reaction?

My reaction…? O gosh! Hurray!! J

What was that article about?

Executive chairman and co-founder of MindTree Ltd, Mr. Soota wrote an article on “Leadership in Ethics”. This was published in Outlook Business in May 2010. After reading this article, I shared my views on Ethical Leadership with Mr. Soota. I had requested him about some addendum to this article because I felt there are still some points can be covered to complete this article in real sense.

After sharing my views with Ashok, what I was expecting is just a ‘Thank You’ mail from him. For sure he replied back to me with a ‘Thank you’ note. In addition, he assured me that he will write something in future on the views shared by me. Here first thing I noticed is; he is open minded professional. Considering my note for his future writings shows he is down to earth!

After few months, one fine day my mailbox was filled with one important unread email “Your visit to Bangalore”. Yes, this was the invitation I received personally from Mr. Ashok.

It took me almost six months to meet this Infotech doyen after the invitation was received. The reason being his busy schedules, frequent travels outside India, our meeting was delayed very long.  However this period gave me one more opportunity to get acquainted with a new face, Viji.

Viji (Vijayalakshmi) is working with Mr. Soota from last 18 years as his secretary. If I am not wrong she is with Ashok from his Wipro days. I don’t think I should separately mention Mr. Ashok’s tenure in Wipro. We all are aware that he was CEO of Wipro from 1984 till 1999. To be specific Viji is second employee in the Ashok’s new venture “Happiest Minds”. I should not forget to mention here that Viji spent lot of efforts to schedule my meeting with his boss.

Finally she got a free timeslot in Soota’s calendar especially for me. Viji scheduled the most awaited (obviously ‘most awaited’ for Mahesh JajadaJ) meeting on 19’Th January 2011 in Pune. This was the last time Mr. Ashok Soota visited MindTree Pune campus. We all are aware that on 28’Th January he resigned from MindTree. May be, I am the last mind who met him in person before his resignation! I think I am fortunate that he gave his precious time to meet me in the determinant days of his ‘castling’ move in MindTree.

M-Day!

Meeting-Day was Wednesday, January 19’Th. I had mixed feelings before this meeting. No doubt, I was excited to meet our Executive Chairman. I was nervous too, because an average Project Lead substance was going to meet a successful Entrepreneur! I did not even know about the topic we are going to discuss. I came well dressed and clean-shaven to the office because it was ‘more than a meeting’ for me. I did my homework well before the M-Day. I was well equipped with bunch of instructions from my Manager Mr. Yogesh Amberkar and MindTree HR Manager Mr. Neville. Few colleagues cum friends were there to support me and obviously boosting my morale. J At sharp 2:30 pm our Centre Head Mr. Chinmoy asked me to go inside the meeting room and he gave me a Good Luck wish!

Meeting Outline:

A)    I introduced myself to Ashok on my professional front. Once I finished with my introduction, he started with his questions. He was more interested into knowing my personal details. First I thought this might be his trick to make me comfortable. But no; it was not formal request; he was actually writing down my personal details on a piece of paper. For what..? I don’t know. He was collecting the detailed information about me. This might be one more thing which separates an ordinary man from ‘Soota’ category person.

B)    He was seriously listening into my introductory conversations. He had even made a phone call to somebody and asked the other side that he does not want any disturbance for the next half an hour.

C)    I have been asked to mention my Engineering semester wise percentages, my hobbies in Engineering days and many more things. He also asked me about my current accommodation in Pune, the distance of my rented flat from the office, about my room partners/friends, their profile, how they think about MindTree, their interest, how do I spend my weekends, how frequent I visit my native. The questionnaire was so long that I do not remember even half of them. I repeat Mr. Ashok was noting down all these things on a paper.

D)   Then he showed me another paper which was lying down on his table. It was my email print out which I had sent to him six months back. The print out was stapled with some notes written by Mr. Soota. I could not believe that my views which I had shared with him are so important to this person? I don’t know. It was his belief! J

E)     Mr. Soota then asked me about what made me think about these views which I had shared with him! He repeated that he is impressed with this thought process. This misled him to draw a conclusion that I am a booklover. However I denied that politely. I admitted in front of him that I am very lazy person and does not turn up myself for the book reading. Still he was not convinced. He asked me again about the source of this thought process. Since I was not quite sure about the source, I thought I should mention about my friends with whom I spend my weekends. Few of my friends like to debate over any run-time topic given. We, a group of 4 to 5 friends sit together on Saturday night, decide one topic to discuss over and spend the entire night on the discussion. Make a note here; our Saturday nights are filled up with cups of tea and not with glasses of wine. Yeah, it’s true! We all are ‘Good Boys’. J

Similar kind of small discussion Ashok wanted me to initiate in that meeting. The topic was ‘Define Freedom’. I explained him that an individual neither works better in thralldom nor in complete freedom. There should be ‘porous boundaries’ to everybody’s freedom. I guess he was agreed to my explanation. Ashok even told me that I should not worry if I am not used to reading the books. He said “It does not really matter which way you are gathering the knowledge and improving your thought process”. However he urged me to write whatever I experience, discuss and feel. So on his request today I am documenting this conversation.

F)     Then he allowed me to throw my questions and queries at him. I think I did that very well. Because he was answering these questions with full of his interest. I can’t mention all the questions and their answers here because of the different reasons.

Q1: One can’t start his career directly by imposing ‘Integrity’ rules on others. What was the time period when Mr. Ashok felt that he and his employees should obey ‘Integrity’ rules?

è He shared some of his experiences in Wipro times. He also shared few examples of non-integrity issues used to happen in early Information Technology business. He said there were many incidences in early IT revolution period which were breaching integrity. Like bypassing the custom duties on hardware, machines and other equipments.

Q2: All the Founder/co-founder members of MindTree talk on the similar lines and convey the same message. How this team was built?

è For this question Mr. Soota shared few of his experiences in early MindTree days.

Q3: How do you find the dress code policy followed in MindTree and other organizations as well?

è This question was answered diplomatically! J

Q4: Tell me about your view on less corruption in IT sector compared to most corrupted government sectors in India.

He agreed. He also emphasizes on reducing corruption in India recently.

When I was done with this question/answer session, I thanked him for his precious time. No doubt, this meeting is added as an item to my list of assets. Believe me this list is very short!

Thank you.