Sundar Pichai & N.Chandra — Birds of a feather.

PROLOGUE

Its the early 70s — An unassuming boy walks 3 kilometers daily to his Tamil medium school in a small town, Namakkal amidst the searing heat of South-Central Tamil Nadu.

Its the early 80s — Another bespectacled, nerdy boy pours into his science books late into the night in an apartment in central Chennai.

By the early 80s, our unassuming Namakkal boy has now grown and joined the famous regional engineering college at Trichy a hundred kilometers further south in Tamil Nadu. He eventually graduates and joins a small organization named Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as an entry level software engineer.

By the early 90s, our bespectacled nerd has joined one of India’s famous institutions — IIT Kharagpur. He then graduates, goes West for further studies and in search of greener pastures. He completes his Masters from Stanford, has stints with blue-chip organizations in the US, before he joins Google, a rising star in the Silicon Valley that would eventually redefine the rules of corporate culture, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Both our men then clamber over the proverbial corporate ladder in their respective destiny defining organizations as they go from strength to strength and from one success to another. Their success, reliability and most importantly integrity do not go unnoticed by the emperors at the helm.

Over a period of time they manage to become one of the emperor’s most trusted lieutenants.

It is now 2015–17 — The respective emperors decide they want to do something above and beyond. They decide to move on. Now, they need capable, reliable hands to take care of their empire, an empire they have so painstakingly built. They need someone they can trust to always do the right thing. They need someone who will not rock the boat, whose integrity is beyond question and who is great at fostering relationships. One of the emperors in question has already made one bad call and he does not want to repeat the mistake.

They handpick our unassuming friends to be their successors.

My Moments of epiphany

Among other things, I was pondering today morning about the similarities in the growth stories and eventual ascension of the two famous Indians Sundar Pichai and N.Chandrasekaran (fondly called Chandra) who recently assumed the CEO positions of Google and the Tata Group respectively.

Let me put down my moments of epiphany -

Epiphany No: 1 — Nice guys do finish first, after all

A popular maxim which has been ruling corporate circles and whose origins curiously coincided with the growth of Wall Street (but that is a different story) was “Nice guys finish last.”

Both Sundar Pichai and N. Chandra have been touted to be among the nicest people in their respective, large organizations. Even off the record, no one seems to have a grouse against them. There is not a single peer colleague who was trampled over, not a single team member who was badly managed.

Not one.

It’s time to bury the Wall Street maxim and state proudly that “Nice guys finish first.”

Epiphany No 2: Loyalty pays-off over the long-term

Make no mistake, there are several instances of professionals who shift jobs frequently and achieve inorganic growth in the short/ medium term. However, the real, career and life defining growth comes over the long term through extended, stable stints in a single organization.

Our protagonists — Sundar Pichai who spent 13 years at Google and N.Chandra who spent 30 years with the Tata Group are shining examples.

Epiphany No:3 Malcolm Gladwell’s book on Outliers has been validated yet again

I recall reading a Malcolm Gladwell book on how the success of outliers was as much a function of “larger ecosystem events beyond individual control happening in cosmic time and space” as it was of their individual talents and hardwork.

The book provides innumerable examples drawn from the growth stories of Jewish law firms to Steve Jobs to Larry Ellison to Vinod Khosla to Bill Gates.

Chandra joined TCS at a time when the software services market was beginning to boom. American organizations were waking up to the realization that enormous cost savings could be realized through outsourcing. Liberalization in India which happened 4 years later also contributed in no small measure to the growth. Chandra’s rise coincided with the explosion of the whole sunrise ecosystem. This eventually made TCS among the most valuable companies in the entire Tata portfolio and as a consequence made him one of Ratan Tata’s most trusted aides.

On the other hand, while Google’ star was already on the rise when Sundar Pichai joined them in 2004, the boom in smartphone penetration and the almost ubiquitous adoption of search over the next decade catapulted Google into exospheric realms.

Make no mistake, there could have possibly been a thousand other Sundar Pichais and N.Chandras with similar backgrounds and experiences who could not achieve the kind of growth the two gentlemen did, but this article is not about those people.

While undoubtedly talented and possessing a great appetite for hardwork, Sundar Pichai and N.Chandra were also possible beneficiaries of the saying “At the right place at the right time.”?

Epiphany No: 4 Silicon Valley meritocracy is 10 years ahead of Corporate India

We have looked at the similarities in the growth patterns and the eventual destinations of N.Chandra and Sundar Pichai. However, there is one major, glaring difference -

Sundar Pichai is a decade younger than N.Chandra.

Just let that sink in for a second.

There are differences in their backgrounds yes, Sundar Pichai studied at Stanford, Wharton, worked at Mckinsey and did not join Google as a foot soldier like Chandra did at TCS.

However, the bigger reason for the faster growth is that Sundar Pichai was part of the Silicon Valley which in itself was a story that unraveled only over the last decade and a half. Larry Page, the erstwhile emperor who relinquished his throne happens to be the same age as Sundar Pichai, while Ratan Tata in contrast is more than 25 years elder to N.Chandra.

End Note -

I find it intriguing how the universe in its own strange ways brings back into relevance some of the age-old maxims of “being nice”, “having loyalty while staying smart” and having the Zen approach to life of “doing your hardwork and letting the cosmos conspire to make things happen for you”…