Inclusivity is About Listening to the Other Person — Navyug Mohnot #JeenaIsiKaNaamHain
Innovation — an oft-abused word as well — is the sine qua non of business. It has always been the case but in the last so many years, it’s out in the open. Stark! If you aren’t differentiating fast enough, you’ll end up as fast food, much to the delight of your competitors.
Consider this — behind every innovative idea that leads to a production grade product finally, thousands of hours are spent deliberating on the intersection between what’s desirable and what’s feasible. What makes the cut is a minuscule of all that could have also been. As someone rightly said, there are no have-nots, only have-laters. A shelved or even a trashed idea today can make it right on top of the value chain (or charts), tomorrow.
Today there are digital tools easily available that make scribbling easier with all the visual appeal imaginable but that wasn’t the case when I first stepped into Navyug Mohnot’s office way back in 2004. His table was used to stack blank sheets of paper which he used for scribbling/making notes, rather generously. A man, not really cut out for small talk, Navyug, would immediately jump (leap?) into a big idea and start to write down his thoughts (and the listener’s as well with much the same detailing). It’s a common phrase — what gets measured, gets done. Visionaries like Navyug have taken a giant leap forward — what gets visualized is not only appealing but gets done much quicker. Sometimes, I wonder if he saved those used reams of paper because I can tell you whiteboarding with him was a journey in itself.
It was my early days at NASSCOM (circa 2004) when I met him and QAI those days was considered as the McKinsey out of India. The country was fast earning its legendary reputation as the global destination of choice for IT Outsourcing and QAI stood out in its quest for quality. Things done cheaper were not so because quality was being compromised. On the contrary, Indian IT was at par with any other top-notch destination. Today, of course, that’s a hygiene factor and something we take for granted.
What Navyug Mohnot did back then along with a few others, was reinforce this strong message time and again — and untiringly. QAI under Navyug’s tutelage set the bar high — really high. I can tell the next generation of techies today that the pinnacle position that Indian IT has reached, came about through hundreds of thousands of man-hours spread over four or five decades, and an incessant flow of messaging (backed by action) that Indian talent was world-class, and clients look no further.
The bar was constantly being raised — it was men like Navyug who shaped the thinking process and tirelessly challenged the status quo even though laurels kept coming with clockwork precision. It would have been so easy to rest on accolades and not do anything further. That’s not how it was — they were insatiable in their quest for excellence and desperate to shrug off unfounded criticism due to the economics of labour arbitrage.
Going back to his office — it was always filled with books. The atmosphere was that of a great leader at work with an extreme keenness to listen to those around him. Perhaps that’s a quality we all need to build on, given that everyone’s shouting from their rooftops today in their bid to just be heard. If today it’s about “Listen to me because I am right”, Navyug was about “OK tell me how you feel about this”. That point of intersection which I mentioned earlier — he’d seek out along with you. You came out of the room feeling the idea was yours just as much as it was his. Oh, I can tell you, he can keep you on your toes and make you think…think…think. He’d write/draw something, argue in its favour, and shelve it instantaneously lest you forget the larger picture. The instant recall of a drawing (framework?) is without a parallel, in life.
He is also freakishly obsessive about design! That design cannot be an afterthought but must be built right at inception, is something he had figured out twenty years back. And has carried it right through.
So, what’s the natural progression for such people?
Naturally, photography! He is very very curious about architecture as well and is an avid photographer. Now where do you think this will lead to?
Well, movie-making.
He wants to make a movie someday and I have told him that I’d like to assist him in its direction. Let’s see. He is a movie buff and over the years has been writing incisive reviews as well.
Presently he teaches at Ashoka University and is always trying to reinvent himself — even after having done so a few hundred times over. Perhaps it all comes down to that very basic quality — why should I stay comfortable with the status quo for long? That’s what drives creative people, I suppose.
I don’t get to meet him so often nowadays but whenever I do, he is as charming and warm as ever.
Thank you Navyug, you are truly a wonderful friend and you shaped much of my thinking process as well. Stay healthy, stay inquisitive and tell me when you are ready with your movie-making plan. But knowing you, I am only too curious to find out how often you will say “cut.”
Your life has been a continuity towards excellence, and you have taken so many along with you. You are a visionary, an entrepreneur, a leader, a design-thinking expert and most importantly — a man who always listens!
