Kishore Jayaraman and “unwinding the complex knots”
A chat with the President of Rolls Royce, India & South Asia
All philosophy stems from a combination of instructive experiences and introspection. It was no different for Kishore Jayaraman who shared his experiences and philosophy during Pragyan 2017, where I got a chance to interview him.
You’ve spoken about your initial passion to become an aviator. Right now, you’re the President of Rolls Royce India & South Asia. How different is your life from how you envisioned it?
“When I said I wanted to be an aviator, I wanted to be a pilot. At that time, there were very few pilots in the country. There were about thirteen pilots or fourteen pilots. So my odds of becoming a pilot were pretty slim. So my father said, ‘Do mechanical engineering,’ which I did. But after that I became an engineer, and it was just a turn of fate that I’m here at Rolls Royce, which I’m very happy about. But I spent 23 years in GE before I joined Rolls Royce. Aerospace is a very fascinating field, and Rolls Royce being in the cutting edge of technology in that field, I’m privileged to be here. When you have something that’s so frontier it gives you the passion to learn and the passion to grow such a business, and it also fosters new ideas, thoughts. So it’s a very different kind of area — we think about services, how we get people into it, skilled labour, how we build it in India. I think there’s a lot of things we can do with this space, and that it’s a niche space. And it’s highly technologically competitive. So I come from an area where being a part of aerospace takes me from being a pilot to being a part of the bigger thing.”
He’s certainly achieved a lot in his career, he’s held several positions of responsibility at GE Energy before becoming its President and CEO for the South Asia region and eventually moving to his current role of President in Rolls Royce. I had learnt that he attributes his success to his parents, and to his background as an engineer, so I decided to ask him if the education system progressed a lot, too.
What do you think was the biggest issue with engineering curriculum at the time of your graduation that still hasn’t been addressed?
“I think we still need a lot more applied knowledge. We still have more theoretical knowledge than applied knowledge. Granted, it has come a long way since I’ve studied. When I studied, FORTRAN programming was the leading edge of translators. I didn’t ever see a computer right before programming. Today at least, people are programming, creating stuff, and seeing stuff being done. So things are that much very different now, and it can still go much further, because I think the future will have more and more of applied learning. And the applied learning will convert itself into new ideas. At the end of the day it’s about the ideas.”
In an earlier interview, you talked about your philosophy to approaching life — “unwinding all the complex knots”. What was the hardest knot you had to unwind during the initial days of your career?
“Initial days? I think when you get into a job, switching over from a protected environment into one where you’re on your own; you have your professional stuff, you have your personal stuff. You’re on your own, you have some money — you have to make sure you don’t screw it up. It’s very easy to get carried away. It’s very easy to lose what you have. And I believe being grounded and having your bearings is very important. But if you take my professional life itself, I started my career in the US. It was about making sure I deliver to the expectations of the people in an environment that I’m not comfortable with. To be alert all the time, to be worried about things takes about a year or two for settling in. Then you know the great morale of how things work, and you can start delivering.”
The lessons he had to offer were aplenty, all genuine counsel he derived by digging into his experiences. Lessons that he had taught himself.
Most people face this clash of interests where their passion doesn’t match the subject they pursue. What advice would you convey to those who face this problem?
“Look, there are times when things that you really want to do, and there are times when you’re given proverbial lemons and you have to make the lemonade. But I think at no point of time at any single job, when I was just talking about this as money.
Can you ever say, “I’m at this situation — this horrible situation — I don’t like it,” and start pulling yourself down? No, you’ve got to say, “This is what you’ve been given, this is what I have, and I’m going to make the best of it.”
And every single job, every single opportunity, has both a success factor and a fear factor. Overcome the fear factor, focus on the success factor, and things will just keep going smoothly.”
