I dint come across Rajat Gupta until the first time I was researching on Indian School of Business. I thought he was just another Indian born CEO of an American company, I understood his true greatness only after I joined an MNC and started to realize how difficult it will be for a minority to go to the top.
Rajat Gupta's story is like a script to a Tamil cinema. Poor hero who is orphaned , works hard and manages to come on top of it and wins against all odds. In the current era of the Pandits and Nooyis and half a dozen other indians heading global MNCs its very difficult to assess the true difficulty in , what i beleive to be rajat Gupta's near herculean feat. It is just like in a family , its always the first child who makes all the mistakes and his/her siblings learn from those mistakes and manage to do better. In that sense I think Rajat Gupta is like the elder brother of all those NRIs who made it big.
For someone who was orphaned at 16 , managed to crack JEE (i guess there were no Kotas and Rammiahs back then to spoil his chances) and with absolutely no money to have got into Harvard itself is a reflection of his brilliance and grit. Then to have managed to have got into Mckinsey with zilch work experience is indeed super human. he went to become the CEO of Mckinsey , the first non US born person to have occupied that position. To get a true idea of his achievement just imagine how you will feel if a hardcore Indian company like Ashok Leyland or Reliance has a non Indian as a CEO. Frankly i will feel vexed. Its pretty much how most patriotic Americans would have felt back then when Rajat Gupta achieved that position.
What I admire the most in him is his total insulation of his goals from what other people think. If he had thought about the people around him he would have been bogged down by fear of racial prejudice and he would have never aspired to reach the top post. In my position when I think where I will be 10 years down the line in my company I cant think beyond a particular level as I am being bogged down by realistic considerations of how much a Indian can progress in an International company.
I think we Indians have to thank Rajat Gupta, who laid the path for us dream ambitiously and to ruthlessly work towards that dream. He also made us believe that the "glass ceiling" of our careers is in our mind and we need to break just that. What ever might be his current short comings or wrong decision calls off late he has taught us all to dream and work.
Rajat Gupta's story is like a script to a Tamil cinema. Poor hero who is orphaned , works hard and manages to come on top of it and wins against all odds. In the current era of the Pandits and Nooyis and half a dozen other indians heading global MNCs its very difficult to assess the true difficulty in , what i beleive to be rajat Gupta's near herculean feat. It is just like in a family , its always the first child who makes all the mistakes and his/her siblings learn from those mistakes and manage to do better. In that sense I think Rajat Gupta is like the elder brother of all those NRIs who made it big.
For someone who was orphaned at 16 , managed to crack JEE (i guess there were no Kotas and Rammiahs back then to spoil his chances) and with absolutely no money to have got into Harvard itself is a reflection of his brilliance and grit. Then to have managed to have got into Mckinsey with zilch work experience is indeed super human. he went to become the CEO of Mckinsey , the first non US born person to have occupied that position. To get a true idea of his achievement just imagine how you will feel if a hardcore Indian company like Ashok Leyland or Reliance has a non Indian as a CEO. Frankly i will feel vexed. Its pretty much how most patriotic Americans would have felt back then when Rajat Gupta achieved that position.
What I admire the most in him is his total insulation of his goals from what other people think. If he had thought about the people around him he would have been bogged down by fear of racial prejudice and he would have never aspired to reach the top post. In my position when I think where I will be 10 years down the line in my company I cant think beyond a particular level as I am being bogged down by realistic considerations of how much a Indian can progress in an International company.
I think we Indians have to thank Rajat Gupta, who laid the path for us dream ambitiously and to ruthlessly work towards that dream. He also made us believe that the "glass ceiling" of our careers is in our mind and we need to break just that. What ever might be his current short comings or wrong decision calls off late he has taught us all to dream and work.
No comments:
Post a Comment