Download pptx - Leadership - Team Leadership at Wipro

Team Leadership at Wipro - By Saurabh Sao 1

Team Leadership at Wipro

Wipro's Co-CEO Model “Are Two CEOs Better Than One?”

03-10-2015


Case Title: Leadership Re-organisation: Wipro's Co-CEO ModelAbstract: In April 2008, Wipro, India's third largest software services firm announced the appointment of Girish Parajpe and Suresh Vaswani as co-CEOs for its IT business. Over the years, divergent personalities like Ashok Soota and Vivek Paul brought in their style of management and moved the business ahead. Wipro expects the appointment of co-CEOs would enable the company to take advantage of blending complementary skills and experience, easing the strain of responsibility and workforce synergies to help the company move up the value chain in the global software industry. However industry experts are sceptical about the model, as such earlier global attempts have not been too successful. But in the Indian scenario, specifically IT, companies have managed well with a collective style of leadership. Will Wipro achieve what it set out to do by appointing joint CEOs or will it be pulled in different directions by the two leaders?Pedagogical Objectives:• To different leadership styles and challenges faced by leaders.• To leadership changes in Wipro and how it affected the business.• The rationale behind the decision to appoint joint CEOs.• The likely impact of the decision.

03-10-2015


About Wipro• India’s third-largest software services firm

• Mumbai- and New York-listed company

• Revenues grown to nearby $4 billion in 2008 from $1.35 billion in 2005

03-10-2015


CEO’S SINCE 1981• Ashok Narasimhan: Founding CEO & president of Wipro's IT business —Wipro

InfoTech and Wipro Systems (software business)• Ashok Soota: Joined Wipro Infotech in 1984 as president and then became CEO

of Wipro Systems in 1991• Vivek Paul: Joined Wipro in 1999 after Ashok Soota left the company to start

Mindtree. Led the company for six years till 2005• Azim Premji: Chairman and CEO from 2005 to 2008• Girish Paranjpae & Suresh Vaswani: Took charge as joint CEOs in 2008 and ran

the company for almost three years• T K Kurien: Assumed the post of CEO in April 2011

03-10-2015


Wipro’s organizational structure• Wipro’s organizational structure is complex and sometimes puzzles

outsiders.

• 1 Chairman, • 2 Executive Director & Joint CEO, IT Business, • 1 Executive Director & CFO.• 8 independent non-executive directors

03-10-2015


Wipro’s IT Business• The IT business has two organizations —

• Wipro Infotech – (serves India, West Asia and Asia Pacific.)

• Wipro Technologies – (handles the global business)

03-10-2015


Wipro’s Business Matrix• In functional terms, the company has a matrix structure with 3

verticals and 2 horizontals.

WIPRO Functions 1 2 3

1

2

3 X 2 Matrix

03-10-2015


The Verticals• The three verticals are

• $1.06 billion Technology Business (which is in the product engineering and the telecom service provider space)

• $1.4 billion Enterprise Business (targeted at manufacturing, healthcare, retail, etc.)

• $799 million Financial Services Business.

03-10-2015


The Horizontals• The two horizontals are:

• $1.1 billion Global Practices Business (testing, package implementation and technology infrastructure services)

• $290 million Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) operation

03-10-2015


Wipro’s Business Matrix

• These verticals and horizontals are headed by executives who were expected, after Paul’s departure, to function as CEOs.

WIPRO Functions

$1.06 billion technology business

$1.4 billion enterprise business

$799 million financial services business

$1.1 billion global practices business

$290 million BPO

3 X 2 Matrix

03-10-2015


Wipro Timeline• Former CEO Vivek Paul left to join Texas Pacific Group(A private equity firm)

• Wipro has had no CEO since Paul’s departure

• Chairman Azim Premji owns more than 80% of Wipro and took charge by combining the roles of both chairman and CEO.

03-10-2015


Chairman and CEO

• Premji got inevitably overburdened.

• “It pushed too much of the operating load on me and was getting counter-productive,” says Premji.

03-10-2015


Change• That situation changed when Wipro announced in mid-April 2008 the

appointed of not just one CEO but two:

• Girish Paranjpe

• Suresh Vaswani.

03-10-2015


Girish Paranjpe• University of Mumbai

Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com.), Economics, Accounting 1974 – 1978

• Daly CollegeXI, english maths 1964 – 1974

• Paranjpe has been with Wipro since 1990

• Most recently was president of the BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) vertical of Wipro’s global IT business.

03-10-2015


Competency of Girish Paranjpe• Start-ups, Pre-sales, Team Management, • Business Analysis, Cloud Computing, Finance• Operations Management, CRM, Business Intelligence• Solution Architecture, Product Management, SaaS• Integration, Strategic Planning, Consulting

• Core Competency : Cost and Profit Orientation.

03-10-2015


Suresh Vaswani• Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

PGDBM, 1983 – 1985

• Indian Institute of Technology, KharagpurB.E., 1976 – 1981

• Vaswani is a 23-year veteran at the company • Before his promotion, the president of Wipro Infotech. • In addition, he oversaw some areas of the global practices of Wipro

Technologies.

03-10-2015


Competency of Suresh Vaswani• Vendor Management, Outsourcing, Pre-sales, Managed Services, • Program Management, Business Development, Global Delivery, • Information Technology, Solution Architecture, CRM, Security, • Team Management, Infrastructure, Testing, Executive Management, Integration, • Project Management, Software Project., BPO, Cisco Technologies, Technical Support• System Deployment, Business Analysis, Social Media, Solution Selling, SaaS, • Enterprise Architecture, IT Outsourcing, Telecommunications, Data Center, Manufacturing, New

Business Development

• Core Competency : Action and Result Orientation.

03-10-2015


Confident with Change• Premji is confident that the new arrangement will work. • He said, “We believe that two people who have worked together for

more than 10 years and been in the company for more than 15 years would be able to work very well as a team. The fact that 75% of our revenues come from global markets, the fact that we are growing at 30% a year in a service, highly people-intensive industry, we figured that a two-man team at the top would be stronger than one man at the top. I continue to be executive chairman, but they are the joint CEOs of our IT business.”

- In an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton,

03-10-2015


The Hot Seats• The two men occupying the hot seat

— in this case, seats

— are equally enthusiastic and eager.

03-10-2015


The Gung-ho• Vaswani:

“Given the size of our business and the ambitions that we have for our business, two is certainly better than one. We do believe that the power of two will help us so far as we are concerned, given our

environment.”

03-10-2015


The Gung-ho• Paranjpe:

“Given the enormity of the opportunity and the task at hand, we felt it was worthwhile to have two of us trying to drive this rather than leave

it to one individual to try and do [everything]. And from a personal perspective, it can get very lonely at the top. So, having two people

helps.”

03-10-2015


My view

“The business environment in India gives a stimulus to this model of collegial and collective leadership,”

• Wipro’s business in the country is associated with both face of India • “Indian premium” • “Indian penalty”

03-10-2015


Indian Premiums & Penalties• The “premium” aspect for companies doing business in India is the

combination of access to a highly skilled labour pool and attractive wage levels,

• The “penalties” are the uncertainties in the business environment with respect to infrastructure, power availability, urban transportation and stability in policy regimes.

03-10-2015


Need of two CEO• Companies like Wipro need two CEOs because of the complexity of doing

business in India• On the one hand, you have to manage offshore client relationships and

business development by staying really closely tuned to what is happening in international markets.

• On the other, you have to be embedded in India to manage the country-specific challenges.

Sometimes these two faces of complexity are quite dissociated from each other, it may be difficult for the same CEO to handle both ends.

03-10-2015


Collegial Leadership Model• Such a “collegial leadership model” works in some Indian companies

is because what they call

“The Founder Effect.”

03-10-2015


The Founder effect• The founders of companies such as Wipro, Infosys Technologies and

HCL Technologies • are entrepreneurs in some senses, • are more principals than employees,• they have very strong shared values and • they have seen their companies grow over the years.

Conflicts between CEOs often occur because of vastly divergent visions and different skills, but that’s not the problem with founders.

03-10-2015


View of Ravi Aron• Ravi Aron, senior fellow at Wharton’s Mack Center for Technology

Innovation • Aron has closely studied Wipro’s strategies for the past 14 years.

• Aron believes the twin-CEO model should work well at Wipro based on his personal knowledge of the relationship between Vaswani and Paranjpe.

03-10-2015


What’s Aron believes“Suresh and Girish are very compatible personalities,” he says.

“Both are hands-on, have a great deal of discipline, never miss the details, and have a strong sense of not going after expensive, blue-sky

ideas until they can be validated by research.” he adds“There could be tactical differences, but those can be resolved.”

In addition, Premji will be involved in all key management decisions, and has “always been part of the analytic filter that all decisions must

pass through,” says Aron.

03-10-2015


View of Peter Cappelli• Peter Cappelli is a Wharton management professor and sounds a

cautionary note, he points out that he hasn’t seen the twin-CEO model work effectively in Western corporations.

“Generally, in the world of governance, this is a situation to avoid,” he says.

03-10-2015


View of Peter Cappelli

“My guess is that what ultimately happens is the co-CEOs confront the possibility of a stalemate, but there is also the possibility of them

continuing to disagree, and so they may end up negotiating settlements all the time. In principle, that is not bad if they actually have the

interpersonal skills to negotiate conflicts as opposed to just stalemates.”

03-10-2015


View of Peter Cappelli• Cappelli also doesn’t recommend shared power at the CEO level by

carving out two autonomous business units as a way to retain top management talent.

“You are basically structuring a whole corporation around these two individuals with the goal of trying to keep two people,” he says,

Adding that he doesn’t approve of “turning the organization on its head just to make that happen.”

03-10-2015


In View of Sudhir Sethi, • Sudhir Sethi, chairman and managing director of IDG Ventures India,

part of a global network of local venture funds.

“Wipro may adopt this approach for two to three years.” “Wipro’s adoption of a joint-CEO structure is a step indicating to internal senior

management the potential of rising to the top,” he says.

“To the other stakeholders, this move signifies depth of its management cadre in the IT business. The IT business is large enough to need two

CEOs.”03-10-2015


Other side of the coin• The other side of the coin, of course, is the notion that this is the easy

way out.

• Wipro has lost some senior people recently.

• Appointing an outsider as CEO — or promoting just one person — could have led to further departures

03-10-2015


View of Nandita Gurjar• Nandita Gurjar, Group Head of Human Resources at Infosys

Technologies.

“A decision to opt for a joint-CEO structure sometimes also implies that the two may have co-skills and that

there is no frontrunner,” says Nandita

• She makes it clear, however, that she is not talking about the Wipro duo, but in general terms.

03-10-2015


ConclusionThe leadership style shown by the team Wipro & the team of Azim Premji, Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe is :

Collegial Collective style of leadership Decentralized Leadership Team Leadership Paternalistic leadership by Azim Premji Democratic Leadership by Joint CEOs

03-10-2015


Thankyoufor listening

03-10-2015