A firefighter remembers

January 2009. Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy three months ago and the world was reeling from the impact of the economic crisis. Member companies of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) were counting their losses and trying to hold on to clients. But for Som Mittal, the industry body’s president, the going was to get tougher.

On Jan. 7, 2010, Satyam chairman B. Ramalinga Raju admitted to financial fraud amounting to $1.47 billion (Rs 9,175.7 crore). As the industry’s face, Mittal was expected to have answers to a volley of questions. But the bigger challenge was to keep the government from shutting down Satyam. Mittal was at Satyam’s Hyderabad headquarters through the first 72 hours of the crisis. “Handling the crisis was not just about Satyam. We were all in it together,” he says.

Mittal believes every job needs a leader—someone to go ahead and take charge. That’s what he did during the Satyam crisis. He volunteered to be a bridge till arrangements were made to resolve the issue. “You need passion to go beyond your core competency. Be receptive to absorb what others are saying and learn from their experiences,” he says.

After a 39-year career, Mittal says he believes that it is people, not technology, that will help in a crisis. A good crisis manager knows how to use team power, he says, and gives an example from his stint as managing director of Digital Equipment India. Digital Equipment was the first U.S. multinational IT company to enter India after liberalisation. But soon the India business had unhappy customers, high attrition, and was making losses. “I told the team, ‘Let’s go out and beat the hell out of the competition.’ We not only survived the turbulence but thrived during those days,” recalls Mittal.

He says executives today don’t share experiences, and knowledge is not passed on. As a result, everyone is reinventing the wheel. “If everyone becomes a strategic thinker, who will handhold and execute?” he asks. “Everyone is caught in leader vs. manager, strategic vs. operational. It shouldn’t be either-or. You have to fill gaps in the team, even get into details, for successful implementation.”
For young leaders, he has a word of caution: Don’t measure success in the short-term and don’t over-engineer your career. “If you keep doing the right things, you will win in the long run. Just be honest to yourself.”