N.R. Narayana Murthy on Professionalization vs Promoter

Murthy held the CEO chair at Infosys for twenty-one years, from founding in 1981 until 2002, before handing the role to co-founder Nandan Nilekani. He remained chairman until 2011 and briefly returned as executive chairman in mid-2013 during a difficult leadership transition, before reverting to chairman emeritus later that year.

Murthy says fairness is his god: in any transaction, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He insisted on data-driven decisions, courtesy toward dissenters, and an environment where people could disagree without being disagreeable — a cultural norm he views as central to keeping bright people aligned.

Assembling the right team, Murthy argues, means finding people with mutually exclusive but collectively exhaustive competencies who share the same value system. The founder's job is then to be the safety net in each person's weak spots, rather than to micromanage their strengths.