Vineet Nayar

CEO of HCL Technologies

How can a company “take a chip out of the marble façade of the office of the CEO?” asks Vineet Nayar – a provocative question coming from someone who himself is a CEO. One method: Post his 360 feedback on the intranet for all employees to see. Vineet has employed this and other unconventional approaches to infuse his company, HCL Technologies, with a unique brand of leadership that is simultaneously energetic and inclusive. Convinced that leadership needs to occur at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy, his management philosophy shifts power away from the office of the CEO and into the hands of employees. The story of how this has played out at HCL is the subject of his recently published book, Employees First, Customer Second (Harvard Business Press, June 2010). Since 2005, when Vineet became President and later CEO of HCL Technologies, he has led a remarkable transformation of the company, which has tripled its revenue and income growth during that period, even as other companies struggled through the recession. Today, HCLT is one of the world’s fastest-growing IT services companies, powered by 55,000 employees across 26 countries. The radical transformation of HCLT has been the subject of a Harvard Business School case study, while Fortune magazine has characterized the company as having the “world’s most modern management.” BusinessWeek listed HCLT as one of the world’s five most influential up-and-coming companies.

Blog Posts by Vineet Nayar

From Where Should We Lead?

As the “Fasten Seatbelts” sign goes off in the global economy and CEOs step out of their crisis-control command centers, they must now decide: Should we go back to leading from atop the organizational pyramid — or should we stay in the eye of the storm?

Women in Leadership : Neelam Manwani

Editor's note: You can follow Vineet Nayar on twitter at @vineetnayar.

I’ve often wondered about the book ‘Nice girls don’t make the corner office’ by Dr Lois P Frankel. The author cautions women that their careers could get sabotaged by “girlish behaviour” learned in childhood, such as working non-stop without a break, worrying about offending others, backing down too easily, explaining too much when asked for information or “polling” friends and colleagues before making a decision…

Follow-up Questions to the Managing Millennials webinar

In my recent webinar with Gary Hamel, we talked about Managing Millennials and the "Employees First, Customers Experiment" we're undertaking at HCL Technologies. (An audio replay of the webinar is available here.) But one hour wasn't enough time to cover it all. There were many unanswered questions from those who attended. I've tried to synthesize the major ones here and provided answers. Please let me know what you think, and let's continue the conversation.

2 Comments

Do We Get Gen "Why"?

I was delighted to catch up recently with one of my teachers, and found her as passionate about educating children today as she was three decades ago, when I was in school. We had a great conversation, but I must admit to a sense of disquiet as I heard her opinions about the next generation.