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Sudhakar Ram, CEO of Mastek
Anything
Can Happen
Five
experiences that have shaped Sudhakar Ram, CEO of Mastek
Being packed off to the IIM
My early childhood and schooling was in Delhi and Calcutta. We moved to
Chennai when I was eight. I graduated in commerce from Loyola College.
Despite being a top ranker, I thought I was done with studies and was ready
to join the family business in printing and publishing. A friend was giving
the the IIM entrance exam and I joined him, just for a lark. When I got in
I was in two minds – whether to waste another couple of years studying or
get on with life.
My father pushed me into going to IIM Calcutta,
telling me that I could always come back to the business after I complete
my MBA. Little did he realize that he had lost me as an employee, forever.
At the IIM, I discovered the two loves of my life: my wife, Girija, and
computers. Both changed my life completely. I ended up working in Mumbai
instead of Chennai because Girija lived there. And I got myself a job in
the IT side of advertising. I eventually joined our software vendor –
Mastek – as part of the founding team.
Visiting an orphanage
We were vacationing in Chennai when my brother suggested that we should
visit Udavum Karangal, an orphanage doing wonderful work in taking care of
abandoned children. Girija and I met with Papa Vidyakar, a truly
inspirational human being. He took us around one of his facilities for
newly borns, where Girija and I could pick up and hold dozens of children -
a delightful, heart-warming experience. We had been pretty clear in our
heads that we had no time to have children of our own, since we were deep
into our careers. I do think that the visit to the orphanage changed our
mind, and planted the seeds for Samvitha, our daughter who was born a few
years later.
Bringing up my daughter
Raising Samvitha was definitely a life-changing experience for my wife
and me. We had the advantage of having a child in our mid-thirties, when we
had reached a level in our careers where we did not need to prove ourselves
every day. I could really savour the experience, making my daughter as much
of a priority as my work at Mastek. I had the advantage of working close to
home. I could come home during lunch to be with her and eat together. I
still remember an eight-month-old Samvitha, sitting in a baby seat fixed to
the dining table, sharing the food that I ate – including spicy pickles and
delicious mangoes.
Reading to her from the age of six months, probably
got her to speak sentences by the time she was one, and has fostered her
love for reading and writing. Treating her like an adult from a very young
age has probably helped her mature quickly. Now at eighteen, she is
perfectly capable of living her own life with no support from either my
wife or me. I am fortunate to have been able to spend that time – unlike
several fathers who miss that experience. Bringing up Samvitha helped me develop
as a person, teaching me to love another human being unconditionally.
The writers who inspired me
I have always been a voracious reader and several books have inspired
me. The writings of Mahatma Gandhi have been a great source of inspiration.
His thinking, in many ways, was way ahead of his times and is far more
relevant to the 21st century. EF Schumacher was a great bridge in adapting
Gandhian and Buddhist thought for an industrialized world through his book
Small is Beautiful. Stephen Covey and Benjamin Zander have influenced me greatly through
their books on personal transformation. Buckminster Fuller, Paul Hawken,
McDonough and Braungart were wonderful in expounding on technology for a
more sustainable world. Arie de Geus has always inspired me to look at
corporations as living organisms, while Adam Smith’s notions of perfect
competition are still waiting to be applied with integrity. All these
writers provided the foundation for my book on the 21st century.
Writing my first book – T h e C o n n e c t e d A g e
I have always been fond of writing, and have been doing opinion pieces
for The Economic Times and other business publications. In 2009, post the
economic meltdown, I realized some fundamental rethinking was required in
the world. Reflecting on the issues, I had an insight worth sharing. The
Industrial Age had brought enormous prosperity to many people on the
planet. Its constructs were scale, standardization, repeatability and so
on. These very assumptions were now destroying the planet but we were
almost blind to it. Unless the world reinvented these assumptions – about
success, learning, work, consumption, wellness, markets, organizations and
governments – we would not be able to transform our planet into something
that works for all of us.
An editor of Harvard Business Review, whom I
consulted about writing a book, advised me to do some ground work and share
my learnings as a blog rather than jump straight into a book. That was the
inspiration to start a blog, The New Constructs. The blog is a chronicle of
my meetings with people who are doing outstanding work outside the
mainstream, books that throw light on what the new world needs to look
like, my reflections, learnings and practices, and my interpretation of
topical events in light of the new world. With a consistent post every
week, I have now completed more than 230 posts over the last 4+ years – and
was amazed to see that it has attracted a Facebook fan following of more
than 40,000.
It is all this research that has now been
transformed into the book. I have really enjoyed this whole journey. It has
been a period of deep personal transformation. I have been able to put into
practice many of the new learnings I have had during this journey.
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