Amit Kapur: Leadership is all about driving change with empathy and it need not come with a title. I think the focus on diversity and inclusion possibly is the biggest source of driving change and that's the source of our growth. Dr. Andrew White: Hello, I'm Dr. Andrew White and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership2050 podcast. My guest this week is Amit Kapur who heads up Tata Consultancy Services in the UK and Ireland. TCS is one of the biggest tech companies in the world. It describes itself as a purpose-led organization that is building a meaningful future through innovation, technology, and collective knowledge. TCS's proactive stance on climate change and award-winning work with communities across the world have earned it a place in leading sustainability indices. In our conversation, I speak to Amit about leadership behavior, why he believes empathy and respect are key and the challenges of keeping up with the pace of technological change while maintaining a sense of moral purpose. But I started by asking Amit to tell me a bit more about his background. Amit Kapur: I grew up in a small town in India. My father was with the Ministry of Defense in India. So we were always housed in small townships, which used to be remote. And when you are in a remote position and a remote location, there are only so much you get to do outside of your regular scheme of things. For me, my school and for my dad has work. What it taught us was the values of simplicity, values of discipline, and essentially the values of being loyal to what you do. And I believe some of these values, including the social values, they hold true as an individual and as a professional as well. I think those values kept on growing stronger. I continued with my education in India, finished my bachelor's in engineering and went on to do the masters in management and that's when my journey with TCS started. So TCS was looking out for management graduates to be hired into the employee forum and it was in year 1999 just before the year Y2K that I got into TCS and it was a defining year for the IT industry as well, given that there were a lot of unknowns on the Y2K and the industry was scaling on the back of that. So I started in the organization, we were a global organization by all means at that point in time, 20,000 globally employees roughly speaking. And today as I speak with you, we are a little over 600,000 employees. So in 23 plus years, it's been a journey of growth, it's been a journey of change, it's been a journey of varied experiences across markets, across industries and across nature of work. The work has taken me places. I started with TCS in India, started in Mumbai and then went on to be based in two other cities in India as well into different roles. And then moved over to Amsterdam in 2005 primarily to help build partner ecosystems for TS in the mainland Europe, continued in Amsterdam for a much longer time than I was designed for. Every year we felt maybe another year and then when it ended up being to 14. So for 14 odd years I was in Amsterdam and then the count stopped and then we took a short flight 35 minutes across the channel into London and that's when I took over the role of my current responsibility being the head of UK and Ireland for TCS. Dr. Andrew White: Yeah, really interesting story. Very much grounded in the values of the family and what you experienced, but an incredible journey both personally through TCS but also going from I think you said 20,000 to 600,000 employees. That's got to be one of the biggest organizations in the world. I've not got the stats in front of me, but it's got to be certainly up there. So very much at the forefront of the tech revolution that we are living through at the moment. Amit Kapur: It's very true. In fact, I think scale is one denomination and I always believe that it's only the one access of driving change. But yes, it does help in making the impact and I think if we look at the world that we are living in today, you spoke about the tech revolution, we sincerely believe that we are living in the world of transition right now and there is more than one transition that we are experiencing. Tech transition in the name of digital and more profound being AI is absolutely visible to all of us. There is energy transition which we all are living in and experiencing in and out. There is a supply chain transition which has emerged out of the pandemic wherein if you reflect back pre-pandemic, I think the entire supply chains were designed and built for just in time. And as we see the transition happening now, the supply chains are getting built for just in case. And I think that's a big shift which is happening in the entire supply chain transition as well. And the last one is I think the entire talent transition. A lot has been said about it, but I think it's still a hugely evolving space. So I sincerely feel that we are living in the world of transition and four of these transitions are primarily going to redefine what we experienced today and possibly in the near future as well. Dr. Andrew White: And this podcast is very much about the world between now and 2050. And you mentioned climate and that's really why I chose that date to put on the end of leadership was because the scientists are saying climate change won't be something that we're thinking about. It won't be something that we're experiencing. We'll have seen the consequences of it. And I think also tech has a huge role to play. If you think about this podcast we're doing, if we were doing this maybe five or 10 years ago, I would've come down to London to meet you. I would've invoked a carbon footprint. The carbon footprint of us doing this now is a fraction of what it used to be. And that's because of tech. And I'm sure somewhere in the background between me sitting in Oxfordshire and you in London, there's some TCS technology enabling us to speak. We can see tech for good, but why also know there's a lot of harm that's being done by social media. So for me, technology is neither good nor bad. It's that classic thing. It's the consciousness that we bring to it. It's the impact that it has. And I think perhaps more so with AI because this has a big potential, it's already having an impact on how we're living. So could you just say a little bit more about how you see that and because there's the good and there's the bad of tech and you are at the forefront of how it's being used and you must be able to see both perspectives there. Amit Kapur: I think pretty fairly put across Andrew. In fact any change for that matter is an opportunity as well as a threat. And so is the case with the tech change as well. Any of the four transition that I spoke about, I think all of them follow that journey of a possibility to do something hugely good. But at the same time there is always an element of what can go wrong. We have seen this on the back of tech in terms of organizations at operating models going direct to consumers. So you and me having this podcast, you and me are sitting in the back of our comfort rooms and still being able to shop online, order online, and get the entire transaction done. Now all those are the positives, but at the same time there is also the cyber risk and the cyber risk which exposes the same transactions onto a very different degree. And I think it's a question of ethics, which is largely a subject well-spoken about, largely a subject which is being pushed across so that the practices are in a fair manner, but it's also a question of ensuring that right controls and balances are put in place. Reflect back on the earlier world of which was 100% physical and look at the industrial revolution. When we set up the factories, we set up the manufacturing units, we always put a safety hazard or a safety denomination on anything which was possibly going to hurt an individual or a health or an environment. So is the case with the digital world as well. I think it's just a question that the pace of this development is so fast that at times it becomes tough for everyone to catch up with it and hence any such evolution needs to be calibrated on the sense of ethics, on the sense of checks and balances, and on the sense of what controls one can put in place for element that one can visualize. So I think that's where we see it and we have seen this hugely positive. In fact, if we were to just look at tech revolution, we have seen instances of that hugely impact different status of society. I think we have seen that in the world of pandemic, the appreciation of technology has improved drastically. We have seen it in the entire life cycle of drug discovery. Drugs which used to take at least a decade plus came into life on the back of pandemic in an accelerated fashion. We were talking months and weeks and quarters and not years. Similarly, there has been element of what has been done on citizen experiences. If I was to give you an example of where I come from, where my upbringing was in India, if you were to look at a very small nuance of a passport, now the tech intervention has done a beautiful turnaround to this. The entire passport issuance, which used to take months today is turned around to a process of 24 to 48 hours. That's a change that tech can make as a difference in a citizen experience, in a citizen service provided it is used for the right mechanism, it has the right checks and balances and the right controls as well. So we have lots of these instances wherein we see the evolution of tech interventions. We have seen TCS play a huge role at scale wherein we have seen society benefit at large. Dr. Andrew White: And I thought COVID was a real case in point, it wasn't easy, was it getting through COVID but the world continued because of the technological infrastructure. Even all those family quizzes we had, we kept families together through teams and Zooms and everyone realized that their teams account and their Zoom account wasn't just for work actually could help the facilitator family conversation as well. And I just think the ease of banking now has just become so much easier. I haven't been in a bank in a long time, but as you say, there are risks around all of this and I think the risk is that we just see the tech and you were very eloquent in describing the system in which the tech takes place, the cyber risk and the societal impact risk. And what I'm thinking is this requires a different type of leadership. It requires people who both can deliver the secure and the excellent processes that you were describing but also understand that the broader and complex world in which that technology is being implemented. Amit Kapur: Absolutely spot on. In fact, under the entire role of leadership, just as the nature of work got reimagined, whether it was shopping, working in office, outside office from home and things like that, the entire role of leadership also stands re-imagined. The entire focus on leadership in the past largely has been around people and performance. You drive your team to drive a performance to drive the impact. I think it's largely been around people and performance. In the new dimension that we are saying while people and performance do continue to be the cornerstones, there is an equal element of empathy and respect and lot of this combination converges into future possibilities. It also converges into what is it that we do, which is right not only for here and now but for the longer term as well impact across stakeholders. And the stakeholders are not necessarily to be mixed up with shareholders only, whether it is employees, whether it is customers, whether it is society, whether it is future generations. I think those are the elements of empathy and respect that leadership needs to demonstrate more now along with the focus on people and performance, I think that's where we clearly see that lots of those dimensions come together and converge. COVID pandemic again I think was a hard element for many across the society, but it also was a way of driving change and the change that we experienced, the change in acceleration that we all live with, I think it has clearly brought us to a point that the decisions which were taken at that point in time, they sounded right or they sounded hard for that moment, but if they were good for the long term than people do benefit. And I think that's a dimension that we clearly see taking more place in leadership now that don't focus only on here and now. Dr. Andrew White: Yeah, and I think what people may not realize listening that TCS is a very modern company, it's seen a credible growth over the last few years, but it's part of the Tata group. And the Tata group is not a modern company. It goes back a long time and it's one of the companies or the group that I admire most in the world because it's got deep, deep values embedded in it. And I think what you are talking about for the world, there's often a recent shift that you are talking about from performance to empathy and things like that. But for the Tata group, this is not a new thing, is it? This goes back a long way into history in terms of the way that group was formed and the emphasis and the focus that it has had on the world. Amit Kapur: Absolutely. In fact, I think most of us who have experienced the group, whether from inside or from as a consumer would possibly denominate the group with one common value being trust. And it's a value that continues to be on the forefront of everything that the group does, whether it is TCS as part of the group or the group at large. In fact, some of the pioneering elements that the group did have been industry standing practices for a long, long time. We all know that women welfare, the childcare became as a practice in the developed economies after a long time. But somewhere in the 1890s after a group had been formed is when these practices were installed for the first time in the group for one of the textile mills. It was never heard of at that point in time, but it really reflected on what the group stood for. It clearly reflected in the group's philosophy and that's a beautiful statement actually, that the businesses exist for the purpose of the community and because community is not just one other stakeholder and that's the philosophy of which the group progresses, that's the philosophy of which the group has continued to invest in. And in fact the nature of the group has also evolved. Group has been in existence for almost 150 plus years. Today the group is very active in the tech space through TCS, in the digital space through multitude of initiatives, in the consumer space through direct to consumer experiences along with the known entities of the group being data motors for the Jaguar Land Rover space of vehicles, Tata Steel and the other entities which are grown in size and scale. So group has continued to reinvent, continued to remain relevant as the decades have progressed and so has been the case with us at TCS as well. I think if I reflect on what we used to have as conversations with customers, employees, and the society when I joined in and what we do now is hugely different. I think what was being spoken at scale today is possibly being spoken about how do you drive change. So it's a cycle which we believe is clearly progressed from one of the players on elements on the downstream of supply chain, possibly today we are one of the orchestrators which defines the upstream and the downstream together on how the technology gets consumed, how technology gets serviced, how the stakeholders get serviced and how all of this gets consumed as an experience and not necessarily only as efficiency. And I think possibly that's a reflection. Andrew, if I may just take another minute on this, I think if I reflect on it, our industry started on the back of a single denomination called efficiency. Everyone wanted to use tech to be more efficient, whether it was enterprise, whether it was individual and things like that. So efficiency was the element of success or failure. Today when we speak, I think that one E has become three Es. Efficiency continues to be the pillar, but equally important pillars are experience and effectiveness. I think efficiency, experience, and effectiveness is the journey that we have seen the tech world go through and possibly that's where our play is today. Dr. Andrew White: You've got a very privileged position. I think there are a few of us who have the benefit of being in what I would call a node organization. And what do I mean by node is that we look across a lot of the world and the business school at Oxford is one of those nodes. A company like yours, a consultancy company is also one of those. So when you look across the world, you look across your customers, I'm guessing you go to events like Davos, the World Economic Forum, who stands out as being a kind of a project or a company that is really embodying the future for you? Amit Kapur: I think a lot of that inspiration comes from fresh thinking, possibly on the back of startups. A lot of this fresh thinking also comes on the back of conversations, conversations with the people who come from different backdrops of society because everyone looks at the opposity and the challenge slightly differently and a lot of those inspirations come on the back of those differently as well. But for me personally speaking, I think I have always enjoyed picking inspiration from sports folks, sports persons, sports personalities. For a very simple reason I think it's in my mind, sports is a culmination of multiple values, whether it is hard work, whether it is focus, whether it is perseverance or whether it is competitiveness. And all of that comes together on the back home of multitude of sports personalities. So whether it is track and field, whether it is cricket, whether it is Formula One, we see different elements of personas being demonstrated, being displayed. On the business front, I think if I was to just reflect on our own group journey, a startup group and our current group chairman, Mr. N Chandra who was the CEO of TCS in his previous role as well, we've clearly seen what energy can do to an organization and what simplistic thinking and focus can do for the larger good. I think in his own words and something that I have always thought about and possibly keeps us driven as well, whenever one was to seek any inspiration, he said, look at growth. There is no other form of energy which is better than growth. So growth is the source of energy and if you just focus on growth, multitude of elements of change and challenges get addressed. So always take a step back, look at a broader canvas of a growth led conversation. And it can come from multitude of different personas as I called out, but maybe that's what keeps us going and that's what we look up to. Dr. Andrew White: Yeah, it's really interesting and I think there's something you're right about startups, there's an unconstrained thinking in there. There's something about those conversations that I think it's conferences and I think to be honest, a lot of it has to be face-to-face where we meet people who are different from us. And on your point on sport as well, we had Toto Wolff, the head of Mercedes Formula One on here and he talked very eloquently and it struck me there's a simplicity with sport. Business is complex, are we doing well? Are we not doing well? Sport can be ruthless. And so it's got more of a defined metric about it. So yeah, there's some really interesting bits. And then I think there is something about we need growth, perhaps we need a different form of growth but there's a sense that we need to have more innovation. And I do think within certain industries there's a sense that the status quo isn't working and therefore it's that thing that comes from a more eastern perspective of things need to die, we need to be conscious to death, but also conscious to life and life is where the growth comes from. So yeah, so really, really interesting lenses on what it's going to mean. So when you think forward 10 years, perhaps 15 years, it's hard to think out much beyond that. What do you see the big shift being in the way tech is being used in society? Amit Kapur: In all fairness, I think the impact that tech can have in the duration that you're talking about Andrew, possibly is slightly unimaginable. For a very simple reason that I think we have seen in the last 24 to 36 months on what tech has done to our way of lif, what tech has done to our way of work, what tech has done to our way of engagement. And this space is only going to multiply. This space is going to multiply in terms of experience, in terms of reach, in terms of growth. I think what will redefine the utilization of tech is the transition that I spoke about. And maybe there are more transitions which are waiting to happen. We would not imagine energy transition without a tech intervention. We would not imagine a supply chain transition without a tech intervention. The talent revolution, talent evolution will not happen without the skills and without the tech in question. So in our assessment, I think tech is going to be a common fabric which will underpin the entire societal element, whether it is for business elements, whether it is for social elements, whether it is for a common cause of good. What possibly may happen is that this tech distribution in terms of its utilization, in terms of its ability to progress, that might get a redistribution into a very different demand dynamics. Today, a lot of that tech distribution is driven by the amount of reach of internet network and mobile as an accessibility. We may end up in a world which might reimagine this basic assumption and I think that's a transition possibly that we are waiting to happen. Dr. Andrew White: So tell me more. What would that look like? Amit Kapur: See today we are contemplating anytime anywhere learning as a case in point. And it was a step up from a dimension of classroom learning. So we moved from classroom learning to anytime, anywhere learning, saying that you got a device, you have it accessible, we got a repository of anything that you can learn at any point in time. The next step which has already happened is that we know that you cannot be connected at all times. So please, why don't you download onto your device what you want to learn, but you learn at any time that is preferable to you. Going forward it may not be a one is to one relationship, it can be a many to many relationship. You may not need those nuggets of modules of learning as training modules. You may need it to be completely re-imagined to say that maybe it is more experiential. And does that need me to be connected, to be experiencing what was being discussed in that module is the question mark. Will my investments in AI help me augment my ability to learn? Will my investments in AI really need to go that deep, that I really need to learn everything and anything or I only need to learn judgment making while the basics are being presented back to me? So I think a lot of that nature will get re-calibrated not of that will get re-imagined. On the back of technology because the possibilities will be boundary less, but it will only be factored by the imagination of the human. Dr. Andrew White: Yes, exactly. And the imagination of the leaders in many ways because they're the often the gatekeepers to resources and the gatekeepers to decision making in all of these things. Amit Kapur: Yeah, that is true but I think we have seen the leadership progress. If you look at the space of younger generation because it's not that the leadership operates in a vacuum, if you look at the space of young generation as well, there is a different voice to this youth. There is a different element of awareness that this generation has. There's a different element of societal awakening, if I may use that word, which this generation brings about. All of that cannot exist in isolation. All of that converges into what enterprises do, what governments do, what society does as priorities as well. I think that convergence is possibly where the leadership styles, the leadership focus, and also the leadership dimensions, both of tech firms as well as the non-tech firms will converge. Dr. Andrew White: And I guess it raises the assumption of who is a leader. If the 20th Century was about the development of hierarchies, I think this century as it develops is going to be less and less about that and leadership coming from lots of different places. And some of the people we have on this podcast have had huge impact on the world and they've got very little in form of an traditional organization. And so that's one of the things we try to be very neutral about. We're not just looking for people who are in big hierarchies, they're interesting people like you and Alan Jope at Unilever and others. But then there's also other people who are, they're innovators, they're entrepreneurs or they do an awful lot with very little. Amit Kapur: Leadership is all about driving change with empathy and it need not come with a title. You can get the source of inspiration on the back of that change and empathy from different status of the society, from different backdrops of individuals and personas as well. And possibly that's the source of our growth. As individuals, we don't grow, if we were to only look at uni directionally on what a value stream looks like. If you look at it, I think all organizations traditionally have grown into vertical integration model. You do upstream, you do downstream, you do it very efficiently, possibly you're a great organization. But that myth and that philosophy itself has got challenged because there is no organization which gets refined as a single industry organization anymore. You operate in an ecosystem. So beyond doing that vertical integration, if you're not able to bring the dimensions of horizontal collaboration, you won't stand differentiated. And I think that's the same philosophy which holds true for leadership as well. You don't necessarily need to look at your titles, need to look at your roles only but look wider, look wider into the ecosystem of starters and personas which can have an impact and bring it all together. Dr. Andrew White: And it raises a really important question listening to you is like, who are you surrounding yourself with? Because if you are surrounding yourself with people who are similar to you, it goes back to what you were saying earlier. You're not going to get that diversity of thinking and that challenge to your assumptions about the future. And we know that that creativity comes from difference and that's where that growth and that emergence can come from. Amit Kapur: I think the focus on diversity and inclusion possibly is the biggest source of driving change because that in a way is at the start of the funnel to say that what new ideas can come through. If one was to surround with like-minded people, possibly one will be happy here and now but will one lead the impact? Will one leave the entire element of the change to be driven? That will be a black hole. Right at the start of the funnel, if one was to able to drive differentiated thinking, different voices, different experiences, that in a way will funnel the entire conversation to come with the right outcome. Of course in an organization setup, you need the performance to strive. So you need an efficient model for the engine to work, but that efficiency should not come in the way of experience and effectiveness. Dr. Andrew White: Amit, thank you. It feels like we could have gone on for a long time. We've come to the end of our time. There are just seven questions I want to finish with which I've used with all the guests on this podcast. The first is, which leader from history inspires you most? Amit Kapur: I think on the business front, as I said, it's a group chairman N Chandra who's been quite remarkable in driving change. But outside of business I take a lot of inspiration from sports personalities. Dr. Andrew White: Very good. And when you look at the leaders around the world today, who inspires you most? Amit Kapur: The captain of Indian cricket team who has been known to drive change and behavior on how India as a nation has come up in that sport, but also about instinctive decision making. That's what I picked it from. Dr. Andrew White: And is there a book that has made the most impact on your leadership? Amit Kapur: I think more than a book, multitude of articles have really kept me in good state. I think that gives me a freshness of different thinking from different originations and that's what I enjoy the most. As an individual, I enjoy reading articles of higher impact with better frequency rather than a book in totality. Dr. Andrew White: You get more diversity of thought that way? Amit Kapur: Absolutely. Dr. Andrew White: And then you must promote a lot of people, you must be constantly looking at your leadership pipeline. Is there one characteristic or is there something that you are really looking for in the people that you are promoting, in the people that you are seeing promoted at more junior levels within the operation that you run? Amit Kapur: I think there are three attributes that I really look at. Ambition, attitude, and the entire performance ethics. I feel the combination of these three go a long way in defining who one is. Dr. Andrew White: And when you look at the younger generation of the employees in TCS, what inspires you most? You talked a bit about how you see something different in them. Amit Kapur: I think their entire ability to experiment in a non-constraint way and bringing the appreciation of larger societal challenges into a smaller pockets of work, I think is a source of inspiration possibly for all of us. Dr. Andrew White: Absolutely. And what makes you most hopeful about the future? Amit Kapur: I think the depth and breadth of opportunities, the transition that we are going through are going to put us in a good state and possibly that will only mean more. Dr. Andrew White: And finally, I can imagine that being in a role like you are in puts a heavy toll on you. There's a lot of pressures. I can't imagine you are working from 9:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the evening. So where do you go for inspiration and renewal? Where do you go to top up the tank of energy, of thinking, of relaxation? Amit Kapur: Meet people. Don't define your day with the calendar agenda only and dialogue, in which you learn and listen. I think listening helps a lot is what I've experienced. So I do walk around a lot. I will meet people a lot and I listen a lot. Dr. Andrew White: My thanks to Amit Kapur. My name is Andrew White and you've been listening to Leadership2050, a podcast from Said Business School at the University of Oxford. If you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word, follow us, and maybe leave us a nice review. If you'd like to hear more from Said Business School, exploring leadership, and how the business world is re-imagining the future, please visit oxfordanswers.org. Leadership2050 is produced by Eve Streeter, original music is by Si Begg Our executive producer is David McGuire for Stabl productions. In the next episode, I'll be talking to Pinar Akiskalioglu, the founder of Punk Business School. Until then, thanks for listening.