S4e02 Unrelenting Curiosity with Tiger Tyagarajan

Host: What makes a great leader? Think of the best leader you've ever had? What makes them so memorable to you? What did they do for you? Did they believe in you before you even believed in yourself? Did they take a chance on you when you weren't ready yet? Did they trust you even when you hadn't earned their trust? Did they have your back even. Even at personal risk to themselves? Want to know why they did it?

Host: Then you're at the right place.

Host: In this podcast, we dig into the why through deeply personal stories of great leaders who are powered by their purpose, anchored in their authenticity, and connect who they are to how they lead in good times and bad, at, ah, crossroads and crises, who challenge status quo and existing paradigms that and do different things differently. It will make you wonder what would you do if you faced a similar challenge? Join us in reimagining the leadership of the future with me, your host, Shahana Banerjee, CEO of Just Human Leadership Advisors.

Host: In this episode, we dig into how curiosity elevates our leadership with Tiger Tyagarajan, one of the most curious leaders I have ever met. He's the former CEO of Genpact, a, ah, technology solutions company with $5 billion in revenue and 140,000 employees. He also serves on the boards of JBIL, MATCO, Inetum and Healthedge, and serves as a senior advisor with BCG, Bain Capital, and others. Eternally curious, he's on a mission to help the world be a little more curious and a lot more open to learn. Welcome, Tiger. It is such an incredible honor to have you on our podcast today.

Tiger Tyagarajan: I'm delighted to be part, uh, of this conversation. You have a pretty amazing set of, um, people you've spoken to in the past, so I'm honored to be part of the conversation on this platform.

Speaker D: Thank you. I followed your work for years, so

Host: this is a treat. Let's jump right in. So let's start with your story, Tiger. Tell us about the people, the influences and experiences that have shaped you into who you are today.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Wow, that's gotta be a long list.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: I'll start off by saying that I don't consider any one person as my kind of role model and who shaped me or a whole lot of people over the years. I have admired something about them, uh, and learned something from them. It kind of a little bit relates to the way I think about in general life. So I keep watching, uh, learning from situations, other people, uh, and that's been my journey.

Speaker D: There are so many learnings in what

Host: you said, but one of the things that really stands out for me is that often we think of, oh my God, if only I had one mentor in my life or if only I had this one influence, you know, that could have really shaped my career. But you're actually dispelling that myth. What you are talking about is almost a uh, treasure hunt approach to learning, right? Which is you're gathering clues through various, you know, influences, experiences that you've had and somehow that's led to a large unlock in your life at some point. Right. So it's truly fascinating. Are there a couple of stories that stand out though in terms of things that you picked up?

Tiger Tyagarajan: I moved to G Capital when G Capital came in in financial services. And in that G Capital journey, I joined as risk head for the brand new consumer lending business that was being set up. I was literally the second employee who got hired into the team and our job was to set up the business to do consumer lending as a joint venture with HDFC and auto finance as a joint venture with HDFC and uh, Maruti, the great brands, great platform, zero, uh, people, zero employees, zero, uh, loans, uh, zero book. Start from scratch. Okay. So we started that journey and about a year into that journey, my boss called me one day and said, I want to talk to you. And uh, he shut the door and he said, look, I needed to tell you that you as the risk head are absolute uh, loggerheads with uh, marketing head marketing and sales and you guys are, you know, constantly fighting. And he said, look, I have to say one thing between you and me, that actually some of the things that he wants to do and you disagree with. I know you're right because you know the financial service industry, you were@citibank, etc. Etc. Uh, so you're right. But uh, it's got to the point where he believes anything he brings up. You say no.

Host: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: And he said, I'm not surprised if I tell you that I believe that you think anything he brings up is all crap.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: So he said, therefore it's got to a situation where the two most important leaders in our business as we build the business, head of risk and head of sales and marketing are not seeing eye to eye on anything and they actually don't trust each other anymore. So that can't continue. He said, you got to find a way to work with him. And he said, I'll give you one advice. You are right on a topic. You know you're right.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Don't have your first reaction to anything that he brings up as that's not going to work because you disagree. And here's the reason it won't work. And shut it down.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: You go along with him, walk down the path, knowing fully well that's a wrong path. Have the courage and the confidence, uh, that you will be able to convince him by the time you get to halfway down the path that he will actually say, I got it. Let's go back. And he said, you must have confidence in your beliefs, you must have confidence in your views, you must have confidence that you're right, but don't shut it down. Uh, in the evening, the sales and marketing guy walked into my room and he said, boss spoke to you? And I said, yeah, boss spoke to me as well. He said, we have to work together, otherwise we are both in trouble.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Huh. He said, let's go for a drink. So we went for a drink, and life changed after that because basically, we agreed that we will give each other's ideas time to percolate. And that, to me, taught a big lesson, saying, don't shut down ideas. Uh, even though you have a fundamental belief that the idea is not going to work, allow it to bloom and flower. I think clever people will themselves shut it down. You don't need to shut it down. That's a learning.

Host: It happens so often in organizations. Our roles are often set up to have a little bit of creative conflict. Right. Which actually makes the business better. But sometimes we don't know how to deal with the conflict.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Right.

Host: We can take that one instance and make assumptions about the other person.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Yeah.

Speaker D: Right.

Host: And what your boss really triggered was a sense of curiosity about trying to understand the person and helping the other person see for themselves versus, uh, you

Speaker D: hammering it down that, okay, this is it.

Tiger Tyagarajan: He actually used the metaphor of the garden and walking down the path. And he said, when you encounter a big rock, you pick up the rock. And he said, take a look at this. This is really bad. Right. Don't you think it's the wrong path or. No, it may be the right path, but, you know, this rock is really bad. And the reaction you're going to get is, yeah, the rock is really bad. We better be careful. And after some time, you keep showing rocks, you keep uncovering.

Speaker D: Right? Right.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Don't say the path is wrong, but just uncover things that you have to deal with. And at some point in time, he's going to say, actually, this road is very risky. Let's go back.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Host: A truly wise man. What's really interesting about what he did also is that he spoke to both of you, not just to one of you. And so he was equal in his approach to helping both of you bridge that gap versus putting the onus just on one or the other. You've had so many such amazing experiences

Speaker D: and a, uh, career full of twists and turns.

Host: Um, take us back to the days when you were creating that business within GE that eventually became the information technology powerhouse genpact. You know, could you tell us a little bit about that journey and what drove some of those choices?

Tiger Tyagarajan: This goes back to the time when I was at G Capital. My boss at that time was Pramod Basin. And we were at a meeting of, uh, the G Capital Global Leaders in Connecticut. And it was a typical annual business meeting with people talking about each of their businesses. And there were 25 people in the room. Uh, we were representing the consumer lending businesses of India. Everyone around the room was talking about billions of dollars of lending and revenue and profits. And we were tiny, so we felt very small in a big company. And our challenge was, how can we quickly grow? So this is 1997. Uh, I joined G Capital in India in 1994. So about two and a half, three years into our journey. And I remember one of the US Uh business leaders said, we are growing so much in the US we are finding it really difficult to hire people.

Host: Right?

Tiger Tyagarajan: You know, they were talking about, so difficult to hire people, so difficult to hire people. My boss basically turned to him and said, how many people, uh, are you trying to hire? And he said, I'm trying to hire 10 people this quarter in Connecticut. And I'm finding it really difficult. And I want 10 every quarter. And it's very difficult. So we both looked at each other, um, my boss and I, Pramod and I, and we said, we can hire 100 people in one week. It's not a big deal. But they don't know anything about your business. They don't know about credit cards, they don't know about mortgage. They don't know about insurance. They don't know anything. 1998, these things didn't exist in India. So I, uh, can hire lots of great raw material. They don't know nothing. So, uh, I hire them. You teach them. M. So the whole room burst into laughter. And they thought it was a ridiculous idea. Um, basically the reason they thought it was a ridiculous idea was because one actually the G Capital Global head, Gary Vendt, said, in India, when I make a phone call to India to speak to you, Pramod, uh, the phone drops every 10 seconds. So what is this thing about you hire the people, you can't provide services from India, you're crazy. TAR is not going to work.

Speaker D: Right.

Tiger Tyagarajan: But by the end of the meeting that evening, we got an approval to experiment. And Gary basically said, you've got a million dollar budget, you can experiment. Uh, if the experiment, uh, works.

Speaker D: Mhm.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Then I, Gary Wendt, take the credit for an amazing, uh, decision to experiment. If it fails, both of you are fired.

Speaker D: So you risked your career on it?

Tiger Tyagarajan: Kind of, yeah, yeah. But we had the fundamental belief that, uh, it can be done. And we said, it's a problem. I don't have an answer, but I'll find the answer. And it goes back to a little bit. Growing up, I loved falling in love with problems. Generally, I love falling in love with problems. Let's just say that, uh, before I fall in love with solutions, I first fall in love with problems. Because trying to find a solution for a problem is the ultimate jo in life. Um, and therefore we came back and said, okay, we got to do this man. How are we going to do it? Um, we can hire people, um, but we don't know what to tell them. We don't know what to explain because this industry doesn't exist. We can't explain to them credit cards, because credit cards, Amex had still not launched. They were just on the verge of launching, um, mortgages didn't exist. None of these things existed. So we started a journey to build a brand new business inside a very large enterprise as an experiment with no, uh, playbook available, no experienced people available, no one knew what to do. Everything was going to be an experiment and everything was going to be a problem. And every day we dealt with 10 problems that no one had found a solution for. And we said, what was the hardest

Speaker D: part of that journey, Tiger? And maybe what was the most surprising.

Tiger Tyagarajan: So the most surprising, um, part was in retrospect, within the first 15 days after we came back and we launched our first foray into the business when one of the businesses in the US said, okay, let's try this. 20 people to do insurance claims, uh, data entry. Um, we actually put a sign in our office in Gurgaon where we started, uh, said trespassers will be hired. And I think the board still exists somewhere in the company. Then about three months later, we put up another big board, uh, and then we would tell the client, that's our philosophy. Come to us for price, stay with us for quality. So the idea was, give us the work. Your problem is you can't find people. I'LL find people, but more importantly, the total cost for you will be 70% lower. Uh, that's why you're going to try. But more importantly, six months later you're going to say, wow, this is better quality than I used to get. So that remained so, uh, at the core of the business, it became come to us for price, stay with us for quality, get great raw material and mold them. And finally we started talking about the whole company is actually a university.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: So we would hire people and we would say, I know we are hiring you for a job, you applied for a job, but remember you're joining a university.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: So, uh, I'm going to pay you to be in this university. M. Um, but every day you got to learn. And as long as you, you're willing to treat this job as another university where you're constantly learning.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: And that's the culture we created.

Host: That's absolutely amazing. And it shows in the results. Right. I think just from 2005 to now, in the 20 years, the business that was under 500 million, if I'm not wrong, is now almost 5 billion. And it's got 140,000 employees and operates in over 35 countries. That is amazing.

Tiger Tyagarajan: I still remember the first employee we hired and the second and the third. Interestingly, one or two of them of the first hundred employees are still there.

Host: You know, one of the things that really stands out in all the stories that you share is you have this

Speaker D: element of being eternally curious and on

Host: a quest to explore. Right. You talked about it as problem solving, but it's always a quest to explore pretty much everything. And so how has that shaped some of your choices or decisions?

Tiger Tyagarajan: Oh, it shaped all my choices and decisions. M. All, um, both at a personal, uh, career choices and role choices as well as, um, choices on, uh, what kind of person, uh, is going to make it long term in the company, become a big leader versus what kind of person will not. Choices on who to hire into the company, um, choices on what kind of, uh, client to win. Even though you don't know how to do anything on a particular topic, but you say, I'm going to try it. So I think this notion of experiment, this notion of I want to know more, I want to ask questions in order to do more. Because life is about asking questions. Society has created this ecosystem of, uh, people should not ask stupid questions. A child can ask stupid questions, but once you start growing up, you should not. When you're a leader, you're not supposed to ask stupid questions. You're not supposed to ask stupid questions in front of other people. You're not supposed to reveal your ignorance. So I've been a big believer that all of that needs to be busted because that's how you get innovation.

Host: Is that perhaps a story, Tiger? Uh, in as you look back where curiosity was one of the key things that actually helped you solve a major business problem.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Let's go back to the beginnings of the business as the service provider for G Capital, and then subsequently a number of the GE businesses. But we started with G Capital. And in G Capital, one of the early businesses we started with was helping the loan processing from a small business that is applying for $50,000, $100,000, $500,000 lease or uh, loan for some equipment they want to buy. So let's say it's a coffee machine that coffee, uh, shop wants to buy that costs $40,000. And this is a coffee shop, it wants a more modern coffee machine. Um, that process of applying for a $40,000 loan, uh, uh, and the effort that it takes to approve it, we dealt with all of that and we found ways to crunch the cycle time down. So I can give an answer back in five days instead of two weeks. Then we said, okay, can we make it two days? Then we can make it one hour. The idea now with AI is can you give an answer in 30 minutes? If you look at that problem, when we walked into many manufacturing companies and consumer goods companies, actually now even SaaS, companies who sell to small businesses, right, they have no idea how it is to, uh, collect the bill that the customer has to pay. Hm, how do they evaluate whether this customer is capable of actually paying me? So we said, why wouldn't the same, um, methodology apply to this environment? So we took our financial services experience and said, let's experiment in the manufacturing domain. And you know, we hit bullseye. Um, if you look at the way order to cash is done these days in many, many enterprises and by many technology and service providers, it is by using some of the learnings of what is very core to a lending organization, which is evaluate credit of a small business and then try and give an, um, answer fast and then give them the money or collect the money once you give it to them. Same way here, you know, assess the credit, give them the product, and then collect the money as quickly as possible. And all the methods that you use in one, you use the same method here constantly. I've always found if you walk around businesses and you keep asking, why do you do what you do? Why do you do these steps, what is it that the customer wants? And then once you understand that, you can actually scratch your head and say, wow, I can take that into a different domain. One of the interesting things about the human mind is that it actually does a lot more transfer learning than a machine does.

Host: That makes a lot of sense. What's interesting is that, and I see this especially now as an executive coach, that a lot of leaders are just overwhelmed with the amount of information, right? Just the sheer volume of it that lands on them. And so some respond to it by almost retreating or withdrawing. Right. Rather than actively engaging, which is what curiosity would dictate. And so what happens when you retreat is that they have assumptions, random assumptions about a lot of things. They come up. They are quite judgmental about a lot of things, right. Not based in sound data or evidence. It's purely a judgment based on biases. And so it's fascinating that in order to actually help this leader unlock, um, their potential, it's almost impossible to do it without having them be curious. And so I often think that, you know, the opposite of being judgmental, it's actually curiosity.

Tiger Tyagarajan: I like the framing, but I have a different spin on it.

Speaker D: Sure.

Tiger Tyagarajan: I make assumptions, I make judgments, and that allows me to form hypothesis, Right. I am a big believer in the scientific method, which is I constantly form hypothesis. I don't care whether they're right or wrong. In fact, by definition, hypothesis means it can be right, it can be wrong. And then I say, let's go and test it, right? So I test it by doing many things, obviously, I tested by actually doing something based on the hypothesis and seeing if it works. I guessed it by talking to my people and saying, hey, this is my hypothesis. What do you think? And why don't we try it? Let's try it. Experiment, experiment, experiment. The other thing that I do is I often walk into a meeting either with my team or with outsiders, with clients, et cetera. And I actually, in my mind, I'm saying, okay, I want to test two or three hypothesis with these guys today because I think they will have a view that'll be very useful for me. I am perfectly fine at the end of the conversation saying, oh, my God, I never thought this way. You are right, I am wrong. So I constantly keep shaping the ultimate answer based on iterative hypothesis testing with a whole ecosystem. And the bigger the ecosystem, both inside and outside the company, the better.

Host: Yeah, that's actually really an interesting, uh, nuance. Right. Because there are a lot of people who make assumptions and judgments but they're also wedded. What you're talking about is actually the scientific method that, yes, you can form a hypothesis, then you have to go and test the hypothesis.

Tiger Tyagarajan: I'm wedded to finding an answer to the problem. I'm wedded to the outcome that I'm trying to drive. I don't really care what the actual, um, method is, and I don't care whether it's my method or someone else's method. So if I get more experiments and more information that actually allows me to get to the answer and a better answer, that's great.

Speaker D: That's awesome.

Host: GE has always been known as a CEO factory, right? And what's really fascinating is that genpact is one of the rare organizations last year that actually had an internal successor when you handed over the reins to Mr. Kalra. So looking back at your own journey as well, I think there's a clear theme of building leaders. Why is that so important?

Tiger Tyagarajan: At its core, um, it starts with, uh, a fundamental belief that the objective of a leader and the team and the business is to drive value to your customers, your shareholders, your team, your investors and the community. Equally important is the resilience and sustainability of being able to do that decade after decade after decade after decade. Once you're clear that you have two objectives. One, the first, here and now and all the stakeholders there. And the second, longer term, uh, and all the stakeholders in the longer term who are often common to the first set of stakeholders. In fact, they're the same. Um, but there are two different agendas. The second one can be achieved only if whatever you're building is sustained over the long haul. So if one of the fulcrums of your success you believe is culture, which I'm a big believer in, then how do you sustain that culture? That doesn't mean the culture remains static, it keeps changing. But, uh, there's a cultural journey, um, based on the environment that allows continuous evolution to happen, that allows the company to thrive 20 years later, 50 years later, when actually the environment is very different. Um, and to do that, you need a set of leaders who actually know where you came from, understand all your strengths and your DNA, and yet are able to constantly mutate and change in order to keep improving because the environment requires that evolution and change. Um, so therefore, the core job of a leader is not just to deliver today's results, but to set the foundation for tomorrow's results, which really is two things. Culture and leaders. I actually have had a fundamental disagreement with the way some capitalist, uh, Ecosystems. And I would put out the US capitalist ecosystem, uh, and the public markets as the biggest culprit in this. That focuses too much attention on what was the role, uh, that the leader played, from starting point of that leader to the ending point of that leader. And in that period, how much did the company grow, how much value got created, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas actually it should be what happened five years later, what happened 10 years later, what happened to the company, what happened to the people, what happened to the leaders, how well have the leaders done?

Host: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Um, because how can you say that you created and ran a great company until date X and the day you left? The company actually didn't do well. The leaders didn't do well. The leaders actually didn't do well wherever they went. That's a real problem. Uh, it's your fault. I actually believe it's the leader's fault. So I've always thought about leaders building a legacy that actually leaves that kind of an institution behind that you feel proud of five, 10, 15 years later. Isn't that how one feels about our kids? Why is it any different?

Host: Very well said. Very well said. Bear with me as I push you a little bit on that, uh, answer further. That's definitely compelling from an organization standpoint. Right. Why is it personally important to you to build leaders?

Tiger Tyagarajan: The most joyful purpose in life, one which is falling in love with the problem and being passionate about the problem and finding answers. Uh, the other joy is to see people thrive and grow. So today when someone comes to me and says, remember I used to be part of your business 22 years back, I spent two years in the company and then I left. And then I've done this, this, this, and this. And then the person turns to me and says, the reason I have been successful in my career is because of those two years. I find so much joy in that. Because you're really then impacting the lives of people, you're impacting their overall ecosystem of the people they deal with, their families, et cetera. And the fact that these people remember that means it must have had an impact. For me to be able to say I create an impact is ridiculous because I don't know, how do I know? Um, it's when people say that that you say, okay, I understand. So I think to me, that's always been one of the joys of, uh, actually any business, uh, even more so in our kind of a business, which is so much people oriented.

Host: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: And therefore, when I see leaders doing various things in other places, over time, yeah, you feel so proud. Again, back to the analogy of kids. It's like your kids doing very well wherever they are, right? It's like, yeah, what I care about is the ability to impact people, the ability to impact large groups of people, and followership. You can lead people because of your position, your power, followership. You have to earn it. People have a free will of deciding, do I want to follow this person or not?

Host: Yeah. That's very well said.

Host: This podcast is brought to you by Just Human Leadership Advisors. We specialize in executive coaching and a broad range of human capital solutions. To learn more, Visit us at JustHuman IO. And now back to the podcast.

Host: You're also one of the rare leaders and certainly a pioneer in holding your team accountable for building leaders, you know, with metrics and all. So what was that journey like and what drove that?

Tiger Tyagarajan: This goes back to Jack Welch's days. Uh, the story I remember that became urban legend was when Jack launched Six Sigma and he forced the company down the path of using Six Sigma. And he told everyone, put your best leaders on Six Sigma. And everyone said, yes, yes, yes. We're going to put our best leaders on Six Sigma. And then, uh, a year later, when it came time to give stock options, every leader was told, give me a list of people you want to give stock options to. And then when he got the list, he then asked his HR leader to say, how many of these people are Six Sigma people? And very few of them were. And then he went back to those leaders and said, so you don't want to give stock options to your best people? No, no, no, no. We've given stock options to the best people. Okay. Which means you didn't move the best people to Six Sigma. So everyone got caught out. So they were forced to move the best people to, because only those people could get options. So it goes back. And then in the private equity world, I learned from one of the most respected partners at Bain Capital, when they were an investor at genpact, where he basically described to me that when you are clear about, uh, the outcome you're trying to drive, and then you align everyone to the same outcome, the, uh, shareholders, the investors, the leadership team. And then you tell, uh, the leadership team that if we get to those outcomes, you're going to get paid outlandishly. Yeah, there's a complete alignment of goals. So this thing about if that's the outcome you want and if you think it's that important, then you make sure that the compensation aligns to that. So that's what we did. So since big believers that for the business to grow and thrive in the long term, you need to create amazing leaders. HR can't do it alone. The leader can't do it alone. Many leaders have to do it and then that will cascade down as a culture. So we actually created in our compensation structure. Show me the leaders you created. Oh, I delivered all financial results. In fact, I beat all financial results. That's wonderful. Show me the leaders you created. Because if you haven't created leaders, the fact that you delivered great financial results, I could actually put that to accident. Um, or I could say you're not going to be able to sustain it for the next two years. M Or I could say you are selfish. You're not helping the company because if you hanging on because if you're creating leaders, then others should benefit from it, but you're not creating leaders. Or if you prove to me that you've created great leaders, then I'm taking away a couple of those people, which is the other thing that we did. So every year we would go to a person. Show me all the leaders you created amazing leaders. Okay, Good. You created five out of your 20 people are amazing leaders. I'm taking away two of them. When you take away two of them, two things happen. You're going to take those two and put them into a new team that's actually going to get the benefit of those two amazing leaders. And two, you're going to destabilize this team a little bit. And innovation happens when a team is destabilized. Stability is one of the, uh, problems, uh, for innovation. Instability creates innovation. So you destabilize the team and then the leader and the leadership group spends more time creating more leaders. So as long as the cycle keeps working, it's a virtuous cycle because everyone gives and everyone gets.

Speaker D: That is amazing. That is really cool.

Host: Um, as think about your personal purpose, tiger, uh, what helped you define or how did you go about defining your personal purpose? And maybe what are some of the values that emerged, uh, in support of your purpose?

Tiger Tyagarajan: One of my early reflections through my early years versus post my MBA was in the early years. I loved solving problems myself. In my uh, mba, uh, as well as iit, I think I learned the joy of bringing different minds to attack a problem. And I realized the power of collective brains versus an individual brain. Right from those early days, I became a big believer that collective brains always wins versus an individual brain, number one. Number two, as a leader your job is to create an environment where collective brains can actually, uh, debate with each other and create a better solution. Where that environment allows people to share their views even though it might be the opposite of everyone else's views. And every view is not attacked until it is understood, uh, as to why you have that view. So I used to have this joke about, you know, if someone walks into the room and says, sun is going to rise in the west tomorrow, what's your reaction? It cannot be. That's nonsense. It cannot be. That's bs. It cannot be that stupid. Uh, it has to be. Peshana, why do you think the sun is going to rise in the west? Because obviously most of us don't think that way, but you do. So there must be a reason. I want to understand why. Because maybe at the end of that discussion, I say, wow, you're the first person to have found out that tomorrow the sun is going to rise in the west. Uh, wouldn't that be amazing that because of you, all of us figured out the sun is going to rise in the west before anyone else does and we're going to make the ship go west because we're chasing the sun.

Speaker D: That is really cool.

Host: How did you define who you wanted to be as a leader? Is there perhaps a story that you want to share about something that shaped you?

Tiger Tyagarajan: So very early in my career, I remember meeting my first job. Um, I was put in charge of a group of seven or eight salespeople. Their age group was 35 to 58. And I was 23 years old and I was their boss as the, uh, management trainee after mba now made in charge of the team, right? And I basically got introduced to them and I said, look, I don't know anything about, uh, sales. Uh, you guys are all great salespeople. And I turned to the 58 year old guy, Kapil, uh, Sonny, and I said, Mr. Kapil, you are considered to be God of sales in, uh, in the company. And, uh, I would like to learn from you. So I remember this odd look on his face. He said, so many people like you, 23 years old, have come and been our bosses as, uh, management trainees. You're the first person who ever said that. And then he put his arm around me and he said, you're like my son. I'm going to teach you. So, you know, I just did it without thinking much. In retrospect, it is the way I've approached many, many situations where I often share my ignorance. M. I often share a bunch of questions that reveals my ignorance. I therefore break down any, uh, walls and hierarchies, Um, I make the person who's supposed to be hierarchically, uh, reporting into you and so on feel actually that they know more. And, uh, they are actually great people and it opens them up to share and that allows you to learn. All your ignorance starts going away because now you can keep asking questions and it's okay because anyhow, you've said, I don't know anything. Once you've said that, you can keep asking questions and then you get lots of answers. And these are clever people. So you start learning. And if you're a sponge and if you have a great enough of a, uh, capacity to learn and you're hungry to learn. So that's the way I've approached all. I mean, almost everything.

Host: That lesson is priceless because often I think leaders feel trapped into this bucket of having to know everything. And, uh, they hesitate to say, I don't know, can you help me with this? Right. And so that's a fascinating lesson that

Speaker D: you learned really early in life, which has clearly held you in good stead.

Host: What's a leadership lesson you've learned the hard way?

Tiger Tyagarajan: Tyga not moving fast enough to change people in the team when you think you should.

Host: As you look back, who's the best leader you've ever worked with and what makes them so memorable to you even today? What's the impact they had on you?

Tiger Tyagarajan: Oh, so many of them. A leader in G Capital. I was in g capital between 2002 and 2005, when, uh, Genpact was still under GE and then the company was getting ready to spin off into an independent company and set up its own business. Pramod at that time called me and said, come back into the company. And I wanted to, but I was caught because, uh, GE, great company to be part of. I love GE, I love the multiplicity of businesses, etc. Etc. Etc. And, and I was really caught. Um, but I obviously love this business. I thought the future is amazing. I love the people. I built the company from 1999 to 2002 before I left to GE, and here was an opportunity to come back and build an independent business, uh, with everything that comes with it. So I was caught. So I picked up the phone and called up, uh, one of the senior leaders at G Capital. His name was Art Harper. Sadly, he's no more. We had a great relationship. I worked for someone who worked for him, but he and I built a great rapport. I called him and I said, I need your advice. So he said, come Meet me in the office. He said, tell me your problem. So I told him, I don't know what to do. I love ge. I don't want to leave. But this other company attracts me. It's a great business. I love the team. I really believe in the future of the business. So he said, okay, how do you take decisions? I said, what do you mean, art? He said, do you take your decisions in life based on your mind or your heart? I said, I normally take my decisions based on my mind. Said, yeah, I know you, I just want to ask you. But you're right, you always take decisions based on your mind. You're an engineer, you do data analysis, and you say, okay, this is the right decision. He said, have you ever taken a decision based on your heart? Once in a while, Very rarely, but I have. And he said, okay, you already told me what your mind is telling you. Mhm. Because you're caught between, you know, the GE journey and the genpact or potential genpact journey. What is your heart telling you? I m said, my heart is tugging me hard to go to genpact.

Speaker D: Right.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Be part of that team and part of that journey. He said, this is one of those times, Tiger, where I think your decision should be based on your heart. Uh, once in a while you should take a decision based on your heart only once or twice in life. This is. I said, okay. He said, look, the good news is GE is still going to be in your ecosystem. It's still going to be our largest customer. You're still going to deal with all the leaders, you're still going to be part of their journey, you're going to create value for them. All that is still there. But you're going where your heart is. You should go where your heart is. I said, thumbs up. I walked out of the room and I said, I'm going,

Speaker D: oh, what an amazing story.

Host: Um, let's talk about your impact, right? I mean, clearly this leader impacted you in such a foundational way as you think about your own impact on your team, clients, industry, what are you most proud of?

Tiger Tyagarajan: All I can say is, uh, when I actually watch people and when they talk about their career and they spend time talking about the time they spent in whatever period in the company being part of the broader team, learning whatever they did, living the values, building the culture, and then they said, then when I got this job, I did this, this and this, and I learned all of that from here, that's what I look at as highly fulfilling. You know, one of the joys Of a business, um, like Genpact is size and scale, as you said, 140,000 people, I think right now. And if you think about a journey from 1998, 99 to 20, 25, so that's 26 years, 27 years, uh, growing from 0 to 140,000. And a typical attrition rate in the industry is at least 22, 23, 24%. Growth rates are, on the average, about 10%. I think if you do the math, uh, it's about easily a million lives plus.

Speaker D: Wow.

Tiger Tyagarajan: So a million lives have touched, uh, the company as we've navigated. Uh, and as I said, because we considered ourselves as a university, by definition, people who navigated through this feels like they navigated through a university. So they learned and they tried and they experimented and they learned and they got feedback and they tested and then they moved into the other parts of the world outside of the company, and they implemented some of that, and they attribute some of that success to what they learned in the company. So I think this notion of a university, of a constantly learning machine, of a culture like that, of a culture that teaches and makes people teach. So anyone who came to me and said, I want to tell you about an amazing solution that we found and it worked brilliantly, so they would explain everything. I'll say, it worked and we won and, you know, we delivered value and we got paid more or whatever, And I would say two questions I have, uh, before you implemented the solution, did you share your problem with hundreds of other people? Uh, and did you get answers of what they have tried, so you incorporated that into your solution? Hopefully the answer is yes. Second question would be, now that you found a solution, and thank you for telling me, but have you told other people, have you told hundreds of other people this notion of I'm constantly learning and I'm constantly teaching? Yeah, the culture that. That got built. And I think, um, I think many people loved it.

Host: So many more questions for you, tiger.

Speaker D: But what I've tried to do is

Host: consolidate some of them in a rapid fire section.

Speaker D: Are you ready?

Tiger Tyagarajan: Okay. Rapid fire. Okay. I'll try and give really short answers.

Host: Yes.

Speaker D: Okay.

Host: If a theme song, um, played every

Speaker D: time you walked into a room, what would it be?

Tiger Tyagarajan: So, actually, a theme song used to play at company events every time I walked in, and it was eye, uh, of the tiger. But I think if a theme song were to play, I would just change some of the words in that because it talks too much about the individual to much more about. We will find a Solution. Because it talks about, ah, you know,

Speaker D: well, that would have been on my mind too. So clearly your colleagues got it right.

Host: Uh, you wake up one day and

Speaker D: realize you're a superhero. What's your superpower, and what would you do with it?

Tiger Tyagarajan: And I think partly some of the large language model journey of the last three years has started creating that superpower. Um, I can keep asking questions, and I'll keep getting answers. So that's a superpower. I just keep asking questions constantly.

Speaker D: I love it. I love it. Okay. What is one thing you have learned

Host: about yourself that surprised you?

Tiger Tyagarajan: I love introspecting, reflecting, reading, listening, a lot of activities on my own. So it's easy to therefore assume I can be on my own, and the answer is yes. But in a certain window of time, after which I need to be surrounded by people, if I'm surrounded by lots of people for too long, and I want to be on my own for a short time. So it's this constant. It's almost like continuous. And, um. I know some people might say I want to be on my own to recharge my batteries. I'm not so sure. Maybe in my case, I want to be with people to recharge my batteries. I don't know.

Speaker D: Interesting, Interesting.

Host: But you need a balance, and it's

Speaker D: a constantly shifting balance. Interesting.

Host: Um, how would you like to be

Tiger Tyagarajan: remembered, uh, as someone who always gave and coached and taught and, uh, took people to a level of potential that even they did not know they had? Um, and all of that is irrespective of their background, their education, they unlocked in themselves. And I was just part of that journey and conversation, but they unlocked it for themselves.

Host: Beautifully said. And we have that in common. Next one. What's one failure you're proud of failure?

Tiger Tyagarajan: Lots of them. I, uh, I invented. Again, I didn't invent it because I can't take actual credit. Um, but one of our board members talked about this as, uh, something he does, and therefore I kind of borrowed it. And now I'm a big believer in it. So every, uh, time there's a failure, um, something doesn't work, something broke, some client is unhappy, something blew up. Um, I'm a big believer that you should bring the team together and then do, uh, what. What he called. And now I call, quote unquote, a blameless postmortem. You basically do a postmortem. Exactly what a postmortem does. But it's blameless. It's what happened, what failed, what are the root cause, what are the root cause. So go down root cause, root cause, root cause, root cause, root cause until you can't go down any further and then build backwards and say therefore what do we do differently in the future, etc. So full learning as a group. So it's collective learning. Um, and it's blameless because there is no mention of someone did something wrong. It's the process, it's the decisions that we took based on information available. It's a way we navigated through that information. It's a way we commute whatever it is. Um, so I'm a big believer in that.

Host: Love that. What is one tool or practice that's helped you grow as a leader?

Tiger Tyagarajan: So back to curiosity. So I generally like preparing for any meeting. Um, doesn't matter if it's one on one, one on many, formal, informal, et cetera. And I create a mental map of the questions I'd like to ask. So the more research I do, the more I can prepare myself for, wow, I did all this research. I wonder why this happens. I wonder why this was done. I wonder why this person did this. I wonder why they are doing this. Why is this their strategy? So I create a mental map of questions and then in that discussion I find a way to insert those questions, um, and then sit back and listen. Um, I love meetings where uh, I spend 15% of my time talking and 85% of the time listening. Uh, and the way to do that is to ask questions. The uh, way to do that is to ask open ended questions. If you ask questions where the answer is yes or no when you ask a question and if the answer is not forthcoming quickly, which means there is silence, allow that silence to continue. Silence in a conversation is good because the other person is thinking. M. If you allow the person to think, then you're actually going to get a better answer. You're actually going to get answer that comes from deep inside. So you might actually end up knowing more about a situation than otherwise you would have known versus ask a question. And because you're not answering quickly, I basically almost give the same answer saying

Speaker D: totally agree, totally.

Tiger Tyagarajan: I think about it as create a mental map of questions.

Host: With AI becoming as ubiquitous as the air we breathe.

Speaker D: What is one skill that will help

Host: us navigate the future?

Tiger Tyagarajan: Two skills.

Speaker D: Okay, two skills.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Two skills equal. And they're both human. Skill number one is curiosity. Um, AI exploits past patterns and information. Human curiosity explores. Explore plus exploit is breakthrough. Turn the dial on exploration and curiosity even more. Because in the world of AI where exploitation is going to be available to everyone. The difference is going to be who explores more.

Speaker D: Mhm.

Tiger Tyagarajan: The second is in the world of everything is fake, possibly the most important thing is who do you trust, what relationships you have. So relationships and trust become even more important. Curiosity and relationship have always been important, but the importance goes up in the world. And they're both human. Yeah, completely human.

Host: Very beautifully said. What is one piece of career advice that you'd give our listeners today?

Tiger Tyagarajan: Experiment with your career. Don't spend too much time thinking about what ifs of the past. The only time you should spend thinking about the past is to extract learnings quickly. Other than that, what if I had done that? And what if I had done that is a complete waste of time. Uh, and then as you think about your today and the future, um, moves that allow you to experiment are the moves that you should welcome. You create your luck and you create your opportunity. And the way you do that is by expanding your aperture so that the things that are coming at you are from an expanded aperture, which means more stuff is coming at you and one or two of them you might actually like and et cetera. The decision on, uh, going down a certain part of a career move, of a role, of a whatever should be based on, um, obviously a variety of things. The easy ones are, is this job exciting? You know, are you going to work for a great boss? Ah, is what you're going to do important for the company, the business and so on? All that is good. To me, the two most important things are, um, what can you add as value quickly in that role? And if 50% of the answer to a particular role is going to come from your background, your experience, your this, your that, that's great. But the other 50%, you should actually say, I have no idea.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Tiger Tyagarajan: And you should feel a little scared about moving into the role. If you don't feel scared about moving into a role, you should wonder if that's a good role to take.

Host: Yeah.

Host: Is it challenging enough?

Tiger Tyagarajan: Yeah. And, uh, now you're going to learn.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Host: Very well said. What is one step forward that you'd ask everyone to try as our mindful leadership challenge of the month?

Tiger Tyagarajan: Try living a day basically saying, today is my day of asking questions.

Host: I love it.

Tiger Tyagarajan: I'm not going to give a single answer.

Speaker D: Oh, that is amazing. Absolutely brilliant.

Host: Oh my goodness. This has been such a great conversation, Tiger. So, so much wisdom, so many learning, so many stories, so many lessons. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your wisdom with our listeners.

Tiger Tyagarajan: Thank you, Shauna. It's been great having this conversation. Wonderful questions. Thank you.

Host: Thank you for joining us. We'd love to hear from you. Please rate, review and subscribe to the Mindful Leadership Podcast brought to you by Just Human. We are a growth accelerator for our clients, helping your people and businesses thrive through human centered ecosystem based people solutions. To learn more, Visit us at JustHuman IO and schedule a 30 minute free call with us.