Ep 9 In conversation with Pratik Kumar
Pratik Kumar has been associated with Wipro since 1991. Pratik spent his initial years in the IT business led the Corporate HR function from 2002. Pratik assumed leadership of Wipro Infrastructure Engineering (WIN) as its CEO in July of 2010. In the last few years, WIN has taken rapid stride in establishing its footprints in emerging as well as other growth markets. WIN, under his leadership has also focused its efforts in scaling up its nascent business in Aerospace & Defence and Water which would be strong platforms for WIN’s future growth. Pratik is member of the Board of Wipro Enterprises (P) Limited. He joined on my podcast Dreamers & Unicorns.Some key moments that stayed on with me:
Pratik Kumar on Careers. I started the conversation by asking him what made him spend time with one employer since 1991. Did he not feel the temptation to change employers?
Pratik: "... career should not get measured in terms of its chronological age, not in terms of the tenure of association with an organization because I believe that career is a series of life-long experiences. It’s about learning, it’s about transition, it’s about identity changes and that is what actually makes any career rich in terms of the experience and the variety of experiences one has had."[audio mp3="https://abhijitbhaduri.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/DAU_S01_Pratik_Clip_01.mp3"][/audio]
Pratik is one of the HR leaders who has successfully made the transition to the CEO Role. What changed and what did he have to learn? Did he feel burdened by the demands of the role?
Pratik Kumar: I was lucky that I inherited a team which was very very capable and I made no bones about not being able to understand fully what was there and once you volunteer to learn from whoever can actually teach you and that’s one of the lessons which I picked up fairly early. You would be finding yourself lot of people who would generally come forward and help you along.By the way this can only happen in the organization where you have grown and that’s the other lesson. I mean, you do not get that kind of flexibility if you were to happen in an organization outside the fold. So, to your question, the difficulty was not so much in understanding the business and what we are driving but it was to get into the finer details of the products, it’s applications, the business cycle, the customer expectation which takes a while. There is something else besides the role dimensions, I think there is a very high sense of responsibility when you get into a business leadership role and the responsibility is about you realize your decisions are beginning to impact the careers of people, their whole livelihoods, the direction which you wish the organization to take and you bet on could come through, it need not, it could have an impact and you need to do it in a lot more responsible manner. And that sense of responsibility just gets accentuated when you step into this role which I have to admit was not there earlier.[audio mp3="https://abhijitbhaduri.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/DAU_S01_Pratik_Clip_02.mp3"][/audio]
In this free flowing conversation, we spoke about many different things. Can a leader shape organizational culture? On how to make career choices. And much more.One thing you may want to listen for specifically is Pratik's view of Industry 4.0. The broad concern I had is that Manufacturing, has been traditionally one of the large job creators and most large economies that goes almost up to 25-27% of the jobs go into manufacturing. But this is also the sector which will see a lot of automation. Is it a good sector for a young person to build a career?Listen to it. And if you like it, please do share the link maedinindia.fanlink.to/DAU
And do rate it generously because it helps others to find us more easily.