Jaithirth (Jerry) Rao

The next in the series was a lecture given by Mr. Jaithirth (Jerry) Rao. Over a 30 year banking career, Mr. Rao served with Citibank and its parent Citigroup throughout the world, holding various positions. Mr. Rao was the founder, chairman and CEO of MphasiS, an IT Services and BPO Company, which became an EDS subsidiary in 2006. Mr. Rao is currently Venture Advisor to NEA Ventures and serves as an angel investor in several companies.

Mr. Rao spoke to employees about various components of leadership and understanding, drawing from both his own personal experiences as well as historical events. He opened by emphasizing that given Ujjivan is in the microfinance industry, all employees should have a thorough understanding of finance and accounting so they can all understand the nuances of the work we do.

Speaking about the leadership, Mr. Rao expounded on what it takes to be a leader. He stressed that leadership is situational; a good leader must be able to adapt to different situations and pull on a variety of skills depending on what arises. One is not born a leader; rather, leadership is a learned quality. A good leader must have a well thought out succession plan and understand when a change in leadership is required. He cited his own transition out of MphasiS as an example: while the company was his brainchild and he had seen it grow from scratch into a successful business, it was time for him to move onto other things and let newer management lead the company to its future.

Mr. Rao went on to say that effective supervision requires that you interact at all levels not just with your direct reports to ensure that you have the complete picture and you do not hear only what your direct reports think you want to hear. Also, he advised that the most challenging people to impress are your peers. Bosses can occasionally be bluffed with white lies, but that is not possible with peers - there is no option but to be absolutely truthful. He left the audience with a final message: leadership within an organization is indispensible; even the interest of the leader of the organization is secondary to that of the organization.