Five Star Hotel as Research Outpost

When I think of the cost of staying at the Leela Palace I wince. Taking into consideration the cost of living in India, it seems a hotel ought to cost quite a little, but the invasion of the multinationals has resulted in USD five star prices. Leela always has around 98% occupancy, so there is no need to lower prices. Fortunately, the moment you move beyond the grounds of the palace, so to speak, life becomes more affordable. In a recent effort at taking a modest step toward independence, I went to café alone for lunch and ordered my own food. I had been to Sukh Sagar previously with two of the Yantra Sterling executives, Col. Jai Padki and A.P. Rao, so I knew the drill, essentially. Masala dosa, a massive crepe stuffed with spicy potatoes and served with several types of chutney, an ice cream parfait of vanilla, figs, and honey, and a bottle of water set me back one hundred and four rupees, which in USD equates to approximately $3.12.

Nevertheless, I learnt in the earliest days of staying at Leela that in addition to the 24/7 attention I received from the many employees, there were decided advantages to shelling out all of those rupees. One was the Library Room, the hotel’s lounge, where exhausted executives would gather after a long day of work. The Oriental carpet of endless ochre and ruby flowers graced the rich dark wood. Large leather couches and upholstered wing back chairs surrounded intricately carved tables. Massive armoires resplendent with old books and Asian antiquities commanded the back walls.

On two of the couches sat exhausted businessmen, sipping beers, chatting intermittently with the United States by mobile phone, and awaiting the ten minute drive to Bangalore International Airport to catch the 1:30 a.m. flight on Lufthansa to Frankfurt and then onto the United States. They snored softly, the soporific din of the others adding to the gentle cacaphony, and they waited. As the weeks passed, I observed this endless parade night after night, catching snatches of conversation here and there, and learning continually.


As I sat one evening reading some of Tagore’s poetry, I overheard one woman talking.

“We’re offshoring…[Everyone sitting around her laughed.]…like everyone else.”

A man chimed in, “We’ve been here for three years.”

And so it went. People shared stories of successes and challenges of being the foreigner in a foreign land. One of these executives, Mr. Anthony Riggs, a vice president with IBM, met me one evening after a day trip to Mysore. Tony had been in Bangalore for a little over two days and I had met him on his first day in town as we awaited our drivers in front of the hotel. Everyone I met assumed I was with a company, for people did not stay in this hotel for pleasure, save some families on the weekends, and each of us was with some multinational. People’s eyebrows rose, for the prospect of an academic committing years of time to understand certain phenomena in India was quite outside the norm of purpose. Tony knew he wanted to talk to me.

Fresh from the Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride of a drive from Mysore to Bangalore—about three and one-half hours away—Tony spoke non-stop about the temples, the bird sanctuary, the drive, the crowded towns, the cows, oxen, goats, and chickens on the road and in the road—one impression after another.

I asked him how his stomach was doing, as people sometimes have a couple of days of adjustment to any new culture, and India can challenge the most iron-clad gut. He gushed, “Elizabeth, I’ve been fine until today. I think I’m going to be ill by tomorrow. In one temple, I went to meet the holy man. He was taking rupees in one bowl and then ladling water from a dipper into people’s hands."

“And you drank it, Tony.” I shook my head.

“I was so caught up in the moment,” he said bereftly.

In India, lesson one was, Don’t drink the water. Bottled water was plentiful and this was a man who traveled the globe, but the moment does have a way of impelling one to suspend all sensibilities, particularly in a place as exotic and intoxicating as India. Nevertheless, I told him that as it was holy water from a holy man, he would likely be just fine. Our waiter arrived.

“Bring me whatever you think I should eat,” Tony said to Rama. I laughed, for I rarely met a foreigner as adventuresome as I when it came to new cuisine. Most I had observed in the early weeks ate the food from their homeland. Our breakfast room, Citrus, resembled more a United Nations with its Chinese, Japanese, Continental, Classic American, and Southern Indian array of choices.

Rama arrived shortly with a sensational platter of lamb chops, fragrant with spices.

“Bring another fork,” Tony requested.

“Madam does not eat meat,” Rama informed Mr. Tony. I loved the way these men remembered everything I ate and drank. I explained to Tony that whilst I was normally a carnivore, I had become a complete vegetarian in India and my stomach was far better for it.

We began talking about Tony’s work in India. “Elizabeth, it’s not about, ‘We’ll run your mess for less’ any longer.' ”

He was expressing the emerging understanding of the savviest of foreign business executives that were recognizing that India, as Infosys Vice President Rajani Kanth had said to me a week earlier, “had moved far beyond outsourcing.” Whilst we in America were still arguing its relative merits, India was not only seeing foreign multinationals continue to acquire its companies, Indian-based multinationals were doing the same elsewhere in the world.

More than this, India was producing world-class leaders that the West was only coming to acknowledge. I asked Tony to describe the nature of his work.

“I deliver the work to the country where the best work is being done. I look around the world and say, ‘Who’s good at this?’ If their business model does not work and they become complacent, if they have no interest in innovation, if they are satisfied with the status quo, and if they are not in growth mode, then I challenge them. If they are not willing to engage in the challenge, then I look around the world and say, ‘Who will take it up?’”

He continued. “I have a vision that we are not stuck in a place in time and that you and I… are changing the world. I will not accept what has been handed to me. “I feel that I have the power to shape where we’re going and I know you do too. I’m not going to play the cards that are dealt me and I’m going to look for a new hand…Forward thinkers….make the world a better place. I’m not here to change the world, but I am here to contribute.”

I offered, “Cultures that are millennia in age have so much to teach a baby nation such as ours.”

Anthony Rigg represents to me the profile of the future global leader. And yet, during my first weeks in India, he was one of few foreign executives I met and one of many I have yet to spend in depth time. My time, rather, has been spent with leaders of India. Whilst the lessons are tentative, toe-dipping into the waters of emerging themes, some thoughts are recurring.

Global leaders are learners. They listen. They question. They step lightly but immerse themselves deeply wherever their planes land. Most hold multiple degrees—the most popular in India being engineering as an undergraduate and MBA at the graduate level. Global leaders insist that everyone else in their midst also be learners. Within two days of his arrival, Tony Riggs had dispatched a team to come to Bangalore to learn more. “One of my people will spend a year here. I have instructed him to change nothing. Rather, he is to learn and to report back everything to us.”

Global leaders spend time in the world. They read the white papers. They keep up with the world news. They research broadly topics such as economics, sociology, and history. Their top executives brief them. But they don’t stop there. They, themselves, visit the countries. Every Indian executive with whom I met had lived abroad for some period of time. Most had lived in the West and many had lived in other Asian or South American countries as well. They had a savvy that is scarcely seen ranging from knowledge of music to languages, world history to art. They fight the necessity many times of the “fly by,” where they realistically can only spend a few days in a country, and seek over time to understand nations in which they are presently a part and nations that are for them, on the horizon—the emerging markets.

Global leaders value innovation, but not at the expense of the culture of another nation or of the organization. They recognize that to move fast, you sometimes have to move slowly, and they pay attention to the values of the culture in which they find themselves. Rather than impose the values of the parent company, they seek to move beyond the multinational model, which inculcates the parent’s values to the children regardless of the implication, to a transnational model, which, in the words of Buck Devashish, chief of India’s Yantra Sterling Commerce, recognizes that the strongest organization embraces the unique strengths of each culture.

Global leaders are transparent. “Put that in your research, Elizabeth,” one Infosys executive said as I was invited into the inner sanctum of a planning meeting, where my recording device was never off limits. To a great degree, the paper shredder is becoming obsolete. These executives don’t mind recordings of conversations and they don’t call legal counsel. Without question they openly share both successes and challenges that they face. They recognize the difficult and seemingly intractable problems, whether inequality, caste, corruption, or poverty. They seek cooperative relationships everywhere, and they aggressively work to involve those beyond their borders—the borders of their companies and of their nations. Wipro Vice President, Ranjan Acharya, meets regularly with government officials, querying, “What would be the worst thing that could happen if you tried this innovation?” While yet they blanch when he speaks, he is relentless in working to build the partnership.

Global leaders seek the best. Nationalism in the classic sense is a dying concept. If the best work is to be had in Bangalore, then these leaders will go there. Clearly, this has huge implications for the United States and its children’s future, but ladies and gentlemen, the cow, in the case of India, is not out of the barn; it was never in the barn. Because loyalty has a new face irrespective of geographical boundaries—loyalty to values of learning, innovation, vision, collaboration, and change—we must pay close attention.

Being an American guarantees us nothing any longer. We can delude ourselves into believing that our “circle the wagons” mentality and our military might will protect us or we can recognize that the greatest protection is to humbly join the world community as learners, innovators, visionaries, collaborators, and change agents. The future, regardless of the language of one’s birth, belongs to these deepest of values that know no geopolitical borders.