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N.R. Narayana Murthy (b. August 20, 1946, Karnataka, India) is a software engineer and the founder of Infosys.
He graduated in electrical engineering from National Institute of Engineering,Mysore in 1967 and got his master's degree from IIT Kanpur in 1969.
In 1981, he founded Infosys with six software professionals. He served as President of National Association of Software and Service Companies, India from 1992 to 1994.
Profile of Narayana Murthy
Mr. Murthy served as CEO of Infosys for twenty years, handing over the reins to a fellow co-founder in March 2002. In 1999, Infosys was listed on NASDAQ (INFY). He is the chairman of the governing body of both the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. In addition, he is a member of the Board of Overseers of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Cornell University Board of Trustees, Singapore Management University Board of Trustees and the Board of Advisors for the William F. Achtmeyer Center for Global Leadership at the Tuck School of Business .
Mr. Murthy serves as an independent director on the board of the DBS Bank, Singapore, the largest government-owned bank in Singapore. He also serves as a director on the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India, as the co-chairman of the Indo-British Partnership, as a member of the Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry, as a member of the Asia Advisory Board of British Telecommunications plc., and as a member of the Board of NDTV, India. He is an IT advisor to several Asian countries.
Mr. Murthy has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors. He was the first recipient of the Indo-French Forum Medal (in the year 2003), awarded by the Indo-French Forum, in recognition of his role in promoting Indo-French ties. He was voted the World Entrepreneur of the Year - 2003 by Ernst and Young. He was one of the two people named as Asia's Businessmen of the Year for 2003 by Fortune magazine. In 2001 , he was named by TIME / CNN as one of the twenty-five, most influential global executives, a group selected for their lasting influence in creating new industries and reshaping markets. He was awarded the Max Schmidheiny Liberty 2001 prize ( Switzerland), in recognition of his promotion of individual responsibility and liberty . In 1999, BusinessWeek named him one of the nine entrepreneurs of the year and he was also featured in the BusinessWeek's 'The Stars of Asia' (for three successive years - 1998, 1999 and 2000) . In 1998, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, one of the premier institutes of higher learning in India, conferred on him the Distinguished Alumnus Award, and in 1996-97, he was awarded the JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award.
Extract of Mr.Narayana Murthy's Speech during Mentor session
...I people who work 12 hours a day, six days a week, or more. Some people do so because of a work emergency where the long hours are only temporary. Other people I know have put in these hours for years. I don't know if they are working all these hours, but I do know they are in the office this long. Others put in long office hours because they are addicted to the workplace.
Whatever the reason for putting in overtime, working long hours over the long term is harmful to the person and to the organization.
There are things managers can do to change this for everyone's benefit. Being in the office long hours, over long periods of time, makes way for potential errors. My colleagues who are in the office long hours frequently make mistakes caused by fatigue. Correcting these mistakes requires their time as well as the time and energy of others. I have seen people work Tuesday through Friday to correct mistakes made after 5 PM on Monday. Another problem is that people who are in the office long hours are not pleasant company. They often complain about other people (who aren't working as hard); they are irritable, or cranky, or even angry. Other people avoid them. Such behaviour poses problems, especially in an area like IT, where work goes much better when people work together instead of avoiding one another.
As managers, there are things we can do to help people leave the office. First and foremost is to set the example and go home ourselves. I work with a manager who chides people for working long hours. His words quickly lose their meaning when he sends these chiding group e-mails with a time-stamp of 2 AM, Sunday.
Second is to encourage people to put some balance in their lives. For instance, here is a guideline I find helpful: 1) Wake up, eat a good breakfast, and go to work. 2) Work hard and smart for eight or nine hours. 3) Go home. 4) Read the comics, watch a funny movie, dig in the dirt, play with your kids, etc. 5) Eat well and sleep well.
This is called recreating. Doing steps 1, 3, 4, and 5 enable step 2. Working regular hours and recreating daily are simple concepts. They are hard for some of us because that requires personal change. They are possible since we all have the power to choose to do them.
In cons the issue of overtime, I am reminded of my oldest son when he was a toddler. If people were visiting the apartment, he would not fall asleep no matter how long the visit, and no matter what time of day it was. He would fight off sleep until the visitors left. It was as if he was afraid that he would miss something. Once our visitors left, he would go to sleep. By this time, however, he was over tired and would scream through half the night with nightmares. He, my wife, and I, all paid the price for his fear of missing out.
Perhaps some people put in such long hours because they don't want to miss anything when they leave the office. The trouble with this is that events will never stop happening. That is life-things happen 24 hours a day. Allowing for little rest is not ultimately practical. So, take a nap. Things will happen while you're asleep, but you will have the energy to catch up when you wake.
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