8/18/2020 The 5 unexpected reasons why Indians make it as CEOs of global companies

Sign in Join now

The 5 unexpected reasons why

Indians make it as CEOs of global
companies
Avi Patchava Follow
Co-founder, Bright Money | Artifi… 1,727 103 9

Why this question?

I was recently on a flight from San Francisco to Bangalore. With so many hours to pass, I
found myself disenchanted with my pre-selected flight reading so I was rummaging through
my mobile apps. I settled on studying some Chinese vocab.
A Chinese lady sitting two seats away taps me on the shoulder, and politely asks if she can
take a picture. What would otherwise seem intrusive (and bizarre) was quickly followed with
reasonable explanation: she was having trouble convincing her American-born Chinese
teenagers to study Chinese. She believed the image of an Indian guy willing to do so might
provide inspiration… so I obliged.
We spent the remainder of the flight exploring and debating cultural parallels and contrasts
between India, China and the West. One particular question she posed: why are Indians so
good at becoming CEOs in the West? She made mention of Satya Nadella, Indra Nooyi and
Sundar Pichai.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-unexpected-reasons-why-indians-make-ceos-global-avi-patchava 1/7
8/18/2020 The 5 unexpected reasons why Indians make it as CEOs of global companies

Of course, the full list runs long: Sanjay Jha (Global Foundries), Ajit Jain (Berkshire Hathaway
Sign in Join now
Insurance), Ajaypal Singh Banga (Mastercard), Dinesh Patiwal (Harman Industries), Rakesh
Kapoor (Reckitt Benckiser), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe Systems), Nikesh Arora (Soft Bank),
Francisco D’Souza (Cognizant), Rajeev Suri (Nokia), Anshu Jain (Deutsche Bank), Ivan Menezes
(Diageo), George Kurian (NetApp) and others.
I had an answer already in mind, having considered the question before. But we explored and
debated for a good half hour. These are the learnings:
The easy but unconvincing answers
You could answer with: “Of course there will be strong representation among the corporate
C-suite - India is a land of 1.3 billion in a world of 7 billion”.
However, we are talking about largely Western-founded corporations. There is a much
smaller group of Indians living in the West: the USA and UK diaspora total less than 5 million.
In any country, there will be an understandable bias in accepting foreigners as leaders. In
spite of this, a relatively small Indian population has succeeded as corporate leaders.
Furthermore, Indians are not over-represented in other domains, such as athletics or musical
superstardom. Even representation in academic research is not significantly above average.
There are many more Chinese names – from universities across the world - in papers I
regularly come across in Mathematics, Engineering, Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence research.
You could also attempt: “it is the large-scale genetic lottery that gives these few fortunate
individuals a super-human combination of skills (e.g., high numeracy, strategic thinking,
communication, team leadership etc.) and these are the individuals that self-select towards
the West”.
There is some truth here. However reaching the level of a CEO is beyond typical genetic
talents. It is winning in what takes a 20-30 year journey where a number of more subtle and
nurture-driven skills make the difference. Here are the 5 skills that I believe have mattered for
Indians in the C-suite.
(See the end of this article for explanation of my personal vantage point in this area).
1) ABILITY TO OWN COMMUNICATION IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Indians have a unique relationship with language. It is a highly multi-linguistic culture. People
often grow up in a truly tri-lingual world between home, school, their immediate society and
the wider country. A colleague of mine once commented “he was bad with languages’’ and
yet he spoke three languages fluently.
Within their own country, they are constantly speaking with fellow country people who do
not share the same first language. For example, South Indians often learn Hindi as a third
language, if at all. Many Indians from the West, Centre and North-East speak with a brittle
Hindi accent.
In any language in India, there are a variety of levels and people will converse in a language
long before they achieve total fluency. The culture does not entertain a binary distinction of
whether you speak or do not speak a language – something more common in the West. The
characteristic Indian question in assessing your language ability is most telling "Are you
comfortable in this language?”. Comfort is what you need to converse.
What does this have to do with making CEO?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-unexpected-reasons-why-indians-make-ceos-global-avi-patchava 2/7
8/18/2020 The 5 unexpected reasons why Indians make it as CEOs of global companies

Indians do not see lack of fluency as a mental obstruction to good communication. When I
Sign in Join now
hear many of these CEOs speak, I hear people who are not speaking a language that is their
first, and yet they speak with command and ownership of the language. There is no mental
block suggesting they are not fully-equipped to be effective communicators, despite
speaking a second language. They own their new language and continuously push their
abilities in communication.
2) PLAYING THE GAME OF ORGANISATIONAL POLITICS
India is a complex country and yet it succeeds in operating as a democratic society,
maintaining the ability to hear every voice.
However, there are no hard and fixed rules for what is possible in India. India is a non-
absolutist culture, unlike Judeo-Christian societies. Pawan Verma’s Being Indian explains how
this fact manifests in daily behaviours, such as the willingness to negotiate at every turning
point of the day.
It is also a land of scarcity, and daily survival breeds an instinct to ask ‘how can I play this
situation to get what I need’. You only get things done if you can play the daily games
required to get your way and find your edge. It is a world that prioritises ends vs. absolutist
means.
As a parallel, organisational politics does not have hard-and-fast rules and yet it makes or
breaks careers. Many situations can quickly go against you if you do not manage them with
organisation savvy, regardless of personal talents and the real facts. Marty Seldman’s Survival
of the Savvy outlines this set of behaviours and skills in some detail.
I sense that the complex highly-political society in which Indians have grown up helps to
make them effective in the organisational politics of corporations. Contrast this with
hierarchical and highly-structured societies – such as Far East Asian cultures – where there is
less frequent engagement with implicit political activity.
3) COMFORT IN HIGHLY AMBIGUOUS ENVIRONMENTS
India is an ambiguous environment. Society still holds together and functions, but it feels
highly chaotic. There are few governing norms for what is appropriate behaviour on the
roads, in shops, in business, or at large in public. Most first-time travellers to India struggle
with the question of how a society can be this disorganised and yet miraculously hold
together and move forward, somehow.
Indians grow comfortable with ambiguity. I see this in the corporate world in how individuals
do not require a disciplined structure to operate; they can comfortably make decisions
without precise clarity.
As a result, Indians develop a comfort for not being emotionally overwhelmed with a large
number of moving parts. Also, a comfort for not having immediate robust answers to every
relevant or strategic question at hand. It is a skill absolutely fundamental to C-level
executives, vs. other forms of leadership (e.g., sport or military leadership), in a world where
there are multitude known unknowns and also unknown unknowns.
4) MANAGING DIFFERING CULTURES AND DIVERSE OPINION
India is a truly multi-cultural environment. There is an abundance of differing opinion.
Amartya Sen’s Argumentative Indian explains the origins of diverse and tolerated opinion in

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-unexpected-reasons-why-indians-make-ceos-global-avi-patchava 3/7
8/18/2020 The 5 unexpected reasons why Indians make it as CEOs of global companies

India, as far back as the beginning of the Common Era in Ashoka’s Buddhist empire which
Sign in Join now
even had a notion of human rights, or Akbar the Great’s multi-cultural royal courts.
As an Indian, you have to deal with lots of counter opinion in your immediate surroundings
on nearly all issues – politics, religion, morality, cultural norms and more.
You are surrounded by multiple cultures that have fundamentally different viewpoints on the
world and what is the good life. It is not just between Hindus, Muslims, Christians and
Buddhists, but between the different communities (Punjabi, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil
etc) and different caste-identities (Vaishya, Dalit, Brahmin, Sudra, Kshatriya etc.) in India. My
parents eloped to the UK in the 1970s whilst both in their early 20s. Despite being middle-
class well-educated Hindu families living in the same state, their two families viewed each
other as foreign cultures: Telugu and Sindhi.
In spite of these differences, people by and large live alongside each other peacefully,
recognising that all these diverse people have some form of claim to the land and country.
Modern corporations are rich multi-cultural environments because they draw talent from
across the world. Indians are comfortable with such multi-cultural environments. They can
operate without making enemies as result of a counter-cultural disposition, or without inbuilt
bias to a particular person or group in the workplace. This is a fundamentally liberal tendency
with an Indian flavour. If Voltaire had been Indian, he might have said: “I detest what you
believe, but I will tolerate your belief and still work with you”.
5) WILLINGNESS TO BECOME NATURALISED IN NEW ENVIRONMENTS
Indians have shown a willingness to be truly at home in their adopted country. Indians have a
chameleon-like tendency to quickly adapt in new environments and deploy a survivalist
instinct to do what it takes to fit in. I recall a Sundar Pichai interview at IIT Kharagpur where
he explains how foreign he felt when he first arrived in Kharagpur at 18 years old: he did not
speak acceptable Hindi and did not know enough suitable slang to avoid ridicule from his
Hindi-speaking batchmates.
One anecdotal statistic which tells the story well: the immigrants fastest to pick up an
American accent in the USA are in fact Indians. It is this ability to fit in for the sake of survival.
They will retain a distinct identity but they do not want to be seen as “others” in a foreign
land.
As a result, Indians can become legitimate patriots in their adopted countries. This
characteristic makes it somewhat easier for the native or local population to adopt them. One
can argue it is driven by a willingness to dis-associate from their homeland. I think Indians
find a psychological harmony where they can become legitimate naturalised citizens, and yet
entertain some cultural connection with their homeland.
Again, it comes down to the willingness to entertain complex identities, cultures and even
personas - not feeling a need for strict consistency.
Thus, my claim is: it is this set of 5 skills and mindsets – strongly connected with management
in the modern world - that lead to the success of Indians in the corporate world abroad.
Note, these skills are nurtured by someone growing up in India - they happen indirectly and
unintentionally. I am not suggesting they are the outcomes of a universal Indian household
culture.
Post-script: my own vantage point

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-unexpected-reasons-why-indians-make-ceos-global-avi-patchava 4/7
8/18/2020 The 5 unexpected reasons why Indians make it as CEOs of global companies

Let me shed light on where this perspective (my perspective) comes from. I grew up in the
Sign in Join now
West - largely at an English boarding school, and at British universities away from my parental
home. I have not grown up immersed in Indian culture nor an India-influenced world.
However, in my career, I have now lived and worked in India for 5 years.
I have recruited in India. I have trained individuals at a variety of graduate and non-graduate
skill levels. I have volunteered as a teacher in Indian schools. I have worked with the
government, corporates and NGOs. I have even built a "brick-and-mortar business" in India.
In the process, I have sought to explore the upbringing and influences of a variety of Indians
– this predisposition even led to an explicit research agenda (see my article on the 6 character
skills that drive success of children in India).
As a subtle outsider in the Indian world of business and management (most do not
immediately see me as a foreigner), I have observed the Indian milieu in some detail and
depth. I have been able to contrast Indian society and the modern Indian corporate world, to
the Western society I know well. You might notice I do not analyse this question as an Indian
patriot, which often clouds this theme. I have sought to answer as an impartial observer.

Avi Avi Patchava

Follow
PatchavaCo-founder, Bright Money | Artifi…

103 comments

article- Sign in to leave your comment

comment__guest-
image
Harish Nair CSM®, PMP®, SAFe® AWS-SAA®
4d
Harish 15+ years success in technical project management, application design and delivery, and IT
transformation / migration
Nair
CSM®, Very insightful article
PMP®, Like Reply
SAFe®
AWS- Angan アンガン Pati パティ
2w
SAA®
Angan
アンガ
ン Pati Brilliantly written.
パティ Like Reply

Rachel Norris
1mo
Rachel MBA, FCCA, Prince II Practitioner
Norris
I found this article via google search. I had this question and discussed with my
Indian friends trying to decode it. This is very insightful and a few good takeaways: -
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-unexpected-reasons-why-indians-make-ceos-global-avi-patchava 5/7
8/18/2020 The 5 unexpected reasons why Indians make it as CEOs of global companies

Pushing your ability in communication; - Willingness to negotiate at every turning

Sign -in
point; - Living with ambiguity- known unknown and unknown unknown; Join now

Surrounding by all issues, but I still work with you.

Like Reply

Doris Doris (Jing) Guo 9mo

Project and Portfolio Management, PMP, M.S., Global MBA
(Jing)
Guo
Different insights about Indians are good at playing politics. Political savvy is
important to success in large organization
Like Reply

LinkedIn User
11mo
LinkedIn
User
Really appreciate your insightful analysis and recap! I have often wondered this
question myself, you have decoded the mystery with conviction!
Like Reply

David Li
11mo
David Sr. Business Development Manager, Product Assembly, Asia Pacific Region at Nordson Corp.
Li
Enlightening! Great thoughts in this article!
Like Reply 1 Like

Show more comments.

More from Avi Patchava 23 articles

On the Combinatorics of The Bright Guide to Great Neural netw

Chemical Compounds... Problem-Solving to building se
Intelligence. It
On the Combinatorics of The Bright Guide to Great
understand th
Chemical Compounds... Problem-Solving
and values....
July 12, 2020 July 2, 2020
Neural ne
the path t
February 16

© 2020 About

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-unexpected-reasons-why-indians-make-ceos-global-avi-patchava 6/7
8/18/2020 The 5 unexpected reasons why Indians make it as CEOs of global companies

Accessibility User Agreement

Sign in Join now
Privacy Policy Cookie Policy

Copyright Policy Brand Policy

Guest Controls Community Guidelines

Language

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-unexpected-reasons-why-indians-make-ceos-global-avi-patchava 7/7