No more boardroom battles please: Why Murthy must let go of Infosys

Infosys founder and promoter N R N Murthy has often said that Infosys is his mid-child, born after daughter Akshata and before son Rohan. But Murthy is forgetting one golden rule of parenting, that is, at some time your baby has to be independent. 

The current outburst of Murthy to highlight governance issue may do more harm to his baby. Already there are parallels being drawn to the ongoing Tata-Mistry boardroom battle.

If that is the case, then perhaps he should also look at what the boardroom battle has done to Tata group's global branding. According to the latest Brand Finance Global 500 report, Tata Group’s position has slipped to 103 from last year’s 82, making it lose its presence in the global 100 brands.

Enough was said and hinted during yesterday’s press conference, conducted by the board of the company, which emphasised that though the company has been founded by the sweat and toil of its founders, it is now has a professional board and management. And that their endeavour is to withheld all the culture and value system built by them, but with a different set of people, a culture of managing the business will be different. 

When asked what message the company wants to send to the shareholders when it is clear that founders continue to be passionate about the company and there is an equal stress on being a professionally run company and that both are divergent views and goals that will have conflict, R Seshasayee, chairman of the board said: “Part of the change is to move from a promoter run company to a professional run and managed company and it is a challenging transition. It is a challenge we have to meet with a great degree of statesmanship and deliver it. And we will do it. If we haven’t succeeded this time then we will do it next time.” 

Both the board and CEO Vishal Sikka took pains to reiterate that they welcome all sort of comments and backlash from founders, but to do so in public means giving room for gossip mongers to talk on issues that hurt employee morale and company’s stature among global clients. One such issue was the CEO’s compensation and the fact that he has a private jet.

On asked if how he feels when the same founders who selected him for the job are now raising concerns on his salary, he said: “I live in the US, I am not a founder, I am an employee who has to deliver. The board is the one which did the benchmarking on salary etc…I do not let it affect me. But then we do not undervalue ourselves. How do we expect our employees, sales team and clients to not undervalue us if we undervalue ourselves? My original contract was more or less based on my prior compensation package and this transformation of the package that Sesh (Seshasayee) talked about is much more aligned to the transition of the company.”

Despite all the concerns raised by the founders, the board yesterday did not answer directly when asked if the founders tried to first approach the board in good faith and solve the issue in confidence. “Murthy was gracious enough to suggest that let us take this discussion forward and we do not need to talk to media. And that's why you see statement from Murthy on this. What has happened...we cannot pull back,” was all that Seshayee had to say yesterday on the issue.

Oppenheimer Funds which is a large and long-term investor in Infosys in an open-letter said: “With all deference to their enormous contributions, we also believe that non-executive founders need to come to grips with the reality that this is a public company.”