Seat of power

It is standard practice at Infosys' quarterly earnings conference for the CEO to walk into the room with a flock of senior leaders who sit near him to provide support for any queries on the segments they oversee. The Q1 earnings conference, which was the last one for CEO S D Shibulal before he retires on August 1 this year, saw a somewhat telling departure from this practice. Shibulal walked in all by himself and waited for about five minutes for others to join in. After a lot of waiting and peeping out through the door, Shibulal finally started his speech with three rows of empty chairs to his left where the Infosys leadership team usually sits. Three senior officials did join him mid-way through his speech, but that only underlined the embarrassing lame-duck nature of his tenure.