Do Your Best and Leave the Rest

Special address at the Madras Institute of Technology (MIT) Alumni Association, Chennai

11 August 2012

I would like to talk about an MIT alumnus, Vidyadhar, the director of the Bangalore-based Lotus Energy Systems in a different context in the corporate world. The point that I would like to make is about the high standard of ethics in financial negotiations and, as a result, in life.

Lotus Energy Systems was shortlisted as a vendor to provide soundproofing equipment for one of India’s most prominent home-grown IT giants. Lotus seemed to be technically best suited for the job. The price was the only criterion that was against them. Because of high technical requirements, Vidyadhar could not offer a lower price. Perhaps he felt that it was in the customer’s interest to uphold product quality since the price difference was relatively small. Above all, he defended only his company’s product performance with quality as his focus—he did not belittle his competitor’s products.

The buyer became reflective and then asked curiously, ‘What is your philosophy while negotiating?’ Vidyadhar didn’t quite know what to make of it or what to say. He said the first thing that came to his mind: ‘Do your best and leave the rest; if it has to happen, it will. That is our philosophy.’ When the buyer asked, ‘And if it means that you lose the order?’ Vidyadhar replied spontaneously, ‘Dharmo rakshathi rakshitha (righteousness protects the righteous).’ This statement was a reflection of his company’s ethical standards.

Despite his high ethical standards, his company lost the contract even though the company needed it to survive. Then, a year or so later, something very interesting happened. Out of the blue he got a call from the same customer. They had a plan for a TV broadcast studio and needed acoustics for the project, which was something they had not done before. ‘But can you do it?’ the buyer asked, eager to deal with Vidyadhar’s company. Vidyadhar immediately said, ‘Yes’.

From that day on, his company has done a great deal of work for the facilities infrastructure of this company across India without ever having to sit across the negotiation table again. The customer, after his earlier experience of buying sound-proofing equipment, realized that he should have accepted Vidyadhar’s offer because the latter had upheld the truth that their product was of a higher quality. That event changed the customer’s outlook and the fortunes of both companies turned upwards, for they were truthful and honest in their dealings with each other.

Under Pressure

Address to and interaction with the students of Peking University, Beijing, China

3 November 2012

Looking at the students of Peking University, my mind goes back nearly sixty years, to 1954–57, while I was studying at the Madras Institute of Technology (MIT), Chennai. There, I had a unique professor. His name was Prof. Srinivasan. I am sure all of you have unique professors too. When we were in the final year of study, this professor called the nine of us from the aeronautics engineering faculty and assigned us a six-month project. I was designated as the project leader. My team included students from multiple areas of aeronautical engineering. Our mission: to design a low-level attack aircraft of Mach 0.8 capability within six months. Each one of us was taught specialized subjects as a part of our course. Through this project, we were given an opportunity to work on system design, system integration and system management of an end-product.