Nitin Seth

Keynote at India Speakers Forum, World Book Fair, Pragati Maidan, February 15, 2015

Passions are a great gift. They are a source of energy. They are the foundation of your success in different aspects of life. However, passions need to be nurtured for them to be meaningful. They are like young saplings that need to be watered and taken care of. If you do that they grow into big, strong trees that give you lovely fruit. If you don’t nurture them, they will wither away and die. Today, given the hyper speed world we live in that has many attractions and opportunities, we tend to have multiple interests. However, you can’t possibly focus on all of them. That will just dissipate your energy. Therefore, it is important to make clear choices on what passions to focus on and nurture.

All of us are unique and should make our own choices. However, it is helpful to learn from others experiences. In that spirit, today I want to share with you the 7 passions of my life. I will share why they are important, some of my experiences and what I have learnt from them.

1. Career Success
   We are all blessed to be living in times of great opportunities. We have the opportunity to excel professionally, to build global careers, and in the process gain material success and provide a great life for our families. Sometimes in our country there is ambivalence around wealth creation. I think it is misplaced, and all of you should aim to do the best you can in your careers.I want to share with you 3 of my greatest insights on building a great career:
   1. Think big and take risks. Often in a career, you get caught in a “comfort zone”. You get some success, are satisfied with that and want to protect it. That is when you miss the bus. You have no option but to take risks. My experience is that the downside in taking risks is often less than what you think and the upside is a lot more. Even if you fail, it will not be a catastrophe and you will probably learn a lot from it. For me leaving McKinsey early in my career and setting up my venture ActiveKarma was a big risk. The venture failed but I was able to recover and get going again very quickly. Moreover, I grew tremendously from the experience. I thought I was a ‘hot shot’ consultant before I did the venture, but my lessons in building a business really came from my ActiveKarma experience. Whatever I achieved subsequently at McKinsey Knowledge Centre (McKC) and am doing at Fidelity, I owe to those lessons.
   2. Persist in search of excellence. The business world is full of uncertainties. You will rise but will also certainly see some setbacks. Therefore, you have to be resilient and persist in your search of excellence. If you give up too quickly, you will likely miss out on the pot of gold. I learnt this the hard way. Having started my career as a consultant, I was used to rapid career progressions. But when I did my venture, I was taken aback by the lack of progress and ended up shutting it down in 2 years. In hindsight I realized that it takes much longer to build anything meaningful and I should have probably given my venture more time. That lesson has stood me in good stead in my subsequent careers at McKinsey Knowledge Centre and Fidelity. I spent 8 years at McKC and close to 5 in my current role in Fidelity. It is this perseverance that has helped realize visions and business impact that would have appeared fanciful in the early parts of the journeys.
   3. Realize the power of relationships. When I joined McKinsey in 1996, one of the senior partners speaking at our induction training said that ‘’to succeed you either need to know something or to know someone’’. At that time, I felt that I would be the “know something” types and that success by ‘’knowing someone’’ was superficial. The latter felt like cheating!!  As I have gained more experience, I have realized how wrong I was and have begun to better appreciate the tremendous value of relationships. People respond more to trust and emotions than to knowledge and logic. Relationships are a force multiplier, helping you achieve outcomes that you can never do on your own – whether it is achieving difficult targets as a team, resolving conflicts, or finding your next job. So build relationships. It is the best investment you can ever make.
2. Innovation & Entrepreneurship
   The velocity of change in the business environment is unprecedented. The global economic outlook is uncertain, business cycles are becoming shorter, existing markets are declining and new ones are becoming significant, customer needs are changing, and most importantly technology is evolving at a dazzling pace. All this presents a tremendous opportunity for innovation & entrepreneurship. I would go further; innovation is not just an opportunity but a necessity both in your careers and collectively for us as a country. If we do it well, it can help us individually and as a country to leapfrog; if not, we will get left behind.The most visible manifestation of innovation & entrepreneurship is to do a start-up yourself, and I encourage all of you to consider it. However, the opportunity for innovation & entrepreneurship is equally there for you in a job whatever your level may be in the organization. I have had the tremendous opportunity to innovate and develop myself as an entrepreneur at the McKinsey Knowledge Centre. When I joined McKC it had less than 50 people and seen as a back-office for a back-office. We were initially providing support to research teams in various McKinsey offices, which themselves were a back-office function in McKinsey. In 8 years, we were able to grow McKC to over 700 knowledge professionals and to being one of the largest knowledge centers of its type in the world. This growth was driven not by offshoring more work to India but through innovation and developing numerous new service lines like Advanced Analytics and Centers of Competence that have re-shaped how McKinsey serves clients. And all this was done by a young team where the management group was not much above 30 years of age!!Today there is an unprecedented opportunity for innovation in India. We have always had the talent; but, we now have the business knowledge, global connections and access to risk capital. If we take our opportunities, we have the potential to be the Innovation capital of the world.
3. Leadership
   Leadership is such a crying need for our country. We have a serious leadership deficit in India in all fields, whether politics, business or our social life. Leadership deficit is a key reason that has held us back from realizing our full potential.Now the good news is that all of us have a great leader inside us. We just need the right spark to ignite the leader within us. Unlocking of the leader within me happened at IIT. I had gone to IIT as an introverted, slightly under confident boy. There I had the opportunity to become the Sports Secretary for my hostel. I was ignited by the ambition to help my hostel Aravali win the sports championships. This generated great energy in me and I was able to transmit that to build a great team that achieved some great success together. Once the leadership genie was unlocked and I started developing my leadership formula, I was able to naturally apply it in different aspects of my life. So friends, find a cause you are passionate about. That is the best way for the leader within you to come out.
4. Family & Friends
   Life is not a sprint; it is more like a marathon. You need to learn how to sustain yourselves for the long run. For me, my sustenance, my big anchor in life is my family. I am married, have 3 beautiful children and a large joint family. They are an enormous source of strength in my life and keep me centered. They also recharge and rejuvenate me and ensure that I have the energy to play a long innings.I am also fortunate to have a large group of friends. I wanted to share that I have been going on a “boys” trip with some close friends from IIT over the past two years and it is proving to be a hugely enjoyable ritual. It is a great opportunity to let your hair down and be boys again, with buddies one has known for over 20 years. In the midst of all the fun we also end up having some rather profound discussions – perhaps reflecting that most of us are now on the other side of 40!!  You can be honest and real with old friends in a way that does not happen easily with your professional network. Therefore, time spent with them gives you fresh and deep perspectives that are invaluable.Family and Friends are not about a means to an end. They are an end in themselves. We are social animals. We crave for trust and togetherness. It is the deep relationships in our life that make life meaningful and bring true joy and happiness.
5. Spirituality
   Many of us are caught in a ‘’rat race’’, a never stopping treadmill of desires. We work hard towards meeting our desires. However, our desires keep on rising. As soon as we fulfil a cherished desire, a new one pounces upon us. The treadmill of desires just keeps going faster and faster and it becomes very difficult to get off it. This leads to increasing stress and loss of peace of mind. Stress is not just losing mental peace but is one of the key root causes of diseases like hypertension and diabetes.Spirituality has been a great help to me in finding balance in life. I have been doing “Art of Living” for over 13 years and in recent years have been reading The Bhagavad Gita. Art of Living has taught me practical techniques of Yoga and meditation, while The Gita has given me a great framework to understand life. Together, these have helped me go deeper within myself, reduce stress s and find contentment and peace.We live in a material world so it is not possible to run away and become a hermit, and nor do our ancient Indian texts encourage that. However, it is possible and desirable to find a balance between spirituality and materialism in our daily lives. I would encourage all of you to explore spirituality and adopt some spiritual practices in your daily lives. India has such a great heritage in spirituality and is an area where we can show the way to the entire world.
6. Sports
   Sports have had a profound influence in my life. While growing up, I was a weak and sickly child. It was sports that helped me find strength and build confidence. Initially, I was not very good at sports. However, as I kept at it I got better. Eventually I played Basketball, Football and Volleyball for my school and college. My core lessons in teamwork, leadership, winning & losing, focus, perseverance have all come from Sports. It has been a character and personality building master like no other.I still play Squash regularly. It is a great stress-buster and helps energizes me for the day ahead. I think my colleagues can figure out when I am not playing regularly as I end up becoming grumpy then!!I find it very sad that we have had little focus on Sports other than Cricket in India. Our performance in Olympics given the size of our population is a national tragedy. Hopefully we are seeing a greater awareness of Sports and that will get reflected soon in both our individual and national character and performances
7. India
   We are at a fascinating juncture as a country. We now have two great assets that make me feel very optimistic about the future. First, is the youth of the country. We have over 500 million people below the age of 25. It is not just the numbers but that the youth have a very different mindset. They are not encumbered by past failures and have a positive ambition and confidence about the future. Our second asset is us, the educated middle-class. This segment is rooted in Indian values yet many have had global exposure. Moreover, many now have financial surplus where they are not limited by the insecurities of making ends meet and can contribute back.It is imperative that all of us contribute towards the development of India because so much needs to be done. Many challenges remain for our country – poverty, the need to create jobs, poor governance and corruption being some of them. To make sustained progress as a country, all of us need to contribute. For some it could be actively joining politics, while for others it could be volunteering for a cause.I explored politics two years back but realized that it was not my cup of tea, at least not at this stage of my life. I have found NASSCOM, the industry body for the IT/BPO industry as my platform to contribute. I chair NASSCOM for Gurgaon and have found it to be a great way to contribute not just to the industry but also to the development of the city. In the process it has been very inspiring to come across so many senior professionals who are contributing back in so many ways.

In summary, career success, innovation & entrepreneurship, leadership, family & friends, spirituality, sports and India are the 7 passions of my life. I hope my personal experiences and learnings were helpful to you.  I want to reiterate that there are tremendous opportunities for all of us for personal and professional success and to contribute back to the country. It just needs us to find the right passions – our sources of energy, and to nurture them. I wish that all of you find that unique success formula for yourself.

All the best!!