I recently went one on one with Riju Vashisht, Chief Growth Officer of Genpact.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to our growth? 

Riju: Let’s start with the earliest experiences of my career. I started my career in HR at Unilever as the first woman to head up HR. At that time, I was the only woman working at the chemical plant amidst 250 men working onsite and 150 male contractors. This experience taught me how to work in an environment where most people are different, and I learned the importance of melding into that company culture without losing my individuality. 

Working at Unilever was a brilliant learning experience for a 24-year-old! In my role, it was important that I learned the operations of the company, how to meet expectations, how to navigate alignment challenges, and how to problem-solve. One thing that has stuck with me is that sometimes the answer to a problem may not be the most obvious answer. 

But most importantly, I got to know the employees better, which helped shape how I worked with them both on a one-on-one basis and collectively as a group. Seeing them as individuals with individual opinions was a great learning experience. The moment you disaggregate the group into individuals, with their own aspirations, it helps to better understand what matters most to them. And then you can shape how that group behaves together and work on driving alignment with overall business outcomes. 

Adam: What are the key steps to growing and scaling your business? 

Riju: When you think about scaling your business, you need to think about differentiation, creating relevance, and prioritizing the customer experience. You need to scale your people along with your business — your employees, your customers, and your ecosystem of partners. Specifically, you need to think about:

1. Differentiation that comes from focus. For example, at Genpact (NYSE: G) we are focused on our IP. If you don't have differentiation and if you're not focused on understanding your customer, you're not going to be successful.

2. Get out of the weeds to raise the profile of your business. What kind of processes and systems do you have in place to build up your people along with your business?

3. Customer intimacy is so important. Ask yourself how you are addressing the customer needs and what bothers your customer — and make sure that you ask questions first and that your solution answers those questions instead of the reverse.

4. Create relevance around your ecosystem of partners. You’re not going to be successful alone. Wherever you exist, how does your partner ecosystem regard you? Do they see you as an important component of the value chain? 

Genpact has a proud history of driving tangible business outcomes for clients in their transformation journeys. We started with industry domain and operations process expertise leveraging our history as part of GE. Many things remain constant from those early days, such as our focus on clients. Over the past 10 years, we’ve significantly enhanced our domain and industry knowledge. We have also built a very strong muscle around Data-Tech-AI through organic and inorganic investments, and we identified a set of emerging areas as future key growth drivers 5+ years ago — risk services, supply chain services, and sales and commercial services, to name a few. We are unique in the way we bring these capabilities together to create a full-stack solution for our clients by integrating industry and process expertise with digital, data and analytics, technology, and experience.

Today, we have two levers for transformation: Data-Tech-AI, where we design and build solutions that drive transformation for clients in their businesses, and Digital Operations, where we transform and change our clients’ operations and run them to deliver higher levels of performance. We believe the investments we made in our strategic choices over the years have positioned us extremely well to help our clients navigate the many challenges in the macro environment.

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?

Riju: The science of leadership has a very interesting combination of the physics of leadership, the chemistry of leadership, and the biology of leadership. The physics of leadership is understanding how do the input and outputs talk to each other. The chemistry of leadership is understanding how this whole ecosystem — or group of people – come together, and what do they have in common. And how do you drive that commonality through a culture that can bring them together. The biology of leadership is making sure that the DNA continues to evolve but not lose its origin. 

Effective leaders can build on these three components and use these in different combinations together. The failure of leadership is if you are very dependent on one versus the other.

There is something in understanding how you continue to drive and stay connected with the whole ecosystem of your teams. How much learning do you do yourself? At the end of the day, you need to add value from a learning perspective — and that learning can be the art of enthusiastic inquiry and staying curious. 

The harder one is getting the right balance of methods, procedures, and processes — but making sure that there is flexibility in this mix to dial up or dial down. Adding value beyond methods, procedures, and processes is also extremely important in being effective. There are companies where the defined methods, processes, and procedures are so stringent that it becomes a bureaucracy and there are companies where nothing gets done and it can be complete chaos. The most successful companies are those that fall right in the sweet spot between bureaucracy and chaos.  

Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level? 

Riju: Staying curious and continuously learning. Also, being in alignment with others, especially the influencers of your industry. It may take time to figure out who the influencers are and to understand that the “decision maker” is influenced by other influencers. I learned a very big lesson at one point in my career: don’t jump into doing a task before you understand the goals or objectives and figure out what the influencers have to say. Very often, you forget to ask what success looks like. You assume that your definition of success is the same as the person who is asking you to do that job. It’s important to understand your network, continue to build that network, and leverage that ecosystem. 

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?

Riju: 

1. Understand who your customer is. What is the biggest problem you can solve for that customer so you continue to stay relevant.

2. Harness your fears! How do you harness your fears in a positive way to drive you and give you that motivation to do more. In other words, if you are paranoid every day, you will figure out the answer to any problem by looking at it from every angle.

3. Focus on adding value. If you can’t answer how you are adding value, you will not exist. 

Adam: What's your advice on building, leading, and managing teams? 

Riju: Create a common definition of success for the team so that everyone is singing from the same song sheet and has a common definition of success. If there is a lack of alignment, spend time to be better aligned by mapping the milestones of success with teams so you are headed on the right path. Finally, define the clarity of roles and responsibilities by identifying the skills for each role. Step back and see what role they are going to play and identify who has the right skills for the different roles. 

Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding?

Riju: Brand and demand need to work hand in hand.

A lot of sales activity is focused on the final outcome, instead of the points of input and points of output. If you disaggregate the whole thing and help people think through steps and measure the good, the bad, and the ugly, you will have greater insight. 

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received? 

Riju:  "Don't be afraid to fail!" Embrace the opportunity to step outside your comfort zone and take on new challenges throughout your career. The greatest lessons come from diving in headfirst. These experiences, which may be uncomfortable at first, will help you develop new skills and lay the foundation for future successes.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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