Ashok Soota: Executive chairman, Happiest Minds

When we were creating MindTree, we had to manage different cultures. There were Americans, Indian Americans, Indians, and more. All of them were senior people and there was a lot of dissonance in the way we wanted to create and manage the company. Some wanted to micromanage, others wanted to look at the big picture. A few wanted me to be hands on, while others wanted to be independent. And I was trying to manage my way around these things, which I saw as cultural differences. That was when I met a professor at a college in New York who told me something which has stayed with me ever since. He said, ‘Never think of culture as something which has to be managed but think of it as a source of different ideas and ways of doing things. Celebrate that diversity even while creating an organisation through a common set of values.’”