Perform or perish: Murthy puts senior Infosys executives on notice

Barely a month after returning to Infosys as its executive chairman, NR Narayana Murthy has given senior executives two choices: perform or perish. Vivek Sinha reports.

Barely a month after returning to Infosys as its executive chairman, NR Narayana Murthy has given senior executives two choices: perform or perish.

A day after Infosys's global sales head Basab Pradhan resigned abruptly, a senior company executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, told HT, "The performance of a number of senior executives have been below par. Murthy, who is closely monitoring their functioning, wants them to get out of their comfort zone and deliver."

The message is unspoken but clear - laggards will be shown the door. "Performance targets are likely to be increased," he said adding, "Big shake ups are possible."

The mood among senior managers at Infosys was mixed - there was optimism that the company would regain its lustre under Murthy but this was tempered by nervousness over stiffer targets and closer performance monitoring.

Asked to comment on this development, an Infosys spokesperson said, "As a policy, we do not comment in public on the company's internal mechanisms for performance improvement."

"A number of senior Infosys executives get fat pay packets and huge dividends (on shares they have got by way of ESOPS). Many of them may have lost their hunger. These executives are holding the company back," the senior executive added.

Over the last couple of years, Infosys has fallen behind rivals TCS, Cognizant and HCL Technologies. To arrest this falling performance, the company brought Murthy back as executive chairman in June.