Nearly all of India’s oldest IT companies have now been led by their founders for more than two decades. Except TCS, where the second generation leadership is already in charge, other IT majors like Infosys Technologies and Wipro are bringing in the change only now. But many others are still struggling. Nasscom and Businessworld organised a roundtable to discuss “Leadership planning and succession: the critical enabler for sustained growth”. The participants included: Nasscom president Kiran Karnik, MindTree Consulting’s chief operating officer Subroto Bagchi, HCL president Vineet Nayar, Unisys Global Services’ managing director Mukul Agrawal, Satyam School of Leadership’s senior vice president Edward S. Cohen and Accenture’s senior vice president Rahul Verma. Businessworld’s Rajeev Dubey moderated the session. Excerpts:

Dubey: Thank you all for participating in this discussion. Can we begin with your thoughts on how crucial is seamless succession for maintaining growth?

Cohen: It is not as much about having position-by-position succession as it is about having enough of leadership and you don’t have to worry about the right platform for leadership. If the platform is solid, leadership comes very easily. So a lot of companies today are concentrating significantly not on planning person-by-person succession but are really thinking if the process can be broadened across the entire enterprise.

Verma: Our experience has been that you ought to look at leadership at multiple levels. We believe that leadership ought to be on the CEO’s agenda, not something that is driven by HR.

Bagchi: What India will, and must see, is an entrepreneurial revolution through the small and medium enterprises. But they seldom think of succession planning. These companies become heavily dependent on the proprietor. This, however, never dawns on the organisation till something goes wrong.