What I learned from Mr. R N Nayak at Power Grid

Changing track from last week, I will switch back to lessons from leaders in my own life. Today I will cover a simple lesson from Mr. R. N. Nayak, who later retired as CMD ( Chairman & Managing Director from Power Grid Corporation). He became the head of department of my uniquely named group, Load Dispatch & Communications (LD&C) after Mr. Bhatnagar retired. Mr. Nayak, as he was popularly called, was close to the then Chairman, Shri R P Singh and was rising very fast in the organization. He was considered a very tough person and before he formally joined us, there were a lot of talk about how things will change and all. I was too young that time to understand the “politics” behind all this talk, but was a bit apprehensive. But all this was going to change as I got the chance to interact with him more closely over many years that followed. He gave me many lessons and this is just the first one.

There is no substitute to Hard Work

Mr. Nayak was new to LD&C, you see, he came from Contracts Department, which ran the commercial part of the business for Power Grid and I thought he knew little about automation or communication. When he was appointed the head, it came as a surprise. As I started interacting with him, I was surprised at his level of preparedness. When I went to explain to him something, he will always bring up something else that he had read and would ask for a correlation. He would make very quick connections and within a few months he was on top of everything. He was a voracious reader and would read every note / document that we created and was quick to correlate the subjects.

What he lacked in subject knowledge, he overcame with pure hard work and then he added significantly from his previous experience. His influence helped me to grow as a professional. I developed confidence that one can lead any function as long as one can put in the right amount of effort and is able to connect the dots.

You may all get chances to lead new areas, but when you do so, remember to put in the extra effort to catch up and then add from your pool of knowledge, this will help all around you to grow and benefit from your presence.

Stay tuned for more next week.