A Meeting of Minds: Carlos Ghosn and Vineet Nayar

ROLLE, Switzerland – BBC World News, one of the most widely watched current affairs programs in the world, broadcast a unique meeting of minds over the weekend (October 13 and 14).

As part of its eight-part series The Ideas Exchange, the program invited two of the world's most successful business leaders – Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn and Vineet Nayar, in charge of the leading IT and Software company HCL Technologies – to chat about how they transformed their respective companies into the highly successful operations they are today.

For Mr. Ghosn, the embedded problems at an ailing Nissan – when he took control, the company hadn't made a profit for seven years and had accumulated debts of 20 billion dollars – meant drastic surgery was the only answer: 21,000 redundancies, mostly from Japan, were called for. "You feel very bad about; I can tell you that in the week before I announced the Nissan revival plan in October 1999 I didn't sleep too much," he told Mr. Nayar.

Although criticized at the time, within a few years Mr. Ghosn's actions were lauded. "We came from a company which had been declining for 10 years to a company which has been growing for 10 years."

Mr. Ghosn was intrigued to discover more about Mr. Nayar's own recipe for success. Since he took over HCL Technologies in 2005, annual revenue has grown six fold and the number of employees has tripled to 90,000 people in 32 countries. His strategy? A plan called Employees First, Customers Second.

By "enthusing, encouraging and enabling" employees first, they will then make sure the clients' needs are met. Mr. Nayar also takes an unusual approach to performance appraisals… he allows his staff to appraise his own performance (they do it anonymously!). "It shows I am willing to learn from the feedback and correct myself if needed."

Mr. Nayar asked Mr. Ghosn about the car industry's contribution to climate change. Mr. Ghosn admitted that transportation is part of the cause of global warming "and we need to be part of the solution." Asked about his legacy, Mr. Ghosn laughed and said: "If people remember me, it will be as the man who turned around Nissan, a company undoubtedly going into bankruptcy in 1999, and hopefully as the main pioneer of mass market zero emission cars."

See the video broadcast

Read the release

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