Novartis’ global CEO Vas Narasimhan finds solace in his Indian heritage when he has to gather the courage to take a tough decision in life, even on a professional level. In an exclusive interaction with CNBC-TV18, the Indian-origin CEO spoke about critical decision-making and how one has to be ready for criticism.

For instance, he said nobody told him in the first part of 2022, that it was time for the next step of transformation. “Let's re-architect the whole Novartis structure globally, that's a moment in time you have to take personal accountability in my role as CEO and make the transformation happen,” he said.

Narasimhan credited his Indian heritage that he learned growing up which helps him to keep his calm in tough situations.

“Learning about meditation and exercises, like yoga and pranayama, looking inside yourself, to find an inner peace that allows you then to be courageous, because in a lot of ways, then the psychological security you build inside your own mind,” he said.

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The CEO of one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies says, he didn’t appreciate these lessons from his grandparents 20-30 years ago but now it all comes back to him because they taught him to find strength within himself because the external world won’t offer it and rightfully so, investors and others will criticise and challenge them.

He says his grandparents gave him these tools when he was a child and adolescent and now uses them as a global CEO. The inside-out approach is not always easy, it's tough to pull off, he added.

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Talking about how his firm functions internally, Narasimhan said, there’s been a big cultural shift within the organisation to bring in a sharp focus on going up the innovation chain.

“We were a knowledge company with knowledge workers. One of the transitions was when I became CEO in 2018, we started on the idea of an inspired curious and unbossed organisation, the idea that empowered people to make better decisions, and they're able to innovate. And that's been the journey we've been on as a company over these last five years. With the belief that if you're really pure-play innovation, you're all about your people's ability to come up with incredible ideas and translate those ideas into products and services for your customers,” he said.

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(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)

First Published:Feb 22, 2023 12:47 PM IST