There are three core ingredients to success- hard work, the ability to say ‘No’, and the willingness to take risks. Personally the biggest risk that he took was to move from the comfort of a $1.2 billion company to move to a much smaller 600 people 25 million software company. Over a space of several years, he has seen the company grow to more than a billion dollars. The one thing which should be in someone’s mind in any opportunity is to grab it and give it your best shot. Do not look for opportunities to be served to you but seek the opportunities which are sitting with you on the table.

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The market is changing rapidly and staying relevant and current is a constant struggle. A good leader should be able to influence the team to influence behaviours that encourage dynamism and receptiveness towards new things. For many successful leaders, there is a tendency to become overconfident. The real challenge is to maintain humility and keep the ‘fire in the belly’ burning. One key statement that he constantly reminds himself all the time is, “This too shall pass.” Whether it is a streak of good or bad, nothing lasts.

A leader should stop relying too heavily on experience and fall into the trap of becoming too preachy. Sometimes a professional gets so engrossed in her/his career that s/he fails to spend time with the things which s/he enjoys. It is important for any professional to dedicate time towards doing things which s/he enjoys doing. Elango would advice anyone to relax a little more, and spend more time on doing things s/he likes doing.

HR is all about attracting and retaining the right set of people at the right time at the right place to make a profitable contribution to the business. His dream and vision is for HR to be as respected and valued as the finance and sales in a company. Some key HR areas in India have already become futuristic, including performance, compensation, and rewards. But staffing is an area where HR needs to get more futuristic.

To be a successful Human Resource professional what Elango suggests is, one should feel the depth in HR, experience all functional areas of HR, go out and do a business role at least for 2 years to get the business preview to the entire gamut.