In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey’s Jennifer Chiang chats with McKinsey Senior Partner and Asia Chair Gautam Kumra, Senior Partner Joydeep Sengupta, and Partner Cheryl Lim about their upcoming book, Shapers and Founders: The Untold Stories of Asia’s Extraordinary Owner-CEOs (Wiley, September 2026). As Asia continues to shape the global business landscape, the authors draw on candid conversations and in-depth profiles of many of the region’s most successful owner-CEOs. The authors share practical lessons for all founders, CEOs, and leaders seeking to create value and build lasting legacies. An edited version of the conversation follows.
Why is McKinsey well positioned to write this book?
Gautam Kumra: McKinsey is very well positioned to write this book for a couple of reasons. First, for more than 100 years, McKinsey has been known to work with outstanding leaders of big and small institutions. Second, we consider ourselves to be a leadership factory for the firm, and we are very proud of the number of leaders McKinsey continues to develop, both at our firm and among those who leave to lead big institutions. And third, as you can imagine, McKinsey invests a lot in leadership development, both with our own people and by helping our clients develop leaders.
Joydeep Sengupta: As a firm, we have always worked with CEOs and business leaders. And one of the things that always struck us is the disproportionate impact that individuals in these roles can have, not just on their companies but also on society.
These are leaders who have sustained multidecade transformations. In some cases, they have reinvented themselves as companies again and again. There’s no summit for these people.
That was a big motivation when some of our colleagues wrote the book CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest a few years ago. At that time, when we established a center for CEO excellence to help CEOs navigate this journey, we realized there is a whole different genre of CEOs who come from backgrounds different from those of typical institutionally owned companies, and these are really the entrepreneurial-led or founder-led companies.
And we became curious to understand what it was about them that was different from those who came from traditional, professionally run company backgrounds that enabled them to create such disproportionate value in the companies they led. So that curiosity led us down this path and eventually led to this book.
Cheryl Lim: We know from our decades-long research across sectors and geographies that 70 percent of large-scale transformations fail. So it’s always fascinating for us to try to understand what will make a difference. And we know it’s not just the strategy itself. How you execute and how leaders lead is so fundamental to the outcome. Personally, for me, that was one of the fascinations. These are leaders who have sustained multidecade transformations. In some cases, they have reinvented themselves as companies again and again. There’s no summit for these people. It’s a constant uphill push to expand. So the opportunity to understand what we can learn, what we can apply, and how this improves our odds of success was very exciting.
Why is ‘scaling without losing soul’—one of the behaviors you identify—so challenging? Do you have any examples of how founders achieved this?
Gautam Kumra: This is one of the most consequential things on the minds of these founders because they recognize that deeply entrepreneurial core, the sense of entrepreneurship that makes them successful as they continue to grow and scale their businesses.
They recognize the need to bring in more professional talent and to put more structure, systems, and processes into the company; otherwise, it won’t scale. But they are also very afraid that by putting in these structure systems, we are going to create bureaucracy and middle management inertia. We’re going to lose speed and become increasingly more bureaucratic and complacent.
So these founders have the challenge of, “How do I professionalize to support the scale of the company but also fight bureaucracy and middle management inertia and complacency?” Founders want to have the best of both: the muscle of entrepreneurship without creating the slaughter of bureaucracy. That is the tension that these people are fighting all the time.
One example is what Sanjiv Bajaj [chairman and managing director] has done at Bajaj Finserv. In a relatively short period of time and virtually out of nothing, they turned the company into one of India’s most valuable diversified financial conglomerates. Sanjiv talks very passionately about the idea of accountable empowerment.
It’s the idea of constantly breaking the organization into smaller teams, delegating decision-making down to people who are closest to servicing the needs of the customers, and pushing back against overcentralization. He has developed simple yet nimble measures of people management and performance evaluation that allow scaling without significant bureaucracy.
Explain the concept of ‘a telescope in one eye, a microscope in the other.’ Who are some founder-CEOs who have demonstrated this well?
Joydeep Sengupta: The ability of most people to both think long term and have a really long-term lens—not five or seven years, but a generational lens that spans 20, 30 years—and at the same time be acutely aware of the present is extraordinarily difficult. That’s because there are typically pressures in the near term. But one of the interesting things about these founder-CEOs is that they are incredibly comfortable managing both at the same time.
There are two or three things that really struck us. One very interesting element is the ability of founder-CEOs to spot long-term trends and think about them quite fundamentally and decisively. At the same time, it was quite interesting that they know there is no long term without the short term. How can we define an individual who has these two contradictions in mind, yet balances them so well? That’s why we use this analogy of a telescope in one eye and microscope in the other.
If you look at many of the founders, all of them have the innate capability [to balance the contradictions]. A very interesting example is Nicholas Moore [former managing director and chief executive officer of Macquarie Group] during the financial crisis, when Macquarie’s stock price was down.
Despite facing challenges, Nicholas and his team made the decision to acquire a big, distressed US energy commodity company. The decision was very surprising because everyone else was hunkering down. His philosophy was that when the chips are down, there are opportunities, and that’s when you have to grab them.
And indeed, if you look back a year later, the business that they acquired truly propelled them to a very different degree of performance in health. That’s only one example.
The reality is that it’s very difficult if you don’t have both at the same time. There are some who would have the long-term lens. But many of them would acknowledge that if we are only focusing on the long term, we may not have a company.
Founders want to have the best of both: the muscle of entrepreneurship without creating the slaughter of bureaucracy. That is the tension that these people are fighting all the time.
Tell us more about ‘big I’; and ‘small i’; innovation. What does that entail?
Cheryl Lim: The idea here is that when we talk about innovation, oftentimes your mind goes to the big disruptive transformations, those ideas that are never before seen in the market or even in the world. That’s what we call the “big I.” But what we also see is that our founders and shapers weren’t just disciplined about the big I.
They were very disciplined about the “small i” concept, which is basically how we ensure that we’re a little bit better every day. Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, had a very simple way that involved three things. He framed it as, “Can you do what you do today faster, cheaper, or better?” Or in the same way, Sidney Lu [founding chairman and CEO] of Foxconn Interconnect Technology would say, “Every day, I ask myself, is this it? Can we do better?” And the answer was always yes. So the small i is the idea that all these incremental changes you make will add up, and they could themselves become equally disruptive and powerful.
What’s exciting to us about founders is that for them, it wasn’t an either-or situation. They balanced both constantly. They had a discipline about it.
Does this add value? How do we eliminate anything that’s not creating value? And I thought that was actually a really powerful innovation for them. It wasn’t just about having a great idea. But there was a real discipline behind it to say, “How do we push ourselves? How do we raise the bar on what we do? How do we make sure that we build it into who we are as an organization?”
We have many big ones, but one very well-known one would be what Mukesh Ambani did with the release of Jio. When it launched in 2015, Jio was a national telecommunications network. At that time, it was a significant investment for the organization. I think they built 90,000 towers, 250,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cable.
The intent was to ask, how can we bring 4G to the whole of India? And at the point when they were doing this, it was, of course, a multibillion-dollar investment for the company, and even outside analysts, when they were looking at it, were not quite certain that it would work.
But Ambani went to the board, and Mukesh essentially said, “Even if we fail, what we would have done for India is tremendous.” It’s that sense of nation building, the idea that if my nation succeeds, I succeed as well. It’s something we see a lot in the amazing group of founders we got to interview, and there was a huge swing at that time. But it was a very successful swing. I think in the first 100 days alone, they had about 170 million subscribers.
One of my favorites [examples of small i innovation] is one I mentioned earlier: Narayana Murthy when he was designing Infosys. Again, thinking about the culture of the organization, he would ask his employees three things. And he told a story about how even the janitor approached him and said that he didn’t understand what it meant.
Murthy broke it down for them by essentially saying, “Can you do this faster?” So if you’re cleaning using a relatively small cloth, use a bigger cloth, or use two pieces of cloth. Is it in the formulation of the cleaning spray you’re using? There’s a way to translate this vision and make it relevant to every single employee, no matter the level.
That was a very powerful way of saying again that innovation—the small i—became essentially a way of life for the organization. It became the expectation of every employee. This is what you do. That’s actually a really powerful way to take the concept and embed it into the DNA of an organization.
We became curious to understand what it was about these CEOs that was different from those who came from traditional, professionally run company backgrounds that enabled them to create such disproportionate value in the companies they led.
What is your opinion on succession? What does it require in terms of systems and governance?
Gautam Kumra: Owner-CEOs have a unique challenge. They not only have to manage the transition of their own business after them but also the transition and the family. Considering succession, all the founders whom we interviewed have a deep desire to build a legacy.
They want to build an institution that will outlast them and that stays long after they are gone. The topic of succession is quite complex because in many cases, founders are trying to marry not only the needs of the business but also the needs of the family.
Unlike professional setups, this type of transition is much longer. Also, you have to think about this in almost two chapters. There’s a first chapter that is much more immediate about who will replace me and the obvious choices about whether it will be a professional person or someone in the family. Each choice comes with its own unique pros and cons.
Professionally, it’s often not easy to find professional CEOs to come in to a founder-led company and immediately know how to integrate into another culture and the unique DNA of that company, in addition to being personally effective in leading and shaping it. On the family side, sometimes they may not want to do it.
So there’s one set of complex challenges about simply finding who will replace me as the owner-CEO. Then there is stage two, which obviously happens in some ways in parallel, which is about how I can build an institution that would outlast me as a founder. This has many elements:
- Governance is the first one.
- Leadership, which means developing a whole pipeline of leaders, both managers and potential board members.
- Culture, which can stand multiple generations.
- A good performance ethic where there’s clarity related to decision-making and performance management.
The topic of succession is a multifaceted one, starting with the immediate question of who would replace me, leading to the broader question of how I can build an institution that would outlast me and many future generations to follow.
What are some of the traits of founder-CEOs? What kinds of unique perspectives do they possess?
Joydeep Sengupta: As we sought to identify the traits of founder-CEOs, we learned about how they have been shaped by philosophies in different countries. We found the Indian founders very influenced by the Gita and the Arthashastra, some of the old scripts that set down ways of meritocracy, how companies run statecraft. We saw the Chinese very much [influenced] by Daoism, Confucianism, and many of the other philosophies related to thoughts about family, commitment, and long-term commitment.
We saw traits of these philosophies coming through in all of these founders. We also saw that all of them had a burning ambition, given that most of them grew up in the post-colonial era, and most of them were at a point when their countries were really striving to get out of a very difficult situation.
There was a burning ambition that their success would not happen without the country’s success, which was a very big element we saw. Finally, we saw humility. The founders are not arrogant; they are quite humble. They believe that they have a need to learn from the West. For example, Uday Kotak [founder and chair, Kotak Mahindra Bank] would say that he learned management practices through dealings with Goldman Sachs and Ford Credit.
These founders found a way of getting the best practices and the learnings, and then marrying them with their own philosophies. And that created a very unique set of characteristics. Some characteristics we identified were being able to hold contradictory thoughts in mind at the same time; being mission driven: the concept that what is good for the country is good for my people. If it’s good for my country, for my people, for my business, then it’s good for me, in that order. That’s a big differentiator in their ability to make decisions. They are also continuous learners. If you talk to them, you’ll realize it all the time. They’re trying to learn something new. I have not seen that degree of hunger and curiosity to learn more with most professional managers. That’s a remarkable trait. Finally, building relationships and being relationship-oriented. They build their networks. It’s not transactional but long term and very vast.
When we uncovered the core behaviors common to owner-CEOs regardless of country, industry or background, we discovered many governing mindsets. There are about 18 mindsets that we highlighted in our book against the six behaviors because the behaviors are a manifestation of the mindset.
Given the example of the microscope and the telescope, one of the mindsets is that I will always look out for new opportunities. Another mindset is that there is no long term without the short term. So these are the kinds of mindsets that we discovered as we went through and against each of these behaviors.
And it was, for us, a real process of discovery to unearth many of these mindsets. These mindsets are the core of what people can take away from this book.
What are some of the outstanding things about hiring and developing people that you found in this research process?
Cheryl Lim: The first thing is that these founders were very thoughtful about hiring for character and fit.
When one of the China owner-CEOs we spoke to first started, he brought in a lot of individuals who were very, very experienced, very capable, but whose vision of where the organization was going to go didn’t fully align. That created subsequent issues that didn’t work out for the organization. And consistently, many founders said, “At the end of the day, cultural fit matters.” Alignment with what we are trying to achieve—our purpose, our goals—matter, and they’re very thoughtful about that. Many organizations do this now, but these founders were doing this decades ago, so that’s one thing they hired for: correct fit.
The second thing I would say is that they don’t think of their people in terms of classic boxes or lines. In fact, when they look at individuals, they’re constantly stretching them.
And they saw it as part of their role to ensure that they were developing people. They were stretching them. They were helping them find opportunities to grow based on their strengths. That really resonated for them.
One of my favorite stories is Anand Mahindra from Mahindra & Mahindra. They were thinking of growing their business in South Africa, and Anand nominated Veejay Ram Nakra, who he described as “the EA to my EA.” And when he put Veejay forward, everyone questioned if he was sure that he wanted Veejay to be the face of the business, to grow the business in South Africa.
And Anand said, “I think he has the sophistication. He’s got a drive; he’s got the entrepreneurship.” He shared the same values Anand was looking for, so Anand chose Veejay despite his role as the EA of my EA.
It has been an amazing success story. Veejay is now the president of Mahindra & Mahindra automotive division, and they have the fastest-growing presence in South Africa. It’s a powerful example of not letting the box on the org chart define who you are, what you’re capable of. What these founders were exceptional at doing was seeing the potential of the individual, rather than being defined by the boxes.
The true cycle view essentially says you are looking at someone over a period of time, not just the most recent year. Dilip Shanghvi [chairman and managing director] of Sun Pharma famously used the words “current account” and “savings account,” the idea being that your savings account is your historical contribution.
If you’re struggling with a new challenge in your current account, he will also consider, while he reflects on that, how you’ve contributed historically to the company. So that’s one way to think about it in terms of how you foster loyalty.
Another way to think about it, and I think one very applicable way, is in terms of entrepreneurship, innovation, and risk-taking. Something a lot of companies talk about now is that we want more entrepreneurship, more risk-taking. But at the same time, and I think particularly in this region, we struggle with psychological safety. We struggle with employees having a real fear of making a mistake and that being the career killer.
If we want our people to take risks, to innovate, to push themselves and stretch themselves, we can’t immediately say, “Oh, you messed up. That’s it.” So they are very thoughtful about saying a true cycle approach is the idea that it’s a journey, and there’ll be great moments. There’ll be dull moments. But they are looking at you as a whole picture. And I thought that was quite lovely.
What are some of your biggest reflections on writing the book as well as your hopes for the future?
Gautam Kumra: There were probably two or three aspects that surprised me the most. One is the ability of these leaders to be able to hold very contradictory thoughts better than almost any other category of leaders we’ve seen. They believe they need to take bold moves, but equally feel a very strong need to manage risk.
They believe in being extremely long term, but they are extremely short-term oriented in execution. So you find that unusual ability to hold these seemingly very contradictory ideas together, and to deal with that ambiguity and balance it masterfully, is one thing that maybe surprised me. Second is, if I were to double-click on this point about risk, many of these people from the outside would be described as big, bold risk takers.
But when we went and interviewed them, their own notion of who they are is that they’re actually very conservative risk managers. So these people have this ability to think very big, make very bold moves, but they are equally very well prepared to deal with the worst case. And they have the DNA that once they approach something like that, they want to work toward making the best case happen. That surprised us.
The last thing that surprised us was their approach to managing people, frankly, every element of the people value chain—from recruiting to development and mentoring to evaluation to retention. These people do things very differently from what is taught in management schools and from what many professional CEOs do.
I am actually much more confident in the ability of this set of owner-CEOs to navigate the future than almost any other category of CEOs. If you look around the world, the level of uncertainty has never been higher. Anyone you talk to will only tell you that the level of uncertainty will continue to rise. The need to move with speed and agility is only going to go higher and higher because if you don’t know what the world is going to be tomorrow, all you can do is to prepare yourself to move fast.
When you combine these three things: ability to navigate an uncertain environment, ability to move with speed, and continuous learning and decision-making, this set of people is extremely well positioned to not just succeed but also thrive in this new AI era.
