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Thomas Kuruvilla, managing partner at Arthur D. Little Middle East and India: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Thomas Kuruvilla (LinkedIn), managing partner at Arthur D. Little Middle East and India. Edited excerpts from our conversation:
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I have been with Arthur D. Little for 26 years. I worked in many geographies — started in Singapore, then moved to Malaysia, Australia, the US, Germany, France, Croatia, India and now the Middle East. I was very briefly with the Indian Air Force. I then worked with Larsen & Toubro, a very large engineering company in India, and then finally moved into consulting. And I must say that I continue being very passionate about consulting, even after 26 years.
I teach at three MBA schools in India and I’m very passionate about teaching. It is in my genes — my parents were both teachers for 30 years in Lagos, Nigeria, where I was born before I moved to India to study engineering and then to Australia for my MBA. I love interacting with students, but I am also keen to give back to society, which I feel is necessary. I’m also very keen to learn from people and to share what I have learned.
Arthur D. Little is the first consulting firm in the world, founded in 1886 by MIT chemist Arthur Dehon Little. Many people may not be aware that ADL was responsible for many groundbreaking projects, like setting up the R&D lab for General Motors in 1911, helping NASA land on the moon in 1969. ADL set up OPEC in the Middle East in 1966.
We helped develop regulations that are implemented in many Middle East countries related to telecoms, transport, energy, media, and healthcare over the last 10 to 15 years. We were also privileged to support governments in the region, particularly in the GCC, develop national cross-sectoral agendas packaged under what is commonly known as Vision programs.
Initially, consultants had the advantage of having a lot of knowledge from which they formulated insights. But now knowledge is available to everybody; and the consultant’s role has shifted more and more towards critical thinking and analysis to make sense of those insights.
Consultants have to become very creative now. They need to be able to process exponentially increasing volumes of information and insights and consolidate them into strategic recommendations that are defendable without any doubt and that are based on supporting data.
Adding their human touch in addressing internal misaligned agendas or politics is another balancing act asked of consultants. They need to be able to come in, not only to help address such an issue, but also to align people within the organization that have these different views towards a common outcome for the benefit of the organization, be it a government entity or a private enterprise.
The process of collecting and analyzing information, creating PowerPoint slides, may be around 25-30% of what consultants used to do in the past. That will now get almost fully replaced by AI. The positive way to look at it is that consultants are now going to work on value-added activities. If they were spending 70% of the time coming up with creative outcomes before, now, they’re going to do that for 100% of my time, adding more value to the client.
There are two main components to my job: Working with clients and working with our team who are delivering projects. For clients, we either bring in expertise from within the firm or from outside ADL through ADL’s network of international domain experts. This is very unique to ADL, because we have what we call an open consulting concept which is operationalized through our network or platform of six mn domain experts that we have access to. The concept is to bring to the client the best people in the world, not just the best people in ADL.
It is impossible for any one consulting firm to know everything, so you have to augment your own expertise from outside. Because of that, we are known to provide pragmatic recommendations, rather than just telling the client what technically works well or what they wish to know.
The second equally important component is hiring and developing the team to deliver this quality. I like to be hands-on all the time, spending time with and coaching the team whether they are working with clients or developing proposals. You need to really understand what is happening to be able to effectively help others, and it also helps you learn continuously.
When I took up this leadership role, I was a little worried that I would get detached from day-to-day activity, so I try to spend as much time as I can working with the team. When you hire very young people, fresh out of university, and you spend time with them, they think that you are teaching them, but I learn a lot from them.
Every morning I like to take a walk in nature — I’ve recently realized the self-healing power of nature and how it can help us shape and guide our lives. Then I find a nice spot and do 30 minutes of yoga. When you do yoga in a spot that you like in nature, it really helps you to listen to your inner self. It helps you become more aware of your soul, refreshes your thinking, and you become really positive.
I also try to spend time with the fishermen’s community in my village in Kerala. Kerala has a large community of fishermen and I try my best to help them with whatever knowledge or skills I have.
One thing that is constant in my every single day is my wife. Being a consultant, I travel a lot, but I alway find time to spend with my wife. Every morning I spend at least half an hour to one hour on the phone, or more during the weekend, and it keeps me very healthy and grounded. If I don’t do that, I feel very incomplete.
Everybody will — correctly — assume I have a large office supporting me, but I personally plan and arrange my day. It helps me remain agile, because things may change, depending on the type of meetings and gatherings, but it also helps me keep the personal touch when I schedule meetings directly with my clients and colleagues.
I am a very outcome-oriented person. I’m not task oriented, So whatever I do, I constantly evaluate whether it is going to produce an outcome. The benefit of this is that I never regret anything that I have done because when I do something, I have clarity that this is expected to yield a specific outcome.
I really want to move on to something where I can contribute to the community by using the expertise I have gained in technology, AI, human behavior, and the contacts and the trust I have built. The idea that I have may sound normal, but I realize that it is non-existent in the entire world. There is no charity organization in which all the activities are transparent and known to all. I want to set up a charity organization that is based on transparency and trust, because I know many people that are very keen to donate but they don’t trust the system.
The secret to having a work-life balance is passion. If you are in a job that you are very passionate about, you still need to have outside entertainment and relaxation, but you will not feel miserable while you are working because your work is your passion. Work-life balance gives an impression that you don’t like your work, and hence you need to balance it, which should not be the case if you have passion about what you do.
To switch off, I can sometimes just do nothing for an hour. But I also listen to music and read. I am currently reading Yuval Noah Harari’s new book, 21 Lessons from the 21st Century. It’s quite controversial; he talks about how we believe that we will achieve mastery over the environment. I believe in nature and I don’t think we can have mastery over it, which Harari also says, but his book says that people believe that they can.
My father told me: Don’t be ambitious, be passionate. This was when I was studying for the entrance exam for engineering courses, which are extremely competitive in India, and he could tell I was very worried. The point is: If you’re passionate, you’re allowed to make mistakes because you can learn from them. But if you’re ambitious, when you make a mistake, you’re worried that you’re not making progress. It took a lot of time for me to really appreciate this difference.
