“He was amazing,” said Banga. “Sandy could talk to the president of a country … [or someone on the management team] with the same level of compassion and involvement…. When you were talking to him, you felt you were the only important person in his life at that time. He’s not looking over his shoulder to check out the other guys in the room and figure out who else he should schmooze.”
Banga credited one of the most important leadership lessons he has learned not to someone at Citigroup, but to the managing director of Nestle India, where Banga started his career as a young management trainee. The director, he said, would never take “no” as an acceptable answer. One had to rephrase it to “Yes, if…” and describe what kind of support they needed to get the job done. “You can change the entire feel and look of a company by making people realize that they’re not empowered to say no,” Banga noted. “They’re empowered to say “yes, if.” It changes the bureaucracy, the culture, the passion, the purpose — it changes everything.”