How meditation, yoga lessons from grandparents play a part in Novartis CEO's big professional decisions

“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.

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.

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.