"You cannot be serious, Doug," said Vishy, thinking, But I have the best, highest-paid, most visible, and most recognized software job in all of India. "I haven't viewed PRT remotely in this light."
Mellinger asked him to start--and for the next half year, he kept seeking Vishy's guidance as he worked through PRT's near-shore plans, settling on Barbados as a location in January 1995. Then Mellinger again did what he always does: he asked himself who could solve the problem. Who could get Vishy aboard? First he called on the customers who were so eager for the development center that they were willing to help finance it, and in April 1995 executives from J.P. Morgan and Chase both pitched to Vishy the idea of joining. Then Mellinger tapped his would-be partners on the island itself, the government officials with whom PRT was in league, and in May, Vishy was invited to the home of the Barbadian prime minister, who echoed what the corporate allies had already said: "Vishy, this is a great thing we can all do here, but you're the key; we're not in it without you."
For 11 months the PRT coalition--including all its varied members--pursued Vishy. But he already had a great job. He already had more money than he could spend. As Mellinger urged him to come run it, come build PRT/Barbados, Vishy thought, "I have run a company already, so what's new?" Why go from leading 700 employees to starting over with almost none? From a home he loved to an undeveloped place he'd never seen? Why give up so much for so little?
In the end, he decided, he was willing to do so for one reason--one that he and Mellinger so often found themselves circling back to: the vision they shared for creating an enterprise whose measure was something far more than the profits it could generate and the market share it could seize. I've generated profits, Vishy said to himself; I've gotten good customers. I've done that. "I am 45 years old now, and I have learned," he said. "I know things. I can do more."
He listened to Mellinger describe the frustrations of Manhattan, a community far too vast for PRT to affect, and he thought of Bombay, of driving to work and seeing misery both economic and spiritual. "There is so much to be done, but whatever I do is always a drop in the ocean." Maybe, he thought, in a new place it could be different. "Could I see my effects?" The Barbadian government ministers told him yes. They had a plan, and PRT was enlarging its ambitions, helping to bring it alive. The company would help rewrite school curriculums and prepare teachers and citizens for the global information-age future. Its resources would help bring new communication lines and power systems. New businesses would spring up to provide PRT with transportation services and catering, data entry and computer maintenance. With PRT as an example and an ambassador, other software companies would move in, and a high-tech industry would grow. Come, the ministers said. You can make a difference.
Yes, Vishy thought. Good. But what he hungered for was something in addition even to that, and for a time he didn't quite understand what it was. And then, as the conversations with Mellinger went on, he knew. "The urge is about how can my job make a difference in a whole way," he says. "Giving something back to our community is a part of it, and so is forming trusting relationships with customers, and so is the idea of bringing people together from all over the world and creating a novel company culture. All of those are parts. Doug understood. That is the level we connected on."
What both men realized together was that here, in the place Mellinger wanted to invent, in some small way they could challenge an economic assumption so long-lived and unquestioned that people scarcely speak of it anymore: the assumption that for business to work, someone always has to end up feeling he has been taken advantage of.
In Barbados, the two men agreed, there was a chance to begin from scratch and make it different. The employees, the customers, the society, the shareholders--everybody gains. Everybody does better, the better everybody does.
"It is not just running a company that I am doing here," Vishy says. "I am seeing people--people inside and outside PRT--feel things about working that they never thought they would feel, and they're having lives that they never thought they'd have. Do you see? You get a good sleep when you are part of that. You feel very proud."
Characteristic #2 of the antiheroic organization: The company can be about something more than the hero, more even than the hero's "vision" for it. That encourages people to imagine meaningful ways they can help form the vision and make it real. They see an unusual chance to have an impact. An antiheroic organization, as a result, is able to enlist contributions from people who would be, for most organizations, absolutely unapproachable.
In August 1995, Vishy accepted Mellinger's offer. By October he was on the island for good.
EPILOGUE: THE ANTIHERO'S REWARD
Barbados again, for the last and best time.
On a night last July, Mellinger finds himself back there, at a dinner table, on an open-air terrace that's carved out of limestone and drops down to the sea. In his hands is a wine list. He is selecting champagne.
