Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of S.D. Shibulal, the chief executive of Infosys, the technology consulting firm. He says he learned from a previous boss the value of putting onto paper the tasks at hand — and making sure they were completed.

To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

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Were you in leadership roles early on?

I grew up in a pretty remote part of India, in Kerala. Both my parents were employed, and one of their biggest contributions was making sure that I got educated. I first started working after I finished my master’s degree. There was no opportunity to work where I grew up. Even delivering newspapers was a full-time job, for somebody to feed their family. So if I did that, then they would not have that job. And summer jobs didn’t exist. The employment situation in those days was very bad.

Early leadership lessons for you?

In my early days as a manager, I often wouldn’t give people bad news or criticism. It took me a while to learn that this didn’t do anything good for myself or the other person. If you have honest feedback, you should give it to them. That’s the only way you contribute anything to the person.

I also quickly learned that you have to be honest, transparent and fair. We have 10 development centers in India, and I travel to visit them. Somebody once asked me a question I didn’t know the answer to, but I invented some answer. About three weeks later, I went to another center, and somebody asked the same question, and I invented some answer again. They immediately said, “Well, you were at another center and you said something else.” I promised myself then that if I don’t know, I will say: “I don’t know the answer. I’ll find out and let you know.”

I also learned to be more disciplined. Early on, I thought I could remember everything, so I never used to write down anything. When I was around 28, and running a big computer center, my manager would give me 10 things to do, and I would get nine done. But he always seemed to know which one I didn’t do. He told me: “Shibu, please get it right. Write it down.” That changed my life. Now I’m very disciplined. I write it down, and I take care of each item and follow through.

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Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.comthat he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here.

His more recent book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, was also also published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.