Subramanian Narayanan walked from Kanyakumari to Kashmir to promote road safety and study the infrastructure. He took 131 crore steps to cover 3,400 km in 51 days and went from 140 kilograms in body weight to 70 kilograms.

But that was not the kind of change Mr. Narayanan focused on during the conference. According to him, five elements are needed to drive change. First is vision, without which there is confusion. Second is pressure, and if it’s missing, people will not care. The third is capability, the absence of which leads to failed executions. The fourth is a review mechanism to tell us which way change is going, and the fifth is recognition, without which there is no motivation.

Drawing on organizational consultant Simon Sinek’s theory of the Golden Circle, he said it was important to approach a problem from inside out rather than outside in. We need to think of the "why" and then think inside out, he said.

Speaking of entrepreneurs, he said they are normally thought of as small-time businesspeople. But there is an entrepreneur in each one of us “who thinks differently, acts differently, wants to get different results.”

The reason why people are afraid to approach a company with good ideas is because it would then become their responsibility. “Accountability is a scary factor among project managers,” he said, adding that we can take this fear away if we understand that we are not working for ourselves, but for the company’s profitability, which in turn takes care of our sustenance and survival.

“Everybody has a moral compass. If you have a gut feeling that it is pointing to the right direction, you have to own up to it,” he said.

He left the audience with a final thought, “Are we doing things right, or are we doing the right things?”