Summary
Summary
• Responsibility learned early often becomes leadership later.
• Curiosity can take you further than expertise alone.
• Trust is built by consistently taking ownership.
• Career clarity comes from experience, not planning.
• Money matters, but it cannot be the sole measure of success.
• The best leaders never stop learning.
Cultural expectations surrounding the elderly are being challenged today, and with good reason!
While it was the norm to slow down and retreat into a quieter life post-retirement, more men and women are finding purpose and joy in doing the opposite.
WisdomCircle honours such men and women by shining light on their journey through an inspiring series called “Wisdom Stories”. These people have successfully smashed stereotypes, and their stories remind us that life should be lived to the fullest, no matter what age or stage.
Harish Methil is a business leader, board advisor, and a CEO with leadership experience spanning manufacturing, food systems, chemicals, supply chains, sustainability, and business transformation across Asia-Pacific and global markets.
From supervising paddy fields as a teenager in rural Kerala to leading global businesses across Asia, the Middle East, and beyond, Harish Methil’s story is not one of a carefully crafted master plan. It is a story of learning faster than the challenge in front of him, taking responsibility before he felt fully ready, and discovering that success means little if it comes at the expense of the life you want to build.
“‘The turning point came when I started meeting the students.’
When people ask me about my career, they often focus on the leadership roles, the international assignments, or the businesses I’ve led.
What stands out to me is something else.
For most of my career, I was asked to solve problems I had never encountered before.
I started as a civil engineer with the Murugappa Group. Very quickly, I found myself working beyond the boundaries of my training, learning manufacturing, operations, project execution, business management, and eventually leading businesses across industries and geographies.
Every role brought a new challenge. Every challenge demanded new skills.
Over time, I realised that experience is not about doing the same thing for decades.
It is about learning how to navigate unfamiliar situations, make decisions with imperfect information, and adapt as circumstances change.
That’s what organisations are really looking for when they seek experienced leaders.
Not someone who has seen this exact problem before, but someone who has seen enough different problems to recognise the patterns.
As my responsibilities grew, so did my perspective. I moved into senior leadership and CEO roles, leading businesses through growth, transformation, and change. By most conventional measures, I had built a successful career.
Then something happened that changed how I thought about success itself.
As part of my leadership responsibilities, I became deeply involved in CSR initiatives and community programmes. What began as a corporate responsibility gradually became a personal one.
I spent time with students from underprivileged communities, many of whom had immense potential but very limited access to opportunities. I met parents making extraordinary sacrifices to educate their children and create possibilities that they themselves had never had.
What stayed with me were their eyes.
The hope. The determination. The belief that education could change not just one life, but the future of an entire family.
Those interactions became a tipping point.
For years, I had focused on building organisations, developing businesses, and creating value for shareholders. Suddenly, I found myself thinking about impact in a much broader way.
How do we create opportunities for people who may never otherwise have access to them?
How do we use our experience, influence, and resources to unlock potential in others?
Those questions stayed with me.
They also changed how I viewed leadership.
Leadership was no longer only about business outcomes. It was about stewardship. It was about creating pathways for others to succeed.
It also required something less spoken about but consistently decisive: cultural sensitivity; the ability to operate across contexts, understand differences in how people think, decide, and disagree, and still build alignment without forcing uniformity. In global roles, it becomes part of how trust is built and how decisions hold together across geographies.
Today, through board, advisory, and mentoring roles, I continue to work with organisations navigating growth, sustainability, innovation, and transformation.
What I bring is not simply expertise.
It is perspective built over decades of making decisions, leading through uncertainty, learning from mistakes, and understanding how businesses, people, and systems evolve.
That is the real value of experience.
Sustaining that perspective also depends on something more fundamental: physical well-being treated with the same discipline as mental resilience. Energy, health, and recovery patterns quietly determine the quality of judgment over time, especially when decisions carry long arcs of responsibility.
It helps organisations see around corners.
It helps leaders make better decisions.
And it helps us recognise opportunities that others might miss.
When I look back on my journey, I am proud of the businesses I have led and the teams I have built.
But some of the moments that stay with me most vividly are not from boardrooms or strategy sessions.
They are conversations with students who dared to dream bigger than their circumstances and parents who sacrificed everything to help them get there.
Those moments reminded me that success is not only measured by what we build.
It is also measured by what we make possible for others.”
Curiosity Talks #50
Harish will be joining the landmark 50th edition of Curiosity Talks alongside leaders from agriculture, sustainability, technology, construction, and environmental stewardship. Together, they will explore how experience, cross-sector learning, and accumulated wisdom shape better decisions, stronger organisations, and more sustainable futures. Register here: https://luma.com/twdtx95s
Interviewed by Nehal Naik for WisdomCircle
Explore more inspiring journeys—read more Wisdom Stories here.
