Vikas Narula Sees What Bosses Cannot

Vikas Pollen image for website

Photo by Marie Ketring. Illustration by Bill Ferenc

Vikas Narula see what bosses cannot. This is the story of how he made the invisible, visible. Pollen. September 2015.

Ignoring traditional business hierarchy, Vikas shows companies how people in their organizations are really connected. By uncovering these hidden networks, he helps bosses work smarter with employees.

His friends called him crazy. It was Sunday night, and once again Vikas Narula planted himself in the computer lab to code. Feeling trapped wasn’t hard. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The room had no windows. A computer science degree? Vikas knew his friends were right: it wasn’t for him. He preferred people to computers. But he pushed on with his degree anyway. It was practical, after all. He graduated. Took a job with a high-tech medical software company. Then another. But he spent fifteen years slowly growing more and more unhappy. A slew of bad bosses, outside management, and dwindling entrepreneurial spirit at the organizations he worked for sent him searching for a better way.

He found it. But first he needed to quit his job.

Leaving bureaucracy and a money-driven culture in the dust, Vikas set off chasing after an idea to create a tool that would provide an answer to the very workplace problems that sent him looking for something more fulfilling in the first place. Read more