Employees First Customer Second - Short Notes, Review, Dew Drops, Ravichander Rao
The innovation and transformation happening in India is getting of attention of the world. Some of the innovations are already a case study in the Harvard Business School. The latest addition to this is transformation of HCL Technologies. The book by Vineet Nayar, Employees First Customers Second, takes us through how this transformation was achieved using the power of organization lies at the bottom of the pyramid or in the value zone. This blog is for capturing the essense of the concepts, and tickle you to read his book to learn the "hows".
Around 2005, when Vineet took over as the President and CEO of HCLT, it was making profits at a respectable rate, but was being overtaken by the new entrants in the Indian IT industry. He starts off his journey by recognizing this fact and realizing that if HCLT does not act soon, it may lose its position or worse - completely collapse. In the book, Vineet takes us through various anecdotes and concepts that helped him to achieve the transformation. Below are some of the concepts that he discussed:
Defining point A to point B:The transformation started with first recognizing the point A and defining the point B. Without everyone understanding what the present was, the organization was disconnected about the realities, and without a grand vision it lacked the direction for the future. For the change to happen, he had to define both and get the employees on board with it as well.
He broadly classified the employees as transformers, fence-sitters and lost souls. Of all the people, the transformers are the people who challenge the status-quo of the organization. These employees are the catalyst agents. The fence-sitters are realists, who sometimes come across as pessimists. Their views are also valuable to have a broader perspective. When he formed the core group which would lay the blueprint for the new vision, he involved many transformers and some fence-sitters from the management.
Employees first:The focus on the employees first came from Vineet’s observations from a few customer meetings where he noticed that the CXO praised the team or the employees for the success of a project, and blamed the management for failure to provide the support to the employees to make the project successful. So, it was apparent that customer valued the employees for what they bring in. Hence, the value zone lied where the employees and customer interaction happened and was certainly not in the technology (since alternatives are available). So, by putting the focus on the employees first and addressing their concerns, he created value for the employee. This in effect enabled employees to focus more on the projects or the value zones. Another example of how focus towards the employees was created was - opening up the flow of information to the employees. The employees wanted to know how their contributions made a difference and how certain decisions related to their projects were being made by the management. This lack of information created power center at the top, which was far removed from the value zone. Hence, created public forums where employees could ask questions to and get answers from the management. With the greater information, the power was shifted more towards the value zone.
The need for transparency:The transfer of powers required sharing of information throughout the organization not just among a few to prevent information hoarding. Though this opened the risk of strategies getting leaked, HCLT still went ahead and implemented it for greater benefits. Additionally, around that time, the customers were also seeking greater transparency and higher collaboration from their service providers. So, the greater transparency with the employee became imperative. Though there were a few cases where the information leak caused embarrassment, there were many more cases where the benefits accrued. So he concludes, it was far more rewarding to open up…
More engagement in the span of influence:The process of review within HCLT was not helping the employees grow and develop. The 360 degrees review from the immediate peers was not resulting in any change in the behavior of the organization. So he extended the 360 model such that any person who was within the span of influence of that person (...,VP, Director, Manager,...) could provide the feedback. This enabled more and more employees to provide a realistic feedback. In addition they placed the feedback in the open forum on a voluntary basis. With this approach everyone could see how someone was performing, and if someone held back, it meant probably the person is hiding something. So it provided additional motivation for the employees to improve themselves, engage more with the employees in their span of influence and help them achieve their goals as well, to get better reviews. Along the lines of this, they also started posting the balanced scorecards of the different organizations in the open forum, which helped in creating a competitive spirit amongst the organizations to be the leaders.
Empowerment of the employees:By creating an environment of transparency across the organizations, information started to flow much faster and people started to learn from each other. Vineet points out a case that highlights how a culture of transparency helped them. A technical-lead, who had no training as a business analyst, was able to put a business process improvement proposal to the CIO of a customer and win over him. What enabled this was, the pilot concept was getting implemented in one of the groups, and because of the transparency, the information spread to another group, who in turn worked in a team to learn the process and created a plan that showed how process improvement measures taken by HCLT could save the customer significant money.
Furthermore, to unleash the passion of the employees and help them enjoy the work, he created employee engagement programs. The employees with common passion interacted among themselves, elected leaders for the group and planned various activities. This not only helped the employees to follow their passions at work, but also helped in developing leadership qualities.
Vineet in his book suggests that, by focusing on the employees first in this way, they were able to transform the company, provide superior value to the customers and complete with the global players. This book is probably one of the few books that focuses on the employees and provides a real world use-case of how their transformation is integral to transformation of the company.
PS: I do not work for HCL.
The innovation and transformation happening in India is getting of attention of the world. Some of the innovations are already a case study in the Harvard Business School. The latest addition to this is transformation of HCL Technologies. The book by Vineet Nayar, Employees First Customers Second, takes us through how this transformation was achieved using the power of organization lies at the bottom of the pyramid or in the value zone. This blog is for capturing the essense of the concepts, and tickle you to read his book to learn the "hows".
Around 2005, when Vineet took over as the President and CEO of HCLT, it was making profits at a respectable rate, but was being overtaken by the new entrants in the Indian IT industry. He starts off his journey by recognizing this fact and realizing that if HCLT does not act soon, it may lose its position or worse - completely collapse. In the book, Vineet takes us through various anecdotes and concepts that helped him to achieve the transformation. Below are some of the concepts that he discussed:
Defining point A to point B:The transformation started with first recognizing the point A and defining the point B. Without everyone understanding what the present was, the organization was disconnected about the realities, and without a grand vision it lacked the direction for the future. For the change to happen, he had to define both and get the employees on board with it as well.
He broadly classified the employees as transformers, fence-sitters and lost souls. Of all the people, the transformers are the people who challenge the status-quo of the organization. These employees are the catalyst agents. The fence-sitters are realists, who sometimes come across as pessimists. Their views are also valuable to have a broader perspective. When he formed the core group which would lay the blueprint for the new vision, he involved many transformers and some fence-sitters from the management.
Employees first:The focus on the employees first came from Vineet’s observations from a few customer meetings where he noticed that the CXO praised the team or the employees for the success of a project, and blamed the management for failure to provide the support to the employees to make the project successful. So, it was apparent that customer valued the employees for what they bring in. Hence, the value zone lied where the employees and customer interaction happened and was certainly not in the technology (since alternatives are available). So, by putting the focus on the employees first and addressing their concerns, he created value for the employee. This in effect enabled employees to focus more on the projects or the value zones. Another example of how focus towards the employees was created was - opening up the flow of information to the employees. The employees wanted to know how their contributions made a difference and how certain decisions related to their projects were being made by the management. This lack of information created power center at the top, which was far removed from the value zone. Hence, created public forums where employees could ask questions to and get answers from the management. With the greater information, the power was shifted more towards the value zone.
The need for transparency:The transfer of powers required sharing of information throughout the organization not just among a few to prevent information hoarding. Though this opened the risk of strategies getting leaked, HCLT still went ahead and implemented it for greater benefits. Additionally, around that time, the customers were also seeking greater transparency and higher collaboration from their service providers. So, the greater transparency with the employee became imperative. Though there were a few cases where the information leak caused embarrassment, there were many more cases where the benefits accrued. So he concludes, it was far more rewarding to open up…
More engagement in the span of influence:The process of review within HCLT was not helping the employees grow and develop. The 360 degrees review from the immediate peers was not resulting in any change in the behavior of the organization. So he extended the 360 model such that any person who was within the span of influence of that person (...,VP, Director, Manager,...) could provide the feedback. This enabled more and more employees to provide a realistic feedback. In addition they placed the feedback in the open forum on a voluntary basis. With this approach everyone could see how someone was performing, and if someone held back, it meant probably the person is hiding something. So it provided additional motivation for the employees to improve themselves, engage more with the employees in their span of influence and help them achieve their goals as well, to get better reviews. Along the lines of this, they also started posting the balanced scorecards of the different organizations in the open forum, which helped in creating a competitive spirit amongst the organizations to be the leaders.
Empowerment of the employees:By creating an environment of transparency across the organizations, information started to flow much faster and people started to learn from each other. Vineet points out a case that highlights how a culture of transparency helped them. A technical-lead, who had no training as a business analyst, was able to put a business process improvement proposal to the CIO of a customer and win over him. What enabled this was, the pilot concept was getting implemented in one of the groups, and because of the transparency, the information spread to another group, who in turn worked in a team to learn the process and created a plan that showed how process improvement measures taken by HCLT could save the customer significant money.
Furthermore, to unleash the passion of the employees and help them enjoy the work, he created employee engagement programs. The employees with common passion interacted among themselves, elected leaders for the group and planned various activities. This not only helped the employees to follow their passions at work, but also helped in developing leadership qualities.
Vineet in his book suggests that, by focusing on the employees first in this way, they were able to transform the company, provide superior value to the customers and complete with the global players. This book is probably one of the few books that focuses on the employees and provides a real world use-case of how their transformation is integral to transformation of the company.
PS: I do not work for HCL.
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