Employees first, customers second free essay sample

1. What was the leadership style Vyneet came with at the beginning of his mandate? Can you give 3 examples of actions he took and which reflect this leadership style and explain? Vineet was without any doubt a transformational leader at the beginning of his mandate. In fact, just before taking the new role, he mentioned that he would destroy HCLT as it was before. He was very focused on his vision of a brand new transformation process and remarked the importance towards innovation that has the analysis of â€Å"what† and the â€Å"how† in a transformation journey. For a transformational leader, the â€Å"what† of the strategy is very important, but is much more important the â€Å"how†. He acknowledged that the first point of this transformation would be to analyze in deep what is going on in the guts of the company, asking directly to their employees. To do so, he followed the â€Å"Mirror, Mirror† strategy, which is a communication exercise that allows the members of the company to look themselves at the mirror and describe what they truly see. Once detected all the needs, he gave an extreme importance to have followers of his vision, and that could only be done by creating an atmosphere of trust towards all the global managers and transmit his vision in the called â€Å"Blueprint meeting†, that he expected that those would transmit their commitment and trust to the levels below. Vineet, as a transformational leader, was fully aware of the importance of identifying the A point (with the Mirror, Mirror strategy), and be able to identify and transmit as clear as possible the B point, where they were all heading to, to avoid uncertainty and reduce the resistance to change. 2. Why does he decide to turn management upside down? How does he do it? Vineet thought that the hierarchies and matrixes that HCLT was holding were obsolete, because they were created many years before and they were not able to create enough added value for the customers, because were the managers the only ones who could be the value creators. His purpose was to change the responsibilities for the value creation, letting the managers focus in their management functions, but allowing and giving flexibility to those who were in reality in contact with the customers on their daily basis, the only ones capable to add extra value to their service; the employees. In the case of IT industry, the value creation lays in hardware design and manufacturing, where the bottom employees are. His idea was to make those managers accountable not only for their teams, but also to all the other members in the value zone that the boss could be influencing in a way or another. To do so, he developed the concept of â€Å"reverse accountability†, that had the purpose to get certain elements of the hierarchy to be more accountable to the value creators, and to apply it, they created the Smart Service Desk, that had the purpose to resolve internal issues between the employees and the functions, giving the employees a directly power of influence. In addition, the employees realized that this allowed them to measure their performance and change the perception about themselves. Another strategy he followed was opening up the 360? degree feedback and survey, which helped people to improve their performance and build trust and transparency towards the organization. 3. What communication techniques does Vyneet use in order to inspire his employees to follow him and to gain their support of his mission? To inspire employees to follow him, Vineet had to create an environment of trust, where they could believe what he was saying and they were willing to follow him wherever he was going. Open communication and honest conversation unveiled the truth and created the need for a change. To do so, HCLT shared the company financial information with all the employees of the company, to create also transparency. Having and communicating a clear vision of the future (Point B) was also key to inspire and motivate people to be committed towards a better future. 4. How does he take decisions? Once created the new environment based on principles like trust and transparency, Vineet took decisions based on being close to the people. Using the Mirror, Mirror strategy he was able to identify the needs of the employees of HCLT, to create an openness to change, build a strategy towards the areas of improvement and communicate them in the Blueprint meeting. The decisions are, in fact, taken by the own employees, but the facilitator role that he took allowed him to agglomerate them, to analyze them together and be able to design the strategy, that with the appropriate atmosphere, would be able to engage the managers, that at the same time could engage the bottom line of the company, and achieve their full commitment. 5. What were the results that derived from turning organizational structure upside-down at the level of the Employees, Organization, Customers, Investors? During the first four years of the HCLT transformation, there were major changes: Employees: They achieved a 70% increase in employee satisfaction, employee attrition felled almost 50% Customers: 70% of their closed deals were won against their direct competitors, growing fivefold. Organization: Their revenues tripled in four years and operating income tripled. 6. What does Vyneet understand by the Value zone? What are the ingredients, in Vyneet? s opinion, to creating value for the organization, the customers and the employees? In HCLT Company the biggest problem identified by Vyneet in the organizational structure was that it did not support the people in what he called the value zone. Value zone is defined as the place where value is truly created for customers. He concluded that inside the culture of the company, communication should be established in all levels . And that this value zone must not stay just inside the pyramid in the company but it should be externalize and fill up between employees and customers. The first change of creating this value zone is to turn the organization upside down making management and managers, including those enable functions, accountable to those who create value not just the other way around. Another ingredient for creating value in the company is by finding something that will differentiate themselves from competitors by creating a real and distinct value. Vyneet also identified that many companies added value by improving their RD centers. In this case he realizes that HCLT has no longer value zone in the technology itself. He believes that something more had to be changed. The transformer employees also called the Gen Y Vyneet identified them as the ones that created the value zone within the company organization but his objective was to put the value zone n the center of the organization. 7. Can you name 2 of the riskiest decisions he took and explain how they could have back-fired? Why do you think they didn? t backfire? One of the riskiest decisions Vyneet did was gather the team of 100 best and brightest of the company for a 3 day conference. In this reunion he will establish the changes that will do and enforce the team to agree with it. The risk he took from this conference was: First not everyone agrees because afraid of changes. Also they don’t support each part of the plan for every new proposal they find new reasons why the plan couldn’t work. And damage their reputation as CEO. Inside his goals the execution of software that enforces transparency of the company was also a risky idea where some employees may use it in the wrong way and damage the environment inside the company. We think it didn’t backfire because Vyneet make it clear that this tool was for enforcing the company communication and making employees realize of the positive effects of it. 8. Vyneet answering the employees? questions directly takes up to 7 hours a week. Don? t you think a CEO? s time is too precious for that? When a company implements a huge change it is necessary to take as much quality time to communicate properly the strategy and giving example and support to the employees. Based on Vyneer perspective, managers must own the following characteristics: Credibility, reliability, intimacy and self orientation. When big changes in an organization occur is important for the employees to feel that they have the support of the CEO. Is not a question if it takes 7 hours a week or more, what is necessary is to follow the characteristics mention before for gaining the trust of every employee. 9. Why does Vyneet place so much importance on trust within an organization? What are his main arguments? How does Vyneet create a culture of trust? To transform a company people must align themselves a work together towards one goal, but this will not happen without a culture of trust. From mirror- mirror exercise until the end of his changes Vyneet explains that trust must be created and follow between manager, employees and customers. Employees start to see the problems of the company as their problems too. They realize that if management is willing to share important information even if it is good or bad and encourage open conversations about the facts it intentions can be trusted. Immediately the CEO will start to see some positive actions in all levels. To get the employees to participated more is important to crate a culture of trust and to do that transparency is needed. He follows 5 steps. First ensure everyone knows the company mission. Second, commitment with the organization. Third, transparency between employees. Fourth, customer to be transparent with the company. And last, share external and internal information. 10. How are generation Y employees different from other employees in Vyneet? s view? Gen Y employees are the ones who create the must value for the customers. They believe in collaboration, and they love to learn. They share everything of their life and ideas in different media networks. And at the same time they expend many hours interacting with society. This Gen Y are the ones how meet the customers and deliver the product service at the same time work together fixing problems and deserve support from the organization. They create the value zone in the organization. 11. What were some of the effects of transparency in the organization? Transparency from Vyneet point of view is an important tool that increase trust inside the company. Some of the approaches that the company did were opening financial information to everyone. In a way this increases the transparency and motivates some of the teams that were doing well. However some employees were demotivated by the information they saw causing embarrassment and complications. At the same time it was a risk because competitors could have access to this kind of information affecting the loss of clients. 12. How does he create accountability in the organization? Vyneet recognize that the company needed reverse accountability. This is define to get elements of the hierarchy to be more accountable to the value zone. He looks to 3 categories of positions: First, the enable function. Second, managerial change of command all the way to the CEO. And third, the influencers who are not part of the hierarchy. 13. Why does he consider passion to be important? Do you agree? He considered passion to be a very important element for employees. HE organized passions into 3 categorize: self, social and secular. He did a survey to discover the core values that are important to people, personally and professionally. The survey turn to be a huge success people started thinking on how passion they were with their actual jobs and learns about others passions and these lead managers to know more about their employees’ passions. Yes we agree that passion is essential in every person lives. It must be take in consideration before every decision making in a way for doing the things that you like and get positive results. 14. When he starts talking about ownership, he is making the step towards a new leadership style. How does he generate ownership? The idea is to transfer responsibility to the employees; this will create a certain feeling for accomplish their goals without been pressure by managers. This will demonstrated at the same transparency and in the future it will end up giving positive results. This will create a sensation in the way that employees perform. They will see ownership of the company as part of them and everything that they do and decisions they take will be for their own benefit and at the same time for the business. 15. What is the leadership style that he embraced towards the end of the book? Why did he consider it necessary to go even further? What are the actions that reflect the shift? Transferring responsibility for change, this was the style and strategy that he mentions at the end of the book. This new way of managing the company transferring to employees’ power is based on 3 reasons: First, for not letting concentrate the power just in the CEO. Second, remove hierarchy of the company through the speed of change. Third, transfer the knowledge with everyone in the organization. In this way the CEO office will not be consider the spiders head but become like a starfish. At the same time he decides to implement and increase the relationship between customer and employee. He starts up with a value portal where employees’ could generate and register new value and creating new ideas, and at the same time share it with customers that will evaluate and rate the ideas based on different criterias. 16. Fortune magazine considers the ? Employees first, customers second? concept as the most modern management idea. Do you think this concept will be implemented on a wider scale in other companies in the future? Why yes, why not? Can you name any other companies you know of who are working towards implementing this concept? How? Regarding the positive results of HCLT creating trust and growth through transparency by making managers and employees own equal responsibilities for change and value creation in order to interact with customers. This new concept idea can be for sure implemented in other companies where the managers like to take risky decision creating new opportunities for differentiating themselves from competitors. We found some companies that used this concept for creating value inside the company. One of the companies is named Mad LTD. Basically this company implements a program design and focus on nurturing young leaders by showcasing and helping to implement their idea improved society.