Personal Reflections - Creating High Performance Organisations

Personal Reflections - Creating High Performance Organisations

At the outset, let me refer to a standard reference point – The Oxford Dictionary to define an organization which is reproduced as under:

Definition of organization

noun

•   1an organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as a business or government department: a research organization



•   2 [mass noun] the action of organizing something: the organization of conferences



•   the quality of being systematic and efficient: his lack of organization



3 [mass noun] the way in which the elements of a whole are arranged: the spatial organization of the cells

Next it is only logical to define what a High Performance Organisation is? For this, I borrow from the work done by the Centre of Creative Leadership. They extracted five definitions from various literature and which in summary they identified as that organization wherein the following attributes exist:

·      Self- managing work teams

·      Employee involvement, participation, empowerment

·      Total quality management

·      Integrated production technologies and

·      The learning organization

Again these five are contextual to time and will re-change depending on the external environment.

CCL goes on to define performance organization as one, “the achievement of organizational goals in pursuit of business strategies that lead to sustainable business advantages”. Each organization may have a different benchmark for what it values, hence this definition may not be comparable across organisations. To avoid this dilemma, a revised definition was offered, “an organizational systems that continually aligns its strategies, goals and objectives, and internal operations with the demands of its external environment to maximize organsiational performance’.

Thus far, I have begun by referring to references, which have been put together with much research and after much deliberate thought. It is time I make a departure and share a personal story of my privilege to being part of a High Performance Organisation.

Let me begin my story…

I joined Hutchison Max (now Vodafone India) in February 2000. At that time, cellular penetration in India was in low single digit penetration. DOT had issued licenses (two operators per licensed state). In November 2002, the third operator was introduced, and by 2004, multiple licenses per state were issued, to our current stage where we have more 7 – 9 operators per licensed state. Single GSM technology later competed with CDMA, and then later 3G, now LTE. Microwave was an earlier carrier giving way to fibre cables that now connect us across not just India, but gateways to the world.

One thing was clear from the beginning: the inflection point was inevitable. The opportunity for Explosive Growth was a ours for the taking, but how rapidly would it explode, was the question, and more importantly would we seize the moment? The hockey stick effect was waiting to happen. All data from matured Telco’s pointed to this across the world, so how do you prepare the organization to deal with this explosive growth? We were without doubt one of THE high performance Indian companies of the decade, we didn't get there just because we rode a wave. We anticipated the wave, geared up for it, paced our investments and effort, and so lasted the course. We worked with ONE QUARTER the equity of bharti, stayed away from distractions like long distance and fixed line and dotcom (talk of strategic rigour), managed complex jv partnerships which none of our Indian competitors had to, and so 'survived to victory'! When I started, there were 32 foreign Telco’s in some measure of control in India. When I left, hutch/VODA was the ONLY one of the major foreign major Telco competing. Many had long departed years earlier. There was intensely complex chess playing, in a complex and hostile (to fdi) regulatory environment, that got us there, and a number of clear cultural differences. We started at 135 k subs, and when I left for UK we were roughly 60 mn - I forget exactly how many. I don't think we were just riding the boom, we created the foundation for a low price model way before others, rural penetration models, etc. And so anticipated, planned for and executed for the 'survival to victory'

Asim Ghosh, who lead the Indian team to what has now become the top ten telcos in the world, once famously shared at a management conference, “ it would be unfair to believe that we are causing the growth. In fact it is the other way around. Growth is causing us to implode, we are rapidly whitewater rafting in the speed of the river. The river of opportunity is doing all the work. We are just making sure we stay afloat on the raft, and don’t lose our market share in this sunshine that is now happening in India”.  We are grateful to our shareholders who hold us in faith, to our employees who are working against all odds to build up the infrastructure, to the external authorities who support the tele-density that contributes to the GDP. But most of us, we are grateful to our customers, who reward us for staying focused. We are focused on our customers, ‘buy or make’ are strategic calls, we are not concerned with our competitors. We are obsessed with beating ourselves. This was the humility of the man – to ascribe the success to all others. A great leader is one, when the job is done, everyone feels they had created it together!

Brand Orange was launched in Mumbai in February 2000. The brand spoke about Values: it was Friendly, Open, Human, At Hutch, we all came to realize that the brand was ‘making a promise’ that is all our marketing guys could do, and they made that promise so tantalizing. Yet it was up to each individual to offer the ‘delivery of the promise’ through the actual experience that the customer would have. It was the brand experience, and making that happen that created the shared purpose – to live our values. To make the inside out, and the outside off! Think about it, what do you really offer as a telco – a sim card, towers, customer service? All services are enjoyed, in the moment of consumption – a flight service is experienced in flight, an hour before and an hour after. In comparison, the service of a telco is a 24X7 experience. You have a point of view on it each moment. So how do you build a compelling Customer Service Experience? An experience that begins with onboarding, off boarding, and through the life cycle of consumption?

The best practices of the day are misnomers – they are at best, practices that have worked in the past. To be successful, an organization needs to constantly seek the ‘next practice’. Consultants that charge huge fees only can share history, they cannot share what will work well for you now. Clearly, what has worked well in the past is no guarantee that it will succeed in the future. The book, ‘Black Swan’ describes this even more fully. Asim always distinguished between long term truths, eg being customer friendly, low cost, simple processes, no bureaucracy versus conventional 'proper' practices. All motherhood, but we practiced it; for us it was real.

So one needs to constantly make adjustments to the environment, constantly working with the inside making it relevant to the outside – always being adaptive to change. One learns to join the dots, to see the picture become more clearer over time.

Defining a set of Values and behaviors is one step in building a high performance culture. At Hutch, we used a simple analogy of whitewater rafting – all the attributes of those brave men on the raft, would help clarify the behaviors we sought: managing speed, ambiguity, ‘a can do attitude’, intellectual honesty, trust, managing personal hardships, etc.  Through these simple analogy a framework of competencies were established. However, a brand is what a brand does, say Arun Sarin and here living the values was key.

The monthly review meetings were a ritual of demonstrating values in action: each circle was expected to compete fiercely with the others for the high honors, yet all the others were expected to ‘steal with pride’ the best practices. What was being said, was more important than who said what. The role of top leadership is to protect a few critical things: one of them is to challenge the status quo, the other to nurture the culture of openness. All other people practices come later – they are at best hygiene. There was a balance between intense pressure to perform married to a caring for and loyalty to people - the magic is how to marry the two so that it does not become either a comfortable club or an impersonal organization of hit and run transactional artists. The execo was just one tool albeit a critical one - there were many others. Our smses were real time, and HAD to be answered immediately. Likewise our phone calls. Compare that to a competitor ( shall go unnamed), where the calls would never be picked up. There were formal communication channels, but also a host of real time informal channels. The key is that the latter were all business oriented, never political. And witness the few people who were not real time - they didn't last the course.

We encouraged conflict and disagreement of ideas, but not of people (except for one high performance individual). And we did not tolerate bs, salesmanship - there was a high premium on substance over style. We tolerated a high degree of stylistic differences.

We had a lean head office, but a critical control tool to create harmonization of culture, processes and results without actually creating a head office run company.

Leaders were expected to lead from the front, give credit for successes, but shield the troops for failure, at least once or twice. Sounds like bs, but think of the several failed starts in 1800 circles till we got it right when an mnc would simply have fired the messenger. We had our moments of crisis. When the environment turned hostile ( as it did in once critical incident, and I do not wish to go into details) we kept our cool and did not succumb to pressure. We stood by our values, and continued to stay focused. We knew that the ‘truth would set us free’.

Over 10 years, we lost maybe max 5 of our top 50 management? The key was not just the fun people were having, but we had developed a real sense of being an elite organization because of our differentiated positioning, showing up in superior way.

Hutch grew with small acquisitions and regularly, as it expanded. As new opportunities opened up several ‘start-ups’ were initiated to seize emerging opportunities. The Indian market moved from high value consumers to high density populace. Innovation comes from the womb of necessity – the ‘chotta recharge’ was the equivalent of the sachet story. It widened the market, creating new usage trends.

Almost every quarter, we saw ourselves at a crossroad – this way or that! Choices needed to be made: on markets, on technology, on managing through the regulations.

As ARPU started to plummet, so too under threat were declining EBITDA’s and the need to find ‘alternatives’ to improved costs to serve. Enter, the new world of outsourcing.  At Hutch we redefined the term to service partners, those who were aligned with our objectives, not just vendors who would profit by it.

Strategy is a privilege of a few. A failed strategy is an orphan, success has many parents. A good strategy is not enough. Asim would always remind us – Strategy is ACTION.  It was our ability to execute faster, quicker and deeper that was our competitive advantage – our differentiation.

What was a 5 million subscriber base is now 600+ million and growing. To feed this infrastructure unprecedented had to be created. Systems and processes had to be introduced in an industry which at its backend resembled an Engineering Company, in the middle a service organization and at the front end, an FMCG.  Competencies had to be acquired and built internally to support this chimera of an organization.

To me Hutch symbolized a case study one was involved with in the making, each day, with a new twist to the tale. Each day at work was like a comma, there was no full stop. Retention was high. A headhunter once asked a senior manager – the job I offer you pays better, has higher responsibility, what makes you stay on here? He replied, “I have friends here. I enjoy what I do”.

High performance organisations are built around a band of people who believe there are ‘core’ to the shared purpose. Who work meaningfully and challenge each other constantly questioning the status quo. Who believe in ‘keeping the faith’ and building an institution larger than themselves. Those who practice intellectual honesty in whatever they do, and strive to outperform themselves. Those who believe they are EBITDA partners, not employees.

Someone once said to me, ‘when I hang my boots on the proverbial fireplace, and I share stories of Hutch with my grandchildren, I am sure I would say – I lived through interesting times”.

To me, an organization culture must respond to the WHY for each one, then only to the What and later to the How. To me, culture is an outcome, it is not a given. A culture is what you create.  It needs two parents: the male adhikar – the strategy and the feminine anurag – the values. It is this integration of strategy and values that create the work processes, the management systems, the communication channels, the authority levels, the rewards and recognition mechanism, the quality systems, etc. When these devices are aligned with the core values/strategy they transcend to create the winning culture. Be not fooled by those who would urge you to build Vision Statements that adorn boardrooms but are still born. Those that would steer you to expensive management schools to learn ‘dead practices’. Not the ‘flavour of the month – latest fads and mantras. These are the false prophets. True culture is discovered each day, like a wet mudpack that sticks, it becomes YOU. It clarifies, it defines and it acts as the North Star. It is trusting oneself and others. In not knowing the answers but in asking the right questions. To put one brick on the wall each day, to make it stronger for tomorrow. It is about being a little smarter than you were the day before. It is about embracing the adversity head on, welcoming the bad news. It is about doing things a little smarter than the other. Discovering the premium in the mass market. It is trusting one’s instinct and not a theory.

In April 2007, Hutch got acquired by Vodafone, Plc – a wonderful moment for it to enter its next phase! The story continues!



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