EMPLOYEES FIRST, CUSTOMERS SECOND -
turning conventional management upside down by Vineet Nayar (2010) Harvard
Business Press, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Pages 199.
Vineet Nayar who took over HCL
Technologies as CEO from Shiv Nadar, has brilliantly portrayed his personal
belief and conviction in the thought and practice of considering employees over
customers. As a teacher of OB, Strategy and HR, I always had this view of
prioritising employees over customers as they are the ones who put efforts to
satisfy customers. A satisfied employee only can deliver satisfaction to
the customers. Nayar's application of this concept (EFCS - Employees
First, Customers Second) in HCLT further reiterates my belief in long standing
assumption with which I have been living all through these years. This
book is a great treat to all HR teachers and practitioners who can pick up the
methods and manners in which Engagement and Empowerment can be practiced by the
organizations.
The book is divided in 5 chapters apart
from introduction, notes, acknowledgement etc. The foreword is
written by late CK Prahalad, an internationally aclaimed scholar of
business strategy, formerly known for core competence (competing for the
future) and recently known for BOP (Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid)
concept. The introduction of the book provides the motivation
of writing this book.
The book gains more ground even as it
questions a long accepted belief of management that the dependence of
business is on customers, hence the customers should be the prime focus of
strategies and policies of business organisations. As the title
suggests, the author strongly believes that it is the employees who are more
important than customers, it is employees who should be the prime
focus and then comes the customers. His practical experiment at HCLT
makes the case more authoritative. As one reads the book, one keeps
gathering strong processes to really make it happen and successfully engaging
the employees in achieving the business goal. The feed-forward
communication holds the key to drive the employees to get engaged and dedicated
to the cause of organizational commitment and performance.
The path so designed and followed by
Vineet is based on his learning and experiences from his personal life, his
growing up, his family, school, college and friends, his visits
and interactions, which does find place in the book at several
places as they helped him developing an action plan. It tells us
that every event of our life, every interaction of ours, every action of ours
get reflected in what decisions we make. So the internal as well as
external factors contribute in shaping a successful leader.
The book discusses the transformations as
they happened as the result of following EFCS approach. The
involvement of employees from micro to macro level for doing what is good for
the organisation is the step followed as 'All aboard' and these agents become the
transformers for introducing change in the organization as well as contribute to
growth of the organization. The author advises
to use mirror for better reflection and to see the events of the past (Mirror
Mirror exercise) and warns to get away with the excuse culture. Similarly engaging customers also is said
to be important for organizational responses and growth as well as to serve a
great value through putting employees first, customers second, and management
third. The examples of Facebook and
Google for bringing out innovated products and services are well placed in the
book.
The employees need to be driven to believe
that they are most important for the organization, they are the first players
and through this they have to have a sense of pride of belonging and owning the
organization. As the author mentions - pride can be a great source of strength when
coupled with a desire to change. Change is the only thing which is
constant. Organizations imbibe change in
order to respond to market and customers.
As society changes customer expectation also changes and the organizations
face this great challenge to respond to customer’s expectations. Successful organizations develop a culture of
change and nourish this culture through strategies and policies. The way HCLT took initiatives to develop such
a culture based on mutual trust is really remarkable and it was possible
through the concept of EFCS. Trust
quotient has to be improved all through ranks in the organization and
through leading by example one has to develop a sense of acceptance among the
followers so that they can believe that their boss is a trustworthy person.
The four dimensions of trust - Credibility,
Reliability, Intimacy, Self-orientation as mentioned in The Trusted Advisor
by Maister are well cited by the author in the book. It is to be followed with employees as well
as with customers, as both play strong role in building the organization. On one side the organization communicates the
sense of trust to employees and on the other hand it has to communicate it to
the customers as well. In the model of
EFCS, the customers have to know why do they come second (as against common
belief that customer is always first - because the customer is King, and the
King can do no wrong, hence the customer can do no wrong - thinking) and it is
the responsibility of the leader to positively communicate and convince them
why do they come second.
The culture of trust is learnt at the
first institution called the family and the values one learns in the family get
reflected in one’s behavior as one takes charge of activities in an organization. Apart from trust, in order to build a
sustainable organization one has to be transparent in his/her approach as elaborated
by the author through the Amsterdam Window experience as he mentions – A
transparent house, has a dramatic effect on the culture inside. In fact through this experience he
successfully communicates the advantages of being transparent. He introduced a system at HCLT which
connected the CEO with all its employees through a exclusive networking group
for HCL employees called ‘U&I’, which seemed to have worked quite successfully
there. This approach sounds unique and through
leveraging technology the organization provides an ear to the issues of concern
for all its employees.
The fifth P of marketing viz., People (employees,
partners, customers) play an important role in the life of an organization. The concept of inverting the
organizational pyramid is all centered on people as experimented at HCLT
through reversing accountability by concentrating on enabling functions, the
managerial chain of command all the way to the CEO, and the influencers who are
not part of hierarchy but are critical to achieving the desired wow in the
value zone. The company introduced Smart Service Desk (SSD) to
resolve issues related to employees quickly by using technology and expertise
of employees. It was based on common practice of customer care service provided
to the customers. SSD was meant to
resolve problems and issues of employees.
Initially the employees at HCLT were little skeptical about the whole scope
and operations of this desk as to if any employee has a problem/issue with
his/her boss (upto the level of CEO), how would it be presented, processed and
resolved. But slowly it got working well
and as mentioned they were resolving thousands of transactions each month at
an amazing rate. This further got a concentration on zero ticket call
for evaluating employee’s performance and they willingly and successfully
followed 360 degree model keeping the Happy Feet. Inversion of organizational
pyramid
The mention of the major achievement
(during the transformation phase at HCLT between 2005-2009) towards the end of the book is the
outcome of EFCS approach. It makes the
model incredible, practical and convincing. Collective wisdom outshines
individual judgment. I truly loved
this statement which is the core of the book entitled The Wisdom of Crowds by
James Surowiecki. EFCS model traces its root in the work of Surowiecki which got
Vineet thinking and using it while developing the whole concept. Though
the book is based on the practices followed at HCL Technologies which is an IT
company, however the concept is well appropriate for any organization dealing
in products or services in any sector of the economy.
EFCS through its engaging appeal makes a
strong case for prioritizing employees over customers. It is possible through developing committed
systems and processes for engaging the whole employee and not just his/her
performance. The role of a leader is
very crucial to make EFCS model successful as there as to be a culture of
change, trust and transparency which has to keep the CEO under attentive
scanning of their employees. The openness
of CEO and a sense of humility as portrayed in the acknowledgement section
of the book towards the end is just unparallel.
Vineet Nayar gets full marks for writing such a wonderful piece (acknowledgment),
acknowledging all concerned individuals. This is what takes to envisage a
concept called Employees First, Customers Second.
(finished reading it ...8
Aug 2011).
