Riding The Tiger

Lessons Learned by Sanjay Devudu, Senior Leader

Once the emotional concerns of our own teams were addressed, it was important to keep people engaged in supporting the organization during this difficult time. What actions could we, as learning leaders, take to help tide over the situation? It was also important that we look beyond our own unit/function and consider the bigger picture.

Our key lessons included

Communicate, communicate, and communicate some more!

• Deal with emotions first, business issues next.
• Don’t miss the larger picture.
• Make the necessary tough decisions; let there be no hesitation in doing so.
• Help other leaders who need the support to tide over the situation.
• Take care of yourself and one another.
• Be tuned in to the world around you.

All learning professionals need to take on the additional role of brand ambassador. The internal and external brand will most likely be severely damaged. They need to understand how to interact with the media, how to respond to internal queries, and, most important of all, how to remain calm in the face of uncertainty. During our first meeting after the news broke, a learning professional asked, “If we are to take care of everyone else, who will take care of us?” We responded, “We must take care of each other.” This is accomplished through daily updates, regular meetings, informal gatherings at the coffee station, and frequent impromptu celebrations of even the smallest successes.

Leadership Development Consultant

What could we offer to the leaders, when—clearly—whatever tools we had reinforced earlier did not include managing a crisis of this sort? As I was trying to make sense of my own reactions and fears, the learner in me desired to know what others were thinking. As I spoke with leaders, I found their tone to be “protective” for Satyam. It was heartening to observe that many leaders wanted to step in and help.

Satyam as an organization had invested significantly in learning, and so I asked if learning played a role in their strong demonstration of leadership. Many leaders gave credit to the leadership development we provided, stating that it helped them understand how to “lead from the front, motivate teams, talk, network, and collaborate.” We had taught our leaders to think about the impact of their behaviors on others. Some said the learning helped identify inherent strengths. One leader told me, “Leadership training has given me confidence to face any situation, including this one!” It is true that anything you repeat as a mantra gets ingrained in the individual’s psyche. . . .“no one wins unless everyone wins” was one such mantra that had penetrated the minds of our leaders. Here is one example of how we gathered strength from another. My colleague, Nicola Klein, and I launched a training program for a response team on counseling services. The program started right after a critical announcement that was filled with even more bad news. Everyone was shocked. Nicola and I were totally broken inside and forced to face a room full of distraught faces. In my mind, the voice rang again, “What’s the point? What can I tell them?” I forced myself to calm down and started the session by saying “I know what you are feeling right now because I feel it too. I am wondering how we can take this session and how we would be able to focus. Let’s not park our feelings. Instead, let’s identify them, because this is how any individual would be feeling when seeking counseling help.”

It’s been almost a year since that fateful moment, and most of us are still reflecting on what has happened. Our responsibility as learning professionals is not one to be taken lightly.

Here is an article we thought would be of interest to you especially in these times when the debate about customer or employee first continues.
Please also read the comments, one of them quoted from our new book, Riding the Tiger
What do you think? Share your thoughts…

 SmartPlanet
For better customer relationships, concentrate first on employees
By Heather Clancy | Jul 23, 2010 |
The first priority of every company should be serving customers, right? Wrong, according to a new book from IT services firm CEO Vineet Nayar, called “Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down.”
This is the management philosophy that HCL uses to run its business, a philosophy it embraced back in 2005. Why should you listen? For one thing, HCL actually grew during the 2008 to 2009 recession, recording revenue expansion of 23.5 percent last year alone.
The issue for Nayar is that managers don’t spend enough time concentrating on empowering and “enthusing” the employees that have the most contact with customers. Here’s his observation from a press release about the book:
“Perhaps the biggest surprise for readers of my book will be that Western-style companies can achieve even greater success by making their approach to business more democratic. Companies with traditional top-down, pyramid-like hierarchies with rigid reporting structures make it very difficult for critical competitive information, garnered on the front lines, to flow uphill to the C-suite, where strategic business decisions have traditionally been made.
This is not to suggest that you should coddle your employees. This is a strategy focused on accountability and results. Those results are transparent to everyone. One example given in the book focuses on the company’s 360-degree performance reviews. If you are asked to provide feedback, you are given the results of that entire review. That applies all the way up to the chief executive himself. The way in which this happens is described in this book excerpt on the BusinessWeek Web site.
HCL believes that this sort of transparency — the transparency you see in social networking communities — will be particularly instrumental in motivating the workforce of tomorrow, Generation Y.
The services firm commissioned a survey among private sector employees to help share the ideas put forth in its CEO’s book. One finding was that 59 percent of the individuals surveyed said that they often see problems that have eluded the notice of their managers.
Close to 90 percent said they would be eager to share their observations for improving the business with their managers — if such behavior was encouraged and rewarded.
But, the problem is that employees today feel undervalued, according to the research. In fact, almost half the respondents said that employees are the least valued group with their company, after customers and top management. What’s more, about 20 percent said that when the present supervisors with a problem, the person promises to address it but never does. Personally, I would expect this last number to be higher and I’m glad that it is not.
The data was gathered during May and June 2010 from approximately 700 employees working for private sector firms with at least 300 employees.
I’m not a manager anymore, but I used to be, and I do know that the biggest motivator for my team was transparency.

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Organizations are made up of both conscious and accidental cultures and turbulent times truly magnify both.  The conscious culture comes from what’s written and documented.  Its accidental culture comes about from those accepting and performing around unwritten or unspoken behaviors and norms passed from one employee to the next, and even one generation to the next.  Most likely an employee “knows” that it is part of the culture, yet it has never been documented. Accidental cultures can create both positive and negative outcomes.  Here are examples of how the accidental culture emerges:  At one business, a team has an impromptu happy hour every Friday where they celebrate all their accomplishments, welcome new members and say goodbye to those leaving. 
 
Another business tolerates leaders and managers that chastise employees in front of others.  Yes, we’ve all seen this at some point in our careers and maybe you are currently experiencing this kind of culture in your organization.  Obviously you would not see anything written that encourages this behavior which is why this is a good example of how accidental culture emerges.  And in fact over time, it may become so acceptable that it is actually not considered a violation of core values when it happens.
 
Sometimes process leads to accidental culture.  Many organizations require their people to complete times sheets (beyond the hourly workers).  This is quite common in service organizations where time is billed to the customers.  Logging hours spent on each project is a mandatory part of the job and yet while necessary, it can accidentally create a “watch the clock” type of culture.
 
As stated earlier, a conscious culture evolves from written and spoken goals, values and behaviors, and practices that are taught, measured and reinforced in the organization.  There are distinct benefits to a conscious culture:
 
·       Leaders more rapidly assimilating to the culture
·       Employees more quickly understanding the range of acceptable behaviors
·       Recruitment is easier
·       It is easier to identify and take action when there is a lack of fit.
·       There is a likelihood of successful integration in the case of a merger or acquisition
·       Systemic change is easier because there is no battle between the conscious and accidental cultures

We are proud to announce the scheduled appearance of Riding the Tiger: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times co-authors,  Ed Cohen and Priscilla Nelson, on the Fox News Strategy Room this Tuesday at 8 am PST, 11 am EST, 2:00 pm GMT, 8:30 pm IST. The Strategy Room is the web’s most talked about live show providing entertaining discussion of the day’s top stories, plus a variety of hour-long shows on topics like business, health, technology, and entertainment.
Diane Macedo will be hosting Pris and Ed.  She will be discussing their new book. 
Fox News Strategy Room:  http://live.foxnews.com/strategy-room

Alas, sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between truth and lies.

Published in MSNBC on May 17, 2010

In 2005, Ed Cohen left his job at Booz Allen Hamilton. His wife, Priscilla, left her consulting practice to take jobs in India with Satyam Computer Services, a top global IT outsourcing company.

Satyam’s Chairman and founder, Ramalinga Raju, “was the most generous person we had ever encountered,” said Cohen. “He would speak of ethics and integrity at every leadership training meeting.”

It turned out, Raju was actually cooking the company’s books. He was arrested in 2009.

“At the time the allegations came up, I thought it was a joke,” Cohen said.

Cohen, who was the chief learning officer responsible for talent management of Satyam’s 53,000 global workers at the time, said many of the employees, including himself, seemed to go through the stages of grief that people coping with death often face — betrayal, anger, depression, and eventually, acceptance.

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Every week I like to round up five blog posts that I found to be especially good reading over the past week.  Below are five posts I recommend checking out from the week of June 21st – 27th, 2010.  Enjoy!

Gina Trapani, Fast Company: Work Smart: How to Avoid “The Busy Trap” – In our work lives, there is the “perfect world” where we plan out our tasks and projects for the day and complete them one by one in order of importance, and then there is the “real world” where emergencies and interruptions are frequent and can easily derail an otherwise productive day.  Gina refers to this as the “busy trap” and has some thoughts on how you can work smarter and avoid it.

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The last 18 months have spawned a lot of advice on leadership in turbulent times. But this post on a book by former Satyam Computer Services employees holds extra weight because of the depth of Satyam’s difficulties and the leadership lessons it learned while trying to recover.

Founder and chairman Ramalinga Raju’s confession to accounting fraud in 2009 left the business battered, its reputation in tatters and morale among over 50,000 employees decimated.

In their book, “Riding the Tiger – Leading through Learning in Turbulent Times”, authors Priscilla Nelson and Ed Cohen chart how it rebuilt itself deploying a “Lights On” strategy indicative of the business’s desperate need for transparency and integrity.

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In January 2009, founder and chairman of India’s Satyam Computer Services—the “largest publically traded company you’ve never heard of”—Ramalinga Raju confesses to massive accounting fraud and resigns. In a five-page letter to the board, he described the problem saying, “It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten.” In an instant, he left behind him, chaos, distrust, and plummeting moral among his more than 53,000 employees. But Riding the Tiger is not about how the Enron-like tragedy occurred, but how a leading through learning strategy calmed the chaos and helped the company recover and rebuild.

Authors and former Satyam employees Pricilla Nelson (Global Director of People Leadership) and Ed Cohen (Chief Learning Officer) share the take-away lessons learned on the road to recovery and renewal. Step one was what they eventually called the “Lights On” strategy. That is “deciding exactly what must be done to keep the business moving and doing only that which is critical to help the organization stabilize.” They describe 6-steps—beginning with hold everything and build an adaptable stop-stop-continue plan—based on the two pillars of learning and communication.

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There we were, close to 50 of us huddled in a small conference room, watching the television, shocked beyond belief. The screen displayed a photo of Raju on the right and a graph depicting the falling stock price on the left. The value of our stock had plummeted in less than 5 seconds, drained like an hourglass. I immediately grabbed my phone and called Ed. He did not answer. It rang and rang. I tried the home phone, and no one answered there either. I continued to call every few minutes.

The reporter on TV began reading a letter from Raju: “It is with deep regret, and tremendous burden that I am carrying on my conscience, that I would like to bring the following facts to your notice.” We watched in disbelief as the news emerged. The letter indicated that for the most recent quarter ending September 2008, Satyam’s bank balances had been overstated by close to $81 million and more than $265 million in liabilities were not accounted for. 

How could this be true? Just last week, there had been an article in the newspaper indicating that Satyam had an excess of $1.6 billion in cash. The reporter continued: “The gap in the balance sheet has arisen purely on account of inflated profits over a period of the last several years. What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years.” We later found out that this deception had been going on since 2001 and that it added up to more than $2.5 billion. Everything we had created at Satyam—our Taj Mahal of learning (see appendix A)—was starting to crack and crumble. 

“Every attempt made to eliminate the gap failed,” Raju’s letter continued. “As the promoters held a small percentage of equity, the concern was that poor performance would result in takeover, thereby exposing the gap. It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten.”  

What had we missed? The unthinkable was playing out before our eyes. Could this all be true? I had actually been worried about Raju for months. His recent lack of communication was a red flag. I had spent years as a psychotherapist and worried that the economic fallout now reaching India was taking its toll. I’d even tried to speak with him, and he had quickly changed the subject and darted off to another meeting. Ed also sent a note to Raju that people were starting to worry and needed some form of communication from him. He finally sent out a brief note saying that it was concerning for us all to watch the economy affect us, yet we were prepared and had enough to “weather it.” He asked for everyone’s support, and we had all willingly given it. Now his letter ended: “Under the circumstances, I am tendering my resignation as the chairman of Satyam and shall continue in this position only till such time as the current board is expanded.” We were numb. None of us believed that Raju could have such a dark side. We all worried that without him—our founder, our leader, the man who defined Satyam—the company would not survive. 

“Rarely does a book come along that is as useful as Riding the Tiger. Ed and Priscilla have turned their turbulent experiences into a realistic howto guide for the rest of us. They show how to move from crisis to credibility of leadership; from pain to passion for the brand; and from scandal to renewed success. Using their practical experiences as a basis, they share action item lists, introduce a new vocabulary, suggest questions to ask, and present a plan to move boldly forward from chaos to confidence. This is not a book to be read, but one to put into action, especially when you are riding your own tiger.”

Elaine Biech Author of The Business of Consulting and Thriving Through Change