“Enthusing, encouraging and enabling”

Gary Hamel has started a movement over the summer designed to rethink management.

The other day, he and Veneet Nayar, CEO at HCL spoke about a cultural transformation that has been going on at HCL over the past 5 years.  It was very thought provoking.  [for more including a link to the webinar]

HCL began their journey with one assumption – “Employees first.  Customers second.”  And, that got my attention.

His logic is that the value in the business is created at the interface between employees and customers.  And, according to Nayar the main way to maximize organizational value is to “enthuse, encourage and enable employees”.  And what they realized very early on was that they had delegated that role to the Human Resources function.

For management to add value they were going to have to change their focus on control to a focus on actively supporting employees. Of course, there would still need to be control.  But, whereas in the past it focused one way, the accountability would now be shared between management and employees.

Now this is where it gets really interesting.  They didn’t just invert their hierarchy and redraw their organization chart.  They didn’t just say the words and leave it to the organization to figure out what it meant.   They started experimenting with different ways to build a culture focused on employees first.

It has not been an easy or short journey. According to Nayar they’ve made “some big mistakes”.  But over the past 5 years they’ve achieved significant growth, seen double digit improvement in employee and customer satisfaction and learned how to better support and engage employees.

As I mentioned in my last post, I think Hamel and Nayar explore many of the themes that have been preoccupying us and bring something new.

Much to learn and think about here.  What do you think?

Tags: Behaviour change, Cultural norms, Engagement, Relationship, Trust