Employees First, Customers Second - Value Maximizers

I recently read a case study surprisingly coming from a little known (internationally speaking) hardware/software company from India called HCL.  Coming from India I knew HCL from its garage phase and followed its visionary leader Shiv Nader who was instrumental in taking this organization to good heights in spite of bureaucratic controls of the late eighties.

The management philosophy they follow is 'Employees First and Customers Second'. The attempt here was not to emphasize some HR satisfaction or motivate employees to do a better job by giving benefits or even just implementing good HR policies/practices but discover within the company how employees can add value to services. The ethos behind this thinking is brilliant because adding value to existing services or adding value to bring something new into the market encouraged innovation within HCL. Added value meant higher levels of achievement among employees translated directly to the end result being transferred to the market place as a company that brought value and innovation to customers.

'Employees first' was a indeed a revelation to me because I thought customers drive the company but its not that way, a customer will pay for added value, a customer is retained because of added value and employees are the one who are directly responsible to bring that added value.  Vineet Nayar has written a book on this theme and is worth reading and the catch statement is very true - "turning conventional management upside down".

My thoughts for the day.

Sam Kurien