Slashdot Mirror
The World's Most Modern Management System
NeoPrime writes "CNN has a story
about an Indian IT outsourcing firm HCL Technologies, whose president feels
that 'employees come first and customers second.' He further feels
that every employee should 'rate their boss, their boss' boss, and any
three other company managers they choose, on 18 questions using a 1-5 scale.
There is even an electronic ticket system to flag anything they
think requires action in the company.
The company president explains, 'It can be I have a problem with
my bonus, or My seat is not working, or My boss
sucks.' This ticket is then routed to a manager for resolution. The article's argument: India has the most modern management system in the world."
This sounds like a PR stunt.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
but what happens when the employees start blackmailing managers?
"We all want a raise of $AMOUNT or several of us will make tickets about you"
I know blackmail like this always existed, but not its a lot easier.
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
This company appears to have actually implemented the electronic equivalent of a suggestion box! I call dibs on the patent for using a computer to implement suggestion box functionality!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In an age when service is replacing manufacturing as the dominant segment of the 1st world economies, it only makes sense to see radical initiatives in the development of a corporation's human capital. Just as having the best factories enabled traditional industrial success, we might see some competition among service companies as to the development of their critical resource, the employee.
NOTE: This would presumably apply first to profit generators like consultants and specialists, as opposed to back-office support staff. Still, it's a step forward...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I'm just wondering how many customers he'll be getting after this article pops up a few places.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
And, just like in college and public school, they'll ignore or throw away anything that would be too much trouble for them to handle. If the managers ARE receptive to criticism, then the system will work spectacularly. But that's the $10,000 managerial question in ANY situation, regardless if they've had negotiation training or what not.
Not to say training would hurt, of course. But this is more of a seperate managerial paradigm altogether, one that calls for humility and an end of rank superiority. That's tough to hammer out of anyone, management or not.
I guess. But does it improve productivity? Encourage employee retention? Perhaps most importantly, do customers see the difference?
WiPro, Tata, InfoSys, iGate - where's HCL? Too busy answering "suggestions" & complaints...
Remember the Red Stapler.
Any system which fails to account for the chaos of human interaction and people running amock with their own personal agendas can hardly be called effective, never mind modern.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
From what I gathered about this place, everything is pretty much upside down from "normal" practices. So I guess they are just thinking that once the company goes upside down because of these practices, they will be right side up? Hopefully someone understands what I'm saying.
Ticket status:
[ ] Open
[ ] Assigned
[ ] Not a bug
[ ] Feature request
[x] Won't fix
[ ] Closed
Well... that's useful.
The article's argument: India has the most modern management system in the world."
Be that as it may, but as soon as you step foot outside the company door you encounter it's compliment, the most moribund political-economic system in the world.
Wow, to be able to hold managers accountable. I've never really seen the like, heard about it, but never seen the like. Which probably explains why there are so many bad CIO's out there.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
People work for money, but they also work where there hearts and minds are. Companies have to make sufficient returns to stay in business, or no one has a job.
The corporate mentality in the 'west' mandates return on shareholder assets. What's missing is that employees are an organization's best assets.
That said, the propaganda machines are simply turning out fodder for an easily duped press. Twenty years ago, Japanese companies were the best run, and we know the end of that story: stagnation and dissatisfaction at virtually all levels, and an economy full of bad debt.
India has a long way to go, as do we all. But calling then 'best' in the context of the article is to succumb to a clever marketing person's pitch to a gullible editor. Go there and find the truth. It's not what's described.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Like im going to tell my boss he sucks.. Thats really smart.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You might look at it in a different way: the employee in this case is really the _product_. All his customers need is a good experience for *their* customers, and of course low prices.
AC: Only on slashdot... could the sentence "My hovercraft is full of eels." be moderated "+4, Insightful
But do they have Hawaiian shirt Fridays?
Thats the only true way to get employees to be more productive and happier, all at the same time.
But, I see one of two things happening. Fear of using the system due to repercussions, or abuse of the system and a very large number of frivolous complaints.
In my daily life I am part of a 2 person IT department, and my manager has no background in computers or technology at all... I'd love a system like this but I'd just be submitting it directly to her and that most likely would be where it would end... along with my employment.
Ineptitude is the norm at most U.S. business and at all levels.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Suggested Title : India discovers Government.
I don't know, generally a place with happy employees will provide you with a good product. On the other hand, a place with neutral employees who arn't happy but not unhappy generally produce worse work than unhappy employees. This is mainly because part of being happy isn't just getting paid well and having a voice, its also having interesting work to do that you enjoy. Something sorly lacking in many jobs. And I doubt this place is any better. But then again, compared to the poverty of their country they are probably VERY happy to be working there.
If I'm going to risk millions of dollars and my entire customer base, I'm sure as hell not going to blow it on a company that ranks their customers (who are my customers) second. True, unhappy employees are unproductive employees but you can only take employee satisfaction so far. If all you want are happy employees just pay them to stay home. Fortune Magazines credibility is dropping like George Bush's poll numbers.
apchar
---Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
It's a very old fashioned idea with some new reporting measures
It was known earlier as "Take care of your people and they'll take care of your customers."
I worked for a small firm that applied that rule quite successfully. The employees were very loyal as well as hard working becasue they knew the bosses(owners and managers) looked after the employees and our job was to look after the customers.
I rarely heard a complaint about the bosses that was not looked into as well as resolved quickly and fairly.
On a few occasions where we emplolyees had difficult customers to deal with the boss would 'fire' the customer. I once had an order for a new, big(for our firm) customer and when I got the site it turned out that the customer was being unreasonable, unrealistic and later offensive in some of his requirements for delivery. So one of the owners called the customer and told him to come pickup his deposit and never come back after because no one was allowed to treat his people like that.
I'd enter this industry just to compete with this knucklehead. Imagine getting to come in with your sales team after the first team just told the prospect that their needs are not your companies' top priority. Buh-bye.
You want other players in other industries where employees come first and customers come second? Try GM in the auto industry, or United in the airline industry. Do they make/do anything you would willing buy? Didn't think so.
I can remember TV shows from the 80's that showed a Japanese factory worker alone in a room and armed with a club. The worker would pound on a management, effigy figure with his club. The worker's venting aggression on the effigy management figure was supposedly one of the underlying secrets to the success of Japanese businesses in the international market place.
From suggestion boxes to round tables it's pretty much all been tried in one form or another. Most likely the factors that make for successful operations are myriad and too complex to ever be set in stone.
just my loose change
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
This is only going to work if they can first brainwash all employees into firmly believing in the goals of the company and putting their own goals aside for those.
Far too bloated, open for abuse, and unwieldy. How much time will be spent fiddling with that new system that could be used more productively?
I love the idea.
I'm much more likely to buy from a company that hires and keeps great employees. I'll use the well done steak analogy - if I were a great chef I'd never cook a fine steak to well done - the customer is a moron for asking for it and it would be a waste of my talent to cook it. So, like all good chefs do, I'd used the meat that's so old and nasty even the rats avoid it, cook that sucker up to well done, and feed it to the sheep at table 3. In this case, the customer got exactly what he wanted and he paid the price for it. In the world of employees first though, the waiter would kindly mention to the customer "Sir, we simply don't serve crap at this restaurant, it's for your own benefit that you order the steak medium rare". The customer did not get what he wanted, but certainly got a better product, for a better value, and better service to boot.
Seems like one of the least effective uses of technology would be to automate this kind of interpersonal relationship (leader/follower). There's no substitute for in person, face to face discussion of problems. This kind of system attempts to quantify and abstract things that simply don't lend themselves to such treatment. This proposed system smacks of fear of conflict and inability to mediate such conflict effectively. Maybe it's a cultural thing (India still does have some notion of caste system pervading their culture I believe) - but I can't see this solution being effective as a management strategy. Perhaps it will be used as a springboard to further exploration of problem relationships, that may not have been brought to light (in which case you'll have to engage in conversation anyway so you've not really bought anything), but to me it actually looks like another excuse for managers to become less involved in their relationship with those they supervise. "You had a chance to fill out the survey and there were no problems detected - so it's not my fault that you're unhappy." If the goal is to further treat your workers as cogs in a machine, and you equate that kind of functioning to efficiency, I guess this would make you happy. But I don't see it as a great way to manage actual human beings. I mean seriously - can you imagine trying to manage other interpersonal relationships this way? Give your significant other a fifteen item ranking survey on your satisfaction with your relationship with little to no extra explanation - let me know how that goes. I hazard to guess either you lie in your rankings, or you're going to have some serious 'splainin to do.
When I've got a problem with someone, I go talk to them. If I want to know if people have problems, I go talk to them. It's the most efficient, effecive way of carrying out interpersonal relationships.
The book, The Customer Comes Second: Put Your People First and Watch 'em Kick Butt is over ten years old, with the updated second edition still around two years old.
That's freaken the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Lots of companies do employee survay's both anonymous and not...the point being to resolve issues in the company. This guy must be living on a different planet or hasn't worked for many companies in the US.
The thing that alarms me most about the article is they are breaking the rule of putting the customer first. Without customers you have no business. I was double charged on my debit card for gasoline at a local filling station run by an Indian. Working for the bank that issued the card I was able to provide him with all the information he needed to reverse the $20.00 charge. When I went to talk to him about it he accused me no less than three times that I was trying to steal from him, so I politley left. THe next day I had the charges reversed from the backend through the the card processorI wrote him a letter and explained how I would never stop at his place again and neither would my family or friends. He took the approach of the customer comes last and now he has lost quite a few customers. And as karma would have it, he was caught selling cigarettes to under age children and hs lost his license for selling cigarettes and lottory tickets for six months.
The exchange rate is about 45 rupees to the dollar. Given everyone is paid less there I figure this is only a 22,000 rupee question. Sheesh, now we are outsoursing questions too. How am I suppose to put food on the table anymore?
--- Tolerance is the axiomatic "virtue" of those without convictions ---
In the first example his complaint would be the food sucks. A person who regularly eats a variety of steak well done would still be able to spot the bad product you started with.
People often complain about customer service calls being answered from India. Maybe this is partly to blame?
Ah, I see. Let me rephrase that for reality.
There. If Corporate India is anything like much of Corporate America, we now have an accurate summary.
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
When you are in a Costco, look up their motto.
Employees come first, Customers second and Vendors third.
Wiki has some info and links to articles
And the NY Times Article
Rapid Nirvana
Well, it all makes sense. We need to outsource our management. I wouldn't mind at all if my manager was half way across the world.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
If by "modern" they mean "newest", then great.
OK - so there's a 'trouble ticket' that reduces a dozen traditional forms to one.
Otherwise, what's the difference between this and going to a traditional HR dept to complain about your boss, or you boss about your compensation, putting in a work order for a busted chair, or the way things are already done?
Maybe it's simpler - the phone drones are so Americanized that their Indian bosses can't understand them anymore, so they better write everything down? I got one the other day who called herself "Sue Murphy".
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
probably because the indian stock market has almost doubled in the last year..?
Ah, yes. Help Desk'll route that one to the company proctologist!
You get return on good employees, and perhaps none on bad ones. No, they're not taxable in the property sense, but you can increase their value through training. As a composite, organizations get return on assets. This isn't to diminish an individual to the context of a machine, rather to amplify the fact that while many things are replaceable, good employees, happy ones (ok, disgruntled if they contribute as some people will never be happy) contribute to the success of corporate bodies. Shareholders contribute capital, in the monetary sense.
Employees don't really invest labor; they're wage slaves. Capitalists get return on their investments. There is a big distinction here. If you get wages as your income, you're contributing your labor against monetary return, and ostensibly but indirectly, the success of the organization that employees you. In many states and regions, you can be discharged at will. Shareholders (stockholders, bondholders, etc) can't be fired, but they can be bought out under certain conditions. Until then, there's a hope that their capital investment provides monetary return. Rarely to corporate shareholders give one whit about the employees, so long as the corporate machine produces return on their monetary investments, or a possible capital gain on the stock.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
India does not have the most modern management practices. One Indian company apparently does, according to the article. I hate it when people who post these stories come up with sensational punchlines to an already sensational claim.
More or less
http://www.tv.com/episode/516819/summary.html near the end of the episode.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Southwest Airlines Chairman Herb Kelleher has said before that employees come first, and customers follow next. This is mentioned on their press bibliography page under "LUV in the air". Today they have the highest market capitalization of any airline in the world and one of the highest profit margins as well. They are the third largest airline in the world in terms of passengers carried. 'Nuff said.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Management Says: Please rate your manager and tell us honestly what you think of him. If you have any other complaints, now is the time for them to be addressed.
Translation: If you can think of any reason you'd like to lose your job, please speak up. We're culling the herd.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
A ticket can only be closed by the originating employee.
I dare them to implement tickets that can only be closed by the customer.
Hoo boy. Someone comes in off the street to do phone drone work, and they can hang a manager up indefintely because they don't like the food in sector 24?
Also according to TFA the managers are pretty well vetted & trained, and then have to put up with every whine from a new hire? Think of the hire you've seen that punched a hole in your least expectations in record time and is the low water mark of your work experience - now hand them a pile of tickets that they can use to complain about anything. Anything. Endlessly. And I mean anything. And did I mention endlessly? Is this annoying yet? How about now? Huh? Hello?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Eh, I get the feeling that the local newspaper food critic (any good one) would promote a restaurant for keeping its standards high. They would probably say "finally, a restaurant in our community that knows how to cook food". The restaurant would cater to a more sophisticated cliental, thereby being able to charge more.
That's the key here: putting employees first and not catering to customers who bring your overall product down, gives your company an image that it knows what it's doing.
BTW, bad steaks are always set aside for people who order them well done. I mean, they have no idea what quality steak is in the first place. Trust me, they don't know it when they're served crap - and they often are.
I work at a company which has extolled repeatedly in town hall meetings with the VP's of the division that in order to keep employees they will do whatever is needed to ensure that the best talent doesn't walk out the door.
In response it seems that significant raises are only given when you walk in the door with an offer letter from somewhere else.
People who don't fill out a single thing on the employee input section of their review forms get just the same as people who put in volumes on what they've accomplished.
Most supervisors have gotten to the point where they might as well have a key fob with a recording of "well you know how this company is..." on it in relation to questions about why people here are paid so much less than industry average for their skill and talent levels.
And as you can guess we have lost our most talented people with a speed and efficiency of a chainsaw wielding maniac clearing out a catholic school girl locker room.
I will believe anything that any manager says about putting employees first and customers second when they can come back in a year and say "this is what we did to put that into play and these are the rewards" , until then it's blowing sunshine up someones rear and that gets boring.
**rant mode deactivated..**
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
the complaints would become reciprocal to the point that nothing would get done and everyone would be complaining about how everyone else does nothing but complain. actually, we already do a pretty fine job of that. though it would be nice to be able to apply a standard deviation to that, something i could monitor remotely and determine whether or not it's even worth coming in that day. then, i could avoid calling off on the "good days"
:)
i'm starting to see why this is revolutionary
Crowded elevator smell different to midget. -Chinese Proverb
employees come first and customers second.
I guess this explains why their tech support sucks.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
"I'd explain it to you, but you'd probably learn it better over time"
That phrase always irked me. Its a subject so complex that your communication skills are not good enough to explain it? Or I'm too stupid to get it all at once?
So either you are too dumb, or you think I'm a waste of time.
(Board room meeting)
Why are we spending so much money on whistles?
I've worked in oppressive IT environments before, and granted, I'd love to be in a job that offered this benefit.
/has/ to come first for a business to stay profitable. How happy will your employees be if they're all laid off because customer service - already working against some Indian firms due to language barrier, etc. when dealing with outsorced services - suffers a decline?
-BUT-
It's built on a colossally bad idea. The customer
What needs to happen is the customer comes first, and the employee second. As opposed to most companies' priorities now:
1) Executive Board
2) Customer
3) Executive Board
4) Shareholders
5) My Daughter's pet pig
6) Something Else
7) Executive Board
8) Employee
akad0nric0
This sentence no verb.
Indian companies are setup differently than american ones. Hence your suggested analogy is slightly incorrect. India's biggest problem is inertia. Large size equals = Large inertia. Anything from fixing the copier to replacing the broken phone or putting in new blinds, takes forever. Although these are minor things these, they take a heavy toll on employee productivity. Due to the large workforce(a natural by product of a large population) the whole infrastructure development is slowed down to a crawl in Indian companies. So when HCL decides to employ a system to address such issues and as a whole increase agility, I say it is good thing. A suggestion box it might be but it represents something bigger.
If you have to blame anybody, blame the US IT/software engineering industry and their ongoing search for lowering operational costs.
Don't be a dick, Sir.
(Karma to burn)
----
'employees come first and customers second.' This explains the support I have been recieving from Dell.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
"What's missing is that employees are an organization's best assets."
For some reason, that reminded me of this:
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
A lot of my Indian co-workers say Indian managers are often bad because they act really hard-ass and start power tripping once they get in to management. And I've seen that with a couple of Indian managers I work with. So while their management philosophy may be advanced, I'm not so sure about how that interfaces with their culture.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
Well, this certainly explains my experiences with Indian companies.
I think you just described a civilized form of collective bargaining. Nothing wrong with that.
What you probably fail to realize if that the chef (and the waiter you later mention) are in what's known as a "service organization" and as such their entire goal should be to "serve" their customers. Unfortunately your attitude is not at all uncommon; it's really leading to the decline of society in a number of subtle but important ways, but I digress.
Yes, some customers are morons, who don't know any better, and they would actually appreciate you letting them know that this is really not what you recommend. But others (non-morons) might make the same well-done request for non culinary reasons. Very few of these non-morons would be insulted if you gave an unsolicited recommendation that rarer is better, so that part is fine; and yet they may still decline to accept your recommendation and request it well-done anyway.
Now, your precious talents are not being wasted, and you as the chef have no place taking out your pent-up frustrations on your customers. Use your vast talents to create the best damn well-done steak you can. Be proud of your ability to improvise under adverse conditions. You are there to serve your customers, not to showboat as a whining elitist.
Yes, there are pretentious snobs who think this crappy service attitude adds a degree of class to the establishment. And the customers who prefer the same may even be willing to pay a premium for it. But ultimately this is a self-defeating attitude, as you will eventually lose sight of the fact that customers are occasionally (not always) right, and if you can't respectfully disagree, you're not going to be in business very long.
There are many "great chefs" in the IT industry (and elsewhere) ready to take your place, many of whom can actually be bothered to care about their customers more than themselves.
i'd say a well run OSS outfit's leaps and bounds beyond this IT firm. Not only are things 100% for the customers, but the workers and the managers are each just as well accountable to each other. and talk abot efficiency! if a manager or coder isn't delivering, then they're gone!
the model is also decentralized and easily portable.
This is the way US companies operated from the late 80s to late 90s so they are behind the curve. The most modern Mgt. style, again from the U.S., is to say F* the empl..err, biological recources, they are cheaper in () and move the work thier. These Indians will learn one day when thier jobs are going to China, Cambodia etc., we lived through the good times too, enjoy it while you can.
Oh no! You can't give the workers power and respect! It will be chaos, CHAOS, I tell you! Really, I promise!
Signed,
Your Boss
As a White American who was a former HCL employee of this company let me just say that I find this article the height of hypocracy. HCL sucks as an employeer and their consultants (outside of me when I worked for them) are poor as well. The horror stories I went through while I worked for them could fill a book, and the horror stories of the applicaitons the off shore teams wrote are the stuff lawsuits are made of. Most of their applications were shot on site when the local support teams had to support them. Also there was that issue with them double billing. And that time when I left and they kept sending me a check for 3 months after I was no longer working for them, while still billing the company I had worked at, even though I had moved on.
This discussion reminds me of http://jobvent.com/, where employees from any company rate their company and employees.
Apparently whoever wrote this article never heard of Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa in Spain. They run an extremely successful complex of worker cooperatives.
Don't like your manager? Take it up at the next social council meeting. Think the General Manager is idiotically running your company into the ground? Vote him out.
Most modern management my foot.
I am surprised to see that most people here think that this is a very bad idea... since on most occasions you see slashdotters talking about how management does not value their employees. I am sure the employees would server the customer better if they are happy with the job, as the employees are the ones who deal with customer on a day to day basis.. management can say what it wants... just because the management says customer comes first does not mean that the customer is getting good service from the employees... but if the top management treats the employees well it automatically ensures that the customers are served better...
would the response be similar if this was a US company instead of Indian
I question the whole meaning of this. "Most modern"? What the hell does that mean? Modern generally has two uses, as far as I hear people using it: either a time period that existed roughly 50 years ago, or "current". So either their management style is from 50 years ago, or... it's current. None of that tells us whether it's good. It's probably just bad writing, and they probably mean "advanced", but even that doesn't tell us whether it will be good and useful and successful, or if it will just be a fad that we laugh at 3 years from now.
A proper chef understands the difference between Well done, and over done, YOU apparently do NOT. There are a variety of good reasons to order a steak done to well. Most people do not understand the difference between Done Well and Over. A good cut of meat will be just as good at Well as at Rare. But it is very difficult to serve a steak at exactly Well.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Whoever said that modern was good? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it's not. I think that the author meant 'better', and for some unknown reason, thought that 'modern' was somehow synonymous with 'better'
They take our jobs, and then they have the chutzpah to get nice management?
That tears it!
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
I don't think I would go as far as to use the word chaos. With the current management style, it seems more chaotic with all the crap and anger rolling downhill until it reaches the person at the bottom who deals with the customer. That crappy customer service you get is due to bad management that never gets reported or falls on deaf ears. I've always suggested employees evaluating the managers at almost every job I've had, but it never got done. I've had some many managers above me who did nothing, but sit on the free ride. The company poured money into an unqaulified or lazy manager, while the employees worked through issue after issue. If they got a consensus from the employees they could replace bad managers and put someone in their place who'll do something and give a damn and help streamline the company and help make money by saving money. Sure there are those who complain about everything, but they don't represent everyone in the work force. I vote they bring the system here.
Can I bum a sig?
"Or sometimes not at all, baby, yeah!"
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm a geek who has a little difficulty himself in face-to-face interactions involving conflict, so maybe I can see the other side of this - it may encourage comment and dissent from people in an organization who might otherwise not have the courage to speak, and who might see your more confrontational, in-your-face approach as threatening and bullying. By making it not be a face-to-face thing, it may encourage freer, more open, less emotionally charged discussion of issues that might otherwise fester beneath the surface.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Management is 100% a person problem. Management is about dealing with interpersonal relationships, and that takes time, talent, and work. This is just giving people another weapon to use in office politics, not actually resolving problems. It's an obfuscation pretending it's responsibility. If they had effective management they wouldn't have to file a ticket to let the boss know someone sucks at their job, the boss would already know and take action.
Reminds me of an interactive agency I once worked for back in the Good Old Days. People were getting double booked for meetings and billing their hours wrong, so they spent years and thousands of hours developing an internal time manager. In the end people still used it to double book meetings and bill hours to multiple clients. Nothing was resolved, only they now had a crappy piece of software to do it with. Behavior can't be changed by software.
(Also, a -1 Troll to the summary writer for "India has the most modern management system in the world". Where the hell did they get that?)
Why is it to my own benefit that I order the steak medium rare? What if I want to be sure that the bacteria/viruses get destroyed? Why is medium rare better than medium or medium well?
In real life customers will complain, but they will never stop using the service or product. Here in Jacksonville, the community bitched about how horrible the local broadband company's service was. The news ran several stories about how the company was aware of how bad they were doing. City council even got involved. My friends even complained about how terrible it was. Did the company ever go out of business? Did my friend cancel his service? No. The company stuck around until they got bought out and all the employees kept their jobs. New company name same crappy service. The American consumer is lazy and doesn't believe that they can make a difference. Best way to tell a company you're pissed is to stop using their service or product, but no one does it.
Can I bum a sig?
lol those dirty injuns
I work with several HCL consultants at a major pharma company who are in the US on the L1B visas. I came across an offer letter of one of their consultants - 10k per year with 2.5k a month in expenses.
Expenses nonwithstanding, I could make more money working at my local Mcdonalds.
I love steak, but I dislike it being rare because I eat it quite often, and would hate to contract an illness. If *I* ever found out I was purposely given a bad steak that I paid for, because the chef is a self-righteous ripoff - forget going out of business: someone is getting their teeth knocked in. I'm sure I'm not the only one. You just don't fuck with my food.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
I've worked in environments where employees evaluated their bosses and it didn't (and doesn't) work!
The shortest distance between an employee and a dead-end career move is negative feedback about his boss. Note that this never works even if the following precautions are taken:
(Sorry, thought I was actually going to create a list here for a moment.)
What the article describes as "the world's most modern management system" isn't... I've lived it many years ago as one of many management flavor du jour. It added nothing to our holistic health and I would even submit it had negative impacts. Nothing to see here, move along.
(I also will agree with other posters the notion of "employee above customers" is suspect. At best it's a non sequitor.)
But not like you would think. Eventually the employer will be in charge, so keeping a database of these "disgruntled" employees can be very handy some time in the future if the workforce needs to be trimmed.
You want other players in other industries where employees come first and customers come second? Try GM in the auto industry, or United in the airline industry. Do they make/do anything you would willing buy? Didn't think so.
:)
Your examples are unions, i.e. worst-case examples of management/employee relationships. How about Costco or Southwest Airlines? Both of those actually said that they put employees ahead of customers (pretty much preventing a union from ever forming). And yes, they do make/sell/provide things that I willingly buy.
Personally, as an entrepreneur, I'm sold on the idea. My customer service employee knows that if there's a disagreement between him and a customer, I'm going to go to bat for him. The customers are almost always satisfied, possibly because he's happier and more comfortable in his job. Also he's more likely to be here in next year or five, which costs me a LOT less in training and recruiting.
I'd enter this industry just to compete with this knucklehead. Imagine getting to come in with your sales team after the first team just told the prospect that their needs are not your companies' top priority. Buh-bye.
If my sales team actually got to the point of telling a customer this, you're more than welcome to them. As in: we just kicked them to the curb because we weren't getting any value from the relationship and we're hoping that a competitor will get saddled with them while we spend our time and effort on more profitable relationships. We might even provide some sales intel to help get you the sale
Regards,
Ross
Southwest airlines does this very thing of "advertising customer second" in all kinds of articles. Maybe you've heard of them, they're the one that's making money.
yes. that's all I'm going to say in all comments from now on.
"sophisticated cliental"
Apparently that wouldn't be you... if you meant "clientele", that is.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
How we do it in the States: The Good 'Ol Way:
Workplace Problem Submitted by Employee: Management staffed by incompetents
Management Action: Employee fired. Result: No further employee complaints.
Workplace Problem Submitted by Employee: Soul-breaking working conditions.
Management Action: Employee fired. Result: No further employee complaints.
Workplace Problem Submitted by Employee: Undercompensated employees.
Management Action: Employee fired. Result: No further employee complaints.
Workplace Problem Submitted by Employee: Large loss of profits due to lost productivity and lack of manpower.
Management Action: Employees layed off. Management given bonus. Stock split. Result: No further employee complaints.
GE has the best management system I have ever read about. We just did 3 cast studies on them and I am amazed how well Jack Welch transformed and ran GE. This Indian company might come close, but don't think they're the best just because they're foreign.
I'm sure customers of the various satellite TV providers would disagree with you. I dropped cable because the of the local company's crappy service and switched to dish network. When I moved and couldn't use the dish anymore, I dropped the service, but didn't go back to cable TV. Why pay for lousy service that you don't watch very often?
so you give people who are concerned about food borne parasites the bad steaks just because that's not the way you like it cooked?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It is because of losers like you that the industry is the way it is. Do you know who this guy is? Do you know what he is doing, other than the mis-represented article by fucking CNN? (The claim that India is at the fore-front of management etc came from CNN, not from the company or from India)
What is wrong with you people? If some manager is trying to actually care about his employees, this is the feedback you give him?
None of which is relevant to his point. Just because his terminology is wrong, his analogy is still correct.
Thanks for the culinary lesson, Chef Asshat.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
That's the problem in a nutshell, the legality of inhuman transnational corporations. You can't kill them, imprison them, and they aren't liable to any election. No matter *what* they do or how many crimes they commit. Even so called shareholders elections are a big fat joke, very few large companies have enough outside shares that could be voted to surpass a few connected insiders shares. But everyone gets to enjoy the "benefits" of what they determine to do. Got a problem with big chemco and local pollution? Too bad, even if you can get the "local" paper corporation sued into compliance, it does nothing for the transnational, they'll just go on their merry way and pollute someplace else. Tired of big armaments company having their products used on you so they can enjoy more profits? Too bad. Way too bad, you lose if you are this years area where those products need to be used up so they can keep the assembly lines open. Sick of bigcomputer program company running the show?? Like to see a little honest choice over in ye olde brick and mortar computer store? Too bad, they got enough money to bribe off your local "elected" doofusses so they can continue wtih their cartel and monopoly..
and so on...
The planet could still have business,no probs there, I think business is a good idea obviously, but we would be a lot better off without the transnationals current way of conducting it. They have turned into the government, and there's little to no way to control them now. Those goofs we elect are just toadies to the transnationals for the most part. a few of them may play act at being "for the people" but looking back 20-30 years, then looking at today, then running a little conservative extrapolation...we're screwed now. They run the planet, organize the wars, decide who lives and dies, decide who gets medical care and who doesn't, who gets food and water and who doesn't. The entire planet is run a by a few thousand unelected uberrich transnational controllers.
As overblown and uncritical as I find the article, I think there's some virtue to this - which makes it worth watching longer before emulating.
Basically, you implement a massive feedback system and use it to improve the employee/company experience. In short, it's something forcing people to interact, albeit through tickets - it's a culture-development tool. It helps quickly make a corporate culture by upping some forms of communication.
I'll guess that after a few hundred tickets, managers and employees just start interacting more like people. That's what's important - five tickets can be prevented by five minutes of talking like people.
So far, it sounds like it worked, but if this is indeed a success I wouldn't say it's the toolset per se - it's what the toolset let you build.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
If my sales team actually got to the point of telling a customer this, you're more than welcome to them. As in: we just kicked them to the curb because we weren't getting any value from the relationship and we're hoping that a competitor will get saddled with them while we spend our time and effort on more profitable relationships. We might even provide some sales intel to help get you the sale :)
Potentially the client might be impressed at being told that rather than having your team doing a half-assed job you think they would be happier with a team that better fit their needs. They may come back to you with business later because of that.Americans who capitalize "white" often can't spell; has anyone else noticed that?
I'm a sort of pinkish-tan myself. Uncapitalized.
This article reminded me of a book that caught my attention in a bookstore quite some time ago, entitled The Customer Comes Second - I didn't get a chance to read it at the time, but the premise of the book seems to be pretty straightforward: take good care of your employees, and your employees will take good care of your customers.
Definitely an important idea for managers to learn. The American standard seems to be 'force all that you can out of your employees for the best interests of management', so this book was definitely an interesting sight to behold.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.
A HINDU CORPORATION
You have two cows. You worship them.
I am posting this anonymously for reasons that will become clear...
...etc. More importantly, they have a very high turnover rate in staff. People would travel here and work for a 6 month stint to gain knowledge, only to resign when they go back. Also, they are weak on the middle layer team leads. All the staff are either rookies or 40 something managers. Nothing in between. Granted, the quality of the rookies is generally OK, but it communication that gets us. They have to be told exactly what to do, and never think out of the box.
...etc. are no longer sellable to executives. Certain parts like support and routine maintenance can be handled by outsourcing companies, but you cannot rely on all coding or all design to be done there. Not by a long shot.
...
As someone who have worked for a Fortune 500 company, I can say two things about this article:
- Ticketing System to evaluate managers:
This ticketing system will rarely work. First, in India there is this social stratification that may prevent the staff from going after their managers. Second, the Fortune 500 company that I work for had this "fad" years ago, when a newcomer CEO took over. He encouraged this "teamwork", "no ego, but we go", "write me anytime", and feedback from staff on managers.
A few of us naive young peons believed in the new system. I remember telling the branch manager at the time: "Ok, the revolution is here. When it is over, will there be a hunt for those who believed in it?" A manager was upset when email was first implemented at that location, lest "someone can write an email to the CEO directly" (these were the days of fax, and they wanted control over the flow of information). An actual email to the CEO got funneled back to the same managers that were the cause of the complaint themselves!
All the old guard just waited this revolution to be over. One of the problem managers begged me to give him another chance. The HR director held several sessions year after year for feedback from us peons on that manager. I said : "but we did that several times, and nothing changes!". In the end the system was abolished after a new CEO came in, and the problem manager got transferred to another better position at another location, and recently retired from the company.
- HCL:
HCL is Hindustan Computers Limited (http://hcl.in/ and is a major outsourcing company in India. The US Multinational company I work for outsources products that I work on to HCL, and has been handing off work to them for more than 10 years.
HCL does not strike me as a company that is better than other or anything like that. All the drawbacks of outsourcing are painfully obvious: communication burden on us to get the point across, cultural issues, language issues,
Management here is finally realizing that outsourcing is a net resource drain, and does not save as much money as they hoped, and freezing things into a co-sourcing arragement. All the selling points of time zone, cost per person,
So, there
the bit about evaluating the bosses and otherwise empowering all levels of employees sounds very much like Ricardo Semler's Brazilian company Semco. See his books "Maverick" and "The Seven Day Weekend". The gist of Semler's approach is to treat all employees -- factory floor workers and managers alike -- as responsible adults capable of being accountable for "making the numbers" and otherwise doing right by their company and each other. Semler tells an inspiring tale -- check it out and then see how many of his ideas you'd love to bring to your own workplace.
Capital has exactly the same options employees have.
It can and will vote with its feet. Try and treat it as a simple cost, not as a critical input that can go elsewhere, and you will get very little of it.
There are markets for labor and markets for capital. Trying to deny that leads to failure, no exceptions.
In each case you balance your natural desire to minimize cost with your need for continued access to the resource. It really is that simple (not that it's simple in detail).
BTW for the owners to 'disenfranchise' the workers the workers would have to posses a 'franchise' in the first place. They don't. They can vote with their feet no mater what the owners do. That is the only control they have. Welcome to earth.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is'nt new. If you order well done beef you have been eating the reject cuts your whole life (everyplace you ever ate). In rejecting a bad steak they set it aside for the next moron that orders 'well done'.
You just did'nt know it because all well done beef is ruined.
This is'nt just subjective. It's an objective fact. Meat gets tougher as it is cooked. You can cook really tough cuts untill tender (e.g. BBQ) but that's an entirely different game then grilling.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It is that simple.
Work in a good kitchen for a month. You won't argue after that period.
The fact you have never noticed proves the main point. Well done steak has been ruined. It would have turned out the same no matter how nice the steak you started with was.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
ID: 123143423
Status: Open
Originator: Jason Patel
Company: National Semiconductor
My boss is a doo doo head. Me smart. He wont give me raise.
are these Indians out of their god damn minds?
I agree with these definitions and continue to order my steaks 'scorched very-rare'. It's one steakhouse in 20 that knows what I'm asking for without me explaining. They get my repeat business.
This avoids the chefs moral problem. Just don't burn steaks untill they are sent back as underburnt.
It does disappoint the asshats that want their meat burnt ('grey in the middle').
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Most of the people here seem to be quite sceptical of the results, while agreeing at the same time that they have not had any experience of this. Perhaps some one with personal experience with this in HCL could chime in?
While a bit of scepticism is expected from a bunch of geeks, I don't quite understand why everyone condemns this to failure. It's a reasonable idea, and just uses technology to get feedback distributed faster and more openly. Given the right management attitude, I'm sure this could work pretty well. Of course given the right management attitude, anything would help!
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
Sounds more like the problem is that said company has a monopoly on broadband.
There is nothing inherently wrong with hedging; commodities futures are used by farmers to protect against unexpected drops in crop prices. It is a sound risk management technique.
:^)
Perhaps Herb was putting his futures contract writers first, his other employees second, and the customers third.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I'd enter this industry just to compete with this knucklehead.
Well I don't think you realize but he's actually provided a great answer to one of the biggest problems prevalent in Indian IT services companies today; employee attrition. And believe it or not, even customers have a problem with that as they have to face the delays caused due to training the new guy.
I think this idea is extremely marketable as well, apart from being very good from an employee retention point of view. Reason being that I can actually quote my extremely low attrition as a cost cutting and quality raising factor.
And I don't think you know it but HCL has been named as the best IT services firm in India and the best speciality offshore infrastructure service provider.
Why is medium rare better than medium or medium well?
Because you can actually taste the steak. If you care that much about bacteria, irradiated steak will fix that, but I use marinade that's got a lot of salt, so there you go.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I don't know that I could taste the steak any better.
The important news? What they're doing seems to be working, perhaps it took 10 years for a CEO to read the book and decide to try it.
Not that anyone else read the article, judging from the 'that's impossible' comments. Impossible or not, we have an existence proof. Didn't anybody besides me look at the bottom-line numbers? I suppose that would have taken actually reading the article, and I suggest you and anyone else who sees this do so before reading the rest of this. The company's net cap has doubled and their income has gone up 34% in the last year, and their attrition has been cut in half, attrition is a serious problem for Indian outsourcing contractors. High-tech companies seem to be lining up to use their services; remember, companies like Cisco are the customers, not the end users. Given the number of more traditional offshoring alternatives, this would seem to indicate that these customers are perfectly content with being #2, given that the real-world alternative is not being #1, but #10 or worse.
Companies that deliberately screw their employees practically always screw their customers as well. Whether by malice or because employees don't care enough to provide decent customer service really doesn't matter if you're the customer. You didn't know that? Welcome to the real world.
Do they actually practice what they're publically preaching, as opposed to using their trouble tickets to spot malcontent employees?
Anybody around here who actually works at HCL Technologies? It would be nice to see some facts dumped into this discussion.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Thanks for posting that book title, it looks like something I need to read... I'm planning to start my own high-tech startup sooner or later.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It sounds a bit like the /. moderation system.
-- QED
Well, I think that if the manager gets a bad review, their job should be outsourced.
I think that if your team was known as the "we get our boss fired for the sake of money" team, then you would have a tough time getting promoted (would you want to?), and you wouldn't expect a good reference when applying for new work. That should be a good enough deterrant.
Though, you can let it happen once and no one will be the wiser.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
One day, the inventory clerk in the electronics parts room, wrote a request up about how every time a certain picklist was filled, half the parts were returned because they weren't needed.
The president of the company who was also the head of engineering and my boss, was in an absolute fit that someone other than an engineer could report a problem. I had an ongoing argument over 3 days with him where he demanded that I tell him who filled out the form so that he could fire him because it wasn't his job! I refused to give him a name.
We ran around in a circularly argument where I asked him that if an employee sees something wrong that the employee should report it or not? He said of course he should report it but only if it involved his job. I said it did involve his job! Eventually, I won out and the process was implemented. What an asshole, I lasted another 2 years then told him off and quit.
A lot of managers don't like to hear that things are not working fine. They get very defensive and take it as a personal blow to their abilities.
"...or My boss sucks. This ticket is then routed to a manager for resolution."
In a small company where there's only one person in charge, this may not work so well. ;-) I worked for a guy who had this posted on the wall above his desk: "Want to improve company morale? Fire all the unhappy people!"
What are you doing now, you lazy drunken obscene unsayable son of an unnameable gipsy obscenity?
It amazes me that such a blatant piece of PR propaganda by a company that is increasingly losing the offshore battle to its better-managed peers(Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, Cognizant) has been written by a senior editor at Fortune!
I'm from India and I've worked in the outsourcing industry for the last 5 years and believe me when I say that HCLT is absolutely the worst place to work amongst all the large IT companies. It is extremely political(careers get decided based on your camps), has no stable strategy/value proposition for the long run, has a long culture of employees back-stabbing each other to work their way up and has way more issues related to sexual harassment than its peers. For a company like this to claim superior management practices and employee satisfaction is like Enron trying to act like the paragon of corporate responsibility!
That apart - exactly where in the article is there *any* reference to managerial practices outside HCL, for the author to come to the conclusion that the "future of management is Indian"? Further, is there even an iota of innovation that seems to be borne from the article that the author is impressed with? Online suggestion tickets, 360-degree reviews? Please...if these are what the author is impressed with, then I suggest he visit real strategic innovators like Infosys(in India) or GE and Toyota(globally).
And this guy, David Kirkpatrick is a senior editor at Fortune?!? No wonder real business folks stick with the Economist!
What's more, if fuel prices continue to rise (or rather are expected to), futures will become prohibitively expensive too. They aren't a panacea, and you can't buck the market forever.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Ricardo Semler.
Before anybody starts talking about brand new revolutionary management techniques, they really need to go and read Ricardo Semler's books, or at the very least his Wikipedia entry and then tell me what HCL is doing is somehow way and above his techniques.
What this article presents is a very shallow clone of Semco's management policies. It's basically an electronic version of what you should have in your company anyway. Putting a ticketing system in place for employees to complain about the cafeteria is not revolutionary.
Changing the process so that managers are hired by those they will manage is revolutionary. Training every employee to be able to read the books, then give them access to the books 24x7 is revolutionary. Giving your employees that information about cash position and then telling them what every person in the company (including their bosses) is paid is revolutionary. Doing all of that and then allowing every employee to ask for whatever salary they want is revolutionary. Telling staff they don't have to turn up, just get the job done is revolutionary.
And whilst we're at it, if you want to really go over the top, I'd check out Gore Industries - makers of Goretex fabric - and their completely 100% flat management model, the 150-staff to a unit cap in place for reasons of evolutionary psychology, their attitude to what makes a leader/manager ("somebody is a leader when other people are following them") and you then realise what is revolutionary.
These guys are here for the PR, and what they're doing is not revolutionary, novel, unique or interesting. The fact that so many people think it is just shows you how poor most companies are at management. For me, the HCL system would be like going back in time by a decade or more... (no, I don't work for Semco or Gore - I have my own business being built using similar principles).
is called "free market" (without public trade of shares).
Be happy 2 have a job that pays bills.
mapkinase
Any of you other bosses tired of trying to make sure your employees are happy? For some it never works anyway. I think if more of them tried to keep me happy things would go a lot better. Otherwise we run into lots of frustration.
It really is time we 'liberate' India. Either that or destroy their society with Starbucks and SUV's - operation potato couch.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"Only the employees can close out the tickets" so I'm thinking you believe this is really going to help. I've seen tickets go unclosed for many, many months. Heck, I once saw a trouble ticket that was almost two years old.
Saying "only an employee can say when the problem is fixed" is not the same as saying "we will fix problems to the employee's satisfaction in a reasonable timeframe."
I'd love to believe the hype, but human nature being what it is (in India as everywhere) my guess is that this is going to be just like every other over-hyped management fad of the last 30 years
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Resolved by Sandeep.
Comments: spicy chicken curry HAIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIiiiii (touches dot on forehead)
Your post has more meaningless buzzwords than the article!
All these funny things happen in India because Indians are deprived of minimum wage guarantee denied social security stipend... http://www.indianpad.com/view.php?id=1744
God and religion are distinct
Indeed, there exists such a system. The company gets employees feedback on the superiors. It is a happening fact that shows a progressive attitude. But 'how' it uses these feedback? It is not 'open' anyway. It can be appreciated but definitely should not be 'hyped' like a 'modern' thinking or 'revolutionary' etc. Company is a 'capitalist' system in which no voice from the 'bottom' is allowed. Here this company is deviating a little. But is that all? Why can't we suspect this attitude?
The other side. First thing it serves the purpose of a publicity stunt. Second thing, the company 'poses' itself as 'listening' to the employee so that he would not need his own caretaker like a 'union'. It is unsaid that the 'ticket' raised by an employee is addressed in which angle. The 'ticket' raising might well be used for issues like 'my chair has to be repaired'..but definitely cannot be used for issues like 'my boss has to be repaired'...Even a dumbest employee would know he might get a 'ticket' to his hometown if he raises a 'ticket' against his boss... Here this news hypes about the 'ticket' which is not a reality.
Software job is a highly paid job. Even with all his grievences still the employee is enjoying a comparatively convenient life. The employees are not 'poor' workmen who are literally poor. In this current competetive world I bet any software employee would like to forsake such a life by raising a stupid 'ticket' that might call for a struggle.
Then what else is the benefit of such a system? Though not very big, such system still provides a way of communication between the top-most and the bottom-most. Though it is not two-way communication; still it is a communication. That's all. - S. Prabhakar. Chennai. India.
Just curious - who came up with the fuel hedging idea? Chairman? CEO? Pilots? Flight attendants? That seems to be a key piece of information missing in your argument. Good point, but still missing the whole picture.
+++OK ATH