Talent management expert and former Satyam Computer Services executive,
Priscilla Nelson and co-author with
Ed Cohen, of the leadership lesson filled book
Riding the Tiger: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times, was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about the book.
Priscilla Nelson describes the crisis that almost destroyed Satyam Computer Services, and the initiatives that not only saved the company from bankruptcy, but transformed the entire organization into a more effective and growing business. She shares the strategies and techniques that turned the company around and began its path to renewal and profitability.
Thanks to
Priscilla Nelson for her time, and for her comprehensive and informative responses. They are greatly appreciated.
What was the background to writing this book Riding the Tiger: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times?Priscilla Nelson: We moved to Hyderabad, India in 2005 to work for a global IT company named Satyam Computer Services that operated in over 60 countries. Ed was the Chief Learning Officer and Pris was the global head of People Leadership. Our responsibility was to ensure the development of leaders and their 53,000 associates. The company was growing at a rapid pace and had been recognized with many awards including ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) naming them number one in the world for learning.
Then on January 7, 2010, the founder and chairman Ramalinga Raju to “cooking the books” in what turned out to be a 2.5 billion dollars scandal. The company was immediately and severely impacted, causing the leaders to find a way to help the company survive. After the chairman’s confession, the leaders and associates were left to pick up the pieces. We decided to document the leadership strategies that work for companies going through significant change and turbulence.
What were the major causes of the crisis at Satyam Computer Services?Priscilla Nelson: The major causes were: The founder and chairman’s desire to project the company as growing rapidly and more successful than it actually was; the need to take a small gap in the books that started in 2001 and perpetuate it because he and his collaborators could not figure out how to close it. The culture of India contributed enormously. Respect for leadership, especially the chairman of a company, who is held in the highest and most trusted position put everyone in a position of not seeing, expecting, believing, or any this level of greed. This acquiescence to the most senior leader went all the way to the highest levels of the Board of Directors. In fact, even after Raju confessed many still did not believe he could possibly have done this.
Was there a crisis of leadership taking place at Satyam?Priscilla Nelson: Yes, there was most definitely a crisis of leadership, although not with all leaders. The organization has scoured the world to recruit some of the best global leaders in consulting and technology. These senior and tenured leaders worked together shift the culture from patriarchal leadership to a distributed leadership model. There was much talk of leveling the hierarchy and for all intents and purposes, this was accomplished. Unfortunately the full life cycle leadership model, while enabling distributed leadership, also encourages a lack of line of sight that perpetuated and disguised the ongoing illicit activities.
Do other companies, regardless of their industry, recover as well from crisis as Satyam?Priscilla Nelson: Others have recovered, although most do not. There was a Harvard study completed that looked at 400 companies that suffered major turbulence. Only 13% of companies were in business one year later. We believe Toyota has taken the right measures internally and externally to recover, however in the case of BP, we they are still very much at risk.
Priscilla Nelson (photo left)
The company adopted a "leading through learning" strategy that calmed the crisis. What did this strategy involve?Priscilla Nelson: Leading through learning is our model for helping leaders to simultaneously lead and learn through every experience, in order to calm the chaos and get the company back on the right path. Leading through learning practices helped so well that we decided to expand our thinking to include practices that all organizations can use when going through any kind of change. Organizations forget that learning can be a key component in a company’s risk mitigation plan. We learned ourselves first hand. Our first step was “Lights On”.
You describe what you refer to as the "Lights On" strategy. What are the critical elements of that approach?Priscilla Nelson: The “Lights On” strategy—is a vital first step for a business in crisis, which simply is to keep the lights on and do only what’s absolutely necessary to stabilize operations and regain forward momentum. The Lights On plan, which is based on insights from all quarters, has two pillars—learning and communications. The strategy is iterative and cumulative and comes about by following these steps:
• Hold everything.
• Build a start-stop-continue worksheet.
• Deploy learning resources optimally.
• Start an information safari.
• Include critical communications and bring people together.
How can the company's organizational culture be guided into the right direction to turn the company around?Priscilla Nelson: Organizations should start with where they are. Conducting a critical analysis of business as it is today, with the processes as a focus, will assist with what steps may be required to prepare for times good and bad. Every organization develops both a conscious and an accidental culture. Its conscious culture unfolds from the written and spoken goals, values, behaviors, and practices that are taught, measured, and reinforced in the organization. The accidental culture emerges from the unwritten and unspoken values, behaviors, and practices to which everyone knows they should adhere. Collectively, a conscious culture and an accidental culture permeate every nook of every organization.
Turbulence of any kind can affect an organization’s culture. To prepare for these changes, the necessary steps to protect and adjust the organizational culture must be planned, and this planning needs to be done before, during, and following turbulent times. We recommend four steps, which have been tried and tested many times, protect and to shift an organization’s culture:
1. Identify the existing culture of your organization.
2. Proactively influence your organization’s culture by facilitating what to keep, what to eliminate, and what to add.
3. Revisit your organization’s core purpose and values, and reorganize them if necessary.
4. Communicate and reinforce the core purpose and values.
How can relationships within the company be improved with an eye to organizational renewal?Priscilla Nelson: Leaders need guidelines and these guidelines need to be reinforced every day. Most of these guidelines involve the need to protect and rebuild relationships. In the book we present the We 12 guidelines of our leading through learning strategy.
1. Understand that we will never get back to normal.
2. Take care of one another.
3. React . . . pause . . . respond.
4. Talk—even when you don’t believe there is much to say.
5. Be visible—now is not the time to play hide-and-seek.
6. Maintain integrity and high moral values.
7. Optimize costs, with retention in mind.
8. Be a brand ambassador.
9. Assess and rebuild trust.
10. Remember, leaders are human, too.
11. Think like a child.
12. Take care of your emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.
How can social networking be utilized effectively as part of the strategy?Priscilla Nelson: Human contact is essential and Twitter’s 140 characters are not enough to convey the messages that people need to receive. During a corporate crisis, it is necessary to find a scalable, flexible, and reliable solution to rapidly communicate with everyone around the world. In most cases, you should be able to leverage existing technologies to make this happen. Developing a 24/7 social media presence is within the realm of possibility for any organization.
Today, web TV/radio capability is as simple as a Skype or Yahoo connection. A small investment in a high quality video camera and a media server further extend this capability. It’s also import for companies to embrace social media. Their people will use it whether they want them to or not so why not leverage this vital information source. Monitor the social media sites to learn what the employees are saying and to hear their concerns.
Co-author Ed Cohen (photo left)
Many employees were troubled and experienced tremendous stress during the crisis. How were these employees cared for?Priscilla Nelson: Because we were a global organization our approach had to be two-fold. We had to be cognizant of the fact that many of our developing countries had no “employee assistance program” and therefore those resources were non-existent. To address this need in those areas we identified several practitioners outside the organization that a) donated several hours per week, b) reduced their costs to employees and c) we used our internal professional coaches for “non-therapeutic” interventions or to identify those who may need additional services not provided by the coaches.
Every leader in the organization was automatically assigned a coach to assist with their levels of stress and to ensure they had a partner for how to determine next steps and manage their teams reaction and productivity.
We also provided a help line for people to call to ask for help and to gain information.
How can a company respond properly in real time to a crisis?Priscilla Nelson: It’s essential to be honest and transparent. Communicate. “Even when there is nothing to say there is much to say”. Schedule updates and don’t ever cancel an update. There are things that are not appropriate to share or those things that could put the employee, leader or organization at risk (for example, actions that are under consideration that if they were made known everyone in the organization could be held responsible…let’s think about how we want to say this), however, including employees in some of the problem solving actually helps everyone find solutions faster.
Identify strengths and put people to work. Ask for their ideas and input, include them in as much as possible. Gaining some level of control over your situation helps. If you are part of the solution, even if it means you are part of those who will be leaving in the end, gives us the ability to take charge of the outcome to some extent. Employees who are going to be terminated need to know so they can make plans for themselves and their families.
Can the experiences of Satyam be applied to other companies to prevent a crisis or to recover from a crisis?Priscilla Nelson: Absolutely! The lessons of Satyam were actually learned even before the crisis. Many of the leadership practices that were put in place prior to the crisis were used during the crisis. By opening up the possibility for leading through learning an organization magnifies the ability to capitalize on existing talent each and every day and systems are in place to get them through any kind of turbulence.
What is next for Priscilla Nelson and Ed Cohen?Priscilla Nelson: We launched Nelson Cohen Global Consulting in November 2009. We consult with organizations on change management and leadership strategies. We are teaching and implementing our leading through learning approach in companies all over the world. We believe that we are always learning and capable of discovering new tools and methodology for organizations to put in place.
We also try to model “not knowing” as it can be incredibly refreshing for leaders to not have all the answers and to seek the missing pieces from their stakeholders…team members, customers, investors, etc… We have found that the model we use today is helping new and seasoned leaders be more effective in what they do. We are also writing and blogging to share our knowledge and experiences with the world.
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My book review of
Riding the Tiger: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times by Priscilla Nelson and Ed Cohen.
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