Customer Reviews

Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anyone who's ever been underpaid and undervalued by management can tell you how much harder they would have worked, how much better their work would have been, and how much more satisfied they would have been in their job if their bosses had made any efforts to respect their contributions. This is part of the basic premise of Employees First, Customers second. In short: if you treat your employees well and support them, they do better work and keep your customers happy. When you treat the people at the bottom of the pyramid like interchangeable parts, but they're the ones interacting with your customers, your customers are going to see it and your relationships with customers are going to suffer.

Mr. Nayar's book has several suggestions that apparently worked well for his company, and look great on paper: Realize that your customer-facing employees are far more important than their pay grade indicates, Increase transparency, Admit when times are tough instead of denying the elephant in the room, Make management and service departments accountable to employees. He gives examples of how his company did these things, and most of those methods seem fairly portable. In all, i'd love to work at a company that even tried to do these things, and i'd love to work with companies that respected their employees by putting them first.

I have a two complaints, one substantive and one superficial.

First, the substantive: repeatedly through the course of the book, Mr. Nayar says something to the effect of 'we had many successes, and many failures.' He never once describes a failure, an initiative that flopped, a new policy that did more harm than good. All we see is the raging successes. For an executive trying to reform their company, knowing what worked for Mr. Nayar's firm will be very helpful, but not as helpful as knowing that and what looked like it should work but ended up being a disaster. Mr. Nayar touts transparency, but gave a very self-servingly opaque account of his efforts and results.

Second, the superficial: This book is written by someone who speaks the Indian dialect of English, not the American. Sentence structure, paragraph structure, and word choice are all a little unusual to American eyes. It doesn't interfere with comprehension, but it does take a little bit of habituation.

Decent, but nothing new. Poorly written. Not much meat here, unless you want to know the details (that is, facts) of the author's company (HCL Technologies); unfortunately, there are a lot of dry facts (we had X% of the market; our growth was Y%; etc.). Just not a lot of useful info here. The author references other books, such as The Trusted Advisor and The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, and I recommend that you just go straight to those books instead.

What business owner wants to say to the world, "I don't put my customers first." But as established in the introduction, even before author Vineet Nayar tells the story of his company's transformation, an employee with a valuable skill set is an asset that's often harder to replace than some customer, especially in a field like information technology.

But this book isn't about theory. It's a case study told in first person. It's an interesting story, but there's not much of an attempt to illustrate how the concepts that worked for Mr. Nayar can work in other situations, too.

As others have pointed out, Mr. Nayar talks about his successes, but only alludes to his failures. That's understandable. We want to understand our failures, but not ncecessarily expose our weaknesses to the world. But it also gave the story of his company's transformation a one-dimensional quality.

I really was hoping for me. I was hoping not for just one company's experience, but some guidence on how a concept can be applied to other companies in other situations as well. I was over half done with the book before I realized that I wasn't going to find that if I just turned one more page.

I really liked this book, though I preferred chapter 1 over all other chapters. Chapter 1, in my opinion, contains a lot of material to think about and incorporate into your management and leadership roles. The Mirror Mirror technique, used to get individuals to acknowledge "the elephant in the room," sets the stage for change. The Mirror Mirror technique reveals point A - Where you are. The next step, which I really liked in name, is "Apiring to point B." Yes, we are at point A, but doesn't point B look good? How can we get there? The rest of the book, for the most part, answers this question. If you like a book filled with real life examples, you'll enjoy the lessons learned along your journey though Employees First, Customers Second.

I work for a company that employs the philosophy of putting their employees first so I'm always interested to see how other companies do it. I found Vineet Nayar's Employees First, Customers Second to be an interesting and informative read. His style is very engaging, and it suggests to me that he actually lives out the principles that he outlines in his book.

Nayar reluctantly took over as CEO for HCLT in 2005 after having successfully started and run one of its subsidiaries. While HCLT was making money, they were losing their position among their peers in India, and they were not touching the big 4 global companies in the IT services space. Nayar outlines the transformation process that he and his team implemented that has made them a true success and sustained them during the economic downturn of 2008-09.

Here are a couple of things that you won't gather from the TOC or the book description on the product page. HCLT implemented the concepts outlined by using catalysts rather than major change initiatives or programs. Nayar tapped into the HCLT employee base to come up with ideas and empowered the employees to implement them. The other key theme is that despite the success that HCLT has had since 2005, they have not become complacent or satisfied.

While things look different at my company, I think that there is much to learn from this book. Nayar also presents his thoughts in a way that can be scaled down to the department or team level so that it is meaningful to leaders at all levels of an organization. This to me is the mark of a well written leadership book. Anytime a book stimulates thought and contains patterns that can be applied in other contexts, I'm interested. I highly recommend this to anyone in leadership.

Overall: A

Vineet Nayar's Employees First, Customers Second (EFCS) is a first person CEO account of the transformation of their enterprise. The book is a refreshing and frank look at the challenges facing leaders looking to transform their company, culture and employees. Nayar discusses his experience leading HCLT and its transformation from a $700 million dollar company that was losing market share to a $2 billion dollar company at the front of their market.

Nayar provides a clear, well-written and frank discussion of the issues he faced and his personal thought process and learning journey during the transformation. It is rare that a sitting CEO provides such a frank and honest discussion of the company and personal journey. At 185 pages in a small format, the book is an excellent size and length for executives to read, reflect on and consider how it fits into their strategies and plans.

Recommended reading for executives who are frustrated with the current structure and culture of the modern organization.

CEO and BU executives will gain an understanding of new views on leveraging the talent, knowledge and passion of their people both internally and more importantly with customers.

HR and Staff Executives will be exposed to a different view of their role. This is not a direct focus of the book, but reading it will help you think differently about what you do and how it creates/connects to value.

Individuals will see an example of the actions and evolution involved in realizing a new way of working. Just about everyone wants to work this way and this book provides an example that can help crystallize your thoughts and how you communicate with your peers and management.

It is particularly recommended to read now or at a minimum have read during the summer months so these ideas can influence their strategic planning and initiatives for 2011.

This book will provide fresh views and a new configuration of approaches to create a new style of organization. A list of strengths and challenges are at the end of this review.

The book covers a number of `tools' and ideas that are particularly helpful for understanding what you can do to change your enterprise. Many of these ideas are based on existing thoughts, but Nayar presents them in a fresh view integrated around the idea of putting employees first. Some of the tools included in the book include:

Value Zone - the place in the organization where the company creates value with the customer. This zone is at the bottom of the enterprise not the top and that reality shapes much of the thinking in the book. You may recognize this in other words as the `moment of value'

Mirror/Mirror - a process where the company and individuals confront the truth of their situation, strengths and weaknesses, and what they need to do about it. This is a direct descendent of confronting reality in the TQM movement.

Transparent House - the role and change created by making traditional management information, plans, evaluations etc available to all.

Zero Tickets - the notion that enabling functions not only work to resolve issues but need to be dedicated to eliminating them. This again builds on TQM principles.

True 360 evaluation and feedback, which can be easily thought of as old hat but which Nayar gives a fresh perspective and experience.

Overall this is a good book and one that will help every executive think about how their company works and what it does to create value. It is important to note that while Nayar's company is based in India, his business is global and these techniques are working in multiple geographies, cultures and workforces. This means that his experience is readily transferable to other organizations and situations.

Strengths:

* Clear and comprehensive in terms of describing the business situation and the actions they took to address the issues. There is no consultant-ese or academic mumbo jumbo, just clear thinking clearly explained.

* Solution specific in terms of defining specific initiatives, tools, things that the company did to create results and address issues.

* Comprehensive discussing multiple aspects of the transformation from the way they worked with customers, to enabling functions, evaluations, transparency and the changing role of the CEO and their office.

* Insightful as Nayar reflects on what has happened at the most basic and fundamental level. For example his discussion of the evolved nature of 360-degree feedback (p. 116 - 126) gives this tool a new power and rational.

* Focused and humble as Nayar accomplishes all of this in just 185 pages without aggrandizing himself, his company or its track record. This gives the book a clear and honest tone that puts conviction behind the words.

* Realistic as Nayar recognized and values the people who say `yes, but' he then goes on to share the insights and changes in the solution generated by people who have legitimate and value issues with the stated direction. This is a balanced and mature approach to change that is refreshingly different than branding people as the enemy.


Challenges:

* Nayar's discussion of the business issues and situations are often at a high level. While I understand the business and publishing rational behind this, it does weaken the context and may lead some people to think that this does not apply to them - it does.

* Nayar presents a fairly straightforward time progression; we did this, then that, then that. This is a strength in making the book clear and focused, but it has caused Nayar to omit what I am sure are some of the

* The book is somewhat impersonal, not from the CEO's perspective, but from the perspective of the people a HCLIT who we hear little about and even less from. It is paradoxical in that the book is about putting employees first, but we really never hear from the employees. A brief first person story of the transformations that an individual manager or front line person when through would have made this a five star plus book.

Overall the challenges do not rob the value of the ideas, experience and insight presented in this book. Read it and think about its applicability to your company, industry and situation. There is much here to think about and even better a deep example of what one company did.
Employees First, something every employer should read.

Written by the CEO of an Indian company of fifty-five thousand employees, this book supposedly describes the process of transforming the culture of his company, a global IT services provider, over a five year period beginning in 2005, to one where employees are empowered to drive company functioning. The author somewhat downplays that his motivation in pushing for this change was an increase in sales volume and market share. The initiatives of this process were spawned in a top-down fashion and, in pointed fact, do not have even the pretense of legal-like standing and could be withdrawn at any time. It would seem that any empowerment in his company is a good deal more fragile than acknowledged.

Any number of initiatives were undertaken to produce change:

Mirror, mirror attempts to define the current state of the company.

Trust is supposedly achieved through the transparency of U&I, a program whereby employees email questions to top management with those transmissions and answers being seen by all. In addition, in the My Problems section of U&I, management solicits advice from employees.

Reverse accountability is achieved via the Smart Service Desk (SSD), whereby various departments must respond to employee problems and questions - again seen by all.

Employee First Councils are organized around specific areas of passion.

These initiatives are designed to achieve a culture of Employees First, Customers Second (EFCS), and to invert the traditional hierarchical command-and-control pyramid. Interestingly, the author divides his employees into transformers, lost souls, and fence sitters. It is Gen Y employees that he expects to transform his company, requiring no more than ten percent of employees to jump on the bandwagon.

The author would like to believe that he has achieved a "family" structure at his company, a dubious analogy for sure. Families are not about profit, but are unconditionally accepting, non-judgmental, and intact structures - not buying and selling members, and are not in the habit of firing members. Maybe the non-Gen Yer's are on to something. It would be a most naïve employee to accept that trust can be based only on management's assurances. Without legal and judicial structures in place, such as those supporting European works councils, the potential for capricious retaliation is ever present. In addition, the wide open peer reviews supported by the author can be brutal. The author is rather vague considering the reach of employee participation within the company concerning important policies. His mostly speaks of employees having added responsibilities to creatively solve customer problems, which they apparently have done as sales have greatly increased.

The book may not be pure hokum, but anyone with any real understanding of empowerment would have to question if that is what has been achieved. It seems more like a system of mandatory increased participation as defined by management. If one's "span of influence" in the company is small, one is not properly participating. If one's sales data has not increased, one has obviously not become empowered. A bottom line is "What is an employee's recourse when it is decided that he or she is expendable?" There is no answer from the author, but the answer is not in doubt. This book merely verifies that management-driven schemes to empower employees very craftily ensure that employees take on more responsibilities rather than achieving any substantially increased standing in the company. One might wonder whether the company song is "voluntarily" sung by the "associates," not employees, every morning.

This book is as light and fluffy as unsweetened puffed rice, but it is much less satisfying. Although, based on the story that Mr. Nayar tells, it's obvious he had some good ideas and worked hard at their implementation, not everything he talks about would be practical at every company. Also, I don't think there is anything particularly revolutionary about involving employees in company decision making and brain storming. (That's what smart companies do, right? Ever hear of a "suggestion box"?) Honestly, I kept waiting for that one `nugget' of knowledge that was going to transform my thinking, my management style, my business insight, my company's direction, my paycheck, ....ANYTHING... but it just never came. Nayar is a successful businessman, running what (I guess) is a successful company. It's obvious, however, that he should stick to business and leave business book writing to people who have something meaningful to contribute. If you want to learn a little about how an IT outsourcing company in India is run, this will be a good read for you, but I cannot recommend it for much of anything else.

With great respect to the concept of employee-run firms, this was a read that I skimmed through for whatever meat was there and one can jump to the summery for a quicker answer: Employees are tougher bosses than bosses. Employees are more intuned to what needs to be tweaked on more levels, and will do it. Workers who are truly part of a collective organization, one with real responsibilities and a major cut of the entire process, will blow away your competition. Here's how Nayar's IT firm did it, and too bad more companies right now are more like a plantation than a business: but as the economy picks up, the first, fastest and brightest firms that utilize Nayar's principles will outrun anything that relies on the same-old same-old. So, a "yes" for material and probability of success and a "no" for length. This would, however, make a great audio condensed book, but if you're flying across two to four hours, you'll consume this in gulps.

To conclude: Like most business reads, a slim volume but more cereal filler than hightlighter-pointed material. If you want to see MY highlightered pages to read, yell; we'll exchange notes.

I had a really hard time finishing this book. Really hard.

The ideas were good, but not all CEOs are writers. Not surprisingly, I think about 1/2 to 2/3 of the book was fluff. Not that he meant to bloat the book, that's just how he writes. I should know. I'm notorious for using ten words where four would suffice.

In this case, the author (Nayar) is very excited to share his vision and endeavors to motivate you to follow his plan. But somehow the message turned into a buzzing sound. I just couldn't help but feel like I was reading on another planet where the gravitational force is 6x Earth's gravity and my arm strained every time I lifted it to turn a page.

Harsh. I'm sorry.

So what is his message?

Managers: Motivate your employees (hopefully with actions, and not with wordy hardbound books) and then stay out of their way so they can excel at their jobs. Give them the tools they need to thrive and then turn them loose so they can overwhelm your customers with dazzling service. Managers, you are like the guy on the Olympic Curling team whose job it is to scrub the ice with a broom. You're not really doing anything but removing obstacles from your staff. Mostly, everyone is impressed with how hard you are working to clear the path for your staff and make them succeed.

The message of this book was really good and at first I considered recommending it to some of my friends. Then it bogged down and I changed my mind. I have a fantasy where an editor or ghost writer gets his/her hands on this book and cuts out a hundred or so pages and turns it into a masterpiece.

I know, I'm like the emperor in Amadeus telling Mozart, "There are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect." But Nayar isn't Mozart, and fewer "notes" would have been much better in this case.