CEO Conclave
BEC Season 2: Meeting 3 | Minutes of the Meeting
Key Note address: Rajan Anandan
Topic: What does a CEO do or not do to create a Great Place to Work? – The Google
Story
Rajan Anandan commenced his address by saying he is not the CEO of Google (Larry Page
is), but at Google, it really doesn’t matter at what position the employee is in the overall
hierarchy.
He went on to address the audience on how Google was built and what it will continue to
do to be a great place to work as per Larry and Sergey ‘s vision. He also focused on the role
played by the organization’s leaders in sustaining the same.
Having worked for various other IT majors in the past as well as at McKinsey as a partner,
Rajan mentioned that the fundamentals and basics of creating Great work places do not
change drastically by sectors or industries.
Rajan mentioned four important things a CEO should do
1. Embrace, Love and Live the mission
The most important thing for a CEO to do is embrace the mission, love and live the mission.
He says that Googlers join them because they want to be a part of something amazing and
leverage technology to build a better world as stated by the Mission of Google – to organize
the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This mission is
known universally to each and every of the 35 – 40 thousand Googlers today who can talk
about it. This mission is at the center of everything that Google does whether it is its search
engine service or mobile android or YouTube that provide video information or Google
Maps that makes geographic information available.
It is extremely important for leaders to embrace the organization’s mission. Leaders who
don’t believe in the power of technology and its capacity to change the world will never last
at Google. He goes on to talk about how most of what employees do at Google is because
they believe in the mission. Eg. One of the biggest goal for Google in India is to digitize India.
The Goal is to get a billion Indians online which will In turn help change lives and make
countries and the world better.
It is most important for the CEO to believe, embrace and love the mission so that it cascades
down to all employees. It is also important for the topmost leaders to translate this mission
down to every single employee down the line, enable them to realize the true worth of their
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work and help them relate it to the overall mission. And hence at Google irrespective of
whether a Googler is an app developer or a tester or a customer service executive, each of
them can relate their role to Google’s overall mission and therein lies the passion to achieve
something great.
2. Live the values
Rajan spoke about how every organization has value systems, very few actually go on to
live them. The reason Google is a great workplace is because it lives its values every single
day. And the CEO has to live the values so that every employee does.
For example, one of Google’s values is ‘Thinking Big or Moonshot thinking’. Googlers
envisage growth at 10 times and not 10%. It is a core value at Google.
The Customer satisfaction goal for Google is 100%. Initially when they started off the CSAT
score for Small business very low. While the most natural response for most organizations
would be to touch a score of around 70% but not at Google. The score today at Google is
close to a 100% and this has been possible because ‘Thinking Big’ is at the core of Google’s
values.
Moonshot thinking is a very important value. Google does not believe in bringing about
incremental change but transformational change. The idea is not to solve problems a little
better but fundamentally resolve them.
Another core value at Google is ‘Moving fast’ which mean decisions have to be taken
quickly and not kept lagging for days. Rajan said it is important say “yes or no” and say it
quickly. Decisions get trickier when decisions have to be made for the frontline. And the
most common response to uncertainty is to wait. Decisions at Google are taken at an
incredible speed and speed inspires. A no is just as powerful as a yes. Most meetings at
Google last only a few minutes. This has been possible because Google is a fact based
company, all documents are sent in way ahead of time of a meeting. Google is a highly
consensus driven company which is not decided by a committee. Every decision has an
owner and the owner is responsible for executing it.
Rajan also shared how Google believes in hiring the best and it is something the CEO has to
do. At Google, the hiring committee comprising members of the senior most Executive team
looks at every single candidate. Only the best candidate is hired. Google does not believe in
hiring the second best candidate and this sometimes even at the expense of business
results. The most important thing is to get the one hire right.
As a people manager at Google, there are very few reasons one may get fired. Ethics or
compliance issues could be some but micro manage people is a major reason why some
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people managers may not last at Google. Micro management is a huge red flag.
Empowerment is a big value at Google. Rajan explained how at Google they set goals and
measure outcomes very well. However, how one gets there is entirely upto him/her. The
leader’s role is only to provide the help that they need.
3. Open and accessible leadership
One of the most important thing that good leaders do is being approachable. They sit with
everybody else. Rajan mentioned how he himself sits in an open cube just like every other
employee at Google. If anyone has any questions, they can just walk up to the right person,
seek support and get the problem solved.
Rajan cited how at Google they believe in over communicating. Larry and Sergey never
miss a TGIF session at Google. It is a forum where everyone comes together and the leaders
take the opportunity to talk about initiates and have a discussion in a truly open
environment. Challenging questions are put forth to leaders and leaders share their honest
opinions on any given issue.
Transparency is at the core of Google’s values. Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman at
Google sends the board letter to the whole organization. For teams and team members it
creates this incredible environment to work with. All hand meetings are one such forum to
come together and share ideas and develop something new. Since everyone is a part of
such initiatives they feel a part of the journey.
4. CEO hold the talent agenda and not HR
Rajan said that he believes that Talent management has to be the CEO’s agenda and it can
only be facilitated by HR. The talent agenda has to be amongst the topmost priority for a
CEO. Google has extraordinary processes for performance management, succession
planning and other talent management processes. Here, the CEO hold the agenda. For
example if Google has an issue around compensation, the CEO shall take a call to
benchmark salaries there and then. This decision is owned by the business leader and
supported by the Compensation Head.
5. Taking the tough calls
Rajan believes that it is very important to take the tough calls that will go a long way in
helping the organization prevent erosion of their long term vision. The acid test is comes
when tough calls have to be taken on leaders who do not live your culture but are really
good at what they do. At Google, they believing in immediately moving these people. Rajan
says that every single day that a leader does not move, the culture is being impacted and
values are being compromised.
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6. Work Hard and Play Hard
Rajan wrapped by saying at the end of the day, at Google they believe in ‘Work hard and
play hard’. They are a fun loving culture and love working in a young and fast environment.
As a leader, he ensures that he is seen as a role model to his employees to work hard and
play hard.
He summarizes by saying that this is how it the culture of an organization is carried
forward and sustained.
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Panel Discussion: The challenge of creating a Great Place to Work – What does the HR and
CEO need to do differently?
The panelists for the discussion included
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Sanjay Mehta, Managing Director, Teleperformance, india
Patu Keswani, Chairman & Managing Director, The Lemon Tree Hotel Company
Aditya Ghosh, President, Indigo, Interglobe Aviation
Shilpa Nirula, CEO, India Region, Monsanto
Bhuvan kicked off the panel discussion by setting a brief context. Picking up from where
Rajan left, Bhuvaneshwar started off by saying that creating a Great Workplace is not the
KPI of the HR department. In fact like Rajan mentioned, it is the CEO’s agenda. The overall
people agenda and an organization’s path towards becoming a Great Place to Work and is
driven by every employee. Sustaining this needs a culture, a certain way of life.
Bhuvan then put a couple of questions before the panelists, each of whom represent Great
Workplaces and have succeeded in maintaining this year on year.
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What was their motivating factor in creating a Great work place?
41 out 50 of the companies on the best companies study belong to the B2C space. He
went on to seek their views on if B2B organizations had a tougher job at hand when
it came to building Great Work places.
Does Great place to work only mean great employee benefits and salaries?
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What was the starting point towards building a Great Work place? What were the challenges
or obstacles faced along the journey?
Sanjay Mehta
Sanjay Mehta mentioned how the BPO business 7-8 years back had gone to the point of
diminishing returns almost everywhere globally. The BPO Outsourcing industry worldwide
had almost turned into drudgery. The management themselves drove this downward spiral
through the extreme efficiency and productivity. This, they realized was not
sustainable.This became the starting point for Teleperformance to take its first strides
towards building a Great workplace for its employees.
Move from measuring satisfaction to experience at the customer level, they set an agenda
to deliver the same level of experience to employees that employees are expected to deliver
to customer.
Today, CEO at Teleperformance stands for Chief Employee Officer and the E in it has 3 parts
- experience, enablement and empowerment.
Patu Keswani
Patu believes there are 3 basic elements for a Great workplace
1. Economic element
An organization is supposed to give an employee a job and provide a financial
benefit in return for his services. An employee should not see a mismatch here
as far as possible. An organization should be willing to give more than what it
receives.
2. A higher purpose
This is what makes the employee feel he is a very important cog in the wheel.
That he is a lot more than just the goods and services we offer to our customers.
3. Culture
The organization culture should be a fun and enabling one. It should be driven
by the CEO and not the HR.
If an organization achieves the above three, it will have employees who wake up in the
mornings and look forward come to work.
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Aditya Ghosh
Aditya believes that building a Great Workplace at Indigo was not a choice. Instead it was
just one of those things that had to be done. Biggest reason to create such a culture is to
ensure employees would want to come to the workplace every single day. At Indigo, they
do not have a vision or a mission statement or even a particularly defined set of values.
They stand for simple things which is at the core of their business
1. Being on time
2. Being courteous and hassle free
3. Delivering low fares
Just like the above, their internal values correspond to their customer values which is to
say that just as Indigo ensure on time flights to its customers, it ensures on time salaries to
its employees. They believe in being a courteous and hassle free place to work similar to
the kind of services they provide to their customers.
Shilpa Nirula
Shilpa added by saying that building a Great Workplace is not the responsibility of a single
individual. At Monsanto, consistency in what they do and how they evolve in the context of
the ever changing environment has been the key. Monsanto works closely through its
employees at the grassroots to help transform rural India. They constantly respond to
suggestions and inputs of their employees at the ground level. They work with people who
believe in that purpose and as an organization they are always open to ideas, hearing them
out and putting them to action.
Summarizing the discussion, Bhuvan said that a common theme that emerged is employee
centricity and employee experience. He then went on to go a step deeper and understand
each of their organization’s contexts better
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Question to Patu - Lemon Tree Hotels have always known to be an equal opportunity
employer and in spite of being a part of a highly demanding industry. How did Lemon Tree
develop this philosophy?
Patu said that hospitality business is often marked by low engagement, tiring hours,
and low pay due to commoditized job roles. However, he also goes on to say that the
organization cannot afford to have two organizations within – one with a highly
motivated 20% and the rest with extremely low levels of motivation.
He went to reiterate the three levels through which an organization evolves as
mentioned earlier in the panel discussion.
Higher purpose – Lemon tree has been known for being an equal opportunity
employer. Patu explained how the journey started off by employing two employees
who were differently abled. While in the west, 40% of differently abled people are
employed in some form of business or the other, in India, we still have a long way to
go. There are over 12 million speech and hearing impaired individuals in the
country today. Typically such individuals have no job, no social net in our country.
Lemon Tree set a target of ensuring 5% of its workforce is differently abled. These
employees could be physically disabled – speech or hearing impaired, low vision, or
orthopedically impaired Lemon tree ensures that such individuals are employed on
roles where their disability will not be a disability or a hindrance in performance of
the role, e.g. a repetitive job for an autistic individual.
The next major task at hand was that of sensitizing all employees in terms working
with fellow disabled colleagues and over a period of time the count crossed 10%.
Next, Lemon Tree also started providing opportunities to economically despaired.
They started hiring people who are also illiterate but functionally skilled. Lemon
tree also went on to redefine their categories for ‘opportunity disabled’ enhancing
the numbers to include people who are economically or socially challenged.
Today, Lemon tree has about 800 such employees and the strength accounts for
about 26% of the employer strength.
Besides he also continued to elaborate on the importance of ensuring a basic culture
of fun and abiding by the social contract.
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Patu believes that some attrition is always desirable. Employees can be categorized
on a 2*2 matrix – Critical to customers and critical to Business Roles.
They identified that 30% employees who are high achievers and high performers
and are critical roles in this matrix. Lemon Tree sees very low attrition in its critical
roles. And it is thanks to this that, inspite of overall higher attrition of the industry,
culture remains constant.
Question to Aditya – You said that at Indigo, every employee feel like the president. How did
Indigo manage to create a Great Work place culture and still that sense of pride in a business
that is not profitable? Indigo has been known to use their employees as models on their In
flight magazines and their Aircrafts. How is it being driven?
Aditya started off by saying that when the most important customer of Indigo walks in,
99.99% of the time he/she interacts with the flight attendant, the ticketing agent or at the
most the pilot. When the aircraft doors closes, the employees decide what is the most
important element and how they are going to help customers deliver a consistent
experience. Unless everybody feels truly happy and connected, they are not going to be able
to deliver their customer service.
All covers of Hello 6E have images of employees. He believes that human beings, more than
money or power, are looking for fame. They started the Girl power badge post the Nirbhaya
episode in Delhi. 42% of indigo workforce is women and 33% of the leadership team is
women. Indigo felt the need to keep reminding people the need to continue focus on this
issue. At first flight attendants started wearing the badges to signify the power of a girl and
women. These became so popular that they started selling these badges at 80 rupees and a
part of it goes into initiatives for the education of the girl child.
Aditya concluded by mentioning that what makes a great place to work is not how you pay
your salaries but how we connect employees to the larger picture.
Sanjay added by saying that happy employees make happy organizations. At
Teleperformance, they believe in keeping it very simple. ESat gives better customer
experience than CSat. And that delivers better KSat and ultimately shareholder profitability
is much more predictable and stable.
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BPOs is the simplest business. 90% of the employees are below the age of 25. These
employees are relatively low on experience and expertise. 100% of the value
generation is through these Gen Y employees. There is both a challenge and
opportunity in this. These employees are at the centre of the customer experience
with the organization and competitive dynamics in this talent space are constantly
changing. These employees are high on energy, are highly sensitive people. Pride in
the organization and trust in the employer are on top of their needs. They value
these above salaries and compensation as well.
Every organization today seem to have a great communication challenge. The
listening challenge is an even bigger one. Sanjay believes that if you have a 1000
employees there will be a 1000 questions and each of it should be answered. At
Teleperformance, HR is called talent excellence. The entire HR leadership team is
from the operations side of the business. These are people who have worked on the
ground and have lived the employee experience.
Question to Shilpa – industry today has an impressive portfolio? How has Monsanto
managed to achieve this culture of consistency and continue to remain a Great Place to Work
Shilpa said that Monsanto is a part of a very non-glamorous industry being a largely
rural based one. However, their purpose comes from a very unique responsibility
entrusted on them. They carry a very significant moral responsibility. This in turn
comes with a lot of pride.
For Monsanto, Engagement scores on the statement ‘I feel proud to work for
Monsanto’ are above 95%.
The organization has a bearing on lives and they have managed to successfully
translate this vision to every single employee. In fact this passion to make a
difference also forms the centre of their hiring philosophy.
Another area that makes Monsanto a Great work place is the accessibility of its
leadership. Any employee can write to the highest level in the organization and be
certain of receiving a response. In fact, Monsanto’s CEO has been known to respond
to employee emails through hand written notes and letters.
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At Monsanto, they have built a very strong one on one culture. They have invested
tine to truly engage their people. It is about one employee at a time.
In fact, off late they have also turned their employees into their brand ambassadors
for the external world. They encourage employees to share their stories with the
external media.
Bhuvan then went on to ask his final question of the discussion - if companies in the B2C
space are better adept at building Great Work Places than others?
Patu said in case of consumer facing companies, every employee including the junior
most one can see the impact of his/her actions on the consumer and that is precisely
what gets them charged up. The overall brand in such a case becomes an even
greater pride factor.
Aditya mentioned at Indigo they have over 9000 consumer facing employees and
their motivation certainly comes from the satisfaction of their customers.
Sanjay also agreed saying that every call that comes in at Teleperformance is to
resolve customer queries and hence the employee experience becomes much more
critical.