Hcl Technologies Case Study
HCL Technologies Case Study In this Assessment I will use the HCL case study to analyze the trends and economic forces that impact innovation and change in the global markets of HCL Technologies.
Analyze the ways that Nayar applied theory to change organizational structure, culture, and processes to support and sustain innovation in light of the changing global markets.Lastly, I will Analyze Nayar’s leadership in relation to the effectiveness of general management planning and decision making in these changes to structure, culture, and processes by focusing my evaluation on Nayar’s use of the U&I portal There are many trends and economic forces that impact innovation and change in the global markets of HCL Technologies. HCL Technologies innovation and change has been impacted through trends of change in the organizational culture, leadership, proactive assumption, and from learning culture concepts. By changing the culture of an organization, top management can indirectly influence the motivation and behavior of organizational members. ” (Hickman 2010). Nayar uses changes in HCLT’s organizational structure to transfer the role of the CEO throughout the case study.
This transformation of responsibility was designed to help force innovation for a growing company through the idea of “Employees first, and Customer’s second. ” Nayar’s “Employees first idea is a good example of today’s learning cultures ideas being put to use to sustain innovation.According to the “Proactivity Assumption,” “A learning culture would have to assume that the appropriate way for humans to behave in relationship to their environment is to be proactive problem solvers and learners. ” (Hickman 2010). HCLT’s CEO’s forward thinking of ways to advance the companies innovation through its employee focus was a great example of being proactive in relation to the working environment.
HCLT team members show another characteristic of the learning culture through its “Commitment to Learning to learn. “The learning culture must have in its DNA a “learning gene,” in the sense that members must hold the shared assumption that learning is a good thing worth investing in and that to learn is itself a skill to be mastered. ” (Hickman 2010). HCLT team members all have the “learning gene. ” As seen in the case study a team of HCLT engineers, put forth the time and dedication to go outside of their scope and learn the knowledge that a business analyst would generally use, to educate HCLT’s team members on the business process of “BAIT. In light of the changing global markets Nayar applied a theory that would change organizational structure by focusing on the company’s employees first and customer’s second.
This idea would push and sustain innovation within the company. Around the time when Nayar decided to use this new theory he had been reading a book by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom entitled, “The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leader Less Organizations. ” The book argued that most company’s functioned like an 8 legged spider, and that in fact should be functioning like a starfish.This analogy got Nayar to think about how centralized his own company was, and that in order to succeed in the future the company would need to operate more like the “starfish.
” “I saw that we needed to become more like the starfish and that this would require us to rethink the role of CEO and to transfer much more of the responsibility for change to its employees. ” (Nayar (2010). This “starfish” theory was first seen at HCLT when a global customer was visiting their Delhi office.The HCLT team members gave a great impromptu presentation of a strategy called “BAIT” that was never formally introduced from the company’s CEO to the visiting global customer. This is exactly what Nayar had envisioned when he originally thought of the “employee first,” idea to drive change and innovation for the company.
HCLT’s team member were proactive in their approach to gain knowledge on this service by going outside of their general work field to learn the knowledge that a business analyst would generally use, to educate HCLT’s team members on the business process of “BAIT. In this case study, Nayar’s use of the U&I portal was designed to further transfer responsibility to HCLT’s employees and create a new process for decision making in the company. As a CEO, Nayar wanted his initiatives to create long term structural and cultural change. Nayar received a high volume of emails on a daily basis. Many of the e-mails, were questions from the employees relying on answers from the CEO. “It was not that the people sending the questions couldn’t answer the questions for themselves.
Many of the e-mailers were brighter than I was, after all, and knew a lot more about the particular technology, product, or geography they were asking about than I did or ever could. ” (Nayar 2010). Nayar realized that the employees were asking the questions because they did not want to take full responsibility for the outcome, and were used to organizational structure of decision making. This was the exact organizational decision making structure that Nayar was working towards moving away from at HCLT.Nayar no longer wanted to make all decisions within the company and wanted to transfer some of that responsibility to the employees. Nayar, along with his leadership team decided to add a new function to the U&I portal called “My Problems.
” “Our original goal with U&I had been to create transparency and thus build trust. ” (Nayar 2010). This original goal actually centralized power to the CEO more than before. The new function was created to move away from the centralization of power, and allow others to share their ideas for decisions to problems that the CEO had issues with answering himself.Although “My Problems” didn’t always give direct solutions it did create positive dialogue between Nayar and the contributors.
“This conversation, by focusing on “my problems and your answers,” started to shift responsibility of actions that could create change away from me to other people throughout the organization. ” (Nayar 2010). The implementation of the “My Problems” function to the U portal was a great step towards Nayar’s ultimate goal of recasting the Role of the CEO. The goal was to get the whole company talking and listening to one another, just like a good family, and for the management to justify and communicate their decisions when they were at variance with majority views. ” (Nayar 2010).
Works Cited: Hickman, G. R. (Ed. ). (2010). Leading organizations: Perspectives for a new era (2nd.
ed. ). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Nayar, V. (2010).
Recasting the role of CEO: Transferring the responsibility for change. How leaders can tap the creative energy of employees. In Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.
