India & Leading Management Style

David Kirkpatrick who wrote some time back about India taking the education into the next generation seriously now writes( saw this courtesy of Rajesh),” The world's most modern management – is in India highlighting HCL’s scheme of putting employees first and a scheme where every employee rates their boss, their boss' boss, and any three other company managers they choose, on 18 questions using a 1-5 scale. Such 360-degree evaluations are not uncommon, but at HCL all results are posted online for every employee to see - David points out that such things are un-heard-of! He adds that to become a manager at HCL, a set of courses - that include negotiation skills, presentation skills, account management, and what they call "expectation management" - dealing with the expectations of both customers and employees needed to be passed. While I do not have access to data in support of the loop getting closed (that’s generally the toughest part - when data points to an influential executive, in general the process gets tossed out), it is indeed a significant framework – a few other innovative things being followed by other indian headquartered majors also are indeed innovative and commendable. It would also be interesting to watch the effects of such moves over a period of time - reflected in metrics such as turover ratio, revenue/employee, profit/employee - these assuming all other growth related factors are common amongst companies. Strange are the ways competitive forces shapes dynamics of corporates – with turnover a matter of concern for all enterprises –indian headquartered and big four ( accenture reported a turnover of 20% last quarter globally), companies are straining their nerves to be efficient and winning the war for talent is an important step.