Aneree,
You may want to forward this to your
colleague , Pooja
Dadu
=================================
Corporate Culture
: Defining and Measuring
At 3P Consultants ,
we are debating :
“
How to conclude whether a candidate is a good fit with the culture of our
Client company or not ? “
In
a two hour interview , judging a candidate’s technical / managerial competence
is not easy but judging his ATTITUDE towards
his Job / his Colleagues / his Subordinates / his Bosses / his Customers / his Suppliers /
his Bankers / local and
central Authoritiesand the Society at large , is next to impossible
!
An
executive gets selected / recommended by us ( the Headhunters ) and even passes
muster in the Client Interview and gets appointed , only to be discovered later
that he simply does not GELL with the client organization !
That
bags the question :
“
How do you figure out a Company’s culture ? How do you measure it ? “
I
am not sure about how to measure it , but the way employees and bosses , react
to a situation , does give some hint into the nature of a Company Culture
Let
me illustrate through following examples during my 31 years tenure with L&T :
=======================================================
·
Mr
Holck Larsen , once telling me ( around 1974 ) :
“
Parekh , the best thing we are doing for our employees , is to provide them
with a wholesome ‘ thali ‘, at 27 paise – far cheaper than its real cost “
· Same
Mr Holck Larsen , re-paying the Company , Rs
72,000 / - from his personal bank account , when it was discovered
that this was the amount that L&T had spent on maintaining his personal car
, to which he was not entitled since
he had ceased to be an Executive Chairman !
· We
recruited an executive from a BABU company
, as our Maintenance Manager , ( who reported to me )
Within a few days , I sensed that employees of that department were unhappy
and feeling stressed
I
cornered one employee and asked : “ What is with this long face ? “
He
hesitated – then said :
“
Every time , Mr NEW walks into
my cabin , he asks me to vacate my chair ( for him to occupy ) and asks me to
sit across the table “
I
felt obliged to walk down to the cabin of Mr
NEW , sit across him ( in visitor’s chair ) and explain to him that
what he was doing was just NOT acceptable
in L&T
Within
a few days , he resigned and left !
(
I am reminded of a recent incident in Mahindra Tech – for which , Shri Anand
Mahindra felt obliged to apologize , setting a personal example for entire
group )
· While
heading Central Personnel Department ( 1977-79 )
, I issued an appointment letter to a fresh engineering graduate , as a GET (
among many others )
A
few days later , my boss ( Mr S R Subramaniam – Director , HR ) called up to
ask , if I had issued an appointment letter to this young man
After
checking up , when I phoned back to confirm , boss asked :
“
Parekh , have you read this guy’s declaration on the 4th page
of company’s Application Form ? “
Now
, who reads every piece of info on each page of a 4 page form !
In
any case , I called up his application , read it and found that his father was aDirector on L&T Board ( none of the interviewers had
bothered to read this ! )
I
phoned boss to tell him what I had found and to emphasize that his selection
was purely / absolutely ON MERITS alone
.
No
one had even noticed his relationship to a Director of L&T !
In
such a situation , the normal procedure is to put this up as an item of AGENDA
, for approval of the shareholders in Company AGM ( a formality ) – pointing
out that the appointee is a “ Close Relative “ of XYZ director of the Company
However
, in this case , not to cause an embarrassment for himself , the Director
concerned resigned from the BOARD – obviating the need for this !
If
you want to know how culture of a Company manifests itself in thoughts and actionsof its employees , you may
look up 41 episodes of :
Then
, if you can think of a WORD or
a PHRASE that you believe
“ describes “ that culture ,
do enter your COMMENTS ( under each Story )
11
July 2017
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