BS-II Case Writeup 2012 Mind Tree: A community of communities

Group 11-Section A

Abhishek Ganeriwala Ankit Upadhyay Ankur Goel Abhinav Bhat Chitransh Chhalotre Alosies George Deepak Bhaskar Ankit Lohmore

0007/49 0053/49 0055/49 4003/19 4015/19 0029/49 4017/19 0051/49

Case Study: Mind Tree: A Community of Communities

Culture at Mind Tree:-

Caring

Social Responsibility

Learning

Sharing

Achieving

These were the values listed by the leadership at Mind Tree when they were looking out for ways to deal with their multicultural make up during the early days of the company. They had approached scholars for advice on how to manage culture and were given suggestions to not manage it, but let it develop in a natural manner following the core values of the company and hence CLASS, as they call it, came into being. These values are the drivers of the culture at Mind Tree. Four of them, namely caring, learning, sharing and social responsibility are instrumental values whereas achieving is a terminal value. The culture at Mind Tree is very important for them as they look at it as a soft differentiator from the business point of view. They leverage it as one of their assets to increase their brand value and hence gain market share. Their aim was ultimately to make the organization, according to one of the managers, as high-caring, high achieving organization by integrating these values to create norms and standards which would propel them towards the mentioned goals. Thus from the above information we see that the culture at Mind Tree is characterised by it all encompassing nature, i.e., covering all the employees and covering all areas of the business. It is also characterised by its utilisation to differentiate the company in the

industry. One more characteristic of the culture at Mind Tree was that it led to creation of a very unique competency of the organisation called Knowledge Management.

Creation and Institutionalization of the culture at Mind Tree:Culture at Mind Tree is driven by 5 values, namely caring, learning, achieving, sharing and social responsibility, also known as CLASS. These values were formally listed down as the most intrinsic values of the company when the top level managers created an introspection team, which consisted of the whole of organization at that time, in process of articulating the company values. At Mind Tree, the culture and values are synonymous and hence the former came into being when the later were stated. Now after the values were clearly stated, the firms next task was to strengthen these values in all its employees and also to devise a process to pass on these values to the future employees. For achieving this purpose, the managers sought to internalize CLASS with companys recruitment, recognition and reward systems. The potential candidates were assessed on their compatibility with these values and about 40% weight during appraisals was given to performance against values. Also, voluntary feedbacks were offered to employees who wanted to know how much were they complying with the values. This led to a holistic growth of both the employees and the company along with evolution of their culture.

Role played by Culture at Mind Tree Ltd.

For an organization like Mind Tree with multicultural make up, the culture and the values of the company have played a very significant role. The company focused on building values and making its employees understand values that Mind Tree stands for. Mind Tree came up with a structured statement of values called CLASS(Caring, learning, achieving, sharing and social responsibility) which started defining the way the employees at Mind Tree interact with each other and their customers. At Mind Tree they believed that good values lead to behavior which in turn leads to results. They believed that they are together to create an institution. The company believed that the wealth generated should be shared by all in the company. This led to loyalty and integrity.

Contribution of Companys Culture to its strategy

The company structured its recruitment process to identify candidates who had values that aligned with the values that Mind Tree stood for. The interviewers focused on one or two

values that the candidates held high and looked for the candidates suitability to the organization. The importance assigned to culture in the organization was so much that during appraisals 40% weightage was assigned to performance against values. Senior leaders managing teams of more than 10 members could voluntarily ask for an all-round feedback of how they were complying with the company values in their function. The employees were given a lot of importance and the company shared its wealth with the employees. This reduced the turnover in employees. The company gave a lot of importance to communication between the employees and the organization and transparency and rich frequent communication was encouraged. The 9595-95 principle was one such initiative which says that 95% of the people should 95% of the information 95% of the time. It was the policy of the company to keep the employees informed of their goals, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats on a regular basis and the progress of the company was made transparent. Decision making was participative and census based. It involved collective leadership, freeflowing discussions. There were disagreements but everyones viewpoint was heard and other alternatives were discussed. Members of the senior leadership complemented each other in their functions rather than having power struggles. Leaders were carefully chosen and nurtured through the Gardner concept. Leaders were identified and taken through a process of interviews and introspections to understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Role played by knowledge management in developing and instilling distinctive culture in Mind Tree
Knowledge management included activities, processes and technologies that were aimed at acquiring, organizing, sustaining, applying, sharing and renewing knowledge of employees to improve organizational performance. Groups of people who shared common interest or concern and wanted to learn more and share came together to form communities. The communities thrive on the values of sharing and learning which are given prime importance as a part of the culture of the company. The values of freedom and self-monitoring were seen in practice in the communities. The members set their own goals and were motivated by peer interactions. It was as much about social network and culture as it was about knowledge. The performance management system gave people the freedom to learn from domains that were outside their job description. The communities never appeared in the organizational chart, never reported to anyone and were left to regulate themselves and their goals. They also instilled the value of excellence through sharing by means of community meeting which offered a chance for brainstorming, solving problems, sharing techniques, comparing successes and failures and keeping abreast of the latest trends. The communities had a distinctive maturity model and were led by captains. Group cohesion was practiced in the communities and the champions, the leader-like figures in the group, were responsible for bringing people together, aligning them towards a common goal and

generating momentum. The community champions meet gave the champions an opportunity to learn from the senior leaders. The knowledge management system informally instilled the values that the company stood for in the employees