Unusual People Do Things Differently by T G C Prasad

Author:T G C Prasad [Prasad, T.G.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184753516
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

If you carefully analyse the above list, you will notice that it is not difficult to cultivate these competencies. What is tough is consistently exhibiting these behaviours and competencies, and this is exactly where great leaders score over the rest.

32

Three Initiatives

Sometime in mid-2006 Saltuk Ertop took charge as the head of HR for Alcatel-Lucent, India. He was deputed from the Paris office to help merge the India operations. He functionally reported to the HR head of Europe South and administratively to the CEO of the India operations. I was part of global organization development and strategy group and was briefly assigned to work on post-merger integration activity with Saltuk.

Since my job mostly involved mergers and acquisitions work, Saltuk called me and said, ‘TGC, can you please help me organize the day-one merger activities?’ Along with the rest of the HR department, internal communications and business leaders, we drew up plans involving activities, marketing, communication and celebrations. We wanted our customers, partners and employees to have an enriching experience. Probably a quarter or more went into the planning exercise. Finally, it was day one and all relevant communications were sent out. Everyone liked the new logo and the communications that were released. Public announcements of the merger had indicated a less than 10 per cent cut in worldwide workforce in a three-year time frame. Deep inside, employees were apprehensive about their jobs, titles, levels, salaries, roles, etc. Sensing this, as part of the launch of the new company, I had prepared an information booklet for employees titled ‘What to Expect from the New Company’. While I had tried to answer as many questions as honestly as I could, the answer to most questions was ‘Wait to hear more from your manager or the HR department’, because we didn’t have adequate information at that point. This manual made its way to the corporate communications group and was put up on the intranet as an example of a regional communications guide. Saltuk, global HR executives and other department leaders thought it was a great piece of work and I received commendation e-mails from many of them. Personally, I thought it was common sense. However, when I started interacting with some global leaders, I quickly realized that in such a culturally diverse environment, people look for answers even to the simplest questions. For people in developed countries especially, the threshold for ambiguity is low and they constantly look for FAQs (frequently asked questions), as it reduces uncertainty for them. Whereas in India, the threshold for uncertainty is pretty high and while people care for information posted on the Net, they tend to rely more on dialogue and information they get from peers and supervisors.

After the ‘day one’ activities concluded, Saltuk had several discussions with the HR and business leaders and then called me and said, ‘TGC, we have to launch post-merger initiatives, can we discuss?’ I went to New Delhi to meet him. At the end of our meeting, we came up with three interventions that had to be implemented.

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