Employees First, Customers Second

Employees First, Customers Second

How do you take a company from US$700 million in an annual revenue to US$3.1 billion in under five years? How do you transform a company that had lost its competitive edge because it had become tolerant of gradual change and take it back to the top rungs of the global industry ladder?

You can do that by turning the company upside down, by making management accountable to the employees who create value for company and putting employees first, customers second, and management third.

This radical response of inverting the corporate pyramid and creating new mantra known as EFCS (employees first, customers second) catapulted an Indian IT outsourcing company to the leading rungs.

The company, HCL Technologies (HCLT), began reshaping itself in 2005 with VIneet Nayar at the helm. The company also set up a smart service desk (SSD) to resolve problems between support functions and front-line staff.

Tom Peters, author of the best seller “In Search of Excellence”, noted that Mr Nayar could be the next Peter Drucker. “Fortune” magazine bills his leadership style as “the world’s most modern management.” And London Business School has called him the leader of organizational innovation.

"This may be the world's most modern management," according to Fortune. "It may be successfully adopted by any company in any industry anywhere in the world, with similar results."