Mind tree:A community of communities

Mind tree: A community of

Communities

2017

Ashwin Kumar C

1527608 - M1

1/28/2017

Leadership Case analysis

Leadership Case analysis 2

Mind tree: A community of communities Ashwin Kumar C 1527608

Introduction

About MindTree

Mindtree Limited is an Indian multinational information technology and outsourcing

company headquartered in Bangalore, India and New Jersey, USA. Founded in 1999, the

company employs approximately 16,500+ employees with annual revenue of $700+ million.[

The company deals in e-commerce, mobile applications, cloud computing, digital

transformation, data analytics, EAI and ERP, with more than 290 clients and offices in 14

countries. Its largest operations are in India and major markets are United States and Europe.

The company was formed on 18 August 1999 by ten IT professionals, who formerly worked

for Cambridge Technology Partners, Lucent Technologies, and Wipro.

About the case study:

This case study deals with the company Mind Tree Indian IT services firm known for its

knowledge management practices this case study deals with how the leaders we're trying to

convert the 278 million dollars Indian IT services firm 21 BN in revenues by 2014.

The '5*50' program - MindTree's participative culture and its integration with the company's

strategy is best highlighted by this program. This initiative called on all MindTree Minds to

offer innovative ideas for building new $50 million businesses from scratch. Knowledge

Management (KM) would help in the ideation process and would provide critical IT systems

support. The fact that MindTree entrusts its employees with resources and encourages them

to build businesses, demonstrates the importance of culture in the company's growth strategy.



This initiative was called as 5 * 50 as a part of a larger strategy for achieving 1billion US

dollars in revenue by the year 2014 this was a very bold and aggressive move by the then

chairman, Mr Ashok who had a very high targets set for Mind Tree as a company this

initiative called on all the employees of Mind Tree who are called as mind read minds to

offer innovative ideas for building new 50 million US Dollar businesses from scratch

Mindtree executive would then select 5 people with the best ideas and would give them the

resources to start their new proposed venture. This is a very Revolutionary initiative

undertaken by the then chairman Mr Ashok which would definitely change the fortunes of

Mind Tree and bring it to the forefront.

Industry and company background in the year 2009 the Indian IT BPO industry that is

information technology and business process outsourcing industry was estimated at 71.7

billion US dollars in revenues and it accountant for 5 point 8% or 6% of the India's GDP and

employees about 2.2 million people in India they had several services provided to their

clients and the lower end where was based services knowledge process outsourcing and body

shopping these processes where usually the companies from US and Europe outsource their

monotonous repetitive jobs to India at a very competitive price so that these companies can

concentrate on their core activities

At the higher end where the most analytical and value added services such as Consulting

research and development. It is also said in the article that the Indian IT industry first rose to

prominence in the year 1999 by fixing the millennium bug that threaten to crash the world's

computers

This helped the Indian IT industry to be noted in the world Arena and this was spurred by the

availability of a young highly educated English speaking technical work force and the

industry grow at an annual rate of 40% or more in the initial years and helped India to

become a Global Technology and Outsourcing hub

The major players in the industry were 6 players

The 6 players are as follows:

1. Tech Mahindra that is Satyam computers



2. Wipro

3. Infosys Technologies

4. Tata Consultancy Services the leader in the market

5. Cognizant Technologies and

6. HCL

These six companies where collectively known as switch companies each of these firms has

revenues in excess of 1 billion US dollars and they managed to scale from that level to

various other levels

For several other midsized companies it was very difficult to compete with the stop 6 players

as industry experts believe that it was too late to compete with the big leagues some other

companies try to concentrate on lower price or on niche segments.

The CEO of Mindtree tried to differentiate itself from other mid tyre companies are players

by using its culture called as soft differentiator by this the business CEO explained that Mind

Tree tries to sell the promise of building a relationship rather than just being a vendor this

means that Mind Tree wants to be more sort of a partner rather than just a vendor who

provides IT solutions and moves away.

CEO makes use of a very colourful analogy to make the same. “Tadpoles in different Ponds

all look alike just like that technical people in our industry so the challenge for companies is

how do you make your tadpoles glow in the dark” So it answers questions to the client

whether the people can work in the organisation will my people be comfortable working with

them and will there be any cultural differences for cultural clashes between the two forms



that is a client firm and the software vendor that is Mind Tree in this case

Mind Tree trying to combine both set of skills that is the try to create a company in that was

Consulting let in the IT services business and intellectual property let in the RND services

business Mind Tree Mind Tree actually experience the very rapidly growth and it was the

first Indian IT firm to reach revenues of about hundred million within just 6 years of its

founding. However there revenue growth gradually slowed down in the next few years which

was demonstrated and are given in the exhibit 1. The economic crisis which led to A

reduction in spending in high end technology and Technology added to their worries

In 2010 Mind Tree had 7 different businesses the 7 different businesses are as follows IT

services knowledge services are ND services testing infrastructure management and technical

support software product engineering and wireless products the company had a matrix

structure and their employees where located in to industry verticals of Technology

horizontals industry verticals where like BFSI insurance automation automobile etc the

technology verticals where Java J2EE dot net among other languages.

CLASS Values

Caring,

Learning,

Achieving,

Sharing, and

Social interaction

MindTree has always believed that its values are one of its core competencies and a key

factor which differentiates it from its competitors. At MindTree, its values define its culture

and are a cornerstone of decisions concerning future strategy.



People-Centric:

In an industry where all firms are assumed to possess homogenous skills, MindTree knew

that, in order to succeed, it had to differentiate itself from its competitors. The company

realized that culture and values were key elements that could be used as "Soft

Differentiators." Also, being a multicultural company, MindTree realized that it could not

possibly manage all the different cultures efficiently. Instead, it decided to develop a common

set of values which could be shared by people from across different cultures. The company

has always strived to become an 'emotionally bonded organization.' In this regard, the culture

of MindTree can be characterized as a people-centric culture.

Value-Driven:

According to the MindTree senior management, "Every MindTree mind is driven by CLASS

- Caring, Learning, Achieving, Sharing, and Social Responsibility." From this, it is evident

that MindTree wanted to create a culture rich in innovation and creativity. MindTree's

emphasis on aspects such as High achievement orientation and high caring further shows that

MindTree aimed to promote a culture of high performance, stakeholder responsibility,

cooperation and corporate citizenship.

Transparent and Participative:

Transparency and rich, frequent communication were cornerstones of the culture. Mindtree

incorporated participative decision-making by promoting openness across organizational



levels. This resulted in the company's 95-95-95 principle, which stated that 95% of the people

should have 95% of the information 95% of the time.

How has this culture been created and institutionalized?

At MindTree, the management's belief that 'values drive behaviour and behaviour drives

results' was at the heart of all decision-making processes.

Internalizing CLASS Values:

Mindtree sought to internalize the CLASS values by integrating them into its recruitment,

recognition, and reward systems. The process started right from hiring of a new employee,

whereby the candidates were assessed on whether they would be a good fit in the

organization's culture. New employees then participated in extensive sessions with the senior

management, which emphasized the importance of these values in the company's culture. The

process continued with performance appraisals, where each value had a clear metric and 40%

weight was assigned to performance against these values. The success of MindTree's

endeavours to internalize the CLASS values can be seen from the fact that 90% of the senior

leaders voluntarily asked for 360o feedback on how well they were complying with the

company values.

Other initiatives like rechristening the HR dept. as the 'people function' and giving stock

options to its employees, have also helped MindTree in building and promoting its culture

among its employees.

Socialization Tactics:

MindTree has also employed the use of several socialization tactics to foster and

institutionalize its culture among its employees. When a new employee joins MindTree, she

is given explicit information about the sequence in which she will perform new activities or

occupy new roles (Sequential Role Orientation). As employees gain experience, they are

allowed to pursue their interests by joining or initiating a community (Random Role

Orientation).



Senior employees at MindTree actively engage with new hires and act as role models (Serial

Tactics). This not only helps MindTree imbibe its core values in the new employees, but also

promotes the participative culture within the organization.

Building Knowledge Communities:

Knowledge management was another activity that supported and contributed to MindTree's

culture and values. MindTree adopted a holistic, encompassing approach to KM, as it

believed that KM could play an integral role in helping people perform their jobs better and

develop themselves, which again reflected on its goal to be a High Achievement oriented and

High Caring organization.

To implement KM a work, MindTree encouraged its employees to self-organize and

collaborate through communities of practice. MindTree also took a number of steps to build a

supportive environment for cultivating KM. The development and contribution of the KM

function has been discussed in detail later in this article.

GARDENING

Organization found difficult to empathize with people

Hierarchy

Nurture the top 100 people in mind tree

One to one discussion – personal professional

Emotionally-bonded

Listening-sense making-Action Response

GARDENING PROCESS

Gardener Identification administers the session1 Session2 Session3 session4 on leaders 5

questions

Sense making Review and Sense making Code of Leader expand Who am I and action

questioning by based on action engagement responses response leaders response

IMPLICATIONS OF GARDENING PROCESS



Leadership, self-awareness and capacity expansion Making people aware of their mission,

visions and values To unlock their hidden potential- sense making(SESSION 2) created an

atmosphere of openness and raised communication Succession planning Improves ability to

make choices and face consequences Less power to listen between employee.

The community Maturity Model

Knowledge is considered as a strategic resource in the current economic age. Strategies,

practices and tools for enhancing Knowledge Management (KM) became one important issue

for organizations. Despite the demonstrated role of communities in sharing, capturing and

creating knowledge, the literature is still missing instruments for assessing their maturity.

Even if several knowledge-oriented maturity models are provided at the enterprise level, few

are focusing on communities as a mechanism for organizations to manage knowledge. This

paper proposes a new Community Maturity Model (CoMM) that was developed through a

Design Science perspective to assess members’ participation and collaboration and the KM

capacity of a community; and to identify its needs, to ensure its development and

sustainability according to its mission, degree of formalization, developmental stages, means,

etc.

This CoMM is intended to be sufficiently generic to be applied to any type of communities

and useable by practitioners for conducting self-assessments. KM experts were involved in

all stages of the maturity model’s development in order to maximize the resulting model’s



relevance and practical applicability. The model was piloted and subsequently applied within

a Chief Knowledge Officers (CKO) professional association, as a community, to assess

especially knowledge sharing among its members. The present work tries to respond to the

research question on how to determine community evaluation basing on a KM perspective.

Conslucion:

Knowledge management prevents staff from constantly reinventing the wheel, provides a

baseline for progress measurement, reduces the burden on expert attrition, makes visual

thinking tangible, and manages effectively large volumes of information to help employees

serve their clients better and faster.

Being a fundamental business enabler, knowledge management will help organisations:

Protect their intellectual capital



Focus on their most important assets: their human capital

Re-orient their culture by opting for an optimal knowledge sharing strategy

Link people to people by setting up collaborative methods bee on flower

Knowledge management opens the doors to a new era of collaboration and sharing

Nowadays, with corporate mergers, employee turnover and global expansion, people

must work differently: they need to collaborate with peers that are overseas, exchange

ideas, keep current on global matters and have quick answers to their questions.

The power of Social Media plays an important role in knowledge management as it

enables employees to collaborate, connect and rapidly access to experts and

information.

Social networks also allow people to collaborate, to be human and to express

themselves in the electronic environment. They have a solid foundation of trust and

popularity among employees and they are part of the knowledge sharing culture.

Increasing company benefits with an effective knowledge management strategy

Knowledge management helps solve most of the common business problems and

helps companies increase their benefits by:

Improving business decisions thanks to facilitated access to expertise and to leading

practices

Increasing efficiency, productivity and work smarter by reducing cases of

“reinventing the wheel”

Improving innovation through wider and borderless collaboration

Reducing loss of know-how by capturing explicit and tacit knowledge

Speeding productivity with on-board trainings and timely access to knowledge

Increasing client satisfaction by delivering value insights

Enhancing quality and ability to collaborate by standardising ways of working and

enabling discussions with leading experts

Education

Mind tree:A community of communities