Culture Rules!

A friend and I with our families were strolling one holiday evening in the Park Street neighborhood looking for a place to dine. My friend suggested a place with great Muglai cuisine and I nodded in agreement. I took notice of the parking attendant take special care in helping us park neatly in the narrow slot. He needlessly gave us a big smile and greeted us in “chust Urdu”. The doorkeeper, with a noticeable moustache and dressed like a Darbari attendant of a Sultan, opened the door and mumbled something in Urdu which sounded like a nice greeting too. As you were about to take a table, a couple of helpers arrive from nowhere and helped us settle down.

The Order taker arrives nicely dressed up as the sultan’s chief advisor and proceeded to e explain the cuisines and advise us in our menu selections. As the Sultan’s advisor left with the order, a musician duo approached us and asked us if we prefer to listen to a short version of Darbari Kanada Thumri while we wait for our dinner. Without going down to the details of the experience (oh yes, the food was out of this world too!), I must admit I just loved the experience. A manager approached us as we were waiting for our bill and chatted on the service and the cooking in general and explained that his restaurant is always striving to find new ways of customer satisfaction and of course no one can give him better tips that customers like us! I made up my mind to visit there again and tell my other friends how different this whole experience was.

Sounds familiar? I am sure all of us must have faced similar experiences in day to day situations and get awed by the way some people give words like “customer satisfaction” and “customer care” a new definition. What does it take to make it happen? Customer satisfaction is as simple as doing things for customer in a way that satisfies his needs and exceeds his expectations - which is the surprise element makes him come back – and more surprises you throw at him, more he comes back to be pleasantly surprised! Easy! This is human psychology and the customer is a human too! And finally the act sums up in cross checking with him (feedback) whether he is impressed. We know all this. It’s all in the book, nothing new! But do we always do it? That’s another story, right? So why do we miss the bus sometimes? What is missing?

I noticed as I was coming out of that restaurant in Kolkata, and I saw a small wall hanging the wall beside the exit gate. As the all-mush-Sultan’s Darbari attendant was opening the exit door for us, I quickly strained my eyes to read the wall hanging. It said “We care for our customer and we do it by practice”!

The word “practice” hit me. Something that we believe in and do by practice over and over again becomes something deeply rooted in us. An idea or a strategy doesn’t become a reality unless it is backed by a sustained action which is practiced, perfected and habitualized. Not only it becomes a habit, but it also becomes our way of doing things. It becomes so strong that it becomes a guiding star in whatever we do and how we do. It becomes so ingrained and so obvious one day that even an outsider can “see it”. This “it” is what I call the “Culture” (I am sure, there are better definitions available in books or internet ).

Every organization has a life of its own. Over years of operation, it becomes like a living being. It can be personified in the way it communicates, behaves and does things. In a word, it is “culture” that makes an organization stand out in the crowd. Its culture makes the difference in its becoming a “good” organization or a “great” organization.

Every kid goes through culture lessons of the family from the parents. When I was young, my parents used to tell me to choose friends with care, from good cultural background. It seems to be so important, almost like a measurement criteria of a kid’s would be friend! Not that a kid is technically equipped with choose friends with such finesse, but the lessons to catch the “good cultural traits” in a person were unforgettable!

If you look at IBM’s website, there is a printed “Culture statement” like the following:
IBM has a performance-based culture that talented people find very attractive. Employees share a real sense of community. We work in a culture that prizes intelligence and innovation. You will find that you really are working with some of the brightest and the best people around in a company that has complete trust in you and your capabilities.

I was in IBM for three years from 1998 December to 2001 December and experienced a lot of the above mentioned cultural traits along with other “hidden traits” which only an employee will know. There may be slight various in the last 6-7 years, but then cultural aspects don’t change drastically over the years for a large behemoth like IBM. The traits also differ slightly from city to city and even country to country. I traveled to various offices of IBM, my base offices in Bangalore and others in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi. I also noticed zonal cultural variations when I closely interacted with IBM-ers of Australia, Singapore, Thailand, USA and Great Britain.

A common thing that however struck me in most of the conversations, particularly with senior IBM pros, is that, they are all very business like. Something that I termed as extremely lifeless during my early days in IBM, particularly as I was coming from a very vibrant, young and lively atmosphere of Tata Consultancy Services. I used to find the IBM characteristics as mature and business like, almost too robotic for my comfort. But then the success of a giant depends on mature culture – and these traits were even visible in the processes of IBM.

Right in the 1st week of joining IBM as the Business Partner program manager, I was sitting in the round table of Services strategy discussions, accompanying my first boss in IBM, and other department heads with Pawan Kumar, The IBM India president. Pawan was one of the big shots of nineties in the IT industry and was a big gun in TCS before he joined IBM. In TCS we would not dream of calling our CEO Ramdorai by first name. Despite the youngish charm of TCS culture, the TATA flagship IT company had this aura of royalty about it.

Desperate to create an impression in my first meeting, I had an extremely valid point to make my maiden entry into the discussion. I looked at Pawan and started enthusiastically with “Sir, I think…”, a few words and he nodded kindly at me, said “Pawan!” In IBM, ever one is called by first name, even a fresher calls the bid boss by the first name.

This points out to an open culture, which is partially true in IBM with standard red tape arrangements as in any other giant organization. Open culture is something which lot of companies preach and practice – but in IBM, as I found out through my experiences, it also talks about a western concept of “human value” - that whether you are young or old, experienced or not, a GM or a trainee – you are respected as a human being first and everyone is equal in that respect. A very simple point – so simple, that we almost overlook it. So who says office culture cannot influence you!?