Caselet 2 –Research Methodology
Mind Tree which was founded in
1999 in India by a group of IT professionals who wanted to chart a somewhat
distinctive path. Today, it has a top line of $269 million and is rated as one
of the most promising mid-sized IT services companies. Creditable as that is,
Mind Tree does not want to be just that. There is an element of serendipity
about what it has been doing over the last year. In 2008, it designated one of
its founders Subroto Bagchi “Gardener’, a gimmicky signal, intended to declare
that he was moving out of the day-today running of the company to nurture
talent which run the company in the future. He has now a report card ready on a
year as gardener. During this one year, ha has also spent around 45 days
travelling round the world talking to clients and prospective ones which has
yield remarkable insights into what firms are doing in these traumatic times.
Lastly, Mind Tree as a whole has spent the last year going through the exercise
of redefining its mission statement and vision for the next five years. Quite
fortuitously these processes have come together with a unifying thread,
presenting a coherent big picture. Mind Tree wants to seed the future while
still young, and executive chairman Ashok Soota has declared that by 2020, it
will be led by a non-founder. So a year ago the gardener Bagchi set out to
‘touch’ 100 top people in the organization, with a goal of doing 50 in a year
so as to eventually identify the top 20 by 2015, from among them will emerge
not just the leader but a team of ten who would eventually, as group heads,
deliver $200 million of turnover each. That will give a turnover of $2 billion.
To put it in perspective, one one VC-funded company, which has not closed or
been bought over, has been able to get to $2 billion and that is Google. But to
get there it has to be periodically redefine its mission (why we exist) and its
vision—measurable goals for the next five years. Its redefined mission is built
around “successful customers, happy people, and innovative solution”. Its new
vision targets a turnover of $1 billion by 2014. It wants to be among the
globally 20 most profitable IT services companies an also among the 20 globally
most admired ones. Admired in terms of customer satisfaction (pay for the
course), people practices (creditable), knowledge management (exciting) and
corporate governance (the Enron-Satyam effect). The really interesting bit
about Mind Tree in the last one year is what Bagchi has been up to. He has been embedding himself in the 50
lives, working in a personal private continuum, making it a rich learning
process “which has helped connects so many dots”. Of the hundred who will be
engaged, may be 50 will leave, of them 25 may better themselves only marginally,
and from the remaining 25 ten will emerge who will carry the company forward.
Questions :
Each question carries 10 marks.
1. What
do you analyses as the main reason behind the success of Mind Tree ?
2. Do
you think that redefining the mission statement shows the lacunae on the part
of the founder members of an organisation? Why ?
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