Syntel Inc. was about to be left in the
dust.
It was about 10 years ago, during the technology boom of the 1990s, and
everything in the technology solutions field
was going global. Local IT shops were drying up, replaced by large, well-connected
companies with the clout to provide their
customers with a wide array of technology
services.
In much the same way that neighborhood
five-and-dime stores were being pushed out
by big-box retailers, small companies like
Syntel were finding their share of the market
growing smaller and smaller each quarter.
Bharat Desai, Syntel’s co-founder chairman and CEO, faced a decision: Stay small
and hope the market would still find a
place for his company, or ditch the small
talk and begin to rapidly scale the company’s capabilities.
It didn’t take long for Desai to come to
the conclusion that a complete corporate
makeover was the only way for Syntel to
survive.
Launching a global expansion plan, quite
obviously, doesn’t happen overnight. At
first, Desai’s plan was to phase in a few
new offerings here and there while still
keeping the old business model intact.
It didn’t take long for Desai to realize that
riding the fence between old and new wasn’t going to work.
“We figured out that the two business models have very different success factors,” he
says. “Some of them were actually at odds
with each other. You can only drive one
culture successfully in a company, so we
decided that globalization was the future.”
It was at that point Desai realized exactly
how radical of a mindset shift such a move
was going to require. In any overhaul, the
momentum has to start at the top. If those
in upper management don’t believe in what
is about to happen, they can’t expect anyone else in the company to buy in.
Desai began by laying out the need for
change to every employee, presenting statistical evidence that showed in what direction the market appeared poised to move.
“I showed them how the services economy would globalize and what that meant,
why our clients were going to embrace it,
what some of the macro drivers were that
are compelling businesses to move in that
direction and how our roles would change
as a result of that,” he says.
During the first year to year and a half,
Desai and his leadership team tried to get
as many people on board as possible. In
any change situation, there will be people
who jump on board right away, others who
need some more convincing and some
who just aren’t going to budge.
When the leader of a company thinks
employees aren’t going to want to hear
what he or she says, the temptation might
be to dance around the topic, use vague
language and avoid definitive statements.
Desai says that’s the worst thing you can
do, especially in a time of change. If you
aren’t straightforward with your employees, you will lose their trust. And if you lose
their trust, you won’t have much else.
“The fundamental and most important
thing a leader has to have is trust,” he says.
“If you cannot inspire and win trust, you
cannot be effective as a leader. It doesn’t
matter what the message is. People will see
right through it if you aren’t telling the
whole truth.”
In the months after announcing Syntel’s
new direction, Desai embarked on a series
of town-hall meetings across the country
where he reinforced the need for change.
He augmented his in-person communication with a series of print and electronic
messages.
“My goal was to meet every single employee in some form or another,” Desai says.
“We sent out communications, we built
posters, rolled those out. We did e-mails; we
did focus groups. They had to hear it from
me, and they had to have the chance to ask
questions and internalize the methods.”
Change can be a complicated, and sometimes messy, process. Any time you steer
your company into uncharted waters, a
degree of trial and error is going to be
involved.
It’s the biggest reason why Desai wanted
to make adaptability a permanent part of
Syntel. He and his leadership team spent
many months trying to find employees and
managers who could spur change.
Syntel has successfully performed its
transition to a global technology solutions
provider, with more than 10,000 worldwide
employees and $337 million in 2007 revenue. But Desai wants to see to it that
Syntel is never again in a change-or-die situation like it was a decade ago.
HOW TO REACH: Syntel Inc., www.syntelinc.com
