“The corporate world is not for me …”
My first assignment as CEO was very tumultuous in the beginning.
When I joined Gallup, I was skeptical of whether I would be able to grow the business or not. If the revenue was static for a decade, profits may have disappeared. The parent must be funding the Indian operations. Many people who could find jobs would have quit. When I joined, I found that most of my assumptions were true.
Of course, when you don’t grow, people don’t stick to you.
But how to make the growth happen was a lingering question.
On my 3rd day, I was having dinner with the global CFO in the USA. I could barely eat anything from the delicious layout. What he said could be summarized in one sentence, “You are an expensive resource. If you don’t turn this around in one year, we will ask you to leave.”
I kept asking myself “What should I leverage?”
In the mid-2000s the number of companies that valued and could afford employee engagement was about 300. We had about 250 clients. With the very high-cost structure of Gallup, growth through client acquisition was not possible.
Improving the average revenue per client required taking the interventions to a higher level. In contrast to my previous job where I worked with people from the top six MBA schools only, most of the talent seemed ordinary. I was excited about the science of Gallup.
When I returned from the US, I found my team was very passionate about Gallup science and their work irrespective of qualifications, experience, role, and position. They respected each other’s jobs.
I leveraged the passion of my team. We created a shared vision to grow the revenue two-fold. This growth would result in better compensation and a better life for all. We cajoled their passion to create workplaces for clients who were engaged and leveraged hashtag#strengths.
I soon realized the power of passion as ordinary teams delivered extraordinary results. We grew 2.5 times in 1 year.
hashtag#Passion for work and organization scored way above qualification, intelligence, or experience.
Therefore, passion is a critical behavior in our employee engagement model.
Last week we discussed how purpose of Tata Group led to hashtag#retention and hashtag#performance. Our science quantitatively demonstrates that hashtag#Purpose and hashtag#Passion determine the propensity of people to perform and stay with the organization.