Steve Hamm's Bangalore Tiger

"Bangalore Tiger" is hard to read. To get the feeling just imagine reading a 300-page corporate brochure - the usual pompous style and "the world's leading" attitude.

Consider this passage: "These were members of the intrepid band that planted the seeds of a global tech powerhouse in a small vegetable company in western India"

Wow, I can imagine Steve Hamm at his desk with his hot mug of coffee and his thesaurus, searching for the one word that could only communicate all the bravery and merit of the Wipro personnel.

In fact, "Bangalore Tiger" is dangerous. Because many will misinterpret it as the India success story. While somebody might have had successful projects in India, too often the stories about Indian programmers send shivers down my spine.

However, if we cut out all the pretentious writing (that spans to nearly two thirds of the book)we will actually squeeze out some potentially interesting facts:

1.
Wipro invests in establishing a culture of high productivity. If you are not ready to be assessed against your scorecard goals every month, then you don't belong here. This is the Wipro Way : 6-day working week, 1 am work calls, high performance. Off course this kind of schedule is not going to work in US companies and especially in European ones. But what we can learn here?

Whatever the focus is ( productivity, trust or communication) big investments in setting up a corporate culture makes sense.

2.
Wipro picks up new approaches to management and measurement as quickly as they come out. The company fires up quick implementation plan, starts small and assesses the progress rigorously. If it doesn’t work they throw it away. If it does, like 6 Sigma and Lean, they expand the practice. In-house Six Sigma black belts and Toyota Production System experts keep the company up with the latest techniques. To some, however, it might seem like few companies can afford building the whole justify-implement-assess framework from scratch.

What we can learn here is that it never hurts to start small and try new things, if you are able to measure the real cost and value of every initiative. That is, invest in measurement tools and systems so you could experiment and innovate more.

3.

Wipro employees at all levels, from the executive board to the freshman tester, plan their activity monthly. They assess their performance against scorecards and report their progress monthly. And their salaries are calculated in such a way that they are motivated to achieve real results, monthly.

Do you get it? That's right, the whole system is geared towards getting things done and achieving real results.

So what are the lessons we, the companies that have been raised in hothouse conditions, can learn from Wipro's story? The message is quite obvious, yet few stick to it : move fast, take risks, be consistent.

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