MindTree is a mid-sized 278 million Indian Information Technology firm known for its knowledge management practices, strong culture and values, and collaborative communities. Its strategy is to become a company that is consulting-led in the IT services business and intellectual property led in the R&D-services business. Currently the CEO of the firm has set an ambitious goal of becoming a $1 billion company by 2014. This requires that employees innovate and create new businesses.

How would you characterize the culture of MindTree?

People-Centric:

In an industry where all firms are assumed to possess homogenous skills, MindTree knew that, in order to succeed, it had to differentiate itself from its competitors. The company realized that culture and values were key elements that could be used as “Soft Differentiators.” Also, being a multicultural company, MindTree realized that it could not possibly manage all the different cultures efficiently. Instead, it decided to develop a common set of values which could be shared by people from across different cultures. The company has always strived to become an ’emotionally bonded organization.’ In this regard, the culture of MindTree can be characterized as a people-centric culture.

Value-Driven:

According to the MindTree senior management, “Every MindTree mind is driven by CLASS – Caring, Learning, Achieving, Sharing, and Social Responsibility.” From this, it is evident that MindTree wanted to create a culture rich in innovation and creativity. MindTree’s emphasis on aspects such as High achievement orientation and high caring further shows that MindTree aimed to promote a culture of high performance, stakeholder responsibility, cooperation and corporate citizenship.

Transparent and Participative:

Transparency and rich, frequent communication were cornerstones of the culture. Mindtree incorporated participative decision-making by promoting openness across organizational levels. This resulted in the company’s 95-95-95 principle, which stated that 95% of the people should have 95% of the information 95% of the time.

How has this culture been created and institutionalized?

At MindTree, the management’s belief that ‘values drive behaviour and behaviour drives results’ was at the heart of all decision-making processes.

Internalizing CLASS Values:

Mindtree sought to internalize the CLASS values by integrating them into its recruitment, recognition, and reward systems. The process started right from hiring of a new employee, whereby the candidates were assessed on whether they would be a good fit in the organization’s culture. New employees then participated in extensive sessions with the senior management, which emphasized the importance of these values in the company’s culture. The process continued with performance appraisals, where each value had a clear metric and 40% weight was assigned to performance against these values. The success of MindTree’s endeavours to internalize the CLASS values can be seen from the fact that 90% of the senior leaders voluntarily asked for 360o feedback on how well they were complying with the company values.

Other initiatives like rechristening the HR dept. as the ‘people function’ and giving stock options to its employees, have also helped MindTree in building and promoting its culture among its employees.

Socialization Tactics:

MindTree has also employed the use of several socialization tactics to foster and institutionalize its culture among its employees. When a new employee joins MindTree, she is given explicit information about the sequence in which she will perform new activities or occ