MINDTREE: A Community of Communities

Case Question: 1) What are the key elements of MindTrees approach to knowledge management? How effective are they? Ans: MindTree is a $278 million, mid-sized global IT Solutions Company with 10,000 MindTree Minds (employees) and customers in 19 countries. For more than twelve years, MindTree has provided its customers IT, Knowledge, and R&D services with technology enabled solutions. Knowledge management at MindTree reflects MindTrees core values: Caring, Learning, Achieving, Sharing, and Social Responsibilities (CLASS). Its mission is to improve customers and employees satisfaction. KM approach at MindTree is human centric, which helps people perform their jobs better while developing themselves. This is achieved by enabling knowledge creation, environment, processes, practices and systems, change, and shift in mindset. MindTree encourages employees to self-organize and collaborate through communities of practice. The effectiveness of MindTrees KM initiatives is commendable. For knowledge management initiatives to be successful, employee participation is of utmost importance. In MindTree's case the numbers speak for itself. A high percentage of employees participating in communities cannot happen without the organization providing adequate support for these communities to flourish. The ideas implemented by MindTree, which were generated from Neuron, Community of Practices, and many other systems have resulted in good amounts of cost reduction, reusability, multiple patents, and process improvements. The CLASS value system helped the recruitment team in selecting candidates who are best inclined to the organizations objectives. This has in turn greatly reduced the attrition rate of MindTree and made 90% of the employees perform in compliance with the companys values.

2) How does MindTree create, develop, and sustain communities of practice? What role do they play at the company? Ans: MindTree strongly supports a large number of communities of practice. Within the organization, there are more than 55 communities, and almost 75% of its employees are members of at least one community. Essentially, the communities are meant for knowledge sharing and collaboration. The communities are independent of the organizations chart, as they are self-created and managed by volunteers who are called champions. Any employee can start a community of an interest, and he/she would have to find others with the same interest to join the community. Once created, the company wouldnt look at that startup community as of value unless it is evaluated against a four-stage maturity model. The first stage is a community of interest, where only knowledge sharing and collaboration exists. Once physical interactions among the participants take place, the community goes to the next level, competency building.

The capability building level concerns creating an impact by providing solutions across other organizational entities. The highest maturity level, capacity building, is reached when a community gets knowledge contribution from internal and external resources. Communities are developed and sustained by their champions, as they set goals and ensure their achievements. Though it is a challenging task for champions, the top management devotes time and support by setting quarterly feedback sessions, where champions meet other community champions as well as the top management to discuss and exchange ideas. These communities play a significant role in MindTree. Innovative ideas are at the top of the list of benefits at the maturity level. It can also be seen in the 5*50 initiative, where it wouldnt be possible without the existence of such communities. In most cases, the communities of practice provide plenty of opportunities for brainstorming, problem solving, techniques sharing, lessons learned, and keep up with the market trends. 3) How (if at all) does the 5*50 initiative alter the roles and responsibilities of the knowledge management function? What changes (if any) would you propose? Ans: Knowledge Managements initial function was to extend innovation and collaboration by including customers inputs and academic institutes research finding. KM approach at MindTree is human centric, which helps people perform their jobs better while developing themselves. This is achieved by enabling knowledge creation, environment, processes, practices and systems, change, and shift in mindset. MindTree encourages employees to self-organize and collaborate through communities of practice. However 5*50 initiative alters the role of KM from organizing and collaborating function to supporting and assisting function. KM would help in ideation process and would provide critical IT support. It will now focus on building a culture of ideation in the company and improve the delivery process. Assisting with business planning as opposed to just qualitative approach. I feel that its time for KM to mature and move toward next step and 5*50 initiative is a way to go forward. However it should not be limited to 5*50 initiative and should not just be a supportive function alone. It should continue to bring out new ideas and innovation which can be implemented based upon the success of 5*50 initiative. KM should be developed to give MindTree an intangible advantage against its competitors which will help in achieving MindTree from moving from Mid-sized IT company to 1 billion $ IT company.