12 MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2010, DELHI MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2010, DELHI 13

TOMORROW IN BUSINESS OF LIFE BODY & MIND

WORKPLACE MORNING NECTAR DIET DESK
Stay healthy with smoothies Madhuri Ruia on how
and juices that are easy to to manage your food
concoct and effective over the habits if you are a
long term Type A personality

The making of a ‘dedicated team’ Going on a business

If you are looking to innovate, you need to do it full time. Excerpts from a
new book on how to put together a team for this—and the traps to avoid
HEAD OFFICE
APARNA PIRAMAL RAJE trip with the family
If you can’t escape the rat race, club a vacation

THE WORKPLACE
U nderstanding the correlation between innova- ed Teams, the natural tendency is that the pow-
tion and execution is not an easy task for most er center remains the same, even if the need for
organizations. Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trim- a shift is obvious.
and a work trip to spend some time with the family
ble, authors of the popular management book 10
Rules for Strategic Innovators, seek to explore this Trap 4: Assessing performance based on B Y J ULIE W EED
link, including how a dedicated team can help established metrics ·················································
bridge the gap, in their new book The Other Side of Evaluating a company’s performance can be a com-
Innovation. Edited excerpts: plex and analytical process. Still, many H ow can a family preserve time together that normally would
be consumed by work, and even turn it into an adventure

A Dedicated Team is, as the name
suggests, dedicated to the innovation
initiative full time. Here are a few sim-
ple principles for assembling the Dedi-
cated Team:
1. Identify the skills that you need.
2. Hire the best people you can find.
3. Match the organizational model to
the Dedicated Team’s job.
Overall, these principles are straightfor-
ward. Nonetheless, we have seen that
companies frequently violate them. In-
deed, if you are leading an innovation ef-
fort, you will face numerous pressures to
do the wrong thing. If you bow to those The Other Side of
pressures, you won’t build a winning Ded- Innovation: Solving the Trap 5: Failing to create a distinct
icated Team. And your initiative will fail.
We examine seven common mistakes.
companies want every employee to
think about performance every day.
Therefore, they simplify. The members
of the Dedicated Team will talk fre-
quently about how things are going and
the conversations will naturally gravi-
tate to the company’s most dominant
performance metrics. Even if the con-
versations are casual, they can have a
dramatic impact on how the Dedicated
Team behaves. Therefore, you must be
sure that you identify the performance
metrics that matter most for your specif-
ic innovation initiative.
STRATEGIST
and save money? They can combine a family vacation with a par-
ent’s business trip. With budget restrictions in place in many
homes and businesses across the country, some travellers are us-
ing one trip to fulfil multiple needs.
According to a 2008 study by Egencia, the corporate travel arm of
Expedia, 59% of business travellers have had friends or family join
them on a trip so they could spend free time together.
Andy Palmer, a co-founder of Vertica Systems and global
head of software engineering at the Novartis Institutes for Bio-
Medical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, combines
WPP chief Martin Sorrell’s views on workspaces may seem contradictory, but they business travel with family time whenever he can. “I hate travel-
ling away from my family,” says Palmer, who lives in New
make perfect sense in the larger scheme of things Hampshire, “so having any of them with me is a million per cent
better.” Last spring Palmer’s wife, Amy, and their four children
accompanied him to Basel, Switzerland, when he had work at

Trap 1: Having a bias for insiders

Execution Challenge
By Vijay
Govindarajan and
Chris Trimble,
culture
One of the clearest windows into a
company’s culture is its collection of
frequently told stories about what
S ir Martin Sorrell, the chief ex-
ecutive of WPP, is bending the
cardinal rules of Head Office,
with characteristic Napoleonic au-
thority. He will not permit even a
the Novartis headquarters.
His family “ate and toured” while he worked during the day,
and they all regrouped to dine together in the evening. The chil-
dren appreciated seeing where their father had to go so frequent-
ly. “He wasn’t calling from a black hole after that—they could
By far the most common pitfall is choos- Harvard Business makes the company great. These sto- peep into his private offices, as he imagine the setting
ing too many internal transfers and too Press, ries are powerful for the Performance prefers to guard his privacy. He where he was,” says
few outside hires. There are several rea- 220 pages, `695. Engine (the rest of the company). But merely deigns to admit that he is a Amy Palmer.
sons for the bias: they can also shape behaviors within “big hoarder, with paraphernalia, Lois Howes, who
u Pride. Confident leaders in accomplished com- the Dedicated Team, even when the Dedicated Team such as the Superman suit my peers works at Superior
panies naturally believe that they can get the job has objectives that are inconsistent with the implied gave to me 10 years ago”. So we meet Travel, in Freeport,
done with the people they have. lessons of the company folklore. Therefore, you him in a rather bland conference PHOTOGRAPHS BY BHASKAR DASGUPTA New York, says she
u Familiarity. Most people making hiring decisions should always take the explicit step of examining the room, on the ground floor of the No­nonsense outlook: (clock­ has seen an in-
intuitively think about people they know before company’s culture and making conscious choices central London corporate offices of wise from above) Martin crease in travellers
thinking about the skills they need. about what elements of the culture the Dedicated one of the world’s largest advertising Sorrell at the WPP office’s combining work
u Comfort. Hiring an outsider, especially for an influ- Team should adopt. and marketing services groups. conference room in London; and vacation, and
ential position, portends change and feels threatening. Although we are denied the view the bright yellow front door often makes those
u Expedience. Finding and transferring someone Trap 6: Using existing processes from his own workplace, I am some- looks attractive and arrangements for
from the inside is usually faster. Performance Engines are skilled at codifying what mollified when he shares his welcoming, but the actual her clients. Recent-
u Compensation norms. Recruiting an outsider each step in business processes and managing views on workplaces. Sorrell is the entrance is tucked under ly she helped three
can be a particularly difficult challenge when the in- them for maximum efficiency. Dedicated Teams, only CEO, in my experience, to have an archway, around the different sets of
novation effort takes a company into an arena in by nature, are faced with the difficult task of in- drawn a diagram of an office layout, corner; a map of all the travellers—going to
which its established and entrenched compensa- venting new processes. When the processes look and included it in the company’s companies under the Istanbul, Seattle
tion policies no longer make sense. similar, it is tempting to simply copy the Perfor- annual report, with a detailed de- WPP banner; and and Savannah,
u A desire to give attractive opportunities to your mance Engine. However, if the identical process scription of its particular merits Sorrell’s office—a set of two Georgia—extend
own employees. Hiring an outsider for a much- would truly work, then that portion of the initia- (page 27 of the agency’s 1995 annu- converted, pre­1930s’ town their work trips for
sought-after position can disappoint and demoti- tive should have been assigned to the Perfor- al report has a diagram of the floor houses—is in London’s some sightseeing.
vate existing employees. mance Engine. There is never a situation in plan of a WPP agency in Buenos Mayfair area. “I had a couple
which the Dedicated Team should duplicate a Aires, included alongside a note on of married teachers
Trap 2: Adopting existing formal definitions of Performance Engine process. the evolution of organization struc- from New York go-
roles and responsibilities tures). Unlike many in his position, ing to a convention
u Use new and unfamiliar titles. A new title en- Trap 7: Succumbing to the tyranny of conformance he has apparently dwelt on the rela- in Seattle this sum- Working holiday: Experienced business travel­
courages people to rethink their roles and responsi- In human resources, finance, and information tech- tionship between workplaces and mer and I booked lers advise checking with a manager first.
bilities from scratch and to make an explicit effort to nology in particular, rigidly enforced standardiza- working styles, and has arrived at them on an Alaska
explain their roles to others. tion can be dangerous to Dedicated Teams. Support some conclusions on the business cruise,” she says. “If their work hadn’t paid for their airfare to get
u Write new job descriptions. Dedicated Teams function leaders who are intent on maximizing effi- impact of architecture and design. out west, they couldn’t have afforded it.”
face a great deal of uncertainty, so new job descrip- ciency at all costs will make it nearly impossible for a cies—reflecting Sorrell’s pragma- building as JWT, followed, for many cal dimensions of individual agen- Tacking personal time on to a work trip is a way to visit a place
tions are likely to be vague. The purpose of the exer- Dedicated Team to overcome organizational mem- Contradictory views tism—rather than any desire to years, by one in the same buildings cies, and unlike most chief execu- you wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and to share that experience
cise, however, is not to write accurate and detailed ory. You must insist on being treated as an exception When you first hear him out, his build an iconic building for the as Ogilvy and Mather, a rival agency tives, has made it his business to with your family, she adds. When Mary Sorensen of Seattle real-
descriptions. It is to eliminate past knowledge about in these areas. views on the workplace appear con- global headquarters. that WPP acquired in 1989. WPP in correlate workplace design with ized that her husband, Stan, would be taking a business trip to Par-
how work is divided between individuals. tradictory. The location for Sorrell’s London New York now occupies space in the business issues. “The biggest prob- is at the same time that their children were on spring break, she
u Create a separate physical space for the Dedi- Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com The parent company WPP’s own office, 27 Farm Street, is a set of two offices that earlier belonged to TNS, lem in our business is getting people sprang into action and rented an apartment there for 10 days. “We
cated Team. In the ideal situation, members of the offices are remarkably low-key, but converted, pre-1930s’ town houses, a market research firm and recent to work together,” he analyses. The took the opportunity to transport our life to France,” she says. After
Dedicated Team should all move from their existing its member agencies operate from on a quiet road off Berkeley Square, acquisition. open-plan Buenos Aires office breakfast, Sorensen and her sons, ages 11 and 9, would hop on to
desks into one shared space. Vijay Govindarajan tells us what motivated him to write this inspiring, often award-winning Mayfair’s prestigious centrepiece. It It is this fiscal discipline that has al- found its way into the WPP’s annual the metro and explore the city. Along with visits to the Louvre and
book, at www.livemint.com/innovators.htm workplaces, which occupy more is spectacularly unassuming. The lowed him to successfully create and report because he realized that tear- Notre Dame, they shopped at the local food market, hung their
Trap 3: Reinforcing the dominance of than 23.7 million sq. ft of real estate bright yellow front door attracts operate a monolithic empire in an in- ing down walls was a valuable archi- laundry out to dry and visited a bakery every day to practise their
performance engine power centers www.livemint.com globally and cost the group $1 bil- passers-by, but the actual entrance dustry earlier dominated by individu- tectural device to foster collabora- French phrases with the owner. “The boys had a wonderful taste of
When creating new subgroups such as Dedicat- lion (around `4,680 crore now) of is tucked under an archway, around al fiefdoms and small hot-shops. This tion, which would move companies what it was like to live in another city,” she says.
its annual combined revenue of the corner, which has better access pragmatism is underlined by Sorrell’s towards a “networked organization Not everyone, however, is comfortable with the idea of bringing
$13.6 billion. “In a business where to the space. If anything, the build- no-nonsense attitude towards the ad- structure”, rather than traditional, their family along on a trip, perhaps fearing that their supervisor
our second biggest investment is ing itself is a metaphor for Sorrell’s vertising and marketing services in- “siloed” divisional units. will think they are slacking off. Experienced business travellers
property it’s important,” qualifies approach to his business. This hy- dustry, which he says “failed to ac- Since then, WPP has devised a advise checking with a manager. Companies are generally fine
CAREER CALENDAR Sorrell, as he describes a range of
creative spaces, from “Grey’s won-
brid of two town houses merged
into one operating space is analo-
knowledge, or ever acknowledge, that
it was a business”, prior to his consol-
Space Programme—an online plat-
form where agencies within the net-
with the idea if employees don’t charge any family expenses to
their employer, and can meet all the professional requirements of
Indian Institute of Management methods, public systems. For details, tute’s short­term evening derful new building in Union gous to the multi-bodied WPP, a idation spree. work can confidentially share best the trip. And extending the trip over a Saturday night may even
(IIM), Ahmedabad log on to www.iimahd.ernet.in courses in fashion and clothing Square” to another WPP agency that conglomerate of more than 150 practices in managing real estate, decrease the airfare the company is paying.
Admissions are open for the institute’s Last date: To submit admission technology, clothing production operates from a converted railway agencies, stacked together by acqui- Sustainable creativity through creative, cost-effective use In the Sorensens’ case, Sorensen’s company paid for his plane
fellow programme in management forms, 30 November technology, garment export yard in Zurich. sition over the years. Our conversation on workplaces of space. In keeping with the cli- tickets and all his meals, and offered a per diem rate for lodging
(FPM) doctoral programme. FPM pro­ merchandising management, foot­ Equally, he proclaims that The office’s earlier occupant was also captures another pronounced mate change zeitgeist, Sorrell also which the family put towards the apartment rental.
vides the skills to identify and research National Institute of Fashion wear designing and production “when you walk into the front door the regional head of European oper- Sorrell trait—the ability to grasp lists energy-efficient buildings as a above us, is probably about the relations are usually embodied in a As travellers try to fulfil different objectives, however, tensions can
complex management issues. It aims to Technology technology, fashion knitwear and (of WPP), the last thing you should ations of J Walter Thompson (JWT), big-picture ideas (such as the role of focus area in reducing waste, citing same size as the conference room. single individual. For Sorrell, cor- rear up. The parent who is there on the job may need to entertain
develop top quality researchers and Admissions are open to the insti­ production technology, fashion retail think is that this is the headquar- the first major WPP acquisition in the parent company versus the role the ubiquitous phrase of “green This apparent contradiction par- porate ambition is clearly not de- clients in the evening, or catch up on email after a day spent in meet-
faculty resources for leading academic management, computer­aided ters of the largest advertising and 1987. After the takeover, Sorrell con- of the individual agency), and to business is good business”. allels Sorrell’s curious role within fined merely by the amount of indi- ings, but the family may be eager to go out. Expectations should be
institutes, management experts and designing for footwear, leather marketing services company in cluded that it made more sense for translate them into practical detail WPP. He is the founder of the glob- vidual shareholding, or the size of set before departure, including each day’s business obligations as
thinkers for business organizations, goods designing and production the world”. He clarifies the dichot- JWT’s regional head to be based at (tangible bricks and mortar offices). Growth plans al conglomerate, its chief executive, the chief executive’s office. well as when there will be time for recreation and family time.
industry, government and society. The technology. For details, log on to omy by pointing out that the role the agency’s main offices in Berke- Just as Sorrell maintains finan- Our conversation on workplace is the face of the parent brand, and To reduce the stress, business travellers say they try to separate
programme is available in the following www.nift.ac.in of the parent company is a staff ley Square, a few minutes away, and cial conservatism for the parent timely. WPP celebrated its 25th an- yet only a minority (albeit wealthy) Aparna Piramal Raje, a director of their activities as much as possible. They don’t make business
areas of specialization: agriculture, busi­ Last Date: To submit admission function, not an operational, reve- that the Farm Street offices were company, he recognizes that an in- niversary in May and Sorrell’s jour- shareholder, with less than 2% BP Ergo, meets heads of organiza- calls from museum galleries. Or they have their families join
ness policy, economics, finance and forms, 10 September nue-producing role, and must better utilized for WPP’s corporate spiring workplace can stimulate ney towards global domination be- ownership of the company. His po- tions every month to investigate the them at the tail end of the trip and extend their time at the desti-
accounting, computer and information therefore remain lean, eschewing headquarters. In New York, where the creativity that is the lifeline of gan with “two people in a room the sition is especially unusual for ob- connections between their workspac- nation for a few more days.
systems, marketing, organizational Write to us at lavish excesses. Sorrell spends half his time, WPP’s WPP agencies, remarking that size of this conference room”, as he servers accustomed to India’s pro- es and working styles.
behaviour, production and quantitative businessoflife@livemint.com WPP’s offices have been strictly office footprint has similarly kept “there is a correlation between of- has often said earlier. Twenty-five moter-driven business environ- ©2010/THE NEW YORK TIMES
carved out of the existing spaces oc- pace with its acquisitions. His first fice plan and energy”. years and 138,000 employees later, ment, where company manage- Write to us at
cupied by other WPP group agen- New York office was in the same Sorrell is well aware of the physi- his personal office, on the floor ment, ownership and public businessoflife@livemint.com Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com