Book Summary — HR Lessons from Hindustan Unilever
I first came across Sudhir Sitapati with ‘The CEO Factory’, an insightful and entertaining book on HUL, its marketing, and leadership practices. Sudhir has written a bunch of more books dealing with several realms of management in a mini blockbuster series offered by Juggernaut. He is probably the reason I intend to purchase the Juggernaut Reader’s Club subscription as the gamut isn’t available anywhere else.
This post is a summary of HR Lessons from Hindustan Unilever and aims to be a compendium of Sitapati’s brilliant insights. At a “Who Moved My Cheese” length, the book is concise and profound. It is a fairly easy read. Recommended for anyone with organizational know-how or looking for relatable reading in the domain.
Sudhir begins with the six principles of the HUL way of people management as –
- Get them early — Summer Internship Programme
- Train them well — The Management Trainee Stint — Often referring to an education rural (grassroots) tenure
- Build careers — Starting on the field, adding the right breadth and depth ensuring continuity, adding fresh challenges for career progression and mentoring by leaders to build future leaders
- Encourage diversity — The author admits to the lack of diversity at HUL, but further mentions efforts at retaining women folks at mid-career with a ‘liberal’ maternity policy and even divides the workforce into 3 categories -Mavericks, Company Men, and Rogues — and explains how it pans out at work.
- Mavericks are the creators. They tend to be weak team players, rebellious but also genuine value creators, and people with very high integrity.
- Company Men are rigorous, loyal, process-driven team players, who also exhibit high integrity.
- Rogues are high energy, creative and achievement-oriented but put short-term self-interest ahead of long-term company goals. They are the destroyers of companies.
I didn’t seem to agree with much, but it was a fun classification of the pedigree nonetheless.
- Reward performance — Objective goals for performance, System that measures and rates, and Promotions based on rating, not biases. Particularly liked the idea of setting up 3+1 goals set — 3 business and 1 personal development goal
- Instill values — Ethics and Morality — Employee is our employee till he is our employee
He mentions the criteria for board appointments as the 3 C-s –
- Contribution
- Competence
- Character
Here he emphasizes that the last takes precedence over the first two.
Further, Sudhir elaborates on HUL’s triple metrics of calibre based on and the career leaves on which they are most important –
- Judgement — Senior Levels
- Drive — Junior Management
- Influence — Middle Management
Judgement is the ability to make the right decisions. He mentions how this is especially important at a higher level and should ideally stem from a coherent intuition and logical agreement.
Drive is the ability and desire to get things done. He mentions how hard work if not output-oriented, is a bias for activity and not for action. I found myself in absolute agreement, albeit guiltily, as he mentioned intellectuals spending their time fashioning a great solution, but faltering when the time came to action on it.
Influence is getting the world to see your point of view. Often through collaboration and teamwork, it emphasized the ability to influence the decisions of others.
Sudhir mentioned Group Discussion as an ability to gauge an individual’s ability to influence more than contribute and while it seems rather intuitive in hindsight, I momentarily paused and marveled as I read, at how I had not thought of that before. He also mentions how self-reflective candidates who are open about their vulnerabilities make for leaders with honest dealings. As a reader, one with a corporate career, I like reading pieces stressing emotional intelligence at work and this one does to the T.
The book is replete with many anecdotes that engage the readers and affirm the principles on which both HUL and the book is based.
My favourite bit from the book was on disengaging a manager for poor performance. Sudhir mentions how the decision should be taken with absolute ruthlessness in the interest of the company, but it should be executed with empathy and compassion — notices, and outplacement support such that it doesn’t sever one’s self-esteem. As we just ended a bullish 2020, that saw a record number of separations, this bit on decisions and emotions is extremely poignant.
