HMD just announced that it will launch its own branded smartphone in 2024. This puts a question mark on the survival of the Nokia brand. It also reminded us of what set Nokia apart during its time of excellence. Here are his six elements that are unique to that culture.
1. Values built from the bottom up: In 2008, when Nokia was rebuilding its values, it set up 16 cafes around the world where employees discussed and came up with values that were ultimately presented to the board of directors. All companies decide their values from the top down, but this was not the case with Nokia. Senior managers were evaluated through feedback from multiple sources on their values practices. Feedback can come from anyone you interacted with during the year. 50% of his annual incentives were based on performance and 50% on the behaviors he displayed in living his values.
2. Flat structure, high trust culture: Every organization talks about a flat structure. At Nokia, he had only six levels between Area Sales Manager in India and Global CEO. You had a long rope. It was your choice whether you wanted to swing or hang yourself. You were always being judged by your company on whether you did the right thing. When Nokia India was his $4 billion company, we didn’t have an internal audit department. When I asked that, the global CEO said, “We trust our employees. Why would they ever harm Nokia?” Some might call this high trust, others naivety.
3. Feel free to disagree, but once closed, commit. In any meeting, you can disagree with anyone’s opinion. But once the meeting closed on the principle of 60% agreement, 100% commitment, everyone marched to the same beat. But speaking out had no consequences. They were judged on their influence at work. In 2010, Nokia underwent a global restructuring. At the time, the company had about 870 blogs, and one R&D engineer wrote on his blog, “This reorganization is like rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.” No one reprimanded him or tried to correct him, and he carried on his work in a way that would be unthinkable at other companies.
4. Premium for culture: In a meeting with a global board in 2006, I spoke about India’s hot talent market and how pay increases of 15 percent or more were the norm. The board asked me a simple question and silenced me. “Are you driving a good culture?” What premium are you getting for that culture?” That really changed the way me and my team thought about culture. Ta. The company always believed that you work for the love of the company and its success (maybe the Scandinavian roots). When a company is successful, all components within the ecosystem are successful.
5. Reverse mentoring and responsiveness: Nokia had policies that were far ahead of its time, introducing work from home in 2009 and open offices in 2010. Even global CEOs don’t have cabins, and in 2009 they introduced hot desks and flexible office hours. . When Nokia was pivoting to Internet services, talented and knowledgeable young managers at middle and lower levels were conducting reverse mentoring to senior managers. So, in 2010, Zairus Master, Navdeep received reverse guidance from Manaktala, Prashant and Dogra, among others. To drive agility, we conducted a bimonthly responsiveness survey in which each department and department head was evaluated by everyone in the organization on their contribution to making the organization more agile. Results are shared publicly within your organization without censorship.
6. Humility above all else: One of the institutional warnings on all forums is “never be arrogant.” Nokia wanted its employees to be humble, down-to-earth, and never get carried away. Even when he achieves great results, the global CEO says, “Let’s celebrate a little bit and spend the next 59 minutes planning for the next success.” Nokia had a low-power telecommunications culture and never did his elaborate PowerPoint presentations. During my time there, I never used the Global CEO and his PPT. He would ask for a page or two of his and we would discuss it on the plane or over tea or dinner. The same was true for the global board presentation. He had to send and discuss two pages of notes and there was no possibility of hiding behind slides.
Shiv Shivakumar is an operating partner at Advent International. He headed Nokia India from 2006 until 2011, and from 2011 he served as Senior Vice President, Emerging Markets until 2013.
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