Unique Nokia culture in its heyday

Shiv Shivakumar

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 six elements of his 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 for putting their values ​​into practice. 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 do something that would harm Nokia?” Some might call it high trust, others might call it public trust. You might call me ignorant.

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. There were no consequences for speaking out. They were judged on their influence in the workplace. 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.

Four. Premium for culture: In a meeting with a global board in 2006, I spoke about India’s hot talent market and how 15% or more salary increases 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.

Five. Reverse mentoring and responsiveness: Nokia had policies that were far ahead of their time. In 2009 she introduced working from home and in 2010 she introduced open offices. Even global CEOs don’t have cabins, and in 2009 they introduced hot desks and flexible offices. An era of choice. When Nokia was pivoting to Internet services, young, talented and knowledgeable managers at middle and lower levels were conducting reverse mentoring to senior managers. So, in 2010, Zairus Master, Navdeep he received reverse guidance from Manaktala, Prashant his Dogra and 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: 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 we achieved great results, global CEOs said, “Celebrate a little and spend the next 59 minutes planning for your next success.” Nokia has a low-power telecommunications culture, and we didn’t do elaborate PowerPoint presentations. I never used a PPT with a global CEO during my entire career with him. He would ask for a page or two and we would discuss it on the plane or over tea or dinner. It was the same with the global board presentation. We had to send a two-page memo to be discussed. There was no possibility of hiding it behind slides.

(Shiv Shivakumar is an Operating Partner at Advent International. He led Nokia India from 2006 to 2011 and served as Senior Vice President, Emerging Markets from 2011 to 2013)