Critical People and Organizational Challenges That Suresh Vasudevan and Paul Whitney Faced at Nimble - Assignment Example

The Critical People and Organizational Challenges That Suresh Vasudevan and Paul Whitney, Along with the Rest of the Senior Team, Faced at Nimble Nimble’s focus from the beginning was to revolutionize the data storage process. They thus wanted to provide their customers with a 2-phase product. The product would cover the aspect of performance by having an accelerator to improve I/O for existing storage systems. They also had the second phase focus on building a primary storage system. The first phase was easy to gain funding to start its production as the product would work for hand in hand with the strong competitors in the market, NetApp and EMC. The second phase fell short of confidence as it would be in competition with the top player in the industry. Other companies had gone bankrupt due to the competition and most funders did not want the risk. However, after a lot of convincing was done, they accepted it. Nimble was experiencing hyper-growth and a strong human resource department was required for it to cater to the needs of the company for the present and future time. However, the hiring of Paul Whitney was a critical step in building a strong human resource leader who would be able to achieve the company’ objective. The company has a recruitment policy and team that has also been handy in hiring talented individuals into the firm together with maintaining the culture of Nimble. 1. *What makes Vasudevan and Whitney unique in terms of a close partnership between a CEO and an HR leader? How does this partnership impact the development and implementation of Nimble’s people Initiatives?* The close relationship between Vasudevan and Whitney is one that is based on improving and maintaining the culture at Nimble. When Vasudevan was made CEO of the company, he was described by Goetz as,” Unlike many leaders, Suresh (Vasudevan) can not only convey a compelling vision, but he’s also a great listener and facilitator who brings the best out of people around him. He created an environment that embraced new talent, while also getting the most from the company’s original executives.” Paul Whitney, on the other hand, had the ability to transform the vision of Mr. Vasudevan into a reality. This is the main reason for the uniqueness in terms of their close relationship. For Paul Whitey to execute the plans in order to for the vision to be transformed into reality, he had to undertake certain responsibilities. Such responsibilities include developing a strategic framework which would help the organization maintain its culture despite the hyper-growth it was about to experience. The framework was also important in preparing the Nimble to become a public company. Their unique partnership helped the company successfully implement the idea of people initiatives. The people initiative is focused around the company’s objectives of supply of talent, culture and systems and infrastructure. Mr. Whitney further tries to ensure that all the workers understand the culture he wanted for the organization by going to where they are and bringing them to his side. He drives his policies by letting the workers understand the culture is theirs without forcing it upon them. This is quite different from what human resource leaders are known for. 2. *How would you describe Nimble’s cultural and organizational DNA?* The marketing strategy employed by Nimble says a lot about its culture and organization. In a market that their competitors are employing a forceful marketing strategy, Nimble has done the opposite. Their focus is on maximizing the customer experience by ensuring the customer is able to enjoy the product they are offering and the benefits associated with the product. Their recruitment practice also says a lot about the composition of the organization. The company works with employee referrals. Current employees who already understand the organization’s value and culture are tasked with making referrals for the company on candidates they believe fit the organization. The original company’s values have changed in order to suit the culture the company wants to instill in its workers. Before Mr. Whitney’s arrival, the company’s values were accountability, innovation, initiative, integrity, listening, teamwork, and collaboration. However according to Mr. Whitney," We wanted to capture the essence of our values but to re-articulate them to make them more absorbable, actionable and memorable.” Later they changed the values to No Jerks, Think Creatively; Make it Happen, and Be Open. The new values would be useful in differentiating Nimble from the other competitors in the market. The values would also be helpful to the workers as they have the dos and don’ts associated with each value and workers could be able to relate well with each other. 3. *What are the specific value-added benefits of the various people initiatives introduced by Whitney since his arrival? Evaluate the initiatives that the Nimble team has put in place. Which initiative is most likely to have the most impact? Why?* The incorporation of managers in the hiring process is a very important initiative by Nimble. The managers are also trained in leadership and thus when involved in the recruitment process is critical in forming the best team to achieve the targets they have been tasked with. Most organizations tend to leave the hiring process to the human resource department. Nimble realized the importance of low-level management being involved in the recruitment process as they were able to conduct the process efficiently and thus involved them. The value-added benefit of this initiative is a reduction in overhead costs that the company would have incurred in training a recruitment team rather than investing in the training of its leaders. Employee referral is another important initiative undertaken by Nimble. For their recruitment, Paul Whitney and Mr. Vasudevan loved the idea of other employees offering referrals of people they believed were suited for the company. The idea was excellent as the company would not have to struggle during interviews to find the right mix of candidates who were suitable for a company. The idea was also suitable for the company to get new employees who already loved the culture the company had and would be easy to fit into the various departments in the company. The value-added benefit of this initiative is the incentive offered by the company which is equal to roughly $3,000 to $4,000 in form of small monetary award or company shares. 4. *What are the potential barriers to Vasudevan and Whitney’s success?* One of the barriers to Vasudevan and Whitney’s success is the different location the company is based in. The company has a presence in 18 different countries with employees from those respective countries. Values in different countries tend to differ. The organization will thus have a tedious task of communicating the company’s values and culture that might seem more suited for the organizations country of origin than to the other countries. As the organization grows, the culture is more likely to have its culture diluted. When a company’s culture is diluted, it is more likely to experience failure as the company will start dying slowly. Oversight is also affected by the vast localities that the company is in. Another barrier to Vasudevan and Whitney’s success is the ability for some of the partners of Nimble to discontinue the partnership they are in. Companies such as NetApp and EMC can decide to start and increase the production of their own flash drive accelerator. Production of a product that has the right capacity and cost-effective performance is the hindrance that is preventing NetApp and EMC from leaving the partnership. If the two firms find a way, they would, in turn, make Nimble obsolete in the market. Branding is another issue for Nimble. As time goes by, businesses will be tasked with monitoring a lot of information and they would depend on software storage companies to help in data organization. Companies are known to associate more with brands they are familiar with and thus Nimble is likely to lose out. 5. *What are the lessons of this case for other companies experiencing hyper-growth?* Any company about to experience hyper-growth ought to be prepared for an increase in the workforce. Management of people is a very important aspect that determines the company’s success. As such, the companies ought to learn from this case that a proper human resource foundation needs to be laid. The company should also have a strong organizational culture that the current and incoming employees would be proud to associate with. Having a strong human resource foundation is essential to the organization as the department can help in establishing a strong organizational culture. When a company is about to experience a hyper-growth, it is more likely that sacrifices will have to be undertaken and thus the company would be affected in different ways. Having a strong human resource department is likely to come in handy in managing the different individuals the organization has and maintaining the balance for the organization to continue focusing on achieving its objectives. Nimble has put emphasis on leadership training for its managers. This is an important development that other companies can take note of. The managers at Nimble get to gain important knowledge such as leveraging knowledge how to drive results and even on team engagement. Such training is important for the workers as they present them with the skills to succeed in the future. 6. *What should Nimble’s senior leaders focus on next? Why?* The market Nimble has other players such as NetApp and EMC who offer strong competition thus making Strategic growth versus profitability a crucial factor that the senior leaders at the Nimble need to consider. Other competitors to EMC and NetApp were unable to compete with the two firms as they were unable to turn in a profit. The location of Nimble is the Silicon Valley, and innovation is widely supported by venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley. However, profitability is an expected outcome from the intensive capital invested in the innovation. Nimble just went public in December recently (2013) and their success will, in turn, start getting measured by the profits they start to rake in. In order to maintain the venture capitalists and help its research and development team to have more capital for innovation, the senior leaders should focus on how they can make the company profitable. Nimble has however announced that it objectives as to start getting profitable as by January 2016. On the issue of strategic growth, the company has announced plans of being a billion-dollar company as by January 2018. Employee training is very important for worker retention. Senior leaders at Nimble ought to focus on this aspect. Despite the fact that Nimble has shown an extensive leadership program, the program seems unable to involve the low-level employees who would like to pursue management opportunities. In turn, this is likely to cause the low-level employees to move to other opportunities that might be present in 3-5 years’ time. The senior leader should thus focus on equipping the low-level employees with management skills that the employees can find useful for their personal growth in their careers. Read More