Leading outside the lines: How to Mobilize the (in)Formal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results

DRILLING THROUGH THE PERMAFROST

A similar and perhaps more aggressive mobilization of the informal played out halfway around the world. India is hardly a country that needs to worry about any frozen tundra in the physical landscape. But, Indian CEOs find they still need to worry about that middle zone of managers who can get frozen into a kind of managerial permafrost that can make employees lower down on the hierarchical pyramid sluggish and unable to move quickly.

HCL Technologies (HCLT), a global IT services company, successfully transformed this layer of middle management and, as a result, engineered an impressive turnaround for itself. HCLT, which employs over fifty-five thousand people and operates in twenty-six countries, was long ...