An Animal called "I.T"

(confidence) In between my life then in Manila and now in Philadelphia, I used to be manager/writer for Corporate Strategy at Satyam, India’s Top 4 IT services company where I had been working for three years. Satyam, at the time, was a highly respected company that served the Fortune 500. Indians who worked for Satyam had good salaries and high prestige – a requirement for marrying well which was the goal of every engineer. There were very few of us writers in this company compared to the many programmers/computer technicians (85% of total employees). (stories) As an employee, I was part of the writing team tasked to compile and write down the organizational story as part of a company-wide strategy initiative in partnership with McKinsey and Co. Needless to say, it was very difficult to do this due to a number of factors. First, the founder and senior leaders had little time to give us so we could not collect compelling nuggets. Second, when we were able to, the next predicament came from the employees who did not find a reason to buy into the organizational stories, much less find them credible. Looking back I attribute our failure to influence people on a variety of factors. The storytelling did not flow smoothly and ideally as we would like. There was no hero or main character overcoming an adversity. The average employee could not continue the story or find themselves as part of the story, etc. (corruption) It was much later when I left India and came to Penn that I realized the tragic flaw of our storytelling. We did not have integrity and honesty in our story. This could be seen when Satyam's chairman and founder, Ramalinga Raju, took responsibility in his letter to the board of directors for broad accounting improprieties that overstated the company's revenues and profits, and reported a cash holding of approximately $1.04 billion that did not exist. The chairman along with his brother (the CEO/managing director), and the chief financial officer are in jail now but out on bail for breaking the law. (fairness) For weeks after the shocking announcement of resignation, the Indian public, including Satyam’s very own employees who committed their lives and efforts to the company, was to discover the unraveling of a tragic story of where the money went and the disillusionment with a giant of a man who was even given the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 and the Golden Peacock Award for Corporate Governance 2008. (money illusion) The damage to the Indian public as a result of the founder’s fall from grace called for righteous anger from stockholders who have lost 60% of their stock value, their retirement and pension now gone, and to other stakeholders who have lost their investment returns and salaries. (conclusion) But like the Deus Ex Machina found in Greek Drama, our story continues in the form of a takeover like all comedies that end in the merriment of a wedding. The criminals are finding the voice of god through meditation while sitting in jail. Exit villains. Government intervenes and places new leadership at the helm. Enter mythic heroes also known as venture capitalists. The invisible hand castigates and corrects. Economic forces are normal again. Animal Spirit, “spiritus animalis” in ancient and medieval Latin, means mental energy or life force, according to Akerlof and Shiller in their book, “Animal Spirits.”Animal Spirits are referred to our attitude in times of uncertainty. These animal spirits are identified by the book as confidence, fairness, corruption, money illusion, and stories. All are present and described in the case of Satyam Computer Services Ltd. From the case, I am interested in knowing -- If an individual’s economic status is dependent on the actions of others like those of their leadership, how does one at the base of the totem pole localize the effects of superior forces in times of uncertainty? Question: 1. How do you calm an upset economy? How do you calm an upset industry? How do you calm an upset company? How do you calm an upset public? References: Akerlof, G. and Shiller, R. (2009). Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Satyam Computer Services, Inc. (2006). SatyamWay, Hyderabad: Satyam Computer Services, Inc.