Building a Winning Culture in India

The Uninor team is defying hard competition and external turbulence to make the company the fastest growing and most competitive among the new arrivals to the telecom industry in India.

“The basis for the results we are enjoying in India are knowing the market, getting the priorities right, and having competent and highly motivated employees”, says Sigve Brekke, CEO of Uninor. “With a clear strategy, a focus on daily targets and ambitious employees, we have managed to create a unified winning team in Uninor.”

Refocused strategy: Simplicity and speed

A year ago, Uninor’s strategy was revised to speed up business in India. The strategy defines Uninor standouts, for customers and in how it runs its operations. Being a newcomer in the country, it was particularly important to be clear for the employees on how the company is going to win. The new simplified business strategy is based on three pillars; Uninor is set to be:

• Best on basic services
• Best on mass market distribution
• Best on low cost operations

“A strategy is all about employees moving in the same direction. To speed up things, we need a clear strategy that creates recognition and nodding heads throughout the organisation,” says Sigve Brekke.

“Both management and employees are focused on working close to the market and our customers. To keep up speed, we break our overall goals down into daily targets, and have established a culture for winning every day across the company. This is important, because what you lose today, you can’t win tomorrow in this industry. Looking at daily performance also means that we can make corrections with speed if we need to.”

Combining local initiatives and Group competence

“The Telenor way of doing business has always been to leverage global scale and local initiatives. In India, we are reusing this philosophy. Our teams in the circles are empowered to deliver what is relevant for customers in their market. We have slimmed down the staff functions and have established a shared services model that provides circle teams with common staff and support functions. In this way, our teams focus on working locally and close to the customers in their circles,” says Sigve Brekke.

Walk the talk! Living the values

India is a huge and complex country divided into 22 circles that in size and population could be countries of their own. Uninor has 2,300 employees and 320,000 point of sales across 13 telecom circles. With different competitors, varying customer needs and almost 40 separate languages (!) the local business variations are undoubtly present.

“To build and grow a company like Uninor, establishing a team pulling in the same direction is fundamental and to do that communication is the key,” says Brekke.

“The culture in Uninor is built on empowerment, a flat management model and meeting the employees in different channels on a frequent basis. We are a transparent organization where we share information and discuss issues openly with all employees. ”

Building a culture “Winning every day”

Sigve is communicating a lot and through many different channels. One of the channels is using the intranet. Issues are raised both on his weekly blog postings and in interviews on video clips made especially for employees. Comments and direct feedback from employees on these sharings are much appreciated.

Another communication platform for setting direction on both strategy and culture, is to meet and talk to the employees in the different circles. Sigve is actually more in the market meeting employees than he is at the office. On average, Sigve is only at the office one day a week. The rest of his time, he spends on the road.

“Being on the road is a means to motivate, but it is also an inspiration to me. In every circle, I have met hard-working, dedicated employees who go out into a very competitive market to win new customers every day. The energy I feel in the offices and when we visit the retailers with our teams on the ground is tremendous, ” says Sigve Brekke.

The numbers are not lying

The Uninor team has proven the sceptics wrong by gaining 20 million customers and adding 2 million new subscribers every month. The past year, Uninor has managed to create a team “winning every day”.

“Being on the road has made me confident that our strategy is well understood all through the organization. All over India individuals have evaluated the strategy, found it sound, and more importantly, decided what it means to them in their daily work. We have a fantastic team in Uninor where we are all pulling in the same direction. We are going to keep on challenging and winning every day”, says a smiling Brekke.