Vintage posters of Pakeezah, Mughal-E-Azam, Guide, Aradhana and Sholay greet you when you enter this room. This is no film studio but the corporate headquarters of Mercedes-Benz India near Pune. And this Box Office room, as it is so aptly called, is part of the new work culture that has been under way over the last three years.

The architect of this transformation is Roland Folger, who took charge as MD & CEO in 2015, and is now set to take over a leadership role in the company’s Thailand operations. He smiles when asked about the Bollywood influence in the Box Office room. “This is something we have given employees to be able to think and create while making them comfortable. It is about getting people to ideate beyond meeting rooms,” says Folger. Clearly, the posters do their bit in infusing a greater sense of creativity.

Beyond this room, there are other changes like ‘standing areas’ where a couple of employees can discuss an issue over a table. Typically, these talks do not go beyond 15 minutes compared to regular meetings, which can last twice as long with people seated around over endless cups of coffee.

There is a greater sense of ease, and yet more efficiency, in this new look Mercedes where stiff formality has given way to stronger team bonding. It was Folger who laid the base for this initiative called Expedition 2020 three years ago. When he took charge of the Indian operations then, Mercedes-Benz was a charged up company which had recorded tremendous growth. “The challenge for me was to plot the future while taking all the motivation and generating maximum output out of this energy,” recalls Folger.

An offsite meeting followed where the team and its new boss sat to discuss the challenges ahead, which included growing exponentially and retaining the No 1 status in the market. Qualitative growth within the existing structure was the priority in addition to doing much more.

“We did a reality check during that time frame and realised that what we did in the past cannot be replicated in the future,” says Folger. He then cites the recent World Cup Football “disaster”, from a German perspective, where smaller countries like Croatia did fabulously well while the proverbial giants like Germany, Argentina and Brazil were quickly wiped out.

“I think there is something to be learnt from there: what qualified you in the past does not necessarily qualify you in the future,” continues Folger. This is equally true for the automotive industry where new players like Tesla are changing the rules of the game and it is important for the traditional brands to reboot their strategies.

“Within the management team in India, there was an understanding that we need to put ourselves mentally in a position where we are like an expedition and, hence, the name Expedition 2020,” he says. The key was to do things as a team and not leave anyone behind. This is akin to an expedition where if somebody is not fit enough, the others do not leave him behind but carry him along.

What Folger noticed was that people within the company wanted to do things together and share that success as well. “They realised that you can be successful only when you share and this can also magnify your own potential in the process. It is also a lot of fun instead of being isolated,” he says.

Within the leadership structure, huge strides were made by setting up ‘Buddy, buddy teams’ where general managers would be paired up to support each other and find better ways to deal with challenges. As Folger points out, there is a lot of “shared knowledge and emotion” in the process. People have also learnt how to make their work experience a lot more rewarding.

What was even more gratifying in terms of results was the “highly motivated” customer service team that has shown the largest growth in revenues. Clearly, Expedition 2020 was pressing all the right buttons and getting employees completely involved.

What was equally interesting was that Daimler headquarters in Germany began working on its own Leadership 2020 initiative globally. When people from the Indian arm participated in these sessions organised in Germany, China and Singapore, they realised there were many areas that were common to Expedition 2020 back home in India.

In reality, there was an overlap of eight areas with Germany while two more that were specific to India were retained to make it 10 in all. One was diversity, which went beyond gender and also looked at getting the right people for the right positions. “From an Indian perspective, we realised that we could just not hire people from Maharashtra but also needed to look at different qualifications from across the country,” says Folger. It was also important to have diverse cultures in order to align better with the dealer network.

“To create good teams means having a variety of people. The most productive teams are generally the most diverse in terms of gender, background, education, etc, and it has helped us,” he adds. The downside is that in a happy work environment and with things on course, people are unlikely to leave, which means taking in fresh blood remains a challenge.

Diversity also means that “optimised communication”, the other area, became an important issue to address. As Folger says, clarifying issues is critical since people may end up doing what is required, nothing more. This is where communicating a message in its entirety ensures that there is no ambiguity.

“Optimised communication is important in a set-up like ours. In our meeting rooms, there is always this mantra on behavioural issues. Punctuality is all-important and anyone coming late has to shut up and listen instead of interrupting the flow,” he says.

Beyond this, people are told to be concise, come prepared for meetings and not carry grudges/personal issues with colleagues that can be resolved later instead of wasting others’ time. “Everyone now understands where we need to go and there is a greater sense of bonding,’ says Folger. The speed at which work is done has also “increased massively”. Earlier, it would take a week or two for the team concerned to react to contingencies like, say, floods in some parts of the country. The reaction time has now reduced to hours, not days/weeks.

Racing ahead on GST

The biggest success, though, came in end-May last year when it was known that the Goods and Services Tax would become a reality in July. In barely six days, Mercedes-Benz communicated the new State-specific prices and preempted the process.

After all, it was clear that cars would be less expensive by 20 per cent and customers were going to wait till July to buy them. As a result, June would end up being lacklustre. The company quickly got into the act and worked on the new prices for 28 States. “That is speed for you where we were out there before anybody else,” recalls Folger.

Of course, this involved a lot of hard work in terms of working out adjustments for different States. Yet, from Mercedes’ point of view, it boiled down to grabbing an opportunity instead of cribbing about an issue. “If you treat these as opportunities, you think in terms of solutions instead of being in rejection mode,” adds Folger.

In the new ecosystem of Expedition 2020, there is also a crisis management team which keeps itself constantly abreast of news developments and understands where a problem is likely to occur. It does not need a push from the top management and quickly comes together to create a definition of a problem along with ideas/solutions.

Efficiencies have also improved at the operative planning level, where figures need to be given to Germany. Typically, this is prepared three to six months in advance with 24 people. As part of the new regimen, the team was asked to halve the process to three months with fewer people.

“We cut back people involvement by 16 per cent and timing by 30-40 per cent. It now takes four months with two-thirds of the people, which means the extra manpower is free to do other things,” says Folger. Today, there are also processes in place for blue-collared workers who are also an important part of the Mercedes family. There is a lot of emphasis now on building new skills within the company. “Change is a constant in our lives and people need to understand that training, facilitating and moving into different departments are part of this process,” he explains.

Moving functions is a “huge bonus” since there there is no point sitting in one job forever. “We want to elevate everybody to new levels of competence with a common attitude of positive change. Working together differently is the key,” declares Folger as he prepares for his new innings in Thailand.

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