LESSONS FROM THE CLASSROOM
HBS Cases: Terror at the Taj
Published: January 24, 2011
Author: Julia Hanna
Under terrorist attack, employees of the Taj
Mahal Palace and Tower bravely stayed at
their posts to help guests. A new multimedia
case by Harvard Business School professor
Rohit Deshpandé looks at the hotel's
customer-centered culture and value system.
Key concepts include:
• Underlying the case is a central
conundrum: Why did the Taj employees stay
at their posts, jeopardizing their safety in
order to save hotel guests? And is this level
of loyalty and dedication something that can
be replicated and scaled elsewhere?
• Taj employees carry a sense of loyalty to the
hotel, and a sense of responsibility to the
guests.
• In India and the developing world, there's a
much more paternalistic equation between
employer and employee that creates a
kinship. Long length of service is recognized
and rewarded by top management.
On November 26, 2008, 175 people died in
Mumbai, India, when 10 terrorists
simultaneously struck sites. Of the five
locations—all well-known landmarks—the
beautiful domes of the hotel known as the Taj
Mahal Palace and Tower would become most
closely associated with the horrific attacks in
the world's collective conscience.
"Not even the senior
managers could explain the
behavior of these
employees."
A new multimedia case by HBS professor
Rohit Deshpandé offers a flip side to the
nightmarish scenes that unfolded in real time on
television screens around the globe. Produced in
collaboration with Ruth Page and David
Habeeb of the HBS Educational Technology
Group, "Terror at the Taj Bombay:
Customer-Centric Leadership" documents the
bravery and resourcefulness shown by
rank-and-file employees during the siege. (The
case is not yet available to the public.)
Video interviews with hotel staff and senior
executives, combined with security footage of
the attack, create a documentary-like account of
events that took place over the course of 59
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hours. The case also covers the hotel's history,
its approach to training employees, the "guest is
God" philosophy inherent in Indian culture, and
the question of how the hotel will recover after
the attacks.
Underlying this framework is a central
conundrum: Why did the Taj employees stay at
their posts, jeopardizing their safety in order to
save hotel guests? And is this level of loyalty
and dedication something that can be replicated
and scaled elsewhere?
"Not even the senior managers could
explain the behavior of these employees," says
Deshpandé. "In the interview, the vice chairman
of the company says that they knew all the back
exits—the natural human instinct would be to
flee. These are people who instinctively did the
right thing. And in the process, some of them,
unfortunately, gave their lives to save guests."
A dozen employees died.
Most difficult case
Deshpandé, a native of Bombay (now
Mumbai), says it took a full week to conduct
the interviews. "This is the hardest case I've
ever worked on. One reason is that I had no
conception of what it would be like to have
people confront the trauma again. We objectify
it, keep emotion at a distance, but after 15
minutes of questions with a video camera in a
darkened room, there are deeper, more personal
reflections of what happened. It was really,
really hard.
"The other thing is that I grew up there. So
the Taj is part of my memories, too. As one of
the interview subjects said, the Taj is their Taj,
meaning anyone who has ever walked through
its doors. It's a place that means many things to
many people."
In one interview, Taj general manager
Karambir Singh Kang describes his father, a
military man, telling him that his job is like
being the captain of a ship. "I think that's the
way everyone else felt, too," says Kang. "A
sense of loyalty to the hotel, a sense of
responsibility to the guests." Several hours into
the siege, Kang's wife and two young sons died
in a fire that swept through their apartment on
the hotel's top floor. Even after receiving the
news, he insisted on staying at his post to help
direct a response to the ongoing attack. (The
battle for control at the Taj would continue a
full two days after other locations had been
secured.)
Nothing in the employees' training could
have prepared them for such an unprecedented
situation, Deshpandé says. Yet further
interviews and text documents from the case
provide background on the unique culture of
Tata Sons, the Taj's parent company, while also
revealing the exacting process for selecting,
training, and rewarding Taj employees for their
work.
Mandate to delight
Awards are given for longer terms of
service, for example, with Group Chairman
Ratan Tata (HBS AMP 71, 1975) personally
recognizing those who have served 10 to 35
years and more. Employees who have
demonstrated outstanding service are selected
for inclusion in the Managing Directors Club
and recognized across the organization.
Such incentives aren't so unusual, of course.
But interviews with senior management
demonstrate how seriously the task of building
a customer-centric culture and value system is
taken at the Taj and its parent company, Indian
Hotels.
"Every time they interact with a guest they
should look for an opportunity to delight him,"
says H.N. Srinivas, senior vice president of
human resources. During a 24-hour stay, a guest
will have an average of 40 to 42 contacts with
employees. "We've mapped it," he explains.
When it comes to selecting employees,
Indian Hotels CEO Raymond N. Bickson
describes how he first looks for "nice people
who are not afraid of serving people." He can
teach them to be a bellman, a waiter, or a desk
clerk, he continues. "But I can't teach them to
be nice. I can't teach that spirit of ownership."
"In India and the developing world, there's a
much more paternalistic equation between
employer and employee," says Ratan Tata,
chairman of Tata Sons. "I think that creates a
kinship." Every employee donates a small
portion of their salary to a pool that can be
drawn on in the event a colleague suffers an
accident or other significant personal setback.
To date, Deshpandé has taught the case in
the School's Owner/President Management
Executive Education program; he expects it to
be used more widely, particularly since it can
also be taught as an example of managing the
postcrisis recovery of a flagship corporate
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brand.
No clear answer
The question of why the Taj employees
demonstrated such loyalty elicited a variety of
responses from students, Deshpandé says.
"For example, some suggested that it has to
do with governance of the Tatas; two-thirds of
their profits are donated to charitable causes, so
the employees feel that they are working for a
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higher good." But the IT firm Tata Consultancy
Services has had many of the same difficulties
with employee retention that other Indian IT
firms experience. "In that case, the loyalty
might be more to self rather than to the
organization," he says.
A definitive answer to the question of why
the Taj employees behaved as they did may not
be possible; but managers who read and view
the case will likely come away with a clearer
sense of what it takes to build a particular
culture and value system and how to recruit,
train, and reward employees in nonmonetary
ways.
"It's all of those very specific things that
build a customer-centric culture in an
organization," Deshpandé says. "This example
far exceeds anything I've seen before."
Julia Hanna is associate editor of the HBS
Alumni Bulletin.
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