Do you have enough multi-cultural employees?
Face it. Indian IT companies are negative case studies of multi-cultural firms. Most Indian firms tend to have Indians at all top positions and most middle management positions for their locations abroad. That is not going to help! Go for local employees with decision-making powers definitely in the country markets, and also back home in the Bangalore HQ.

The importance of soft-skills cannot be over emphasised
Put more rigour in your soft skills - particularly cross-cultural skills. The Indian soft skills could do with some if not more improvements. Speaking in English is not enough, understanding the customer’s idioms, discussing baseball scores without drooling about your love for cricket in US, not looking flustered in non-vegetarian alive-till-it-enters-your-mouth restaurants in China, and offering multi-lingual visiting cards with two-hands-and-a-bow in Japan increases the comfort level the prospects will have with you.

Rule #4: Don’t forget the small things in the rush for strategy

• w Follow the laws of the land scrupulously. Full disclosure of business practices: In a world where every other company is looked at suspiciously as a potential Enron, being an Anita Roddick’s “The Body Shop” helps.
• w Think glocal. Get involved in local charities, volunteering, anything that can help the under-privileged in the geographies that you operate. Can you honestly answer - “What does your company do for the disadvantaged society in your customer’s countries?”
• w Indian decision-making is still very consensual and top down. Many an expatriate manager who joined Indian companies found that the empowerment to take quick decisions on the ground is limited. See what decisions can be delegated, formulate clear policies around them, and go ahead and drive down the decision-making where required.
• w Get into the consulting attitude - don’t be afraid to criticise the client!

Rule #5: Climb the right value chain!
As ‘climbing the value chain’ becomes the mantra for all the Indian technology companies, make sure that you are not doing that for the wrong reasons.

• All the telecom focused IT Services firms got hit in the telecom meltdown of 2001, when they found that their widely acclaimed IP generating work had no buyers, as the markets collapsed.
• More than one top 10 IT Services firm found after a year of launch that their BPO arms are going nowhere and there are not too many synergies between their BPO and IT Services arms.
• Getting into products is high-risk, high-reward. Behind the success of the software product companies so visible today, there are thousands that didn’t make it!

Do it for the right reasons and think innovatively.
w If you have decided to take the product-marketing plunge, do a what-if analysis and be a real Uncle Scrooge before splurging on brand building overseas. PR could works wonders in place of a costly marketing extravaganza.
w If you are getting into Strategic Consulting make sure that you have everything below to separate that - the IT infrastructure footprint, the high-rolling strategy consultants, and the product templates.

Rule #6: Build agility into your business strategy
The late American strategist, Col John R. Boyd, USAF is credited with the theory of manoeuvre warfare that states that fighter pilots who operate with faster decision cycles (or “OODA loops,” for observe-orient-decide-act) are more likely to win over their adversaries. This theory has found a lot of business applications.
For an Information technology company, this means that if you are able to be quicker in identifying niches, exploiting them, and moving on to the next big opportunity without straining your organisations’ central nervous system, you win!
Brand building is an exacting but exciting journey. And with the Indian IT industry poised to do for the country what the Japanese electronic firms did for Japan, we live in exciting times. Be the best chauffer