Investor’s Business Daily: Cognizant President Talks About the Company’s Efforts to Protect Organizational Culture Through Rapid Growth

Gordon Coburn, President, Cognizant

“The key to protecting our culture is creating an environment where employees can apply themselves fully and succeed,” says Gordon Coburn. “That means articulating a vision and then getting out of their way. We empower people to run their piece of the business and make sure they have the tools they need. Otherwise, you become a bottleneck. To get and keep good people, you can’t micromanage them. A culture of empowerment depends on the quality of the staff. Hiring self-starters with technical prowess and people skills paves the way for better results. The best people have judgment, intellect and fire in the belly. In 2011, Cognizant hired an average of 20 people every business hour during the year. Establishing the tone from the top, characterized by transparency and clear communication, has enabled the company to grow so fast without losing its identity.”

To harness Cognizant’s expanding brain trust, Coburn says, the company launched Cognizant 2.0 — a global collaborative platform for employees to share knowledge. “We want it to be process-dependent, not people-dependent. We want the process to be replicated so that it’s not dependent on a particular individual. So we document with care what’s done and why it’s done. Because a majority of Cognizant’s workforce is under age 30, they are adept users of social media. Cognizant 2.0 appeals to younger employees in part because it involves crowd-sourcing and other online social networking activities. Many of our employees are on Facebook Sunday night. We want to make their Monday morning experience like their Sunday night experience,” says Coburn.

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