The ordinary heroes of the Taj Hotel | Rohit Deshpandé | TEDxNewEngland

On the 26th of November 2008, a group of terrorists struck a dozen targets in Mumbai, India, including the iconic 103-year old Taj Palace Hotel. The siege at the hotel lasted two days and three nights and was covered extensively by international media. But there is an amazing, inspirational backstory about the heroic actions of the Taj staff couched in the culture of the Taj Hotels company. What can the staff, who saved lives while endangering their own, teach American companies about ethical behavior?

Rohit Deshpandé is the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

On the 26th of November 2008,

as you just heard,

a group of 10 terrorists
attacked the city of Mumbai -

what used to be called Bombay -

in India.

They broke up into teams to attack
about a dozen different locations.

One of those locations
was the iconic, beautiful,

103-year-old Taj Mahal Palace Hotel

in South Bombay.

For three nights, two days,

there was absolute havoc in that hotel.

Guests were terrorized;
people wounded, shot, and killed.

This group of terrorists
with automatic weapons,

plastic explosives,
and grenades in backpacks

roamed freely through this old hotel.

Many of us, many of you,

witnessed or saw some of that coverage
on television at home.

Let's take a closer look.

(Video) (Music)

Narrator: The evening
of November 26, 2008,

was a typical busy Wednesday for the Taj.

More than 500 guests
were registered at the hotel.

Another 500 to 600 were attending
functions in banquet halls

or sitting down to dinner
in the hotel's 10 restaurants.

(Explosion)

(Explosion)

Shortly after 9:00 PM, an explosion rocked
the Leopold Cafe just around the corner,

less than 200 meters from the Taj.

(Siren)

(Gunshots)

Two young men pulled out automatic weapons

and began firing.

(Gunshots)

Crowds at the Gateway of India

and along the street
in front of the Taj panicked,

many rushing the doors of the hotel.

In the ensuing chaos,

two heavily armed terrorists
circumvented the metal detectors

and entered the lobby.

(Ominous music)

They were soon joined
by the two attackers from the Leopold,

who broke through a back door.

Hemant Oberoi: 9:35 or 9:40
was the first call I got

from one of my chefs.

And he thinks some shooting
is taking place:

"A person has been shot dead
outside my restaurant."

Then we heard another gunshot,
and I told him on the phone only -

I said, "Just close all the kitchens,
all the restaurant doors."

Man 1: They were banging the doors.

They were alerting everyone:
"Come out; otherwise we'll shoot you."

There were a few guests who,
you know, they were scared,

and they came out
by putting their hands up.

And they started hitting them;
they started harassing them.

It was horrible.

(Fire crackles)

(Shouting)

Man 2: The situation,
the entire scenario, was very scary.

We couldn't judge at that time,

OK, what is exactly
happening in the hotel.

Man 3: It was a literally war situation.

You could hear grenades lobbing around
and the gunshots also.

Karambir Singh Kang:
We did not know the scale of the attack.

We did not know
what exactly was going on,

where they were at that moment.

And there was total chaos.

My colleagues were trapped with guests
in various places, asking me,

"What should we do next?"

(Shouting)

(Music ends)

(On stage) Rohit Deshpandé: So picture
what's happening inside that hotel.

There are 500 guests
who are registered at that hotel

this night of 26th November.

There are an additional 600 or so guests

who are in various restaurants,
attending various banquets and functions.

There are about 600 or so
staff members on duty that night -

young people, many of them very young:

20, 30-year-olds.

Some of them had -

these staff members had only been working
for a few years at this hotel.

Many of them fathers and mothers,

the sole breadwinners in their families,
with children at home waiting for them.

One of the things -

we don't know a lot about the detail
about what happened there,

but one of the things we do know

is that all 600 of these employees
knew all the back routes.

They knew the exits,
they knew the entrances,

they knew the hallways,
the kitchen galleys.

In other words, they knew how to get out
and how to get out fast.

All the research we have
in psychology would tell us

that the natural human instinct
at a time of terror like this

is to flee.

So think about it ... what you would do.

So when I teach this case study
at Harvard, I ask my students -

I say, "How many of these employees
do you think fled,

and how many of them do you think stayed?"

And they would hazard guesses,

and the maximum they say that would stay
would be maybe a quarter -

150 or so.

You know, but that's the maximum.

Everybody who can run away will run away.

Well, the truth of the matter
is that nobody ran away.

They all stayed.

In fact, some of them not only stayed,

they helped guests out
and came back in to help more guests.

It's an amazing story.

These are some of their stories.

(Video) (Music)

[Footage courtesy NDTV]

Narrator: The staff of the Taj
stayed on duty throughout the siege,

calming frightened guests
and assisting in their rescue.

Many even came back inside
after leading guests out of the building.

Members of the hotel's team
of telephone operators,

originally evacuated,

voluntarily returned to their stations
and stayed on all night.

Man 4: They became the hub
of communication at that point.

They were the ones
calling every single guest room,

talking to the guests,

and telling them to stay in,
don't step out, lock your door.

Narrator: As the terrorists
roamed the halls,

telephone operators instructed
trapped guests to pull their key cards

to turn off the illuminated "Occupied"
button in the hallway outside their doors.

Man 5: The attack started
at 9:30 in the evening.

Till four o'clock,
they were answering guest calls.

I think that speaks a lot
for a hotel under attack.

Narrator: Among the guests
at the Taj that night

were members of the global board
of directors and senior management team

of Unilever,

who had gathered along with their spouses
to honor incoming and outgoing CEOs.

Leena Nair: So we had this really
elaborate seven-course meal,

and that was sort of
the setting, the mood.

There was warmth, there was laughter,

there was a perfect setting
for a nostalgic farewell,

and a perfect setting for a nice welcome.

And I heard what seemed to me,
which is an untrained ear,

like firecrackers in the hotel.

Mallika Jagad: We started getting
these text messages and phone calls.

There were some gunmen on the loose.

The only logical thing to do
was to close the doors and just stay put.

LN: Mallika came to us and said,

"We think there's a problem;
we're not sure what exactly it is.

But I'd request all of you
to be on the ground right now."

The level of calm and composure
that the staff displayed was amazing,

was absolutely amazing,

because they had the presence
of mind to advise us, saying,

"Couples, please separate.

Don't stay at the same place;
just be in different corners of the room."

MJ: 65 lives were at stake,
so can't take a chance.

So obviously, we were in touch
with security all the time and -

had a lot of alcohol in the room.

So that helped a little.

LN: This went on the whole night.

We were on the floor
with our hearts in our mouths,

with debris falling all around us,

the noises of, you know,
firecrackers all around.

And all through,
the staff kept their composure,

kept coming to ask,

"Do you want some water?
Do you want something?"

MJ: Well, I was scared.

But there was something
more important to be done.

LN: This went on
till 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning,

when the room filled with smoke.

So we had no choice
but to find a way to escape.

MJ: The entire corridor
outside the hall was on fire,

so there was no way we could get out.

The fire guys were outside,

and they were dousing the fire
on the sixth floor,

and we happened to see
Mr. Kang downstairs as well.

So he sort of ushered the fire guys to us.

LN: We sort of climbed onto the ledge

and did some stuff which in today's
normality I wouldn't be able to do.

But we came onto the ledge,
climbed down to the ladders,

which by then the fire brigade
people had come.

The staff insisted
that we would go first -

guests would go first.

And they kept like that
till all of us had come down,

and then they all came down.

MJ: Well, in a way, because I was there,
I was looking after the function,

I was responsible.

I could have been
the youngest in the room -

and I know at one point in time
I was the youngest in the room, but ...

I was still doing my job.

Abhijit Mukherji: The easiest thing
for our staff to do at that point in time

was to drop whatever they were doing
and run out of the hotel.

Not one did that.

Not one.

Karambir Singh Kang:
I come from an army background -

not myself but my father -

he retired as a general in the army.

And he often used to say

when I was even appointed here
as the general manager -

used to often tell me that

"You are now like
the captain of the ship."

And I think that's the way you think -

that you're the captain of the ship
and you have to be the last one to leave.

And if it sinks, you sink with it.

(Singing)

[Several hours into the siege,

General Manager Kang's wife
and two young sons

would perish in a fire
that swept through their living quarters

on the hotel's sixth floor.]

[Another tragedy would occur
in the early morning hours of November 27

when a team of chefs and kitchen staff
began to evacuate guests.]

(Singing ends)

Ajoy K Mira: At some point,

our kitchen brigade decided
that it looked like a lull in the thing

and they could be taken out
from the back of the kitchen

through the fire exit to the back road.

And our chefs had formed a human chain

to escort people in the darkness
down those stairs.

And as hundreds of them
were being evacuated,

somehow two of those terrorists
got to know that this was happening.

And the terrorists arrived there

and saw these chefs lined up,
herding people away,

and there was mayhem.

They cut loose, and that's where we lost -

we lost our biggest numbers there.

We had five or six
of our chefs gunned down.

But they took the bullets.

R K Krishna Kumar:
So they risked their lives

in just making sure
that the guests were safe.

LN: I don't think we would have
made it out of the hotel

without the support, the assurance,

the constant, you know,
service orientation

that the staff provided, without doubt,

which is why we will continue
to be so grateful to them.

Ratan Tata: I can't explain it.

There were no manuals,
there were no instructions

for what should be done
in the circumstances.

So what seems to have happened

is individuals, from the waiters
to the managers of the restaurants,

all had this goal of
"Let's get the guests to safety."

(On stage) Rohit Deshpandé: To reiterate:

500 registered guests.

600 guests in restaurants and banquets,

like that Unilever board event
that you just heard about.

600 employees.

It's about 1,700 people that night.

Of those 1,700, over 1,600 escaped safely.

Only 34 people died.

Of those 34, fully half
were staff members of the hotel.

So when we were working
on this case study,

I asked senior management
how this happened, why this happened,

what explains the behavior of their staff.

And these are young people.

Mallika Jagad, the banquet manager
for the Unilever event,

whom you saw speaking -

24 years old.

What explains it?

And you heard:

They can't explain it, senior management.

Mr. Ratan Tata, head of the Tata
group of companies -

they own the Taj Hotels -

he couldn't explain it.

So I teach this at Harvard.

I bring this case study back,

and I teach this
at the Harvard Business School

as a case study of leadership from below.

We teach usually about leadership

as being something
from the top that filters down.

This is leadership from below -
it's just amazing.

And I ask my students,
"How do you explain it?"

And they have plausible explanations
for the behavior of the employees.

Some of them say,

"Well, it must be the culture,
the national culture, of India.

It must be something in the value system
there that explains it."

And in fact, there is.

It turns out that
there is a value or a belief

that says a guest
is to be treated like God.

When a guest enters your home,
treat her or him like God.

"Atithi devo bhava" in Sanskrit.

Other students say,

"No, no, no, it's not national culture;
it's corporate culture."

If the Taj Hotels is owned
by this family, the Tata group,

they have a long history in India

of very benevolent
human resource policies -

a family of integrity
in their business dealings.

It's the corporate culture.

And others say, "No, it's not that.
This happened at a hotel.

It's the industry culture;
it's hospitality."

Employees are trained to serve customers,
so that's what's going on.

All of these are very plausible.

So along with another colleague,

I decided to go back
into the Taj Hotel company records

to try to understand
their human resource policy.

Who were these people?
Who were these staff?

Where did they find them?
How do they recruit them?

How do they motivate and train them?

And I learned lots of really,
really intriguing things.

Let me share, in the interest of time,
just three of them with you.

First, about recruiting.

You know, they recruit their first line,
their frontline employees,

from high schools
not from the major cities -

not from Bombay or Delhi
or Calcutta or Madras.

They recruit them from small towns:

Haldia, Chandigarh,
Nashik, Tiruchirappalli -

small towns.

And they recruit students,
graduating students,

for attitude, not grades.

They ask their headmasters
or their teachers,

"Who are the students that you teach

who have the most respect
for older people, for their parents,

for the teachers?"

They're not looking for the students
who do the best in grades

but, rather, for attitude.

Then, training -

this is fascinating.

You know, you've heard
of brand ambassadors.

Lots of companies, many organizations
perhaps that you represent,

train their frontline staff

to be ambassadors
for the brand, for the company.

You know what they do at the Taj Hotels?

They train their frontline employees

to be ambassadors
for the customer, for the guest.

It's very different;
it's counterintuitive.

They call them "guest ambassadors."

They believe frontline employees

should be the voice of the client,
of the customer, of the guest,

to the company.

And third and perhaps most importantly,

their motivation system -

their reward system, incentives -

is not just monetary.

They pay about average,
a little above average,

in that hotel sector in India.

But they reward people with recognition,
personal recognition.

So when an employee does something
that delights customers

and the guest writes a note,

within 48 hours
that employee is recognized.

48 hours!

They don't have to wait
for a Diwali or a Christmas bonus;

it happens within 48 hours.

Amazing.

In fact, they won
the international Hermes Award

for an innovation in human resource
management for this STARS program.

So let me close by asking you

to think a little bit about the lessons
that you take away from this -

from this company far away
on the other side of the world -

the things that we can learn
here in America, that we can bring home,

that we can scale to American businesses,
American organizations.

Things like the way customers are treated:

building a customer-centric, guest-centric
corporate culture, organizational culture.

Rethinking the relationship, the contract,
between employer and employee.

And finally, let me close by saying
this is an amazing, inspirational story -

that something that was supposed
to be a symbol of terrorism

is today a beacon of hope.

Thank you.