Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey

Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down.

By Vineet Nayar. Harvard Business Press, 206 pages. $24.95.

This slim and almost conversational volume is about putting employees before customers, an idea so heretical in some recent management dogma that the author might just as well be burned at the stake.

But author Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, a highly respected Indian information technology firm, makes a strong and highly reasoned case for the approach. He's not saying ignore customers, but to stop making them the top priority. Instead, he writes, companies should shift their focus to empowering and "enthusing" employees in the "value zone," where workers and customers interact. Then, employees can see opportunities to create value for the customer and the company.

As HCL's CEO since 1995, he's obviously doing something right. HCL has grown to 55,000 employees and annual...