The Delhi Metro Rail Company was successful because they created a specific culture of

integrity and accountability to each other as well as their governmental, community, and
financial stakeholders. As mentioned, the “four most important values on which DMRC operated
were Punctuality, Integrity, Professional Competence, and Social Accountability” (p. 7). These
were the driving principals of Dr. Sreedharan and most of them are positivity; however, I believe
the emphasis on punctuality and professional competence can be a double-edged sword and led
to some of the problems in the company.
I would say that Seredharan’s management style is laudable and give us a lot to learn,
regardless of the current situation of the collapsed bridge. I was particularly struck by how
conscious he was in making sure that there was social responsibility structured within the
organizational structure. Having community stakeholders involved in keeping the company
accountable helped the company avoid delays from protests within the community. The
transparency of regular press conferences and who the Chief Engineer of the area of the project
allowed the community to feel that the decisions that were being made were fair and gave
minimal reason for social disruption. They also created a culture of zero tolerance for corruption
which also aided in the public sentiment that the company was effectively using resources.
Sreedharan’s emphasis on making sure these characteristics penetrated the entire organization
allowed for him to not be an indispensable leader, as he mentioned, “I have built up the
organization in such a way that there are people to take over from me without difficulty” (p. 13).
In many of the leadership courses I took in my previous program, the most successful institutions
were those that had a leader who focused on making sure additional layers of the organization
were able to take over at the end of the leader’s tenure. Any organization that focuses on the cult
of personality of a transformational leader is bound to fail at the time of transition.
One of my concerns of this style was that Dr. Sreedharan only allowed those who he had
a personal association with or those whose “integrity erstwhile colleagues...vouched for.” This
creates a very specific culture because it very driven on those personal circles and people have to
come from similar backgrounds. I would be worried that this could be easily give way to
groupthink. As the other reading discussed, putting together a strong team would be trying to
bring together different experiences to create a possibility for structured dissent and highlighting
different ways of thinking about a problem.
 The changes I would propose to the management system of DMRC would be to alter the
hyper-emphasis on punctuality above all. It seems that the drive to finish the project on time
resulted in more than one accident. The TEDx talk that we also watched for this week, he talked
about the triple constraint of management; it seems that in this situation, the DMRC chose time
over quality which led to the collapse. I also would encourage Sreedharan to look beyond hiring
employees that he knows or has been vouched for from the Indian Railways company. While
those individuals might be strong individuals to be part of the team, having a lack of alternative
experiences could have possibly led to the disaster that we are currently in.
Dr. Sreedharan is facing many difficult problems in regard to the current collapse of the
bridge. I think he has been primarily focused on the reputation of the organization which is why
he structured the DMRC the way he has: the four values focused on punctuality, integrity,
professional competency, and social responsibility. Because this is his focus, I would have him
consider doing what he can to save the company’s reputation. The case mentions that if he fires
the company supervising the construction that the reputation of DMRC would be saved but
workforce morale will become low. I think he would do best to make any announcement to the
larger staff before the press and figure out how to acknowledge and address their feelings of
despair. He also should consider taking some additional time to finish the construction to make
sure that it is up to quality and safety standards instead of rushing to finish it before the
Commonwealth Games. However, if they can prioritize the Central Secretariat-Badarpur link,
maybe diverting other resources to finish that section before the games and the rest of the metro
after, that would cause the least amount of problems for the company in going beyond their
deadline.