In today's dynamic world, success - organisational, individual, societal, perhaps even global - comes from having and nurturing the best people. And doing that involves objectively and intentionally creating a great culture.

That was the message delivered by prominent entrepreneur and investor Anupam Mittal, the founder and CEO of new media company People Group, at People Matters TechHR Pulse Mumbai this week.

Speaking in conversation with People Matters CEO Pushkar Bidwai, Anupam put it simply:

"Culture is fundamentally operating model multiplied by people strategy. If either one is zero, your culture is zero."

So what is people strategy?

In Anupam's words: why you hire, why you promote, and why you fire. The 'who' is simply a subset of that; the reasons for having people within the organisation, for advancing them, or for not having them, are fundamental.

And what is operating model?

"That is simply alignment cadence, which means how often the people align with each other. Some people call it reporting. I don't like that word, so I call it alignment cadence: real time metrics."

He pointed to the concept of DRIs - directly responsible individuals - as the most effective way of assigning accountability, so that every important metric is taken care of by a single person.

With this understanding, Anupam said, the organisation gains clarity about what is important, what pieces are present or missing, and how to address any gaps. And HR's role also becomes clearer.

"When you have that kind of structure, if you think about culture like that, it becomes more objective, and then you start to realize how critical the HR role is in there. Because if your operating model is not great, but your people strategy is great, your culture is still zero."

How do these things combine to create culture?

It's not a matter of describing everything in pretty words, Anupam said.

"Culture, values, all these are not fancy things you write and put on a sign in your lobby. You must have heard of a company called Enron? I'm sure they had amazing values on display in their lobby."

Instead, it goes back to extremely basic things: how people behave, the way they speak to each other, how they interact in various situations, how they escalate or resolve issues.

And it requires HR leaders to influence the operating model. He shared how he has seen things go wrong if leadership does not put effort in. During his time in the US, he saw the approach of building corporate cultures where companies hire the best in the business, leave them alone to do their job, and give them help when they need it.

"That strategy failed. Terribly," he said.

As an investor, he also asks: how are you defining a 'great team'? If a successful company is made by a great team, then people need to have a very firm idea of what makes a great team, he believes - what the culture of that team is, what works for the organisation.

"Only then can great talent be great performers."