50 minute read
HR Tech: A longitudinal view of the industry
What we were
Over the last three decades, the business ecosystem has seen many sweeps of changes. Waves of emerging trends hit the business world, yet the fundamentals of doing business have rarely been contested. A brick-andmortar company in the industrial town for ages or an unseen e-commerce startup; hail-a-cab became call-a-cab; or the modern company with a swanky office in an upmarket business district – Cost, Quality, Service, and Speed are the obvious common pursuit of them all. Kaoro Ishikawa’s 4M’s of business extended to six. Man, method, machine, material, milieu, and measurement got into an interplay to create a process matrix of people, operations, accounting, strategy, finance, and marketing. Interesting but by no means elementary. Every business process domain eventually took to technology to make life easier. HR too! From the Bundy Clock time-tracking machine which had workers inserting a thick card into a slot to get their in-time stamped to the modern retina scan, HR has soared the technology curve and is now galloping ahead.
Cut to the 2020s and India is seeing the largest population of Gen X in the world. A whopping 34.23 percent who come to work with diverse career aspirations, and workplace preferences. The managerial life of them and their managers is transforming too. The pandemic and the business complexities associated with it are only making the recipe of success even more complicated. Therefore, enters the next-level technology. PeopleStrong says that Indian companies can save at least $600m annually by 2021 using HR Technology (PeopleStrong, 2017).
What we are
The top-7 trends in next-level HR technology are: i) IoT Wearables in HR - Facilitating remotelevel tracing in hardposting areas, engagement, health, and fitness options with the glitchfree cloud-based services in an ecosystem. ii) AI Augmented HR
Processes – Wherein human intelligence will be augmented with artificial intelligence for sharper predictive analytics and decision making. iii) Cloud-Based HR – Millennials and Gen-Z run the
‘shared economy’. ‘Share it in the cloud’ and that’s often the best road they take to productivity. iv) Bite-sized learning –
Delivered to the device wherever you are.
Responding to tests and assessment by the flick of the finger is changing the classical models of
instruction design and pedagogy in L&D. v) Health – An app for meditation encouraging you to observe your in-breath and out-breath is the new age reality and it works. vi) BYOD – Despite gearing up on the security front, more and more organizations are asking employees to ‘bring your own device’ that they are most comfortable with syncing their personal and professional lives through their personalized IoT network. vii)Freelance Economy –
Run by the people with
Gig Mindset are those who want to work for you but without compromising their need for freedom, independence, and away from the nine to five frames. That is an ask from technology for solutions round-the-clock accessibility if not availability. Why HR adapts tech
Two imperatives drive HR to adopt the technology. First, even those companies which stay small and lean on headcount are seeing widening scales of operations across geographies and timelines. They use technology to augment their remote business processes. Secondly, with more and more organizations shifting to an organizational design that is a matrix, synergies of processes are in demand. Thus, technology is leveraged for optimal collaborations across functions.
The figure below represents the process technology adaptation by HR. Business exigencies triggers the need for finding the maximum or minimum value of an activity for some constraint, which must be true regardless of the resultant solution. This means the best possible remedy for a given problem under a welldefined set of organizational constraints. These activities sum up the process. Within each activity lies many tasks. Technology helps us to go deep into the multiple layers of tasks, activities, and processes and enhances our ability to retrieve and process data for information analytics for business decision-making. All this sounds great but ‘is a there a business viability of this’ – is what the executive think tank ponders upon.
Business Exigency Business Viability Acquisition Choice Deployment Adaptation
HR Tech Adaptation Model
Once the business logic is agreed upon, the big ‘acquisition choice’ is to build or buy. This is what the HR Tech industry is built upon. And of course, the final stage is that of the continuing cultural adaptation of the technology embarked upon.
What the HR Tech Industry looks like
With more and more business houses laying greater emphasis on ‘managing people’ effectively, the number of HR professionals in the world is increasing. The median ratio of human resources staff to total employment may be declining, but more organizations are having HR professionals on board increasing the width of the profession. COVID-19 swept its axe and cut down many heads in HR but come 2022, pre-pandemic growth in the profession is expected to accelerate. Globally, a spike of 15-18% is what is predicted by 2025 by most trendwatchers.
HR tech integrates HR tasks to HR activities thereby helping to map HR processes. The genesis of this industry was by making life simple on HR payroll by offering payroll software. However, the HR Tech industry now paints a much larger canvas with a diversified portfolio and aggressive footprints on the 7-top trends as mentioned above.
Pandemic has been a blessing in disguise for the HR Tech industry. Work from home and remote productivity challenges have pushed many companies to adopt HR Tech. The industry thus became attractive to investors. The last six months’ trends of industry players like Service Now, Ceridian, and some more in the stock market show a steady rise. Ceridian saw a steep rise in its stock price during peak pandemic months.
Legacy HR tech firms had the biggest slice of the market pie in 2019, with an aggregate value of approximately 60.4 billion
LEGAcY Hr TEcH FIrMS HAD THE BIGGEST SLIcE oF THE MArKET PIE IN 2019, WITH AN AGGrEGATE vALuE oF APProxIMATELY 60.4 BILLIoN u.S. DoLLArS. BY 2025, THE ProJEcTED MArKET vALuE oF THE Hr TEcH INDuSTrY IS ExPEcTED To BE MorE THAN DouBLE
U.S. dollars. By 2025, the projected market value of the HR Tech industry is expected to be more than double.
Legacy HR tech companies battled the COVID19 pandemic slump much better than start-ups. The principles and subsidiaries' relationships helped them leverage many integrated strategic advantages. Ceridium and Ceridium HCM Pty of Singapore, ServiceNow Software Development India Private Limited – subsidiary of ServiceNow America, Linkedin of Microsoft are glowing examples.
Start-ups on the contrary are the more nimble-footed greenhorns. They are faster, even more, creative with novel solutions in the areas of tech-based workgroup engagement and offering unique capacity for interconnected platforms, systems, and unique applications. Start-ups continue to provide ground-breaking HR Tech products that the biggies do not see business scale worth a punt.
India has a fertile HR Tech start-up climate. The sector is poised to reach $41 billion by the year 2022. About a $4.5 billion worth of the pie belongs to APAC with India going for a big bite. The APAC market is expected to move to a fast-track growth with an annual growth rate of 13.5 percent from 2019 to 2025, becoming the fastestgrowing region. HR Tech product portfolio
The archetypal payroll product has yet not hanged its boots. It rules the portfolio with about 58% share, followed by recruitment products. These have evolved many generations with cloud-based offerings and other task-organizing and analytical frills, enjoying a fair share of about 27% of the pie. Newbies in the HR Tech product portfolio are learning & development and rewards & recognition products. They make a promising debut Conclusion
The HR Tech industry will see start-ups growing faster than legacy firms. Yet, the growth rate is not expected to be universally spread across products and geographies. Payroll products will remain the top seller as more organizations will want fewer complexities around compliances and calculations. Cloud-based SaaS solutions will appeal to millennials and Gen-Z - the ambassadors of the shared economy. If work from home continues, engagement and connectivity products will
with about 3% each. Given the bite-sized microlearning and blended learning boom, these are set to mature faster in the COVID19 season. Analysts are apprehensive if learning and R&R have the potential to dislodge the payroll king. This is the niche in the market that HR Tech startups are eyeing. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 pandemic continuum surging in waves, workgroup engagement, and connectivity products are set to enjoy a spurt of about 14% taking its share to 24% by 2025. grow. Interesting to observe would be L&D products. Can a remote platform remove the ‘classroom’ from our consciousness? HR Tech is surely a sector to watch.
References
• Statista. (n.d.). HR Tech. [online]
Available at: https://www.statista. com/study/85007/hr-tech/ [Accessed 8 Jul. 2021]. • PeopleStrong. (2019). HR Technology market landscape. [online]
Available at: https://www.peoplestrong.com/hr-technology-marketlandscape/ [Accessed 8 Jul. 2021].
Satyakki bHattacHarJEE is Managing Partner, GrowthSqapes Consulting and Doctoral Scholar, XIM university BBSR
rucHi KulHAri
Rebuilding the workplace of the future with tech
the workplace of the future will most definitely be defined by technology. With technology underpinning the drive towards a distributed workforce, everything from work culture, ways of collaboration, engagement, and even problem solving will change the way agile organizations operate. While many consider the pandemic as a watershed moment in human history, it is important to note that technology enabling transformation is not a new concept.
Old concept, new approach
From an organization’s perspective, human resources have been using analytics for some time now - often called people analytics, to manage the workforce through data-driven decision making. Companies have been using digital products and services to attract the right talent, connect with remote employees across client locations, integrate employee data and automate processes. The only difference is that it has taken a novel coronavirus to call attention to the true potential of digital HR.
Building operational resilience
Last year, the pandemic and subsequent lockdown highlighted the importance of business continuity and how organizations must take control of the important aspects of their businesses. Organizations with a Business Continuity Plan in place seemed to be less disrupted and were able to scale up their infrastructure and adapt to the rapidly changing working environment when faced with challenges. As we move into 2021, organizations must focus on building a business resiliency plan, equipping their remote workers efficiently, and identifying challenges quickly to take corrective measures in time.
Companies must realign their policies to catch up to the changing scenarios, whether in terms of business, employee well-being, introducing additional paid leaves, or revamping existing health allowance to help deal with the situation and recuperate better.
Digital enablement
As norms continue to evolve and businesses develop new working models, organizations will require new systems, processes, and roles to enable the digital landscape. A holistic approach to such digital enablement will involve a full-bodied digital workspace platform, introducing virtual onboarding, providing seamless access to applications and data, providing modern device management capabilities, addressing connectivity challenges and much more.
To ensure productivity and optimal performance, organizations will have to support flexible user choices to deliver exceptional employee experience like never before.
Data analytics strategy and compliance
HR data analytics will possibly be the most critical aspect of managing human resources in the future. Companies will need to equip themselves with the right set of analysts, a strong strategy to use available data and insights to make well informed decisions and provide a robust data infrastructure to find success in this new model. Investing in such capabilities will give organizations the visibility to understand the needs of their employees better.
For instance, with the help of data analytics, organizations can help provide any special accommodations their employees might need to work efficiently, positively impacting productivity and driving business growth.
Creating value in learning on the go
Companies will have to get creative and explore alternative digital learning strategies to build an agile, skilled workforce. Leaders will need to continue enabling and delivering on capability building by introducing new formats of learning, like delivering L&D programs in short byte sized modules, pre-recorded sessions, replacing in-person programs with virtual classrooms, and breaking down virtual live learning into smaller programs for effective adoption.
Increased people interactions
outcomes of the pandemic has been the increase in personal interactions. With travelling restricted, leaders, management and employees have been able to virtually participate and familiarize with each other, regardless of their location, position, or experience. Whether it is connecting with a senior leader in a townhall, participating in a team building fun activity, brainstorming through a virtual meeting, or introducing your pet to your team members, virtual platforms have helped build and subsequently develop a deep socio emotional connection that might have not been as effective in a pre-pandemic era.
Replacing locationdependent operations
Unlike earlier, where companies would have a remote work consultant working out of client location, the workplace of the future might be a more flexible and viable option, with consultants working virtually in the new normal. With virtual accessibility to information, multiple communication channels and deliverable driven approach, companies can redefine and enable remote work successfully.
Addressing security challenges
Organizations must ensure that their IT and security teams have access to the best of resources and tools to deploy a security model beyond the corporate network to support both company and personal devices. With growing adoption of remote working, the attack surface has widened exponentially, which can mean more complex phishing attacks and security threats from criminals looking for a new target. Companies will need to enforce appropriate policies and monitor compliance subject to regulatory requirements to prevent data breach and loss of revenue.
Attracting right talent
A distributed workforce presents significant opportunities for employers to tap into a favourable talent pool that seemed far fetched before. With accessibility and geography a possibility now, companies can consider recruiting people from diverse backgrounds, experiences, ethnicity and foster a culture of innovation, with the right skill sets
for the role. Embracing such an approach can also help employers bring in innovative ideas, address talent gaps, any form of unconscious bias and also reduce costs attached to travel and office structure.
Leveraging gig economy
With organizations moving to hybrid models of working and becoming more flexible, the gig economy is set to expand and grow exponentially. To become intrinsically agile, organizations must have flexible working hours, offer special benefits, health coverage, automate processes and leverage efficient platforms to reinvent rules and policies around new ways of working. We might have great potential in the next decade to lead a global gig economy as the numbers of freelancers, consultants and affordable labour continues to grow.
Performance and experience management
When employee experiences are meaningful and fulfilling, it helps the workforce to be more efficient, productive and inspires a sense of culture and greater collaboration. Addressing employee grievances must be a critical aspect for organizations to retain talent and holistically bring important changes across the organization. Employee experience is no longer just an HR’s responsibility and can significantly impact business outcomes for leaders who are making the right boardroom decisions now, laying the foundation for the next era.
The pivot to a new work culture is an opportunity for organizations to bolster their workplace flexibility options and revisit their technology investments, while making the necessary changes in their IT budgets. Modern workplaces will also need to focus on cybersecurity on priority and relook at digitizing their operational processes. Priorities for HR managers will include addressing the increase in remote and hybrid workers while implementing the right practices to ensure employee satisfaction, wellness, and productivity. The key is to understand employee needs through constant engagement, feedback, conversations on managerial levels, better interpersonal communication and driving a sense of belonging and call to action.
rucHi kulHari is the Senior VP –Human Resources at Coforge Limited. She oversees human resources for North America and Europe.
In a hybrid world, it is more important than ever to get a complete perspective on who you are hiring, promoting, and managing, shares Ashutosh garg, CEO and Co-Founder of eightfold.ai
By Shweta Modgil
while HR Tech and Work Tech solutions have been fast gaining ground over the last couple of years, however, the pace of change and the way several trends came roaring together dramatically in 2020 was unheard of. Over the last one and half years, technologies have been playing a crucial role in keeping organizations and employees functional. And these technologies and disruptive digital innovations may have a long-lasting impact beyond the pandemic.
But what are the top drivers that organizations factor in to invest in work tech? How are they tackling the adoption challenge and making sure their investments are giving them
returns? What are some of the areas which will see high adoption of worktech technologies?
To answer these and more questions, we spoke to Ashutosh Garg, CEO and Co-Founder of eightfold.ai, which offers an AI-powered talent intelligence platform that is helping transform how enterprises manage talent. The startup also recently raised a $220Mn Series E funding round, led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2.
Here are the excerpts from the interview.
The HR landscape is undergoing a drastic shift. Nextgen technologies that helped facilitate ‘work’ in remote mode have gone from being something of an experiment to essential for survival. What are some of the shifts that you foresee in the near future?
Work is increasingly global. It wasn’t that long ago that if you needed a finance person, you’d be looking in New York, or Silicon Valley for tech people. But skills concentrations aren’t as relevant anymore, and that has put every open position into a global marketplace.
Your company is your people. Having a platform in place that identifies potential skills or best fits for new roles only adds more value to your organization -- if you can ensure you have a worker who is continuing to grow their skills and career, they are exponentially more valuable than a static employee.
In a workplace that no longer functions on human interaction, the only way HR personnel can ensure employees have a smooth experience is through the adoption of tech tools. What are some of the areas which will see high adoption of worktech technologies? lenges that will be faced by organizations and employers alike when it comes to adoption and how can they make mitigate those challenges?
The biggest challenge will be overcoming existing biases and mindsets. There are so many poor assumptions about remote work environments or how employees can interact with each other. The reality is that if you have identified and hired the correct people, they will be passionate about their role and naturally build to success together.
The most important HR breakthrough is going to be about hiring for potential. Selecting a candidate who is not just the right fit for the job description as it currently sits, but what the role is going to look like in five years, and if they have the skills to grow alongside it. Finding those fits will be a key differentiator for the most successful companies in the world.
What does the future landscape of talent intelligence platforms like eightfold.ai look in the hybrid world?
In a hybrid world, it is more important than ever to get a complete perspective on who you are hiring, promoting, and managing. You simply have more options than ever before. That unfortunately means it is much more likely to make the wrong decision - this can be corrected by having all the most relevant data.
Dr. M. Muneer
Bsc-sFo: What separates winners from losers
Strategy execution is a critical differentiator for businesses. Learn how balanced scorecards and strategy focused organizations outperform their competition
over two decades of hands-on experience with strategy execution taught me many lessons, and it is no surprise even today that more than 90% of enterprises continue to fail in deliver their internally set objectives. It is not because their strategy was bad, but their execution was jugaad!
It is much worse when it comes to governments, especially in India. There is not a single elected government in the post-independent India that has executed what they had been promising at the election time.
Execution excellence is evasive not just in the Indian boardrooms, although it is more accentuated here with the “ho-jayega” culture and poor attention to details. A worldwide survey conducted by Fortune Magazine shows that the problem is global. Another study by Fortune reiterates this: “In the information age, vision and strategy are no longer enough to drive success and great performance…. the mistaken belief that developing the right strategy will enable a company to rocket past its competitors. In reality, strategy is less than half the battle. In the majority of cases – we estimate 70% – the real problem isn’t bad strategy…..it’s bad execution.”
Herein lies a possible competitive advantage at a time when every company is chasing the ever-disappearing advantages. Can they execute their strategy well to become the 10% that succeed rather than follow the herd and become a poor performer? CEOs need to build strategy execution as a core competence and stand apart like a few global organizations continue to do.
In our quest to find what separates winners from losers, here are some interesting findings:
Action Item Breakthrough Results
Some Progress
No Results
Executive Team has created a sense of urgency 84% 55% 21%
Strategy translated into operational terms and communicated well 84% 40% 0
Corporate/Business Unit metrics are linked & aligned to strategy
Employees are aware of the strategy
Individual and team goals are aligned with the strategy 72% 38% 0
57% 33% 0
43% 27% 0
Budgeting and planning processes are combined 100% 45% 0
You might ask, “What’s new in this?” Most of the items look like common sense. But 9 out of 10 companies don’t follow this common sense and fail to deliver the results!
So, why do companies fail to manage strategy? Over the years business has undergone a paradigm shift from the manufacturing mode to a service mode. For example, Nike is not a manufacturer today but a brand and marketer. They outsource almost everything else. The proportion of intangible assets has increased dramatically over tangible assets. Companies have to grapple with more intangible assets such as brand, human capital, IPR, culture, service quality and many more, and managing these are not as easy as counting machine uptime and downtime or number of defects. What one cannot measure, one cannot manage. And that is one key problem faced by companies today.
There are other reasons too why companies fail to execute strategy. Our research shows that 95% of the workforce within a company do not understand what the company strategy is, 60% of organizations do not link budgets to strategy, 70% of companies do not link management incentives to strategy and 85% of executive teams spend less than one hour a month discussing strategy. There’s more…. Most companies have not yet embraced a consistent way of describing strategy and the heavy strategy document is normally kept secretly in the CEO’s office and even the senior management rarely opens the same after the consultant had presented it. 67% of IT and HR support functions are not aligned to strategy.
According to Michael Porter, the selection and execution of hundreds of activities are the foundations of strategy. That means strategy cannot be limited to a few people at the top. It must be understood and executed by everyone. The employee objectives (KPI/KRIs) must be aligned to those of the organization. Performance management systems are supposed to create this alignment
but have not been able to do so well. Most performance management systems are designed around the annual budgets and operational plans and they promote short-term, incremental and tactical behavior. One just cannot manage strategy, which is longer term with a system designed to manage tactics.
For some reason, India Inc has not warmed up fully to the potential of using balanced scorecards for holistic implementation of strategy perhaps because of the short term focus on getting performance managed for the quarter or year. The QSQT (Quarter Se Quarter Tak) phenomenon looms large. Perhaps it is also because of the proliferation of software tools with drop down menus that made employees reluctant to apply their minds to strategic thinking. It is astonishing that most Indian enterprises behave in a very predictable way when it comes to executing strategy.
From our experience of having implemented strategy execution projects in India, along with Kaplan and Norton partnership, we have seen most Indian enterprises doing excellently well in driving processes that deliver short-term results such as operational excellence and cost cutting. They are average when it comes to executing processes that deliver medium-term results such as customer relationships and service excellence – You will not find a world-class example of customer service from India. What is worst across the spectrum of Indian enterprises is their pathetic ability in executing processes that deliver results in the long-term such as R&D and innovation.
What most CEOs do not as they are unlikely to yield results before 18-24 moths,
The Kaplan-Norton framework of Balanced Scorecards and strategy focused organizations have been popular in the Americas and Europe and parts of Asia for some time now. According to a study in Asia and Middle East, the penetration of BSC is fast increasing in these regions, sensing a
realise is that organizations have to do all the three process categories simultaneously in order for continued growth and profitability. If you wait till the operational processes are implemented well to start your customer processes, you will find both top and bottom lines suffering since customer service processes will take at least 6-12 months to show some results. Similarly product development and innovation processes should be driven early on major benefit while planning for organic and inorganic growth.
So what is a Balanced Scorecard? When I ask this question to many C-Suite folks they all say it is a performance system and they think they know what it is after reading the HBR article or the book. When you probe further you realise that they do not have much of an idea. Some folks tried to implement it on their own and failed miserably because they did not do it
right, and then they blamed BSC as not useful. This has caused India to lag behind in embracing this framework and successful execution is still eluding India Inc.
In simple terms, the BSC is a framework that helps organizations translate strategy into operational objectives with a view to driving both behavior and performance. It is called balanced because it covers all aspects of a business, not just financials. It covers financial and non-financial issues, long-term and short-term issues, tangible and intangibles, and so on. Kaplan and Norton had tested it out in Mobil in the late ‘80s and published their seminal article in Harvard Business Review in 1992. Since then this tool has revolutionized the way companies execute strategy.
Many executives in the Middle East and Japan compare it with Hoshin Kanri system but BSC is much more than incremental improvement and TQM. It has its foundation on longterm strategy, and is aimed to deliver breakthrough performance rather than continuous improvement, which tends to be incremental. Also, these two systems work in a complementary fashion rather than in conflict. While Hoshin Kanri focus on policy deployment and assumes stable processes, BSC focuses on strategic feedback and learning, and assumes dynamic organization with evolving strategy. Hoshin Kanri assumes organizational hierarchy but BSC is organization independent, i.e., hierarchical model not necessary. Both of course have accountability built into the methodology.
BSC had been used as a performance measurement tool in this part of the world by early adapters like Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles, Tata Steel and others. And that eventually turned egy execution. The Indian subsidiaries of large MNCs had far outperformed their global counterparts in profitability and their CEOs moved up the ladder faster. Indian companies that have done it right, like LMW, went on to lead their industries globally in value terms. IT companies providing services to global clients continually moved up the value chain. Global business services of banks improved their delivery efficiency and garnered more share of business and in newer areas.
into an HR initiative by later adapters. What they missed out, as the deeper work by Kaplan and Norton unearthed, was the true power of BSC as an excellent change management tool.
In conjunction with the principles of SFO, BSC and strategy map become extremely powerful in delivering breakthrough performance in organizations. For instance, many organizations we have worked with in the last two decades have grown tremendously and some have become hall of fame companies for stratOverall, the competitiveness of most companies using the BSC-SFO processes has improved tremendously. The items separating the winners as illustrated in the beginning are all addressed by the SFO processes. No other methodology has delivered so much for our clients. No wonder then that Harvard Business School terms it as the most revolutionary management tool of the last 75 years.
So how do you build an SFO? The following figure illustrates the basic model of the five phases of SFO framework.
Principles of Strategy-Focused Organisation
Translate TRANSLATE STRATStrategyEGY TO OPERATIONAL TERMS Executive MOBILIZE CHANGE Leadership THROUGH EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
Continual
Process
Organisation Alignment Everyone’s Job
ALIGN THE GOVERN TO MAKE ORGANIZATION TO STRATEGY A CONTINUAL
THE STRATEGY PROCESS MOTIVATE TO MAKE STRATEGY EVERYONE’S JOB
1. Mobilizing change through executive leadership
The BSC-SFO project is not a “metrics” project, but a “change” project. The single most important condition for success is the commitment of the leadership team to change. In our process we use five best practices to drive this change agenda. We kick start the project with a VMV (VisionMission-Values) workshop involving the leadership team and executive team members. This is a highly emotional exercise and over the two or three days, the team articulates the vision, mission and values, and more importantly, what these are not. Once this is over, we do an SFO assessment to find out the current status of the 26 strategy execution processes at the organization. This involves extensive data analysis, strategy evaluation, executive interviews, survey of senior executives and so on. We also benchmark these processes against the best practices globally so that the organization benefits tremendously in terms of where they are when they start off the BSC journey and where they can be in a couple of years from then. This process is something proprietary and is not otherwise available elsewhere.
2. Translate the strategy into operational terms so that all can understand it
Here is where we use strategy map, strategic objectives, measures, targets and strategic initiatives. There are five best practices here as well. The process is proprietary and designed to deliver powerful results. Working together with the senior executives, we complete the strategy articulation, identification of the key objectives across the four perspectives that are modified from the earlier Financial-Customer-ProcessLearning and growth to the new age Outcome-Stakeholder-Process-Enablers mode. Each objective will have at least one measure and some objectives, two. We work with them to fix targets for every measure and map initiatives to close the gap. The success of this process is also because we assign the right job to the right person. For example, a CFO may lead quality movement across the company. Quite often strategic themes also emerge as a way to manage objectives in a group, which could typically be short, medium and long-term result-oriented processes (Eg. operational excellence, customer delight, innovation, CSR) to help articulate the strategy better across the organization.
3. Align the organization to the strategy
Enterprises are complex structures, and most organizations have several business units and functional support units. BSC is a powerful tool to describe each business/support unit strategy, derived from the enterprise strategy. The assumption is that the combination of these business units’ scorecards should help achieve the overall strategic goals. It is imperative that we use BSC
to define strategic linkages between the business units and functions. What we normally do is use the five best practices to cascading the top level BSC to the next level of business and shared services and establishing the linkages between objectives. These are explicit and help companies stay focused on strategy. We believe this to be the trickiest part since most organizations fail in cascading and aligning objectives. There are companies who have even developed customer scorecards (Eg. Infosys) and supplier scorecards (Wipro, LMW) to ensure that everything critical to the organizational strategy is aligned, measured and managed.
4. Making strategy everyone’s job
Since most of the work performed in a typical company today is knowledge-related, we need to manage this asset carefully. There is also a growing silicon staff (AI, automation, robots) movement in many companies. Knowledge workers make strategic choices every day and they need to understand the organization strategy clearly to take informed decisions. There are four best practices here that we follow and develop a communication plan to cover all employees in order to start aligning them to the corporate mission and vision, and derive personal scorecards from the cascaded BSCs of SBUs and shared functions. We also link the incentive compensation to scorecard measures. Planning and budgets also get aligned at this stage and the earlier devised strategic themes and strategic initiatives help a lot in accomplishing this.
5. Making strategy a continual process
One of the most critical processes for the success of strategy execution is the monthly or quarterly strategy review meeting. We have perfected this governance methodology and train the senior leadership team on how to focus more on strategy than on operational issues. There are seven best practices here. One of the reasons for the poor execution, as cited before, is the absence of quality discussion on strategy by the top management. With the governance model this will be changed. We have seen transformational thinking in such meetings where senior managers started moving away from discussing mere numbers to drivers to the numbers, for instance. In our experience, the real execution begins at these sessions. Unless you review your work on a regular basis there is no way of knowing where you are going. Also, strategy being a hypothesis, the earlier you know it is right or not, the better for you to change plans. By applying various management tools, senior leaders argue for the performance of their objectives in a manner that seeks collective wisdom to move forward.
The BSC-SFO process has enabled most clients to transform their governance and review process – one that is focused on strategy. This has enabled them to put emphasis on learning, team problem solving, and coaching so that there is a context to any action at the unit and individual levels.
noTE: Muneer has been involved with the proliferation of balanced scorecards in the region for over two decades, and as a partner to both Robert Kaplan and David Norton, much of the details in this article have been based on their framework and successful implementations at client organizations
MunEEr is Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist at the non-profit Medici Institute Foundation for Diversity and Innovation. Follow him in Twitter @MuneerMuh
Organizations with agile leaders at the helm will continue to thrive: Ruchira Chaudhary
Effective leaders can build the foundations for digital capability by involving everyone in the change and encouraging a growth mindset, says ruchira chaudhary, Author, Leadership Coach, and Founder - TrueNorth Consulting
By Mastufa Ahmed
An alumnus of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Ruchira Chaudhary, Author, Leadership Coach, and Founder - TrueNorth Consulting, straddles the corporate and academic worlds – she is a leading executive coach, adjunct faculty at several top tier business schools and runs a boutique consulting firm focused on organizational strategy solutions.
Ruchira’s diverse and eclectic background in mergers & acquisitions, organization effectiveness, and strategy execution, coupled with two decades of experience in emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, helps her grasp challenging people issues. Ruchira is also the author of the book Coaching: The Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership.
In a recent interview with People Matters, Ruchira talks about the evolving leadership styles for the new digital world of work.
As an executive coach who straddles the corporate and
academic worlds, what has been the most fascinating thing for you that emerged from the crisis from a leadership perspective?
I am truly passionate about amplifying the message of leaders as coaches and enablers - it’s a topic I have written about extensively, teach it at several business schools, and is also the focus of my recently published book Coaching the Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership (Penguin Random House).
The most fascinating thing for me as an outcome of the pandemic is the realization that you cannot lead through a crisis without enabling your people, and taking them along in the journey. In times of uncertainty, no leader can have all the answers. Good leaders recognize that the best ideas can come from anyone. These leaders empowered their teams and gave their colleagues a platform to voice ideas, opinions, and suggestions. These leaders weathered this relentless storm and navigated choppy waters by collaborating and partnering with their people – by asking them not to tell them what to do.
There are so many different leadership styles and leaders that we see today. But when it comes to leading through a crisis? Do you see a synergy in terms of how they lead? Or there is no rulebook?
While there is no rulebook as you rightly pointed out, the pandemic has shown us that organizations that have thrived not just survived had agile and nimble leaders at the helm. Leaders showed swiftness in taking
decisions (even when they do not know the answers) and moved from analysis to a plan of action.
These leaders surrounded themselves with experts whose advice they took into cognizance before making balanced decisions; they empowered others, communicated clearly, and unambiguously separated fact from fiction. Importantly, these leaders consciously created a culture of motivation, not Instruction by Asking, not Telling Others.
To make a success of digital transformation, effective leadership and mature organizational culture are necessary. What is the mindset that leaders require to succeed in a digital world? Anything new that you learned from this crisis?
I believe effective leaders can build the foundations for digital capability by involving everyone in the change and encouraging a growth mindset. As Prof Deborah Ancona at the MIT Sloan School of Management says, “To thrive in this landscape, organizations that have long been siloed and bureaucratic must become nimble and customer-centric, and command-and-control models must give way to distributed leadership.” The Crisis has reiterated that these leaders succeeded by: • Ask probing questions • Create psychological safety • Build Digitally Focused Organizations
The continued uncertainty is a test for both organizations and workers. What’s your advice on how to best take care of employees’ changing needs while continuing to solve new business challenges?
Today, more than ever, leaders must discern, adapt to and balance many fronts skillfully: focus on employee well-being yet drive business results; provide clarity despite not knowing enough, and, above all, he needs to project confidence despite knowing harsh business realities. The organizations, and by extension the leaders who have done this right have focused on a few key aspects such as cultivating empathy and building trust. Leaders can support their people in achieving peak performance by trusting them to do their job without constant supervision giving them the time and space in this new WFH reality. Second is Role Modeling. Many say New Zealand’s PM Jacinda Ardern is a master class for leaders on how to handle crises. Empathy seems to naturally flow from her. Lastly, it’s resilience. Leaders need to build higher levels of resilience in themselves and their teams by taking charge of how they think about misfortune, crisis, and adversity. As Sheryl Sandberg says eloquently — Resilience is a
muscle you can build. It’s just a matter of knowing how.
There are ample studies that demonstrate a strong correlation between diversity at a leadership level and business results. But not much is changing in the real world. How is this going to unfold/change in the post-pandemic world?
When the pandemic first hit in 2020, millions of women were among the first to lose their jobs because they are overly represented in the service sectors - leading some economists to call the ensuing recession a “shecession”.
Research tells us that women are much less likely to ask for promotions, or apply for leadership positions vis-a-vis men despite being equally qualified – what many experts term as the confidence gap between men and women. The pandemic has only exacerbated the problem. Employers need to take cognizance of this alarming reality and make concerted efforts to create an ecosystem where women employees can rejoin the workforce with the right support, infrastructure, and coaching that helps them play to their potential.
What’s the code for ‘uncommon’ leadership? Can you share some insights from your latest book ‘Coaching: The Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership’?
Coaching: The Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership is a book for people that aspire to become extraordinary or Uncommon Leaders. Uncommon lead-
ers are those that achieve success by helping others grow, who take others along and help them become a better version of themselves. It’s a book about the journey from being a good leader to an extraordinary one, or shall I say a leader to a leader-coach. Coaching is the key - or the code - that unlocks Uncommon Leadership.
Uncommon leaders understand that it’s not just about building an empire, or making millions in revenues but also about the journey and the teams they build along the way. When these leaders relentlessly focus on elevating others, they also elevate themselves, and their organizations. When they shine the light on others, they shine even brighter.
A new book edited by Dr. Anil K. Khandelwalexplores transformational leadership in banking using indepth case studies and insightful interviews
By Dr Aquil Busrai
Iwas filled with a sense of anticipation and exultation as I picked up the copy of Dr Anil K Khandelwal’s latest book “Transformational Leadership in Banking” a hardcover book with an attractive bright cover and with 514 pages of treasure between them. Having already authored two best sellers “Dare to Lead” and “CEO, Chess Master or Gardener”, Dr Khandelwal has by now, made a mark in the leadership domain. He revisited his earlier book “Human Resources Development in Bank” written in 1988 to reflect upon the progress of HRD function in Public Sector Banks. In his own words, he laments that “…in last three decades, while banking has taken rapid strides, such as introduction of technology, retail banking and more recently the amalgamation of 10 PSBs into 4, the HR function continues to suffer from neglect…” such observations coming from a stalwart who chaired the famous Khandelwal Committee in 2010, are serious indictment of the HR function. Dr Khandelwal is known to be a handson leader and this book is testament to his passion and commitment to ensure that change does happen. This perseverance sets him apart as not only a thought leader but also a committed change agent.
In editing the “Transformational Leadership in Banking” Dr Khandelwal has garnered contributions from 34 outstanding luminaries from academia, industry, and consulting. The cross section of contributors testifies to the magnificence of diverse perspectives, opinions, and counsel. The success of this book can be attributed to this very feat, where Dr Khandelwal has been able to extract the wisdom of such accomplished professionals and string their thoughts together in harmony with the central theme.
Essentially, the book has dwelled on three broad themes: Governance, Leadership and Human Resources. It has critically examined what role HR can play in influencing the other two. The archaic method of selecting Boards and giving the CEO a team of Executive Directors from different banks, that too on a short tenure of 2-3 years has posed grave challenge in obtaining commitment for long term changes and
limited possibility to engage in transformational change that requires tenure commitment. Banking industry continues with the mindset of focusing on immediacy of commercial goals leaving very little room for getting the banks future ready. Banking industry has been beleaguered with huge manpower numbers. Estimated to be over 1 million today. But the type of talent needed for future skills like risk management, data analytics, digital technology etc., is in short supply. HR will need to prioritize reskilling current manpower expeditiously.
The book is structured in three parts. Part 1 focuses on future of banking, governance, leadership, and talent. Part 2 presents four case studies from leading Banks where HR has played significant role in business transformation process. This part more than adequately establishes that when reforms in HR are undertaken, they indisputably facilitate good banking. Part 3 presents interesting individual insights, gleaned through one-on-one interviews. The systematic taxonomy of the book is a unique feature. It enables a reader to focus on one major theme at a time, without losing the connection.
Part one is split into four sections. Section one covers future of Banking and urgent need for reforms considering the rapid advent of technology and Digital Revolution. Essays from MS Sriram, Sushil Saluja, Akhil Handa focus on reimagining work and workforce to better understand how machine and man can collaborate and importance of reskilling the workforce to work with intelligent machines. Section two Highlights the Governance issue including soft factors like personal ethics and organizational culture. It underscores the need for transformation because the banking regulations do not always yield the desired results.. Section three on
leadership, with Dr Khandelwal’s epic Fifteen Actionable Insights from the Trenches. This is unique because it is based on his own personal experience as Chairman and CEO of Bank of Baroda. Eminent writers like late Dr Pritam singh, Anil Sachdev, Abinash Panda, Mamkoottam, Raj Bowen, Rajiv Jayaraman, Nishchae Suri and others have written excellent papers on leadership, culture, learning, new manifesto for HR in digital environment.
Part two is a collection of four case studies that highlights the sterling work done on transformation by State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, ICICI Bank and Union Bank. SBI’s transformation of its HR practices, the way it revamped its training and development and the role HR played in merger process and digital transformation is a benchmark. The second Case Study is the famous Bank of Baroda’s professionalization of its HR and overhaul of its HR processes. The ICICI bank Case Study on building contemporary HR, including close industry -academia partnership and building a leadership pipeline is an outstanding example of pioneering work.
Part three is simply fascinating. Stalwarts on Bank boards and acknowledged institution builders - have all candidly shared their experience and outlook on culture, leadership, board management, HR and digital challenges.
Although the primary focus of the book is Public Sector Banks, nevertheless the insight, the farsightedness and the wisdom contained in the book is universally relevant for HR leaders and CEOs in any industry. This is a book every senior banker should keep on his shelf. It is futuristic and insightful.
In my opinion, this book is a must-read for all HR professionals and senior business and banking leaders, particularly CEOs.
Dr aquil buSrai is the CEO of Aquil Busrai Consulting
Past Month's events
new Frontiers in employee skilling: Digital learning, curated content & business
People Matters & Plethora 22nd July 2021 Online The rapid pace and scale of technological change and global flows of information, among other forces, are disrupting labor markets and fundamentally altering the future of work. With 2020 having a major focus on performance and efficiencies, 2021 is about building capabilities to create new values and opportunities for clients and businesses, which is not possible without an overriding strategy for digital learning, and relevant content for skilling and development. This discussion invited leaders to decipher the new frontiers in skilling and development and how organizations can embrace new emerging skills to redefine value for the business, and the role of curating right, engaging, and personalized, and yet impactful content in bridging the skilling gaps. tweetchat - emergence through excellence: what’s next in the world of work?
People Matters 23rd July 2021 Twitter For continued business growth and to stay on the top with the right people strategy, business and HR leaders must hold on to this new agile work culture driven by tech. If 2020 was the year of The Great Reset, 2021 is all about Emergence Through Excellence. We have the chance to stride ahead and build a betterthan-ever world of people and work. Empowered by technology, it is HR who has to lead this journey. But as we advance, there are a few important questions we must reflect upon. Hence, as a precursor to the People Matters TechHR India 2021’s theme, we invited HR and business leaders to come together and answer the question that stares us in the face- what next? People Matters techHR india 2021: the Great emergence
People Matters 4th - 6th Aug 2021 Online With everything disrupted, considering going back to the old ways of working is not at all a winning strategy. Companies have accelerated their business agility & speed by adopting new ways of working. People Matters TechHR 2021’s theme, The Great Emergence will answer the question that stares us in the face - WHAT NEXT? It marks the beginning of reimagining the possibilities presented by our new reality. It was a perfect opportunity for all the leaders to network with 2500+ delegates and discuss how HR continues its quest to become more digital, datacentric, and businessdriven than ever before, with execution being at the core.
Upcoming events
unlocking business value through skilling People Matters Are you in the list Awards People Matters ex APAc Virtual conference
People Matters & Coursera 12th Aug 2021 Online As the new world of work awaits to unleash new challenges, opportunities, and innovations, ensuring companies have the right skills mix to thrive in this new world of work has become a priority.Upskilling is emerging as a core to many firms’ talent strategies. Hence, in the coming years, the speed and scale of upskilling and reskilling human capital. In this virtual session by People Matters & Coursera, we will look at what has been the major skills gap in organisations that they are looking to solve? How are organizations looking to address the shift in learning patterns among employees? How should organizations plan at linking learning efforts with tangible business outcomes? How to effectively collaborate with business leaders/teams to make sure the employees learn relevant job based skills to help their individual & team performance? People Matters 27th Aug 2021 Online As HR leaders played a pivotal role in spearheading their organizations through the uncertainty, stress, and change, they developed and defined a new core set of skills which is going to be a prerequisite of emerging HR leaders in the second year of the pandemic and beyond. It is these very visionary and talented HR leaders that the People Matters Are you in the List 2021 Awards which is in its 10th year of running aims to recognize- the new generation of HR leaders who rose to the challenge of 2020 and became the answer to the challenges in the People and Workspace and have redefined HR for the future HR leaders. The People Matters Are you in the List 2021 awards in association with DDI is the right stage for you-as it has been for the last 10 years, identifying the emerging HR leaders of tomorrow who can rise to the challenges of the future. People Matters 9th Sept 2021 Online People Matters EX APAC Virtual conference is a full-day event that will feature four virtual tracks and will take a deep dive into different aspects of the EX with keynotes, case study sessions, panel discussions, and dedicated virtual exhibition space for service providers to showcase their latest offerings. It will cover the foundations of EX to maximize business success, accelerating the development of a consumer mindset to solving people & work challenges in order to attract and retain future talent, bolster productivity and ultimately build happier workplaces, which makes more business sense in the long run. So come, learn, interact, and network virtually with over 1000+ delegates and explore how EX translates in every decision in the talent strategy.
Blogosphere >> Dr. PEtE HarPuM
The paradoxes of digital culture
We have never been so connected. Still, we struggle to manage these several lives we live, side-by-side in time
Digital Culture, as a phenomenon, cannot be separated from the all-pervasive reality of capitalism. The early beginnings of the digital age are identified with industrial-era pioneers such as Charles Babbage (calculating machines), Charles Jacquard (automated weaving loom), and inevitably, and later, Alan Turing and his work on the universal computing machine. Capitalist imperatives led to the work of these people – to embed capital into the production process, so removing the need for humans to carry out the “making tasks”, improving efficiency, and reducing cost – that is to say, increasing profitability.
The second aspect of digital culture identified by writers such as Charlie Gere and Cohen is the direct line of development from the counterculture of the 1960s to the current time. These writers describe the co-location in time and place of counterculture aesthetics and ethos with developing computing technology, not the least of which happened in Silicon Valley. A desire to express individuality, to explore ways of being that were outside the mainstream culture of the USA at the time, was common amongst the microelectronics and computing scientists and engineers.
There is a paradox here. Capitalism created the context and “need” for digitalization. The reaction to capitalism, the 1960s counter-culture, then delivered exactly the answer capitalists were looking for – the personal computer and, thereafter, near-global GAFA technology platforms (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple). This “origin paradox” has spawned several more paradoxes. • Paradox 1: People as data.
People have submitted to the panopticon of GAFA and others (one thinks of government agencies), through the data we seem willing to make available, free, to the market economy. Simultaneously, we cry out for hyper-individuality. The very data we give away is used to categorize, normalize, and rationalize us for commercial ends. • Paradox 2: Invisibility of digital culture. We access, literally and metaphorically, an essentially invisible digital system, through highly visible and heavily marketed physical digital
devices. Our smartphones, computers, and intelligent personal assistants are completely integrated into our daily experience.
Yet behind the device is, as Gere describes it, a “… vast, complex, and largely invisible assemblage of information and communications systems through which late modernity operates…” • Paradox 3: Comfort and heroism. We have conflicted needs for passivity and social morality.
This is resolved partially through the contradiction of “relaxing” by watching unspeakable horrors on our devices – via mainstream media, Facebook,
Twitter, etc. The violence is seeming as raw and unfiltered as possible perhaps to make us feel actually alive, as opposed to living in a torpor. • Paradox 4: Connection, but no control. The plethora of apps we have available to us allows us to live multiple lives simultaneously. To converse with many people on the same and different platforms at the same time, to organize our love and sex lives, to order goods and services, to multi-task to perhaps extreme degrees. We have never been so connected.
Still, we struggle to manage these several lives we live, side-by-side in time. Our egos run riot. • Paradox 5: Production and consumption. The digitalized world of commerce has enabled the market to drive production costs to the absolute minimum. Everything is outsourced, accepting what firms consider, following the work of C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel, to be their “core competencies”. As products beyond the reach of the many have become cheaper and cheaper, capitalism has won over the workers. The same people that have seen their tal culture and the way it impacts society. I ask organizational leaders to take to heart this invocation by Aldo Schiavone: “We cannot leave technology, and the network of powers that pervades it, to decide without mediation the ways of life available to us. It appears increasingly necessary to find an equilibrium point that, even while integrating the connection between technology and the market, stands on the outside.”
The point? Become a locus
median income stagnate (particularly in the West) over the decades since the 1960s, embracing the very system that has created the hourglass economy.
What on earth has all this got to do with senior leaders? Well…everything! Quite apart from the fact that senior leaders represent and deliver both the capitalist creed and facilitate the digital culture, they also lead the working people/producers – that also consume! This is a privileged position to work from in shaping digiaround which mediation and equilibrium can be developed. Make visible to the people in your organization the paradoxes of digital culture. Make sense of the digital culture within which they work and live. The traditional demarcation of work and private life is no longer a fiction we can abide by. The producer/consumer paradox demonstrates this. Organizational leaders are, de facto, leaders of society too.
about the author
Dr. PEtE HarPuM is Partner: Eu & uK in GrowthSqapes Consulting
