Transforming the Organization

Across a number of world-class firms like McKinsey and Fidelity, culture has been the bedrock of their enduring success, bringing consistency and common purpose across their global footprint.

• In the VUCA world, it is critical for an enterprise to have a consistent work culture; however, it will need to go one step further and also build an entrepreneurial culture to succeed. In this chapter, we look at nine aspects that are critical for success in the digital age. These are distinct attributes that enterprises will need to consciously incorporate into their culture.
• However, just articulating these attributes is not enough. We need to integrate them into the way we work to create a definitive culture at the enterprise. This is a slow and complex process. It can be achieved by setting the direction for employees through a set of clearly articulated values, encouraging role modelling by leadership, and institutionalizing the culture through performance and reward processes, to name a few ways.

Key Takeaways
Nine aspects of organization culture
How to build culture consciously

There is a need for a shift in approach from vesting know-how with a small cohort of experts to a systematic method of knowledge management. This will involve:

• Building effective knowledge management capabilities and enabling the knowledge cycle. You will need to identify the different types of knowledge needs, as per business priorities. Second, you will need to clearly establish the knowledge experts and those who need the knowledge. And third, you will need to finally establish processes and invest in the technology to ensure that the required knowledge is available to the seekers on a timely basis.
• Establishing a culture of knowledge-sharing and collaboration. Knowledge management initiatives are complex and time consuming. Moreover, their ROI cannot be easily established. The success of any knowledge management effort is dependent on leadership sponsorship, establishing a culture that encourages knowledge-sharing and collaboration, and creating a well-defined knowledge architecture supported by the right investments in knowledge processes and technology.

Key Takeaways
Essential components of a knowledge marketplace
Why knowledge management initiatives fail?
Six best practices for organizational success

Understanding innovation from the Indian IT/BPM Industry:

• The value proposition of this industry was built on high-quality, low-cost technology talent, ability to scale up at speed, customer responsiveness and a strong process orientation.
• However, due to the impact of digital transformation and the changing expectations of the customer, the ask from Indian IT/ BPM firms has changed significantly.
• The Indian IT/BPM industry needs to step up its game when it comes to innovation. It cannot afford incremental approaches anymore and needs to place bigger bets on product and business model innovation.
• To step up to the challenge, the IT industry will need to go beyond its long-standing success formula, step up its innovation budget commitments, better understand customer pain points, and explore collaboration with start-ups and acquisition of firms with niche skills.

Key Takeaways
Why the Indian IT/BPM industry has not reaized its innovation potential
What the IT/BPM industry needs to do

Agile is not just about project planning and software development but is applicable to all business functions including strategy and planning; to be agile you have to simplify your processes and empower teams to drive outcomes; in a world where you cannot predict developments beyond the next six to twelve months, the ‘fail fast’ approach works best, and you have to get accustomed to not working and operating sequentially.

Key Takeaways
8 key insights on Agile adoption

Every organization has to focus on continuous learning for its employees to adapt to the changing needs of the digital age. The Learning and Development (L and D) function, if leveraged well, can be used to build enterprise capability as well as provide it a competitive advantage. L and D priorities should help the organization meet its short-term and long-term goals by building strong technical, professional, leadership and change management capabilities. For the learning process to be effective, the content should have a degree of personalization, be byte-sized and virtual, and drive a culture of self-directed learning.

Key Takeaways
Five key shifts in the L&D space
Learning and Development action areas and challenges

Most technology companies employ a large proportion of women, varying from 25 percent to 45 per cent of their workforce. However, as you get to mid-senior management levels, this proportion drops dramatically. Diversity in the workforce is an imperative, not only to ensure that it is a good representation of society but also so that it is a driver of innovation, has the right balance of empathy and gives a better understanding of the buying behaviour of customers.

To drive better diversity representation, enterprises will need to create processes as well as changes in workplace design that help women employees manage maternity and their subsequent return to work, as well as help them to continue in the workforce as their responsibilities grow.

Key Takeaways
Why diversity is important
Why there are not enough women at mid-senior management levels
What should companies do to bridge the gap

In the digital age, organizations have no option but to adapt to the rapidly changing environment.

• Despite the inevitability of change, many organizations have been struggling to drive effective change management programmes. Learn the seven best practices that form the critical ingredients of a successful change management programme.
• Overall, enterprises have to carefully craft and monitor the transformation process and use all possible levers to capture the hearts and minds of their people.
• The transformation journey should begin with setting clear change goals, help employees understand the implications of the change process, and celebrate quick wins to build momentum. Communication is a powerful enabler which, if used well, can have a great impact in galvanizing the change process.

Key Takeaways
Best practices in change management

HR has a historic opportunity to play a pivotal role in helping organizations navigate through these uncertain times in the VUCA world. This is because the nature of challenges organizations face in the VUCA world requires many solutions to come from HR.

• Areas where HR should take the lead in driving change include - playing the role of culture champions, organizational redesign, resetting of learning and development strategies, driving new approaches to talent acquisition and engagement in the VUCA world.
• However, the HR function needs to make a number of changes to step up its impact, such as upgrading its own talent DNA, leveraging advancements in technology and data, and stepping up the positioning of its function in the enterprise.

Key Takeaways
What HR should champion
Five areas where HR should step up

If we reinvent our business processes, we will be able to take advantage of AI technologies to fundamentally reshape the nature of our work, create positive business impact and fetch benefits for our workforce. AI will not only impact the nature of jobs but can also enhance employee engagement by helping enterprises track issues more dynamically and become capable of more targeted and personalized interventions.

Key Takeaways
Impact of AI on the nature of jobs
Need for retraining and upskilling
AI as an enabler of employee engagement