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Transforming the Organization to Win in the Digital Age
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  Introduction
Building Organization Culture to Succeed in the Digital Age
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
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  Nine aspects of Culture that enterprises need to build to succeed in the Digital Age
- 2.1
  How to build culture consciously
Knowledge Management - a Key to Differentiation in the Digital Age
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
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Innovation - A Call to Action
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
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  Why the Indian IT/BPM industry has not realized its innovation potential
- 4.1
  Unlocking innovation potential
Agile: Key Insights
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
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  Eight key insights from Agile training
Learning to Reinvent for Tomorrow
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
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  Five key shifts are being witnessed in the Learning and Development space
- 6.1
  What should Learning and Development action areas be?
Women in Leadership
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
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  Why is diversity important?
- 7.1
  What should companies do to bridge this gap?
Lessons in Change Management
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
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  Best practices in change management
How HR needs to transform itself to lead in the VUCA world
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
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  Historic opportunity for HR to lead
- 9.1
  HR needs to step up in the following five areas
Future of Work: unlocking the potential of the workforce through AI
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
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  Three dimensions to the impact of AI on the workforce
Quiz
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  Transforming the Organization Quiz
  10 Questions

How to build culture consciously

Start with defining the Values. The foundations of Culture are clearly stated Values. Culture develops over a period of time and is based on the cumulative of decisions and actions. And, it is Values that help guide the decisions. Defining Values is not easy, it takes a lot of thought and reflection.
Role Modeling by Leaders. I often see companies blaring their Values and Mission/Vision statements across their walls, both physical and virtual. While communication is important to build awareness and embed the Values and Culture, it can only lead to partial success. What is even more critical is actions of leaders.Actions speak louder than words’ is especially true here. Role modeling by leaders is thus the single most important driver of culture.
Institutionalize through Processes. Culture is the way you do things. Therefore, culture is not about sporadic efforts but has to be institutionalized and thus built into all the processes. Whether it is your client service policies or internal processes like recruitment and performance management, all need to reflect your Values and Culture.
Culture is tested in the ‘Moments of Truth’. Crisis can bring the best or worst from us. How enterprises and leaders act during a crisis, the ‘moments of truth’ truly shapes the culture of the organization. Our actions when we are tested deeply truly define and shape both the individual and enterprise character. Our actions in such ‘moments of truth’ carry a deep imprint for both customer and employees alike, and thus become defining points for the culture. Covid 19 pandemic has certainly presented such an important moment of truth for enterprises and leaders.

Nitin’s conclusion:

The Digital Age is often seen to be about Technology change. While Technology is certainly a very important driver of the Digital Age, Culture is perhaps the most important differentiator between winners and laggards in this era. It is even more so as there are many paradoxes and seemingly conflicting objectives and expectations that have to be met. A more entrepreneurial culture and managing paradoxes or ‘duality’ are the most unique aspects of culture in the digital age. I hope my experiences above provide you some useful perspectives both on what are some desirable culture elements to have and also how to build them.

Transforming the Organization

Curriculum

How to build culture consciously

Nitin’s conclusion:

Transforming the Organization