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
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
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.
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.
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
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
It is not just a gender diversity agenda but a business agenda
Men and women have different viewpoints and market insights, which enables better problem solving and different solutions, ultimately leading to better organizational performance. Statistically, 80 percent of consumer buying is influenced by women. A gender-diverse team better aggregates industry knowledge and allows the company to serve an increasingly diverse customer base.
Diversity is natural and reflects the composition of the population. Just visualize a male-only organization or a female- only organization. Neither is likely to be an effective or interesting place to work in!
Women who reach the top are less conventional and bring high empathy, creativity and innovation to the enterprise.
The impact of diversity is backed by many research studies showing that organizations with higher diversity in senior roles deliver superior business results.
In the digital age, when there is lot more complexity and volatility, and collaboration is a key success factor, diversity becomes even more important
Why are there not enough women at mid-senior management levels?
Career losing momentum for women after maternity:There seems to be an ‘invisible cliff’ on the path from junior- to mid- management where we lose a large proportion of women. This often coincides with women having their first or second child. The initial couple of years after childbirth are very challenging for women, most of whom find it difficult to balance the multiple responsibilities at work and at home, and their career loses momentum.
Unintentional prejudices of the majority:Men who are typically the majority in an organization often carry gender stereotypes or ‘unintentional prejudices’ from their homes to the workplace. There is often a typecasting of what jobs women would prefer and what they would not.
Women carry subconscious biases:Women often carry subconscious biases where they put limits and barriers on themselves. They often lack the self-belief and/or the aggression needed to push to the next level.
Societal inequalities:The root cause behind many of the issues we have observed above lies in the structure of the society in India and its deeply embedded expectations from the respective genders. If we go beyond the relatively privileged middle class in the big cities, education and growth opportunities for women are often limited. Even in the cities, while many women work, the expectations society has of the woman versus of the man, have not changed. Societal change will not happen overnight. However, unless we do something about it, we might not be able to move the needle significantly on gender diversity.
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