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Leading a strategic organizational transformation

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Leading a strategic organizational transformation

What and why needed?

Organizational transformation is the process of transforming and changing the existing organization structure, corporate culture and employee behavior to reap certain strategic business results. It is affected by visible action taken by organizational leaders to move from the present to the future in order to achieve a specific outcome or benefit or to respond to the changes in the VUCA world that may be adversely impacting the organization. This blog underlines the steps that can be taken to cause a successful transformation; written in the context of a real-life case pertaining to NWO, which is predominantly an upstream operator and asset owner, exploring and producing in the North Sea, Africa, and the Middle East.

When the price of a barrel of oil plunged by more than 80% the market dynamics had already changed. Nord-West Oelleitung GmbH (NWO) met the challenges of these new market conditions by implementing an extensive organisational restructuring and behavioural change programme. Implemented in a matter of months, this programme led to a new more agile organisation ready to react to industry changes and embrace new opportunities as they arise. NWO, puts the success of the programme down to one simple reason, “We had a plan and we stuck to it”. It might sound like a simplistic approach, but with over 700 employees affected and the business-critical implementation carried out in a matter of months, this simple tactic proved its worth.

Onboarding the right people:

To help them execute the plan, NWO brought in transformation consultants. The tight timeframe and extent of the changes led to the transformation team taking a bold approach to strategic change management. In addition to carefully planning and documenting a series of initiatives, including workshops and training sessions, they decided to use a pull model to allow time for support on an ad-hoc basis. Transformation Leader Dr Pete Harpum explains, “We started this programme with a very clear idea of the key processes and behaviours that the business needed. But we also knew that we couldn’t just take a training manual approach to a transformation of this size. We needed to incorporate flexibility to deal with the unpredictable issues we knew would emerge as the programme unfolded.”

This combination of a clear strategic plan plus scheduled and ad hoc support meant the strategic transformation programme was completed in a matter of months with visible benefits from the start. Furthermore, its success was underlined by the fact it was carried out with minimal impact on production and zero incidents.

Meticulous planning:

Planning the organisational transformation started and putting success measures in place is crucial to the success of the initiative. At NWO an internal team looked at the restructuring needed to achieve greater agility in delivering business critical projects while reducing operating costs. The resulting design of the new organisation was created around a strong matrix structure that aligned the new teams with a clearer focus on the business instead of being organised around functions. To handle the organisational change, NWO established a cross-functional Transformation Management Office (TMO) comprising of a secretariat, HR and the transformation consultants. Part of the TMO, Jane Smith was involved in the scoping of the strategic transformation and describes the changes as “incredibly sensitive” as they affected around 700 employees. “Some people were promoted, some demoted, people got new managers, new areas to work in. So it was all about finding the right operating processes and rhythm for the company,” she says.

Mapping the right skill:

Ensuring that the right job is mapped to the person who has the appropriate skill set is important to ensure the success of any change initiative .Although they were brought in as external consultants, the transformation team worked as an integrated part of the TMO, located on site, and were able to complement the NWO team with their unique skills.“We used the skills of the transformation consultants but the process was still very much internally driven. This was definitely part of its success. No-one could say that we’d used consultants who didn’t understand our business. We knew which processes were necessary but not how people would react. This was where transformation specialists could help,” said Jane Smith. “Each consultant in the transformation team had a different profile and area of business expertise. It was a good opportunity for us to learn from them and take advantage of their key skills,” says Fred Brown, Head of HR at NWO.

Agility in management:

The VUCA world demands that the change is implemented before it becomes necessary to change again. Therefore to avoid the insecurity and inefficiency that any transformation programme breeds, the process was fast and intense – lasting just a few months. All employees were presented with the case for change in their teams and then held individual meetings with their old, and in some cases new, managers to discuss questions, concerns and plans.

Once the transformation was underway, the benefits of the flexible approach to the change process taken by the consultants were clear. Any issues were spotted and managed in a timely manner before they escalated or became negative office gossip that could heighten insecurity. In many ways, this approach also pre-empted the resistance that is encountered when external consultants are involved in creating new organisational structures.

Managing stakeholders:

 Transformation is driven by the key stakeholders, hence keeping them in one’s good books definitely helps. “The managers at NWO are highly professional dedicated individuals who have been hired because they can deliver. Therefore, they’re not the sort of people who think they need help. Our approach and presence on site as part of the team meant we could provide the coaching and role modelling they needed without putting it into a formal structure,” says Pete Harpum. It might sound like an unusual approach but this fluidity meant the transformation team could react as needed in a more dynamic way.“It probably appeared coincidental when we showed up at the coffee machine to talk to the individuals about what was going on. But for us, this was carefully thought about. Working closely with the TMO, we had already identified peoples’ specific sensitivities and had anticipated their needs,” explains Pete Harpum.“By having the transformation consultants on-site, we could get change management support immediately and therefore we could adjust to what the organization needed,” says Fred Brown, Head of HR at NWO.

Building cohesive teams:

In addition to this ad-hoc individual support, the transformation team also facilitated a series of over fifty customised workshops. By focusing sessions on actual needs, the teams involved were able to create vision statements for their teams, clarify roles and responsibilities, identify team ground rules, establish efficient and value adding activities, and improve the effectiveness of team meetings as well as identify opportunities in terms of strategic feasibility and cost reduction.“Again, we knew what we had to achieve and by not scripting each session down to a fine level of detail we could maintain our focus on the people and teams affected by the change and their actual needs. And it paid off. During one session, a team in the Sub Surface Function found savings of £80 million in one hour. This kind of initiative wouldn’t have happened had we had not let the workshop be led by the people involved,” says Pete Harpum.

Measuring success:

No transformation initiative can be called a success unless the success measures are achieved. Nine months down the line and the new organisational matrix structure was in place. 200 people switched jobs, managers and teams and the organisation had the agility required to face future challenges. Looking back, Jane Smith is pleased with the way people have embraced the new structure. The overall process was a success from a business perspective. The change was never easy but it has been well managed and during the process, NWO has managed to maintain stable production and reduce the number of incidents. The transformation project has been vital to the company. It was well executed as could be seen in the fact that production indicators actually increased, which had never happened in previous change management programmes.

Growthsqapes offers multiple solutions in leading and managing change from diagnosis to implementation.

This blog has been authored by Pete Harpum – Partner at Growthsqapes.

Building Customer Centricity In A Crisis

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Building Customer Centricity In A Crisis

It’s been more than four months since the current COVID 19 crisis caught us off guard and sent almost the entire world in a lockdown. A direct fallout of the lockdown has been a grinding halt to the world economy with a severe erosion of business and consumer confidence. As governments learn to deal with the crisis in several ways, businesses are realizing that getting new customers would be extremely challenging.

While we see governments taking steps and measures to ease lockdown and restart business activity , the corporate world is learning and embracing the fact that COVID 19 crisis is here to stay here for the near and medium term. However, as they prepare for the long haul, what is also brewing as a thought in the mind of organisations is –under a pandemic situation, which has created a new normal, how do organisations remain customer centric and continue to command customer loyalty?

Let’s look at 4 actions that organisations can take to remain centric to their customers’ needs in the new normal.

Reach out

In times of crisis, a helping hand is remembered for long. Reaching out to customers will be the first step towards delivering a message of customer centricity.

Anything that can alleviate the customer’s pain is a crucial one. Also, creative and novel ways of engagement are critical success factors. How organisations rationalise cost and reward loyal customers would be an important consideration to be made.

For example, introducing loyalty programs for existing and new customers is one natural way to go. Other ways can be loyalty points transfers, incentivising customers who have been with the company for a long time, deferring installment payments, a longer credit cycle or multiple ways of accepting payments.

Create and offer a digital experience

As more and more consumers spend more time online it is but obvious that they search for digital equivalents for in-person activities. Hence, organisations that would want to succeed must move quickly to accommodate the massive shift to digital channels to offer a digital experience. It’s highly likely that consumers will prefer to use many of these digital offerings even after the crisis hence slowly combining a in- person and digital experience (PHYGITAL) would be most effective. Many companies, from mobile carriers to food-delivery services, have made targeted investments to build or augment their digital capabilities. Several themes have emerged. Successful companies have used an agile, iterative approach and design thinking to identify new digital opportunities beyond their comfort zone.

Let’s take the example of Tesla, a brand known for raising the bar of customer experience. Tesla’s sustained commitment to reinventing the car-buying process using digital has proved especially prescient. Its state-of-the-art digital showroom and virtual user guide offer customers an immersive online experience, and the contactless car delivery is tailor-made for the current environment.To broaden its online reach in China, the carmaker partnered with Alibaba on a T-Mall online store. From December 2019 to March 2020, Tesla saw its sales in China double while other carmakers experienced a 50 percent drop over the same period.

Focus on health and safety

The Covid 19 pandemic’s massive health implications have made health and safety the most important concern for consumers. Therefore companies must keep these issues front of their minds as they plan their transitions to the next normal. Companies that are able to create a “contactless customer centric experience” will be able to pacify the customer’s concerns more effectively.

Take an example of India. Many companies in India have started transforming into a contactless safe delivery model. Walmart-owned Flipkart is in the process of hiring 4,000 people, Reliance Retail and Arvind Fashions are building processes for a surge in e-commerce and phone orders, and training manpower for safe contactless operations.

Process feedback fast

The increase in digital penetration also means that companies will have more dynamic feedback data at their fingertips pertaining to customer sentiment, experience and value. Companies that are more proactive and responsive in a real time basis to the feedback of customers will be able to harness their loyalties. At the same time, companies which will invest in technology and systems required to harness data and analytics tools to deliver exceptional customer experiences will command customer loyalty.

Let’s look at what an airline did. They developed a data-driven system using machine learning to predict and act on customer satisfaction and revenue performance. By taking actions based on predicted customer sentiment and outcomes, the airline was able to more effectively focus its effort on customers that were most at risk of defecting and achieved an 800 percent rise in customer satisfaction and a nearly 60 percent decrease in intent to churn.

Under the new normal, the customer experience landscape is evolving with each passing week. Companies which build capabilities to become more customer centric at this time will definitely stand out.

This blog has been written by Rupender Singh Khaira, Associate Partner at GrowthSqapes.

How Covid19 Pandemic will bring in an Agile Digital Learning Culture

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Covid19 Pandemic - an Agile Digital Learning Culture

The coronavirus has offered one collateral benefit. It has given Learning & Development the means to finally achieve the ‘the last mile’ coverage. Naysayers in L&D with fixed mindsets are still hoping that virtual learning will vanish with the virus.

However, courtesy the disruptive changes, virtual organizational learning and development is the ‘new normal’ to which CHROs, L&D leaders, managers and learners must adapt boldly.

COVID, post-COVID, lockdown or not – The inevitability of new skill development by learning, unlearning and relearning faster than before will continue to remain top-of-the-mind problem recall for organizations – private as well as state-owned.

The shifts in technology, life-expectancy in general, nature of work practices and new age gig economy business models have generated a deep need for continuous, lifelong learning and development. It is ‘Learn or Perish’.

In most professional business organizations, Learning has got elevated from the outer circle to the inner core of talent management. Come COVID-19, leading organizations are taking initiatives for “home delivery” of learning to their people in a more customized way, integrating work and learning more seamlessly than ever before.

CHROs are on a thoughtful yet hot pursuit for added learning-transfer technologies and digital learning solutions to augment the process of last mile home-delivery of executive learning.

According to a survey, almost 94% of CHRO and L&D leaders consider it a top-priority to ensure that the coronavirus does not make learning episodic. They want to keep learning as a perpetual capability building, skill-building endeavor that ensures a fast-footed workforce with new skill and competence to adapt boldly to the changing business scenario.

Like every crisis, the corona pandemic is also throwing up opportunities. Organizations must exploit the momentum generated by Covid-19 to proactively build a learning culture that is new and updated digitally. Time is ripe to raise the building blocks of an Enterprise Digital Learning Culture.

Digital Technology alone will not build the Enterprise Digital Learning Culture. In most organizations, only 20% of employees exhibit truly effective learning behaviors. As behaviors construct an organization’s culture, it is absolutely necessary that organizations drive base-level interventions to induce positive effective learning behaviors in their employees.

It is simple, can capability-building happen without the learner’s initiative and willingness? Thus, besides the technology platform it is the employee’s new behaviors as learners that would build a truly enterprise digital learning culture. Here in, lies the bits and bytes of Digital Learning Transformation.

One of the many comforts of technology is its ability to provide independent learning experience across all age groups. That takes care of your Millennials as also your Baby Boomers.

Efficacy of experiential learning in virtual mode

The efficacy of experiential learning towards behavioral modifications and holistic development is well accepted. However, here’s the big question – Can experiential learning happen virtually? CHRO, L&D leaders, Facilitators and Participants need to remind themselves that virtual is only a medium.

Behavioral learning is based on principles of having an experience, reflecting on the experience, learning from the experience and conducting self-trials from what has been learnt. If the facilitator can create an atmosphere in Zoom or any other virtual classroom, where participants can have an experience, reflect on it, learn and experiment – one can remain confident that experiential learning can be made effective even through virtual means.

Of course, the facilitator needs to be competent in understanding the norms and nuances of the virtual medium and must be adept in the skills to induce and intervene effectively in the virtual lab.

Moreover, in its true sense, experiential learning has its noiseless presence even in certain conventional skill development programs – task-related skills, decision-making skills, project management skills etc. Skepticism in the efficacy of experiential learning in virtual mode, also jeopardizes the progress of these conventional programs through the virtual learning methods. What must be kept in mind is that Virtual is just a medium.

Elements of Enterprise Digital Learning Culture

  • Convert In-person offerings to Virtual offerings – Organizations need to change the way learning and development is approached. It is now a mandate to abandon conventional training and development approaches and migrate to an agile learning mindset of perpetual learning that is digitally-enabled, self-paced and gives personalized experience. At all levels, an assortment of digitized offerings from micro-learning to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) needs to be made available through which the organizations can easily serve the learning needs and capability-development initiatives of its employees.
  • Adaptive Learning Delivery – Any curriculum, anywhere, personalized and delivered by any means other than in-person – is the new normal. If your organization has a practice of delivering customized learning programs to address the unique learning needs of an employee through just-in-time feedback, next-steps, and resources rather than just rolling out a one-size-fits-all learning experience – you are in an Adaptive Learning zone. However, the next level in the maturity curve of adaptive learning is a stage when the algorithm of your learning-technology platform decides on what learnings to offer, timing of the offer and how much of the curricula to offer based on the individual’s learning behaviour, memorized as patterns by the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) of the platform.
  • Learning Mobility Programs & Tools – The culture of enterprise digital learning is reinforced when the organization initiates to offer the content and meet the learning objectives through Gamification. Learning is fun when the learner can score, compete with others, have a sense of winning and achievement and gets excited to avoid a loss. However, the bits and bytes of digital learning transformation lies in influencing the employees to use the tools. L&D managers’ task is to highlight to the employee, how the skillsets that the employee requires to perform a particular task are fast changing; and use the ease and attractiveness of the gamifications to make the employee come to the okay graph of using the gamified tool and learn. Gamification is also a great leveller. To a considerable extent it equates learning across all organizational grades and levels and builds a common learning vocabulary of growth. That gets exchanged in the organization’s chatbot or learnbot. Bosses use gamification as an opportunity to put across the point that, learning is fun and business, but not trivia – an important perception determinant towards building a digital learning culture enterprise-wide. Besides, the collateral gain of effortless employee engagement.
  • Digital-First learning Strategy – With changing business dynamics, the half-life periods of most skills and competence are diminishing fast. Obsolescence, substitutions, double-hats to reduce headcount, role reversals, role redundancy created by robots and computers are realities. Organizations must focus on high-speed reskilling and upskilling if they want to avoid these management menaces. Therefore, the Board, CEOs and CXO level leaders must on-priority first focus on the ‘Learning and Development Strategy’   within the HR Strategy, stressing more than emphasis on digital learning ecosystem. The leadership must align L&D Strategy to HR Strategy in such a way that L&D becomes the essential process that compliments the core business process. One of the many way to endorse and elevate the importance of learning in the organization is by linking learning to the reward and recognition plan. Incentives to learn drive learning. Skills-based pay policies working well are glowing examples, particularly in the manufacturing sector. A standard blended learning formula is 70:20:10. Within this, 70% of learning is acquired using on-the-job experiences, 20% over informal learning by interacting with others, and the 10% by formal learning methods. Each organizations must formulate its own blended learning ratio based on its specific business essentials.
  • Effective Learning Governance
    Organizations willing to adopt an enterprise digital learning culture must put in place an effective learning governance model. Learning governance significantly improves decision-making and helps to align your learning strategy with your larger business strategy. It helps ensure that learning is not adhoc and episodic but strategically planned at all levels and flawlessly executed at every part of the organization. Efficacy and efficiency of learning programs and organizational development interventions are direct outcomes of prudent planning and monitored execution. Robust learning governance creates efficiency within the learning ecosystem, ensuring an effective decision-support system for the entire stakeholder-base of the learning community. Keeps learning tuned to changing times like Covid-19 and its shifting business trends.

Conclusion

Coronavirus has physically separated us but systemically united us. Digital and biological worlds have fused people and technology despite social distancing. This is to stay at least till the foreseeable future. It is beyond doubt that this would impact the way people work and business organizations generate value. Across all industries, national economies and human societies – the future of work is going to get redefined in terms of knowledge, skills and competencies.

Fast economic recovery is what nations would expect; bold adaptability is what business organizations would want to respond with. That boils down to how people perform at work in the post-Covid world. Continuous capability-building, reskilling and upskilling at all levels are definitely not optional. These mandates have to out-speed the speed of spread of the coronavirus. Learning & Development has to grow into an enterprise-wide culture.

This blog has been written by Satyakki Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at GrowthSqapes.

Sales Competencies In The “New Normal”: 2020

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Sales Competencies In The “New Normal”: 2020

Sales has been around since we started bartering as cavemen. Evolving progressively over the centuries and decades, the pace of change in the B2B selling world has gained a lot of momentum in the last decade. With the advent of the new informed buyer, the buying landscape has also changed significantly. What the buyer expects from the salesperson now is a lot different from earlier. Additionally, the emergent circumstances of Covid-19, known as the new normal, are forcing companies to look at restructuring and re-skilling their sales force to build resilience and make them successful in that new normal era.

Let us first look at some of the changes in B2B buyer behavior which is impacting the way B2B sales is evolving:

  • Today’s buyers are well-informed. A tsunami of information is available at their fingertips even before they interact with salespersons. The expectations that customers have from salespersons now has evolved as someone who can seek and provide useful information which will help the customer to make their purchase decision.
  • They have become more demanding and are looking for customized solutions. They will not mind spending that extra dollar to get what they are looking for. A recent research* shows that 80% of B2B buyers expect companies to interact with them on real time. Unlike earlier, they are involving specialist procurement teams to evaluate vendors and offers, making the decision-making process more complicated with multiple stakeholders with their individual interests and influencing power.
  • Clients are increasingly influenced by the information they get on social media. In fact, this works both ways as clients are also able to influence more by providing information concerning products and brands – a function that used to be the sole responsibility of businesses a decade ago.
  • Commoditization of industries has made customer experience the differentiating factor. 85% of B2B marketers agree that consistency across content, teams, and channels is the backbone of an effective customer experience and 65% of business buyers will switch without personalized interactions.
  • Almost,the entire buying process is happening on virtual/remote mode. In fact, with the current Covid -19 pandemic, in some product categories, it has now become 100% virtual and there is no F2F meeting between the buyer and the salesperson at all. This means that building trust and giving that personal touch is so much more difficult now.

Given the above scenario, let us look at what it takes for the salesperson to be successful in today’s environment; in the below 2 categories:

1. Skills and competencies which were required earlier but are now gaining importance:

  • Personal Branding – the ability to build and nurture a personal brand that portrays expertise. This is a differentiating point and critical for adding value, especially in luxury selling. It would include leveraging social networks to strengthen one’s brand.
  • Rapport Building – This skill is central to the entire customer experience and more so because of the post-Covid 19 situation where rapport-building has to be done remotely. 73% of customers say companies’ trustworthiness matters more than it did a year ago.
  • Influencing – Today’s salesperson communicates and behaves more like a consultant. They speak with gravitas and are more equal in every way to the buyer. The skill of influencing adds that cutting edge that makes a salesperson’s offer irresistible to the customer.
  • Value Creation – The professional salesperson understands that value is created through the entire sales cycle starting from the first touchpoint to every single interaction and communication whether through email, phone or face-to-face meeting.
  • Persuasive Story-telling – Buyers don’t want to hear about your product or service. Good salespeople know this and weave the product or service they’re selling into the larger story that bends and blends with the customer receiving what they want (which is usually not your product, but a key benefit).

2. Competencies which need to be developed and adapted to match the demands of resilience under the new normal:

  • Digital Proficiency – the ability to leverage digital tools and platforms over a variety of digital devices as well as sales force automation and marketing automation to generate results.
  • Prospecting and Referral Generation – In the phygital age (i.e. physical + digital), the ability to generate leads as well as referrals through quality social connections and getting warm introductions and, attracting a growing volume of the right relationships. To enable organizations and sales professionals build resilience, Growthsqapes is creating new and exciting offerings in the space of social network selling.
  • Providing Insight –the ability to create new demand by proactively bringing new insights to target prospects. Salespeople should be able to do big-picture thinking and evaluate alternate scenarios to bring out value in their proposition.
  • Buyer Process Map (BPM) Recognition–salespeople should understand that there are multiple buyer process maps and have the ability to recognize where the buyer is in the buyer journey.
  • Sales Process Execution – the ability to sell the way the buyer wants to buy. The sales process execution should be dynamic and in sync with the BPM to increase the conversion ratio.

Successful capability development of a B2B salesperson depends on nurturing and embedding the above skills and behavior elements in the personality of the salesperson. For customized interventions to develop the sales competencies in the new normal feel free to contact Growthsqapes.

*independent research done by author

This blog has been written by Mr Sandip Mitra, Associate Partner at GrowthSqapes.

Why BEI?

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Why BEI?

Hiring managers use a variety of structured and structured ways of interviewing to assess the fitment of a potential recruit in an organisation, across all levels of hierarchy. Some methods use business cases, some use psychometric instruments, some use the simple traditional face to face questioning method. All of the above methods provide an opportunity to evaluate candidate’s personality, cognitive abilities and his/her fitment in the organisation’s culture. In evolved organisations, one of most preferred methods used by hiring managers is the use of psychometric assessments.

While psychometric instruments provide a comprehensive evaluation of candidates cognitive ability and personality, what is does not measure is the response of the candidate in a realistic business situation. This is where an advanced method of structured interviewing, as known Behavioural Event Interview (BEI) comes in. As a method, BEI gathers evidence of past behaviour against a well- defined competency framework; which provides a highly reliable indication of likely future performance in the role so long as the role and work environment remains stable in the future.

As against traditional interviews, BEI is a dynamic form of interviewing. In this method, the interviewee is guided to tell about both successful and unsuccessful outcomes in recent business roles whilst the interviewer skilfully probes and clarifies exactly how success was achieved. Owing to the reason that the interviewee is recalling their actual behaviours with regards to a particular business situation, accurate recall is enhanced and even the most nervous interviewees are given the best chance to accurately portray evidence of their strengths and weaknesses.

It is this dynamic style, which differentiates behavioural event interviewing from more traditional, structured or critical incidence interviewing. The experience is more pleasant for the Interviewee and more profitable for the interviewer in terms of gaining an accurate picture.

Empirical evidence suggests that Behavioural Event Interviewing has shown approximately 50% more predictive validity than traditional interviewing and research suggests it is especially effective when evaluating candidates for senior roles. This method is used to capture evidence of individual performance against a set of business situations within the framework of a competency model that is required to succeed in a dynamic and challenging role. As said earlier, research shows that the best evidence of future performance is found in the evidence of the behavioural competencies that the interviewee has displayed in the past.

Accordingly, during this type of selection interview, the role of the interviewer is to collect and collate as much evidence as possible of the behaviours that the candidate demonstrated in some specific situations. This demonstration is used to evaluate whether the correct competency was displayed and whether it was displayed at a particular role for the intended role.

While BEI is an effective method of selection interview, there is a caveat that needs to be kept in mind. As this interview process places a lot of emphasis on the interviewing skills of the interviewer to collect and collate detailed evidence during an interview, consistency in the application of the skill and the following of the right process is extremely important to get the right results. Consistency and is best achieved by the interviewer undergoing formal training to learn the skill of BEI.

GrowthSqapes’ programme on BEI enables you to develop the skill of BEI which is critical to ensure success of the interview process and select the right candidate.

This blog has been written by Satyakki Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at GrowthSqapes.

Developing the FTMs

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Developing the FTMs

Being promoted as a First Time Manager (FTM) is the stepping stone of one’s management journey. However, as exciting as it may sound, there are various challenges that FTMs face, leading to the need for them to be developed well in order to succeed in their new role.

Let’s look at some statistics published by some leading leadership development institutions

  • 85% FTMs don’t receive any training before taking up the new role
  • 60% of them to underperform or fail at their people management role
  • 69% of managers find communicating directly with employees uncomfortable.

These figures mean it is imperative to develop FTMs. Let’s take a look at the significance of developing them

  • Gaining Clarity About Expectations – FTMs lack clarity about what results are expected out of them due to which they lack implementation. The sudden transition from an individual contributor role to one where one is responsible for the entire team’s performance can be quite daunting, and leave FTMs confused about what is expected out of them. They need to gain clarity about the goals and results to be achieved, and then drive the team towards achieving them. Thus, an initiative aimed at this can be the make-or-break factor.
  • Managing Relationships – While the shift from being a team member to a team manager is very exciting, it poses a massive challenge of managing people and relationships across the management levels including one’s team, peers, supervisors, and stakeholders. One should also not lose sight of the organizational politics that need to be managed apart from the aspects of gaining respect, re-defining some relationships like with past peers and new peers, building trust and being able to employ emotional intelligence in doing all this. This is a major chunk of the tasks that newly promoted FTMs have at hand.
  • Motivating, Mentoring & Coaching the Team Effectively – This is a crucial part of a manager’s role. Being responsible for the team’s performance management also involves keeping the team motivated at all times and providing team members coaching and mentoring support as and when required. Also, they need to lead the desired team culture, sometimes through innovative ideas and leading by example at other times. First-time managers may struggle at figuring out the ways to do so and a planned initiative offering the required support is critical to their success.
  • Promoting Collaboration & Teamwork–Transitioning from an individual contributor to a team contributor needs the promotion of collaboration and teamwork for the success of not only one’s own team but also the greater management team that one is a part of. Thus, FTMs need to promote the spirit of teamwork and collaboration amongst teams as well as themselves for knowledge sharing, increased synergies, and more effective goal attainment. Yet, again this is a skill that not all may be well versed at and may need to acquire.
  • Effective Performance & People Management – First-line managers touch the maximum number of lives at the bottom of the management pyramid as they are responsible for chasing productivity and getting the work done. This requires effective performance management and people management skills like delegation, effective listening and communication, feedback and recognition, conflict resolution and emotional intelligence, to name a few. The lack of any of these could lead to the failure of a first-time manager which in turn could have serious business ramifications.
  • Time Utilization & Management– The success of any endeavor lies in ineffective time utilization. This also involves the proportionate amount of time allocated to tasks according to their relative priorities. This is a decisive skill that could make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful First Time Manager. Understanding where, how and how much time to allocate to the various priorities could make a world of difference to the attainment of the business outcomes. Thus, FTMs need to be developed on this vital aspect to ensure greater business success.

The above would lead to the attainment of a greater business impact by way of higher productivity, greater morale and motivation amongst the team and self, lower turnover rates, higher profits and, overall greater synergies both within and across teams.

For a customized intervention on FTM development, feel free to contact GrowthSqapes.

This blog has been written by Namita Singh, Consultant & Project Manager at GrowthSqapes.

Evolution In Disruption

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Evolution In Disruption in business models

In the World Economic Forum meet at Davos in Jan 2020, global business leaders contemplated the purpose of the existence of an organization in the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution. This technological revolution is a period that is seeing the rapid replacement of existing technologies by new technologies in a very short span of time. It is an age of accelerated technological advancement that is characterized by new innovations whose rapid application and fast transmission is causing disruptions in business models and sudden, unexpected changes in society.

As organizations define and refine their purposes to meet the needs of multiple stakeholders and of sustainability in the VUCAD world, they themselves are forced to foresee the need to evolve in response to the disruptions that technology is already, both, causing as well as driving. With the latest wave of new digital technologies like AI and Machine Learning, businesses are not even sure if they are asking the right questions which are vital to frame their response strategies. Many feel that they are on the proverbial “treadmill” that makes them run but still keeps them in the same place.

One of the 4 principles of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution states that “only the survivors of the competition for resources will reproduce”, suggesting that only the fittest will survive. If we relate Darwin’s theory to the context of an organization in a business environment, this principle affirms that continuing development is needed just in order to maintain an organization’s fitness relative to the systems and environment it is existing and co-evolving with. Everything is changing around us. If organizations do not reinvent themselves, they will not survive. The Darwinian Principle is a seminal suggestion to keep transforming.

The question that arises now is how can organizations reinvent and survive in the face of the challenges that the dynamism of change throws to them. Organizations can make investments in cutting edge technologies if they have various types of resources to do so. However, what will be a critical success factor is the organization’s ability to apply the technologies to meet its goals. This application will depend upon the capability of human talent in the organization. Therefore, while technology and capital are indispensable resources, the human factor will play the most critical role in defining the differentiators for organizations in the years ahead.  Thus, the importance of human resources will increase, not decrease.

At the pace with which we are moving, it is highly possible that in the near term future, we will see a total change. That change will be manifested by humans supporting systems than systems supporting humans. Hence the definition of talent will also change. Many roles and skills will become redundant and the need for new aged skills, the multiplicity of skills in a person and learning agility will push organizations to fashion new business models. Organizations will become a matrix of networks. The shift from vertical functional hierarchies to a network-based organization will lead to a sharp reduction in the importance of designations and a sharp increase in the importance of skills and capabilities. Due to changing demographics, as each new entrant in the workforce will be at least a Millennial, the thought leadership of Millennials and their demands from their professional and personal lives will be seen, shaping the future of organizations.

Organizations will have to become more agile learning organisms, where they will have to quickly learn from their mistakes and adapt to the dynamism in the environment. Organizations that give learning opportunities to employees, motivate employees to learn and transform their work environment into a compelling learning experience will thrive. This will, though not be possible just by chance or will happen in a day. That kind of a learning environment has to be deliberately designed and intentionally built, brick by brick. That environment will create an atmosphere that enriches the lives of their workforce by meeting their needs and empowering them to contribute.

Therefore, as the transformation of the business landscape continues via technological disruptions, successful organizations of the future are likely to be those which can move faster, adapt quicker, and learn swifter. 
GrowthSqapes’ learning solution for building a digital business mindset helps to make the workforce more agile.

This blog has been written by Baalmiki Bhattacharyya, Partner & COO at GrowthSqapes.

Key Pillars Of Successful Leadership Development

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Key Pillars Of Successful Leadership Development

We live in times of constant change; times where long-established notions are constantly being challenged and replaced with newer ones. One such notion around leadership is – Leaders are born, not made.

Innate talent is no longer the only parameter that qualifies one to eventually grow as a leader. Today, a systematic approach of talent and skill development has transformed several individuals with the willingness to learn, into excellent leaders. This system is deployed in the form of leadership development interventions.

Let’s look at some statistics published by leading leadership development organizations, suggesting the need for leadership development-

  • Only 7% of CEOs in a Fortune survey opined that their organization was building effective global leaders.
  • 84% of organizations anticipated a shortfall of leaders over the next 5 years
  • 77% of the organizations reported the existence of a leadership gap.

The question thus arises is: what is required for the success of such development interventions? Leadership Development programs rely on some key factors for their success which are as follows:

  • Buy-In From Top Management – A successful leadership intervention should have its strategy and business value aligned with the organization’s strategy and business goals for it to have the acceptance of the top management. A program not aligned with the organizational vision, mission, values and business goals would fail to deliver any real measurable positive business impact.
  • Contextually Apt To Enable Learning Transfer & Retention – The program should be designed according to the organizational context where the learning has to be applied. An intervention would fail if its learning cannot be transferred to the workplace and applied for a successful learning transfer and retention.
  • Application-Based & Measurable – A successful leadership intervention should be application-based by design so that the learning comes in a practical hands-on manner rather than just a conceptual understanding. This would enable better development of the participants as future leaders. Moreover, the intervention results should be measurable in the form of concrete business impact. An intervention that’s not measurable cannot be said to be successful or unsuccessful, just on the basis of the participant reaction it generates, because then its focus would end up staying limited to generating a favorable participant experience.
  • Favourable Individual Attitude & Ownership Towards Learning And Change – For an intervention to be successful the participants should have a favourable attitude and ownership towards learning and change. They should not feel it to be a forced upon process; they should rather feel encouraged and supported while being proactive about their learning and development journey, and take ownership for it. A resistance or lack of desire towards learning and the accompanying change can prove a bane for the most well designed and implemented leadership development intervention.
  • Adaptable According To The Changing Scenario–Existing in a VUCA environment change is the only constant. Keeping this in mind, leadership development interventions need to be futuristic in nature. This means that not only should it aim to develop the leaders to meet the current business challenges but also the ones that may arise in the future. This would enhance the relevance and business impact of the leadership development intervention making it more effective.
  • Developmental In Nature–The aim of any leadership development program should be to develop the leaders as a whole in a gradual and continual manner. An intervention designed as a quick fix is bound to fail. Unlike a management development program, a leadership development program is not a task oriented intervention; it is rather a continual process of building the overall capability of the individual as a business leader. Moreover, the program should be customizable to the specific individual in accordance with where s/he is in their leadership development journey.

As a successful leadership program is critical to fill the leadership gaps in any organization, an intervention designed keeping the above aspects in mind would inevitably be a success thereby delivering a positive business impact via some vectors such as low turnover; higher productivity; higher motivation, better engagement and commitment levels; greater alignment to the business goals, and high creativity& innovation to name a few.

GrowthSqapes follows a diagnostics based leadership development approach that creates a positive business impact.

This blog has been written by Namita Singh, Consultant & Project Manager at GrowthSqapes.

Value creation in a VUCA world

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Value creation in a VUCA world

In a VUCA world, sellers are always expected to create value. Buyers consider the “value creation ability” of the salesperson to be the hallmark of their success. We all talk of value repeatedly. But what is value? Value is defined as “the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something”. Value is a perception of the worth of something. Value is determined differently by every individual.

However, today, we live in competitive times. There exist a plethora of competing players offering roughly comparable approaches to solving the same problem of the buyer. Buyers, of course, love this, as it makes their lives easier. It allows them to compare different sellers against each other via admirable, logical and rational comparison charts thereby encouraging cut-throat price competition. Sellers, on the other hand, often complain about finding it difficult to paint a picture of their differentiated offerings in the minds of the buyers. In the sales process, value creation by sellers depends upon 2 paradigms.

  • The sales professional’s competence in making impactful value-creating conversations that will help buyers redefine the problem or need and demonstrate newer, insightful ways in which their solutions will deliver long term sustainable business impact for the buyer
  • The seller’s capability in presenting their categorically unique offering that is both tactically and strategically cohesive to the buying organization.

Let’s look at some simple ways that can be used by sales professionals to create value in the sales process.

  • Pre-sales process: initial value can be created for the customers through meaningful conversations that focus on building a relationship and understanding the underlying and unspoken needs of the customer. Positioning ones’ product or solution in a manner that resonates with the spoken and unspoken needs of the customer also goes a long way in defining value.
  • During the sales process: By ensuring that the transactional aspect of the sales process is seamless, flexible and not time-consuming, the sales professional can create value for the customer through enhanced customer experience. Skills required to create a delightful customer experience is crucial.
  • Post-sales process: the delivery of the product and/or service must be completed while ensuring quality and timely delivery to create value for the customer once the transactional sales are complete.

In the VUCA world, businesses don’t buy products or services – they buy results and outcomes. Therefore, today’s salespeople can only succeed by “Value Selling”, which addresses their customers’ “sense of worth” of those outcomes. Starting by clearly identifying priority needs, sales professionals must not only know but also constantly upskill themselves on how to present their offer in terms of its contribution to their customers’ business goals. Additionally, value selling also requires a special mix of skills that help salespersons to build

  • Trust and personal relationships with different customer personalities
  • Relationship with various stakeholders in each organization
  • Consultative selling ability
  • Negotiating ability

With a repository of knowledge and experience collected from industry stalwarts, GrowthSqapes up kills the sales force of organizations to enable them to create, develop and sustain the art of value selling in the VUCA world.

This blog has been written by Baalmiki Bhattacharyya, Partner & COO at GrowthSqapes.

Gem Spotting: Identify Strategic Accounts

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Gem Spotting: Identify Strategic Accounts

In the domain of B2B sales, a key account is a veritable “precious gem”. Typically speaking, it is that strategically valuable customer of yours’ who if lost would impact your organization’s profits significantly. Hence, managing that “gem” is crucial. Therefore, it is noteworthy that Strategic/Key Account Management (S/KAM) isn’t just about winning new business from your customers but changing the very complexion of how you do business with those customers. This calls for a robust S/KAM framework with a strong focus of winning and retaining those strategically significant “gems”

Let’s understand the three primary business attributes characterizes a precious gem

The Value Opportunity: All customer does not become large from day one. What is big today started off small at some point in time in the past which is why it’s important to look at growth potential in your key account selection criteria. The business value that the customer offers is co-related with time. Therefore while trying the estimate the value opportunity, some of the areas where account managers would need to do research pertaining to the above are: potential volume of future sales, their expansion into new markets, their profitability from operations, the uniqueness of their product offerings, focus on innovation, etc.

The Relational Attractiveness: Over and above the value opportunity, there are several pointers to determine your interest and investment of resources in a particular account. For example, you may like to consider the ease of doing business with a particular account before investing your resources in them for the longer term. Some of the other factors that you may like to evaluate are: how much of industry’s work do they represent, their budgets for your products/services, customer’s potential volume you can realistically capture, their willingness to collaborate with you, your access to their decision-makers and influencers, the mutual alignment of values and culture and the like.

The Competitive Positioning: What is your positioning in the customer’s mind space as against your competitors, will determine, whether both teams will be able to work well together for the long term or not. For example, a good current position in their mind would mean that you have a good relationship with the customer but more growth of the account is possible, perhaps through cross-selling products/services or by penetrating other divisions. A strong current position would mean that you are well entrenched with the customer and are maximizing the value from and to them. The limited current position would mean that you have been selling to them for some time but have only limited penetration of the account and future growth is unlikely unless conditions change.

Account managers shoulder the responsibility of deepening the existing accounts via the development of new opportunities. Towards the same, they do not have an infinite bandwidth of time to grow and protect their existing accounts. Hence they must make sure that they are applying uniform guidelines in assessing new opportunities when they arise. Those guidelines are determined by these factors: 1. The reality of the value opportunity. 2. The competitive ability. 3. Winnability 4. The worthiness of the win.

GrowthSqapes’ Strategic Account Development framework empowers you to train and develop both the skillset and mindset that is vital for Key Account Management.

This blog has been written by Baalmiki Bhattacharyya, Partner & COO at GrowthSqapes.

What makes organizations effective?

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Making organisation effective

What makes organizations effective? Organizational effectiveness is about achieving results. Capabilities are central to an organization’s ability to achieve results. It’s the people who drive the results. Whereas Mission, Vision, and Strategies are identified and formulated to map what the organization should do, it’s the people with their knowledge, skills, attitudes, put through the processes within the organizations’ boundaries, authorities, roles, tasks, their energies and resources that make the recipe for the results.

Great strategies necessarily do not give great results. For people to translate great strategies into unique results, they need unique capabilities.
Given the shifts in the business weather-patterns across the globe, the capabilities that business organizations need the most have evolved. It is still a debate if the manner and means of developing those capabilities have advanced at the same pace. Surveys on this, indicate that the most effective business organizations devote their energies and efforts on building such skills and competencies that help them to sustain their business. These organizations link their learning interventions to business vectors and track business performance.

For example, a firm we were engaged with had formulated a strategy to radically increase their business, by making their company a process-centric organization. Focusing on the key value-adding activities which summed up to the major processes and moving away from the traditional operational structure identified by departments. The strategy sounded great inside the board room, but on the ground it hit hurdles. The new approach that the strategy recommended required numerous capabilities that were new to the people: people had to learn to work in a matrix organization reporting to different bosses for different responsibilities.

Several islands needed to merge, with a heavy exchange of information, collaborative-influence became a pre-requisite as a competency for many managers who were until now only commanding their own ships. These new capability requirements demanded that the majority of people in the company changed the way they worked at least in some way. The strategy did talk about “change” but it was silent about the need to develop the capabilities that would facilitate the change.

Thus, recommending change and embarking upon organizational change, is not only unmanageable but also unachievable without building capabilities. Commonplace data show that today most companies indulge in some level of learning and development to build the skills and competencies of the people. Credible research shows that organizational bosses voice significant challenges about their own capability-building programs. The biggest being the ability to link the learning and development programs to business-vectors to arrive at some matrix to assess the impact of the learning interventions on the business.

On the positive contrary, there are companies who have seen the needle move. These companies experience that sustained capability building by linking learning and development interventions to business-vectors helps them track business performance. These are organizations that have evolved from being impromptu in their training and development approaches to a systemic sustained and scientific approach to capability building.

This is an approach wherein the company looks at its strategy through the lenses of the capabilities required to execute the strategy and achieve the result. It begins with a systemic approach to diagnosing the parts of the system to arrive at the capability gap of the whole system. This ensures that strengths are not concentrated in a few parts warranting a misbalanced organization. That’s what systemic sustained and scientific approach to capability building is, which produces a tangible positive business impact.

GrowthSqapes, through its various capability development interventions, help organizations achieve effectiveness.

This blog has been written by Satyakki Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at GrowthSqapes.

Great Leadership Capability: 5 Manifestations

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Great Leadership Capability: 5 Manifestations

Leadership in the most layman terms could be called the art of engaging people and motivating them to drive towards the attainment of the common business goal. Leaders play this most crucial role in any organization. They are the torchbearers of the organizational mission, vision, values, and business goals. Think of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook at Apple, Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, Jack Ma at the Alibaba Group or Bill Gates at Microsoft. All these leaders have been at the forefront of the success journeys of the companies they led while also bringing about a business turnaround in troubled times.

Special mention – Vijay Sharma of PayTM India, who changed the way how every level of Indian society transacts financially. Such is the effect of a leader with great leadership capability that s/he can steer an organization towards success. So, what are some of the manifestations of great leadership capability?

Studies and researches world across establishing the following as industry and role agnostic capabilities and competencies that differentiate between great leaders and average leaders, as also, leading organizations and average organizations.

1. Collaboration & Teamwork: Unlike a boss who treats his/her people as subordinates, a leader treats his/her people as a team. This fosters a spirit of inclusion and sharing, thereby encouraging an environment of teamwork and collaboration. When people collaborate as a team, tasks are accomplished in a better, more efficient and timely manner. Apart from this, great leaders provide the environment to bring out the best of everyone by way of sharing ideas and best practices. The key to this is the belief system of the leader.

Remembering Hertzberg’s Theory X and Theory Y, effective leadership for total organizational effectiveness emanates from the on-ground application of Theory Y principles. These leaders are called ‘great’ because at the core of their heart they believe that people fundamentally want to work and deliver results. This generates a climate of positive and productive reciprocity in the teams led by them, thereby heightening the possibilities of business results achievement.

2. Innovation & Creativity: The open and collaborative environment promoted by a great leader ignites and encourages the spirit of innovation and creativity. People are encouraged to think out-of-the-box and innovation are encouraged. People are rewarded for coming up with creative ideas and solutions to problems. This lends the organization a competitive advantage to outperform competition and create a niche for itself.

An important component of capability building for leadership development is encouraging diverse and radical thoughts, opinions and suggestions. Great leaders are effective because their approaches are not tilted towards being either Left-brained or Right-brained. They freely welcome unconventional, unusual, never-tried-before approaches to problem-solving. A message goes out to the people that ‘being different is not judged here’. The effectiveness of leadership capability lies in its Whole-Brained Thinking and Application.

3. Increased Performance & Motivation: Great leaders inspire others to bring out their best and be self-motivated. This not only increases the motivation and enthusiasm levels but also the overall work output. Higher productivity positively impacts self-image and work satisfaction levels and in turn, leads to greater motivation and enthusiasm.

Thus, an incremental cycle is set in motion which leads to a win-win situation both for the organization and the individual. Individuals realize the value and power of being the source of origin for any activity. Being motivated is nothing but wanting to make a move without anybody telling you to do so. People in organizations with effective leadership experience so. This gets so much into the unconscious competence that the manifestation is so natural. People realize it in retrospect only when they are checked on this.

4. Greater Levels Of People Commitment: When people believe in their leader, they are motivated to work towards common business goals. This is a result of the increased commitment levels towards the organizational vision, mission, values, and goals. This increased commitment is a by-product of the psychological contract that is forged between them and the leader. Beyond the semantics, commitment is a behavioral characteristic of the organization at the individual and group level that prevents the organization from being stagnant.

Organizational stagnancy can thus be referred to as how primitive and non-relevant with time, individuals and groups become in the organization in the ways that they think and act. It is a committed leader that makes committed people. An important manifestation of commitment is constant renewal and, renewal in thinking is the antidote for organizational stagnation.

5. Lower Absenteeism & Turnover: In an organization where there is a warm welcome extended to radical and diverse opinions and ideas; where it is celebrated to be unconventional; where the climate is such that one is enthused and excited to reach the workplace.

Has an enjoyable identity at the workplace and can also claim to have friends and relationships there – is an organization where chronic absenteeism is bound to below. This is a place where people come to experience positive emotional energies. A climate created by the leader through his/her managerial style. A Harvard University research by Litwin and Stringer shows a high degree of correlation between organizational climate and business turnover.

The above are the five manifestations of great leadership capabilities in an organization. Clearly, there is no hierarchy of significance within these manifestations. All of these comprehensively constitute leadership capabilities that differentiate between great leaders and average leaders, as also, leading organizations and average organizations.

GrowthSqapes offers a structured approach of inculcating the above capabilities at various leadership levels through a range of organization development and leadership development interventions.

This blog has been written by Namita Singh, Consultant & Project Manager at GrowthSqapes.

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