admin, Author at GrowthSqapes

Developing the FTMs

Posted on March 6, 2020 - 8:21 am by admin

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

Posted on February 7, 2020 - 6:51 am by admin

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

Posted on January 10, 2020 - 8:14 am by admin

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

Posted on November 8, 2019 - 6:42 am by admin

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

Posted on October 4, 2019 - 5:21 am by admin

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?

Posted on September 6, 2019 - 6:55 am by admin

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

Posted on August 2, 2019 - 11:48 am by admin

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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