STEERING THE CHANGE - My Approach

Me standing over at my cubicle and addressing the team is a common sight at the workplace these days. I have sessions with the team about the recent developments in the organisation and also about the road ahead for all of us as a team. The anxiety that prevails within the team is an obvious function of the CHANGE. 

In the coarse of managing a young and big team in the times of the change, I realized that the best way to bring about change is to first gain the support of the people who will be affected by it and the people whose support you need to implement it.

I scratched my head in an effort to realize the best way (whatever extent possible) to manage and bring about the change in an organisation. One question that kept coming to me as a manager of change was that, " What factors should any CHANGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM have to make it successful?"

It came up that an ideal system should have following factors which can ensure that the brought about change is successful and meets its objectives. 

I have tried to define it as a 4-tier process:

• Guidance
• Communication
• Empowerment
• Culture

I will make an attempt to describe the above factors in context to Change Management in any typical services organisation of today.

GUIDANCE:

People ought to follow leaders who have the ability to guide them to the final goal / destination. The leaders of the change ought to ensure that they are directing the people in the right direction and everyone is aligned to the cause. When the people are aligned, the decision making is lot more easier and effective.

COMMUNICATION:

This is one of the most important factor contributing in the success or failure of change. With lack of communication, even the best of change management initiatives might turn out to be complete disaster. Communication can have many forms, carried out in many phases, have many levels to it; still it is very important to continuously keep spreading the right information to people, customers, vendors and the business world.

EMPOWERMENT:

In CHANGING systems, the major anxiety people have is about delegation of authority - whether they will be empowered to take decisions the way they use to earlier? 

An ideal system should empower people at the lowest possible level, which increases the productivity and motivation of the employees. It also develops the next layer of managers who can work independently and pull of things in crisis situations with help of innovation.

CULTURE:

A common set of values, beliefs, language and perspective helps people with diverse backgrounds to work together in harmony. The same people working under different cultures - even in the same organization - can act in very different ways. Change culture, and you change the way people act!!

A common thread of culture binds people together and facilitates achieving the organisational goals.

Let's try to understand further how above 4-tier approach can help in devising an ideal Change Management system.

Guidance: 

• To clearly define Where we are and where we have to go
• Map the current process and systems
• Concentrate on people
• Define the strategy with clear scope and expected results
• Device clear parameters for measurement
• Sustain the current best practices

Communication:   

• Share with the stakeholders about what is happening
• Daily and Monthly meetings
• Frequent/periodic descriptive mails from leaders
• Sharing of remarkable data and information
• Open door policy
• More time on work floor than cabin

Empowerment:

• Confidence to employees that they can do what they need to do
• Delegation of authority to sub-ordinates
• Involvement of supervisors/managers in system development
• Direct access to superiors
• Assigning responsibilities as well as functional authority to employees

Culture:

• Clearly demarcate how to do things around in the organisation!
• Plans for individual, team and organisational growth
• Encourage MBO (Management By Objective)
• Device effective training & development programmes
• Hold confrontation meetings
• Linkage of salary to performance and productivity
• Employee Surveys
• Rewards & Recognition

Many organisations have implemented some or all of the above initiatives to ensure effective Change Management processes in the past. In my understanding, an effective system not only assists in effective change management rather it helps in positive transformation of the organisation and facilitates the growth.

My organisation; Vertex Software is integrating with 5 other subsidiaries in India and start operating as one brand - NTT Data, which is a 16Bn dollar organisation and also the 7th largest IT Company in the world.
Refer the links below for more information:
http://americas.nttdata.com/news/2012/press-releases-31-jan-2012.aspx

RIGHT PEOPLE at the RIGHT JOBS???

In last few years of my career, I have had a chance to work with best of the professionals in very conducive organizational set-ups and the learning has been astounding. I have been put on a fast track since the early days of my career and due to having an opportunity to work under very able leaders, my professional journey has been somehow rewarding. 

Having worked in areas of Core Competency Development, Organization Development, Talent Management, Delivery Operations Management in the industry I always had an insight of how the business is conducted.

 

Lately, I had an opportunity to work in the selective functional area of Talent Management, which covers almost every aspect of Human Resource management and at the same time it is very well coupled with business and strategy.

It’s during my latest stint that I got to learn more about how most of the organizations are actually managing resources. It seems that organizations today are not cognizant of the very principle of "Right Person at the Right Job"

I recall reading a publishing long back during the days of my college, which highlighted the major mistake that the organizations have been committing in ages related to the above principle.

Actually, people who really know recruiting also know that the best way to understand the overall recruiting process is to visualize it as a subset of the common business practices of Supply Chain Management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Recruiting cannot reach its optimal impact, nor can it help drive an organization’s "performance mindset," if it is viewed in isolation. Instead, it must be viewed as an integral part of the entire people/productivity process. It's not enough "just to recruit them," it's equally important to look at the next step, which is to ensure that top performers and new hires are continually placed in the right job. And after a period of time in any job, it's also important to continually redeploy them into other "more appropriate" jobs.

Unfortunately, we now know that two of the most common errors that organizations make are:

1) Putting wrong people on wrong jobs.

2) Keeping them in these jobs for too long.  

By "right person/right job" I don't mean the traditional "skill fit," but rather the underutilization of talent by putting top performers into inconsequential jobs and vice versa.

Here's a list of the 16 most common errors organizations make in how they treat and place their top performers.

A deployment mismatch occurs if the organization..

• Fails to identify it’s "mission critical" positions, and then fails to focus the energies on these critical positions (10% of all jobs)
• Fails to identify top performers, and then fails to treat them differently than the average worker
• Allows a mission critical position to be left open/vacant
• Allows a mission critical position to be filled with a non-top performer
• Allows a top performer to remain in a non-mission critical position (generally because they assume that top performers will move on their own)
• Allows a top performer to have a "mediocre manager" Allows a top performer to be "stuck" in a mission critical position beyond their peak growth period
• Allows a "bottom performer" to remain on the same team as a top performer

Mistakes most of the organizations commit in terms of Employee Engagement are: 

• Providing little differentiation (less than 40%) in pay between the top and the average performers
• Allowing a low percentage of all employees' pay to be at risk (less than 20%), contingent on performance
• Not knowing specifically what motivates, challenges and frustrates every top performer
• Not providing every top performer with the resources they need to in order to succeed (great teammates, budget, a plan and learning opportunities)
• Not providing every top performer with "stretch" goals and enough on-the-job P&L opportunities to prove to themselves and others what they can do
• Allowing a top performer to get a better offer from another organisation prior to getting a "better" internal offer from their own organisation
• Failing to continually "challenge" any employee to the limit of their expectations
• Not measuring and rewarding their managers for doing each of the above things

It is equally important to ensure that the right people are placed in the right positions, so that top performers can optimize their learning and growth. Unfortunately, many managers take a cavalier approach to deploy resources, and as a result, they have top performers working in non-essential jobs.

In addition to impacting their morale and retention, it also affects the organisation’s productivity, as well as its ability to maintain a competitive edge.

If you want your team to be productive, it's essential that you periodically conduct a "human capital audit" to ensure that the right people are placed in the right job!