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Short Relevant Reads
Opening the door to the People space.
Quonscious People Maturity Curve
Resource
1
Attendance
Utilisation
Compensation
Enabler
2
Talent Management
Performance Incentive
Digitised Processes
Culture
3
Leadership Development
Growth Opportunities
Value Empowerment
Experience
4
Value & Purpose Clarity
End to End Flow
High Engagement
Driver
5
Energised Engagement
People Centric
Dynamic Work Structure
Corresponding read that add to the areas of improvement in each maturity level.
MATURITY LEVEL
2
Your Culture is putting your business, small or large, at considerable RISK.
Why you may be losing more from people than making from them?
Despite the fact that your people management has moved from purely attendance and utilisation to talent management and well documented people processes, your organisation is still at business risk.
A business that is not leveraging people power is losing out on its revenue. A third of the revenue is spent on people - infrastructure, salaries, administration and subsequent departments. And yet,
Businesses lose customers to poor quality work, not enough follow ups, sharing best practices, going all the way to help them, or simply not enough pizzaz to hold the customer's interest beyond daily tasks.
Organisation is losing out on improvement and suggestion on different functions of the organisation as people work through them. Improving them for value, performance, effectiveness and technology for ease. Adapting to new technologies and initiatives with ease. Best practices and collaboration for best service to the client become much easier as people compete to get the best out to the customer, rather than within themselves.All of this, done bottom up, saves the organisation considerable value in money, reduced friction and services offered.
Business loses out to customer satisfaction as people work towards customer compliance ( getting things done) rather than innovative ways to capture customer delight ( superseding expectations). Customer satisfaction , in a poor people culture, can easily renegade to getting a survey filled and following up with the customer a week before. Not only defeating the purpose of the exercise, but adding to customer discomfort as trust is depleted.
People lose out too as policies support the competitive over collaborative, flattery over authenticity, unthreatening mediocrity over challenging ideas. Demotivating people who could have brought in the much needed business differentiators at every stage.
Getting people right is as much a business advantage as is technology or process.
Your Culture is putting business atrisk
Why learning self management is as important as learning external skills
MATURITY LEVEL
3
The ATHLETE Mindset: Why an inside out training program delivers better results.
Athletes know this more than anyone else. For them, the stress of performance is compounded with people watching every action . Every decision is scrutinised and your value is determined at the end of every game and performance. They know that while they train for the sport, they also need to be able to train their mind. Great Athletes undergo physical, mental, emotional and many other trainings to get their inner state balanced, along with their external state - stance, skill, poise etc.
Over the years, as training has matured to bring in different skills - project management, sales, business, technology - skills needed to manage self through these, have largely been missing. Clubbed under the broader leadership skills, self management and personal excellence is the most important and the most fundamental skill, that is largely ignored.
Even when added, it is taught without sheen and inspiration. Taking away the inherent magical nature of their application to the individual's life and the company's performance.
Whether it is compassion with your team, resilience during a crisis, problem solving during a difficult customer problem, patience during customer service, conflict management within functions or negotiations in simple every day deals.
If competency is the pipeline around which productivity is measured, personal skills are the water flowing through the pipelines and the final performance achieved. Even if we have perfected the pipeline through policies, system and technology, unless we have de-toxified the water, nothing drinkable will ever come through.
Athlete
MATURITY LEVEL
5
Designing an Award Winning Program: to achieve measurable business outcomes - How we did it.
One thing we knew. We had to go with a mindset of innovating something new. And only take in parts that fit in the new model or else design it anew.
The reason we knew that was that we had as a team been inside the system for long enough ( 15 years then) to know that a) trainings available , despite the top b-school tie ups and labs, by itself, weren't enough to help leaders become great leaders b) something was gravely missing and left too much to chance - specially personal skills and c) the business system wasn't well integrated with the HR/Learning system to hold value beyond order taking, sheet filling, tick boxes and lots of numbers . The ground reality that we were alive to, despite some amazing intent and myriad interventions, wasn't moving the business or personal needle well enough or consistently enough.
We also knew something else. Learning had to be designed for both - inculcating personal excellence and inspiring business outcomes. By designed , it meant - not a mish mash of people thrown into a class and pulling people out of billed business days to attend it .
We started the Personal Excellence Academy with 20 people . It became 200 by word of mouth and then two cities simultaneously enrolled. Eventually we were a CEO Initiative with funding to run 500 people in a batch over 6 months, all in all drawing 100x returns in revenue, CSI scores, organisational improvements and more. We won 20+ international awards and many domestic ones in business ( for business outcomes achieved), in HR ( for people transformation), in innovation ( for design of the interventions and systemic changes), in leadership ( for running it successfully for 4 years ) and more.
These are some of things that went behind the scenes of what seemed like 'just another program/ cultural intervention'
Design Phase
- Individual Needs
- Immersive Design
- Psychology of Change
- Behavioural Matrix
- Gaps ( Cultural, Leadership, Business)
- Specific Business Outcomes we can effect
- Business Strategic Alignment from the workforce
- Process Engineering for critical points of impact and optimisations
- People and Culture Analytics - Points of data collection and subsequent insights
Delivery Phase
- Group Dynamics
- Concept Retention
- Experience Design
- Session Energy Flow Design
- Event Management
- Communication Design
- New Process for recruitment, 'building' the faculties
- Inspiration Quotient/ Happiness Quotient
- Brand Management
- Team Composition
- Cultural Fitment
- Personal Concerns Management
- Back to Business Fitment
- Business Expectation management
- Technology Utilisation ( Back End)
Continuous Fitment & Changes
- Feedback ( expressed and subtle)
- Progress Management
- Ear on the ground for fitment back to business concerns
- Continuous tweaking using insights
- exploration of new concepts and techniques.
- Acclimatisation soft suggestions to business
- Closing the gap between the map and the territory
- Reprimanding some detrimental business behaviours to uphold values an intent.
- Continuous communication of insights, changes and victories to management
- Repeated clarity of cultural and business vision through the people & cultural interventions
Much like a duck seemingly smoothly wading through water, while its feet were propelling constantly and consistently. Sometimes what 'seems' simple is actually a complicated machinery with a simple interface for the user. That is the best way to design them too.
Award Winning Program
Why your training needs to evolve - and fast. And what your organisation stands to lose.
MATURITY LEVEL
2
Behavioural Analytics : How ad-hoc trainings deplete trust & can be counter productive.
Training used to be an evolved form of at scale distribution of SOPs - Standard Operating Procedures. Most of their purpose was to avoid both manual errors as well as ensure safety measures.
While the scope of training has grown to include leadership and domain skills, much of training reasons have stayed the same - to up-skill the workforce to be effectively utilised and deployed.
This intention has led us to increased revenue and up skilling over the years. At the same time, it needs a rejig to fit into a rapidly evolving workforce ( specially post globalisation and now, internet).
There are many reasons for why current training models do not work well.
1. They are not continuous . Ad hoc trainings do not provide a focused result.
2. They can be conflicting and not value centric. Sales at any cost vs win win during negotiations.
3. They are not sold well. Coerced through soft and hard incentives, the clear assumption unchecked is that people don't really want to learn.
4. They are not holistic. Focused on business needs rather than holistic growth.
5. They are not customised. To what the individual needs at that point
6. They don't make people feel empowered and self independent or innovative. They are design to teach (forced concepts) rather than educe ( draw out naturally)
7 . They drain energy rather than add to it. People typically feel bored and look for a reason to leave.
8. Learning on the Job , by itself, is overrated - and costly- to the customer, org reputation. Using live projects to teach atthe cost of error and customer disatisfaction is an expensive loss. Live projects should serve as a safe deployment zone rather than a risky training ground.
Thus shared , Training are one of the things you do FOR the employee. When done unwell they can leave a lingering taste, taint the culture and set wrong precedents of what the company really 'thinks of you.' Like going to an old friends house during dinner and being sent home on a glass of water and some fast food.
Adhoc trainings
Employee Performance : expecting the best
How Performance is a mixed bag of many things done well and what you can do about it.
MATURITY LEVEL
3
Employee Performance : Expecting the best ? Give them the best .
Increasing Performance at every phase in the organisation is a different beast. A new joiner's performance standards are different from someone at much higher positions.
We all understand that and yet, we drill performance into quantifiable measures and close it at that.
First is what is performance ?
Performance is at least four types - Personal, Team, Organisation, Customer.
Personal Performance is how well they stand by their values and what they know and feel. While being the most important one (People will forget what you did but will never forget how you made them feel - Maya Angelou), it is often the least catered to. A direct result of both daily interactions with work as well as the overarching culture.
Team Performance - Another very important part and yet, hardly measured or measured well.
Competitive marks ensure loss of collaboration. Only one promotion, less number of positions at the top etc, leaving survival of the fittest as the most understood strategy. Reaping a few individual dividends and losing out on the larger collaborative synergistical pie.
Organisational Performance - Measured by if that unit performing towards its stated goals. Incentivised if yes and collective reforms if not. Again, this is not measured or drilled down well for an individual to feel like he/she has any role in it, even when they do.
Customer Performance - A measure used by those closer to the business and not for other others. Again losing out on value and impact of the whole team.
So if many are not doing any of the above well, how are they measuring performance? Through tasks and projects. Most organisations measure performance based on goals and set tasks. Most the goal setting as well as performance appraisal lose value when seen disconnected to the value to the organisation of each of those tasks. These are eventually done based on the degree of bias of the manager and the efficiency of the system to capture log hours and quality of information of actual work done.
Is it then a surprise that performance does not improve, when our ways of defining performance and measuring it are incorrect?
Then there are nuances of mapping the type of people with the type of performance. Some people are great connectors and energisers, some are great at managing, other at technicalities and some others at creativity. Allowing people to hop in and hop out of roles, finding , learning and appreciating the mixed bag an organisation is, then still evaluating them well for what they add to the organisation is key.
An organisation that has people systems - like training, people experience and continuous culture measurement has a better chance of people performing well than those that only rely on task structures and completion.
You Peopl canbe your biggest advantage
How to make your People your biggest advantage?
MATURITY LEVEL
3
Your People can become Your biggest Business Advantage - if you know how.
Short answer would be to move up the maturity scale.
Long answer would be to design for people. That implies having a good grasp on the people you bring into the organisation , right up to growing them around your specific culture, aligning processes and policies around the experience they need to have within the organisation , to finally letting them feel like stakeholders in the purpose of the organisation.
Most organisations design for business. From sourcing the ingredients/resources ( sometimes that includes people) to process and business functions that will lead to a business outcome. People are either enablers or friction to the process, with considerable effort put towards encouraging compliance and discouraging outliers. This constant struggle as people come in and go, becomes normal and anything above is profitable medium.
Anything that is not designed for people will work for people. One wouldn't go to an Indian restaurant to eat Chinese. Then no matter how much we market our Chinese food, there will be bo takers. Because the wok is different, the sauces are different, even the culture of how to invite and how food to offer becomes different. You cannot fake it.
That doesn't mean that one cannot get closer and closer to people as a business advantage irrespective of that fact that you don't want to complete change the business model you follow. It does however mean that once you are ready to move into using people as another strategic pillar, you will need to be willing to go for the long haul, with slow changes as you move forth. Cosmetic changes will yield only cosmetic results.
Businesses end up spending more on marketing - to customers, to recruitments, to employees and to social media- to showcase their business advantage to the outside world. The same spend can be used wisely inside - and letting people and customers showcase their delight.
Building the Right People Systems for Business Growth
3
MATURITY LEVEL
Leverage People Systems to build the right employee experience for your org. It's easy too.
Just as organisations find value in creating systems of work for processes, policies, business functions, customer deliverables, technology onset - to unlock massive value from efficiences, ease of use, reduced manual error, faster turn around time and economies of scale- all the while following the right business model.
Similarly, developing people 'systems' that allow for the right recruitment, deployment, performance, growth right up to business revenue can be crafted - to unlock massive vale from energised workforce, improved quality of work, collaboration, customer delight, downstream revenue and controlled innovation - all the while following the right cultural model.
The key is to think about people models differently , with what people outcomes the system should generate followed closely with tying those outcomes across the process to create business outcomes as well.
This is not as difficult as it looks. Unlike technology or process, once establised is difficult to uproot or change, people models run on people - the most adaptable - and easily powered- part of the system.
With the right purpose, communication, ownership, business and HR collaboration, expert consultants and CEO involvement - this is actually easy to do , unlocking the remaining business value.
Like any other change - process optimisations, legacy migrations or technology adoptions - it does take the same amount of time and commitment- from all stakeholders, to see real ( and much more sustainable ) compounding value at the end.
Leverage People Sytems to build the right employee experince
The New Shift : People Care and People Administration
MATURITY LEVEL
2
People Administration vs. People care. And why you should outsource it.
Millennials don't want to feel managed anymore. They want to feel empowered. They want to know they can do everything they want to do - and the organisation they are joining is as interested in growing them , as it is in growing its revenue and customer base.
Earlier people engagement and loyalty was an outcome of gratitude - being given the opportunity to work in that organisation . Safety of job and security of pay were ample reasons to stay with the organisation. Then came in differentiators of which industry paid the most, who could get in where as brand of the organisation became an important commodity to leverage better pay and other opportunities.
More and more people from branded universities are shying away from working in organisations for their brand alone. They want an opportunity to explore themselves too. Find their passions and interests. Work on themselves.
As other avenues of paid jobs, beyond engineering, doctors and lawyers, open up, more choices are available to them. More and more they want organisations to care about them as well.
Traditional HR systems built on narratives of people -initially working on factories - for the need for attendance,compliance to standard operating procedures, supervisor authority and control over their work etc- are still the bedrock of most organisations. Even when people opportunities and leadership classes is being explored, the method and attention to people care is largely missing , or soon set aside, anytime business revenue is at risk- diluting the people equity built.
Firing people for the slightest discord , laying off during revenue loss, empty marketing promises, inadequate penalising of bad managers etc - all leads to a culture that creates friction and hampers the people's ability to bring their best to the job.
An technologies and domain expertise evolves, it is now much more easier to let people and leadership management, people care , mentoring etc be driven by experts than it is to manage it in depth inside . Having a people or culture head that designs the culture and value systems of the organisation, with even a simple basic team can work. By leveraging the vast opportunities for people building and people care from the outside. At the same time, keeping the people data etc inside for their analysis and insights - is the better way to go.
Enabling the current HR to move themselves of people administration to people care as well. Feeling fulfilled in their own jobs as well.
People Adminstration & People Care
MATURITY LEVEL
3
Technology & People Experience: Uniting the Giants and building on its shoulders.
How organisations can leverage technology to meet their people care needs.
Technology is everywhere. There are many softwares that allow for people administration end to end, as well as pin point solutions for recruitment, compensation and learning management systems. It is much more easier to allow software to take over the computation aspect of people development, performance and care. It does give returns multiple ways as processes become clearer, control is taken away from individuals and centered around policies and a fairer system. With clarity comes transparency, and more trust for the organisation. That is however, something an organisation should have done as of yesterday.
The organisations of today are beginning to understand that just as businesses have to be remodelled every year, to be closer and closer to the changing needs of the customer, people also have to be taken care of in better and better ways. In their care and comfort, lie the opportunity to unlock better customer service, innovation and organisational agility and development in fast changing times. They are also understanding the cost of losing employees to competitors, the cost of disengaged employees to brand reputation and the cost of work compliance alone to customer delight and downstream revenue - is a hard margin to hold.
More and more, organisations are leveraging people experience ,the experience the people have of joining the organisation, the ample opportunities to learn and grow, the need to be aligned with the business, the whole process and its touchpoints - are as strategic an advantage - as any other cost optimisations. There is no point optimising the top and bottom line through operations, process and new business strategies - only to lose it to people friction, disengagement, lack of collaboration, unenergised interactions, reduced work quality, business model inagility, lack of adoption of critical pivots in strategy etc.
With technology easing both the workload of people administrations and enhance people experience, organisations are eagerly looking to leverage that advantage.
That said, technology for the sake of technology can be detrimental. Like a blind leading another. It has to be preceded with people strategies, a complete analysis of the system, the current value system and cultural habits of the system, the leadership example, past organisational history among many other foundational things - much like any business strategy - before being digitsed through technology.
Else people analytics, end to end HR management, these are great tyres, but in an old car, with an uninformed driver.
Technology &People Experience
How to make People Analytics work for you
MATURITY LEVEL
5
People Analytics : How even the simplest information about a person can change how we manage the people dynamics in an organisation
So you are at level 5. Engagement is high. People experience is somewhat set as you tweak it every off and on with people feedback and leverage technology to drive changes at scale and speed.
People Analytics will help fine tune the experience by personalising and customising the people experience based on location, needs, cultural precedents, leadership exhibited , existing business functions in that geography etc.
A simple example would be - A local cafe that understands my preferences, knows me by name, is able to ask where the family is today - will get my business over a branded cafe closeby. All this with the same effort and possibly less expense.That is the power of people analytics.
Similarly when we design our academy, we put in a lot of effort to take in data from all directions - not just conscious surveys, but also their behavioral choices that were making subconsciously - to design what next to teach and how to keep course correcting the program .
However, knowing when and how to use analytics is also critical. Sometimes the data is biased by the nature of the organisational culture rather than by individual preferences. Sometimes, data has to be ignored in favor of inspirational direction rather than purely logical next.
Analytics, like culture building, is a longer journey and has to be built on slowly, methodically and in alignment with what the company wants to stand for tomm. A shoe company like Zappos and Nike, built their company culture on service. A manufacturing company may want to build it on zero tolerance to error and human safety etc. Thinking of people and culture as another differentiator and enabler to business advantage is key to start well on this road.
Also, people see, people do. When their own experience is personalised and customised, they understand how to do that for their customer and it comes naturally to them , rather than through forced workshops on how to engage and delight the customer.
People Analytics :Simplest Information
Why Giving is an important leadership quality?
5
MATURITY LEVEL
The Human Experience. What we learn about ourselves by giving.
Giving needs to be inculcated into the leadership discipline as we organisations take the responsibility of building our employees.
Giving naturally inculcates a mindset of abundance as it puts what we have in perspective to the have nots.
In an organisation, as people grow up the ladder, what they have becomes the new normal as they crave for more and more incentives to compensate for the hard work, labor and missed life moments. Giving brings one backk to the perspective that having a work that allows you to be part of growth - self and others- in itself , is a privilege.
That said, how we as organisations enable it is also as important. These 'opportunities' to create value, can easily flip into distasteful gimmicks as employees either see them as 'forced good', 'gimmicks' or 'time away from work'.
Which is why engaging with attention and intention is key. Working with people who understand how to build these ( and other ways) into the dna of the organisation such that key skills can be built without losing balance, outside of workshops.
There are many such ways to build real-life leadership.
The HumanExperince: Giving
When work and experience still isn't enough.
MATURITY LEVEL
5
The Lopsided Employee: Why poorly designed culture may be ruining their human-ness.
As humans, we are designed to want to experience our full range of emotions, explore the capability of our intelligence, as well as express ourselves in myriad ways.
Designing an experience solely around their ability to enjoy work, leaves people with less time for anything else.
As an example, most organisations prefer their employees to be from a certain school, educated in certain domains, expressing themselves in certain ways , dressed in a particular way and live life a certain way - some of it is expressed and some of it is subtle.
Humor for example, in many cultures is a no-no. And yet, laughter makes for a great engagement and belongingness tool. Appreciating the serious ones over the light hearted ones may make for a great customer sale pitch but it doesn't do much for the 99% other times, when people are working with each other. Not to mention the serious faces when the people return home to other challenges driving life.
Making our workplace a good diverse representation of life is an important aspect of ensuring a healthy human mind is at work. That implies reducing work bias towards certain human traits - documentation, preciseness, seriousness, curtness, poised, articulate, non emotional, delivery excellence, order takers, competitiveness etc ...as a need for promotion , shunning - creativity, light heartedness, strategic and big thinkers, laughter and compassion.
What gets appreciated, gets embedded. As people quickly learn to imitate those that got promoted over those that didnt. Eventually become clone of each other, rather than adding the much needed diversity ( in mind) for a place to feel natural ( and homely). When there is fear of judgement or being ostracized, at the back of the mind, it is highly unlikely that people will bring their all - or their best self - to work. Eventually feeling under pressure to perform , rather than performance being a natural outcome of who they are. Feeling discontent with the organisation, without knowing why.
There is huge opportunities and value to be unlocked by letting the people experience mimic that of a close tribe where each one has each others back - rather than one where each one is fearful of turning their back. Knowing how to design for a tribe is critical to getting the experience right.
The Lopsided Employee
MATURITY LEVEL
4
UNlocking VALUE :
The Massive Business Returns from People Experience
How experience design can take your organisation to the next business level.
Imagine this.
An employee joins your organisation after his profile has been assessed for both competency and cultural fitment. The employee is clear about his job role, what to expect, what competencies he has and what he/she will build through this new role. He/she is excited to work with some of his team mates, whose details and accomplishments have been shared in advance and is looking to be mentored by his manager who rates highly in the system for his people management skills.
The work is challenging and befitting his/her profile, his competency and where he/she wants to go in his life. The leaders are encouraging as much as they are firm on processes and outcomes. There is an exhausting learning experience built in that ensures his own personal development along with professional. His goals and feedbacks are logged in to their own learning goals , that are services by quonscious academy that has some of the best faculties teaching classes.
This goes on throughout the time cycle the employee is in the organisation . Although it looks seamless, the experience has been meticulously designed at the back by quonscious experts pouring into every detail of experience touch point and building/refining constantly.
A whole crew of counsellors, mentors and industry experts is available to them to learn from , as they figure out their own paths to purpose, all from within the organisation.
Imagine the business advantage.
Business does not loose cost in work quality or disengaged employee followups. It does not lose customers over bad feedback or lost downstream opportunities. It does not lose revenue to interdepartmental collaborations or lose business over aligning people to newer technologies, service offering, better processes adoption etc. There is no friction inside the system.There is only alignment to the customer as people own needs are met for.
That said people experience is not people assurance or entertainment. The idea is not to entertain them after office through events alone or to spoon feed them with delicate nothings. People experience is building the scaffolding on which people can park their own internal needs, knowing these will be addressed, as they focus on the organisations purpose of existence - making the customer's life better- just as their own is by their internal organisation.
Unlocking Value - Massve Returns
MATURITY LEVEL
5
The OMG Experience: Different Experience Levels & Designing them
Designing the Oh My Gosh Experience.
There are many levels of experience just as there are many underlying objectives for the experience, depending on the Industry. Where one organisation may focus on customer centricity and innovation, another may focus on service delivery and values like trust, and still another may want reduced error depending on whether they are products, services or healthcare.
An experience goes through the following levels of design
- Current.
- What is expected.
- What will significantly enhance the expectations.
- What will set a new precedent entirely.
- What will finally, inspire and respark belongingness.
Designing for each of the experience depending on the strength of the cultural foundation underneath it, is always exciting as it is challenging.
Designing the people experience involves four critical parts - the learning engine , the cultural touchpoints, the KPIs and the feedback analytics.
The learning engine ( Academy) ensures that there is way to continuously keep the organisation agile and in alignment with the needs of the organisation as well as people's own needs to learn and grow.
The cultural touchpoints includes relooking every policy, process, messaging etc that reaches an employee- visually, kinetically or auditory. It also takes into account what gets created by them in words, actions or events. The business models and future strategies are all evaluated in lieu of people performance, bringing in more clarity and ground level details into the system. Everything folds into this.
The KPIs ensure that every new or old intervention is introduced based on its effect on the cultural and experience KPIs as well - specially policies, penalties, enforcements, marketing, customer feedback - that touch people.
The feedback analytics - much of which is embedded in the system- along with surveys and pulse feedbacks - ensure for transparency into the system and its ability to absorb exceptions ( rather than be built around them) as well as agility to clone best practices and spread them at speed.
That said, experience design is as much art as it is science. People with an eye for compassion and innate understanding of behaviour science perform better than those with a structural or academic view of it alone.
The OMG Experience
MATURITY LEVEL
4
Starting Small: How to get started on experience in a DIY way.
The DIY ( D0-It-Yourself) Kit for People Experience Design
Note : This can only be done by a CHRO/ CPO/CCO and must be done mandatorily , with the CEO. Without collaboration across the different functions and an alignment from business heads to change business models and way of working, if effected, there is slim chance of a real experience.
People experience unlike technology, requires ALL its components to be working well. Like a small stone can take away the experience of an otherwise lovely spread of buffet, sometimes simple unthoughtful measures can take away the trust from the entire system. Hence the importance of the above note.
Listing a few easy steps to get around to designing the experience on your own.
1. List the cultural history of the company. The big people achievements and the clear misses.
2. Identify what the company stands for. Clearly identify the values and purpose.
3. Identify the people touch points across the organisation and the current experience and messages they convey. Objectively list down the feelings for each process
4. identify critical path and points of strength and weakness w.r.t people experience. Research both within and outside the organisation.
5 Identify the future culture of the organisation, align ot with the people attributes needed and the business strategy needs -one or more of - product innovation, customer service, distribution reach, agent experience, digital dominance etc.
6. Leverage market research to understand how competitors across the industry are doing this better.
7. Create employee personas - both existing and future - and build around them.
8 Slowly build a system to uphold the people experience.
9 Plan for conflict between business and culture - and be willing to stand up for either depending on what is in alignment with the purpose, values and balancing long term cultural and short term revenue needs.
10. Ensure that it is a continuous exercise of measuring and monitoring, much like any technology or business strategy.
There it is. For a new start up this is much easier. For an existing startup or a decade old conglomerate, this requires much more care, deliberation and conviction to pursue and persist, specially from the business and CEO.
The DIY Kit
MATURITY LEVEL
3
The Fundamentals : Building the beliefs and behaviours for business transformation
How people behaviour accelerates everything the business wants.
What an organisations wants is different from what people inside the company may want. And it is this conflict of perception that leads to business loosing its people.
What is needed is a shift in both - people perception as well as company's focus on people experience - over business and revenue alone.
Speaking on people behaviour alone for this read ( assuming the organisational policies and experience are already in way or addressed)
People's perception of their work, the quality they bring and the coloured lenses in which they view the corporate's day to day, is based on the beliefs, experiences and cultures they come from. Beyond a point, even if the company addresses all the process flaws, it can still not come deep inside people's perception to change it favourably. Until, they work on it as well. This is typically where an Academy or a discipline of learning helps - as it gradually and impersonally removes a non productive mindset ( both for the individual as well as the organisation).
Working on assisting people with reforming their own behaviour is not just a culture need anymore. As more and more business look for an abundant mindset, relentless pursuit of growth opportunities, resilience during conflict and persistence in ambiguity, strategic decision making, wowing the client with their overall knowledge, becoming growth partners to the client as opposed to proposal generators, down to the details of excellent communication and people management skills - it all eventually comes down not to forced leadership academic classes - but to what people really believe in deep inside their head.
If someone is not likely to try a new dish, its unlikely they will be comfortable trying a new customer ( specially after the must do falls away and what is comfortable to do kicks in). Helping their leaders address what is inside their mind is as important as addressing what to do when their mindset is straight and aligned to it.
Most learning programs fail to address that part assuming incorrectly that it is the process of how to do it that is unknown to them. Whereas, time and again, it has been proved that when the why we need to do it is clear, the how to do it hardly gets in the way, Right Behaviour, attitude, mental model, mindset - call it by any name - is as important to address as is the how - the process, method, concept.
Agility is not possible till people are wired to be agile themselves in their thinking. Innovation is not possible without imagination. Good customer service is not possible without compassion and new product or solution offerings without empathy. Good Delivery is not possible without the muscle of excellence. Every business results eventually depends on people behaviour.
Th fundamentals
Welcome Aboard.
QUONSCIOUS
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