Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch (Source: Youtube)

Success in the marketplace through alignment of critical business levers

What makes an organizational successful? .... My immediate response to that question - "an organization with a sound strategy which it executes with excellence through its people with enabling policies, processes & technology framework in a supportive external environment may become successful over a given period of time"

So, if we look at the response mentioned above we may find that organizational success is an outcome of a combination of factors both internal and external to it which come together in harmony to create a successful venture.

Given the stage of existence at which an organization is, the impact of these factors on the success of an organization may vary, for instance, a small organization may be able to achieve success by relying more heavily on select bright and hardworking individuals but as this organization grows, it may become imperative to develop enabling processes and policies to support size and scale and reduce dependence on individuals. Similarly, if an organization visualizes innovation and intrapreneurship as its mainstay of growth, it has to have enabling policies and processes which encourage its people to innovate. One shining example of organizational processes encouraging innovation is Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Corporation or 3M as it is known to all of us. 3M processes allow every employee to actually spend 15% of their workweek pursuing individual projects of their own choices. The employees don’t even have to share the details of the project with their managers, let alone justify these projects. Furthermore, every business unit is encouraged to innovate, to the extent that as a policy matter it is mandated that 30% of its revenues most come from products introduced in the last four years.

Similar cases in point of successful interaction of people, process, technology and policy levers to achieve organizational success has been seen across organizations such as Wal-Mart and Dell. These organizations looked at the eventual outcome to be achieved and then aligned the people, process, technology and policy levers to churn out the desired output.

If you want to be a customer centric organization, make sure that your people know what it means for them in their day to day interactions with the end customer and at the same time everything from the organizations product display, distribution & exchange policies to promotion plans, incentive schemes and pay raises etc. mirror that.

Hence, while designing organizational strategies it is critical to understand the nature of impact these strategies may have on each of the business levers and how the organization intends to better align these changes to achieve its strategic goals. The impact on critical business levers and the organizations ability to manage that impact, can actually act as a crucial filter for the organization to decide whether a particular strategy can be successfully executed or not. By building this self correcting evaluation mechanism at the strategy design stage itself, the organization actually brings execution focus right from the outset and hence eliminates the most critical problem facing organizations today i.e. lack of execution excellence.

To summarize, it can safely be said that for an organization to achieve success and continuously beat the bourses it is critical to focus on end outcomes while constantly aligning its internal management systems to talk to each other and aim towards achieving the desired end outcomes.

Improving channel partner throughput with Strong Relationships

It is increasingly becoming imperative for an organization to focus on its core value proposition and build a network of channel partners who act as extensions for the organization and help them multiply their presence and offer non-core services without leading to challenges associated with size and scale.


These channel partners are the interface of the organization for the end customers, be it in the form of franchisee owners or sales and service partners. These channel partners must mirror the brand promise that the organization is working towards delivering to its end customers and at every touch point with the customer, deliver on that brand promise.

The confidence and credibility of the organization in question can be strengthened or eroded by the channel partner with whom the customer is interacting. So, every time a customer walks into a channel partner outlet or speaks to a call center representative he/she feels he is interacting with brand in question and it is the brand’s ability or inability to resolve his/her queries that is being subjected to a test.

With this growing focus on channel partners and their direct impact on our business as they touch our end customers, what can organizations do to ensure that they have a channel partner network which is committed to building and growing business with them and mirrors the organizations core values to its end customers and at the same time acts as a key differentiator for them in this crowded marketplace?

The answer to this question lies in building Strong Relationships. Just as strong customer relationships mean sustained business growth similarly strong relationships with channel partners help ensure creation of an ecosystem which reflects organizational values and is committed to building the business through increased customer acquisition, better servicing and improved cross sell/up sell.

For an organization to positively impact this relationship strength, it may look at building customer like relationship with its channel partners which go beyond rational satisfiers and are held together by a strong emotional connect.

In a complex business environment, businesses continue to rely on gut feel and impressions to impact and improve channel partner performance. If we do not make any major investment decisions without going through the numbers then how can we make decisions that impact our business so directly without going back to numbers, identifying areas of improvement and then acting on it.

Hence going forward, one of the key differentiating factors for organizations may be their ability to objectively assess their relationship strength and work on areas which have a maximum impact on business.

Two critical aspects which impact any relationship and hence need to be evaluated are Rational and Emotional aspects. While rational aspects indicate an organizations ability to satisfy a channel partners on hygiene factors of a relationship such as product, price, promotion etc. emotional aspects (such as trust, integrity, pride and passion) help an organization assess the commitment of channel partners in building a business and has a direct impact business outcomes.

An objective assessment of the channel partner & company relationship strength is needed. This can be done through various research based frameworks available through reputed agencies. Most critical aspect to be kept in mind while evaluating a framework should be its ability to assess the critically important emotional bonds of trust, integrity, pride and passion and its linkages to business outcomes. This framework may then be coupled with other organizational and business environment variables; this would help an organization get a complete picture of their relationship across both rational and emotional aspects.

A complete approach to relationship strengthening may encompass the following steps- measure, plan & implement and review & monitor to help organizations experience improved channel partner throughput. The complete approach may be designed with a view to assess improvements made.

Thus, the paradigm shift of strengthening relationships should focus on measuring the key outcomes and drivers which impact channel partner relationships and instituting steps to ensure effective improvements which are then assessed for effectiveness for further improvements.

Friendships at the workplace- do they harm or help?

In a battle between organizational policy and human nature; human nature would always win. If you try and restrict social bonding at the workplace, you would eventually fail. The need for social bonding and relationships is very basic to every human being and will also surface at the workplace. A whole lot of studies have proven how having a network of friends at the workplace positively impacts outcomes such as customer service, safety incidents, sharing of information, suggestions and opinions etc.

Now, if we were to reverse the situation where overall engagement of employees at the workplace is very low, and performance on friendship parameters is very strong; does this mean that this social bonding at the workplace is working against the organizations efforts to improve employee engagement? Where all the conversations through all these informal channels is centered around how the organization is trying to cheat the employees and take away their bonuses or how the new guys are being interviewed to replace the old ones. The friendships at the workplace are getting stronger with common misery bringing everyone together to fight and crib against a common enemy.

A disengaged employee is like an irate customer, he/she is actively trying to spread his/her disengagement around the workplace and in the process garnering support from all others who share a similar feeling. Unlike an engaged employee who is busy working hard and contributing to building the organization, this disengaged employee is talking a lot more, enjoying longer coffee breaks and is creating more such partners in misery.

Social bonding at the workplace which can serve as a great source of bringing together the organization for achieving greater goals is now working against it with disengagement being the basis of most of these social bonds.

The failure of the organization to provide an enabling environment and local level managers to create an engaging work environment at an individual team level created this disengaging epidemic which is gradually spreading across the organization through these friendships at the workplace.

So what can an organization do to curb such a situation? Trying to curtail the relationships at the workplace would do more harm than good and would eventually lead to spreading of more negativity. The answer may lie in the basics of creating an engaging experience for every employee and hence provide more positive strokes to the conversations thereby using the informal networks to spread more positivity.

Our managers have to play a very critical role in ensuring that they are talking a lot more to their teams and keeping them abreast of what is happening in the organization to eliminate the impact of gossip on employee morale. This talking is about informing the employees about what's happening, why is it happening, hearing from them on what is troubling them and painting a true & fair picture for the employees. Nothing can replace an honest, regular dialogue.

While the most natural reaction would be to try and curb all informal communication, my suggestion would be to create opportunities for people to come together and share their thoughts, feelings and aspirations in a more conducive environment. This may actually help in steering these negative conversations in a more positive direction and create a more enabling environment at the workplace.

Another critical aspect will be to completely refrain from playing any kind of blame game in any given situation. Strictly avoid blaming anyone for anything that is going wrong at the workplace, for this may create a cycle of negativity and blaming which would further add fuel to the fire. You may want to talk to and hear from the trouble makers in private rather than use any kind of public medium to reprimand them. While you should use public platforms to recognize all sorts of positive behavior which has contributed towards creating a positive experience for employees and/or customers, thereby, encouraging more such behaviors.

Research has shown how friendships at workplace contribute to building a more positive and candid workplace where friends tolerate and work out disagreements better, cheer each other up in the times of trouble and are more committed to achieving the goals of the group. Thus, it is critical for an organization to encourage friendly relationships at the workplace rather than see it as a peril of having "people" at the workplace.

Unlocking world class performance-one individual at a time

Every individual is unique and is blessed with certain inherent strengths which when put to use in a suitable environment may help him/her deliver a world class performance.


Now, if we were to assess you for these inherent talents and strengths through some highly validated and recognized psychometric test or any other form of assessment tools. Put you in a role which was totally in line with the way your brain was hard wired i.e. complete and absolute match with your internal strengths. There is very high probability that you will be delivering a world class performance at work every day. If in a organization every individual was in such a role where he/she was delivering a world class performance in his/her role; you would automatically have a world class organization which beats the competition hollow and is on the top of the table at every count.


In spite of several advances in industrial/organizational psychology and high degree of predictability that we claim with our psychometric and assessment tools we still continue to fail to create such a world class organization.


I am not against these assessment tools or the role of individuals’ strengths in helping him/her deliver a world beating performance. My thoughts on this revolve around the factors outside of an individual which may have a bearing on his/her performance and thus act as barriers or enablers.

In my mind, the first step on this journey of creating world class organization would be to learn from your best. Learning from your best may lead you to identify the typical traits of your star performers in a particular role and then create/modify assessment tools to identify how closely your future hire is exhibiting such traits if put in similar situations. This would mean that you are getting more of such people who mirror the behaviors of the best in critical situations and hence their chances of success in real world situations may multiply because their thinking patterns are closer to those of your stars. This actually may be seen as an extension of the age old adage of "recent past being the best indicator of future behavior". Thus, you may be filtering those people who do not fit the thought patterns of your stars at the outset itself. Critics may argue here that reactions in simulated situations may wary wildly from those in real life situations but this however may be seen as our attempt to get close to identifying future stars through the behaviors of our current stars.


Now, if we did have a tool which allowed us to slot individuals according to their talents and then helped us put them onto such tailor made roles, we would surely be setting them up for success. This however, is only one side of the story, one critical piece of this puzzle is our local level manager. Our managers have to ensure that he/she is giving all the individuals on his/her team an opportunity to maximize his talents/strengths on the job. A failure on the part of the manager to recognize people for their uniqueness would definitely prevent individuals from reacting in their most natural way and hence would curtail their ability to perform and leverage their inherent talents and strengths. Hence, it may be imperative for us as a organization, to create an enabling environment with the help of adequate managerial education, sensitization and support around improving their people management capability and recognizing them for their ability to encourage individuals to put their strengths to work. Furthermore, a manager must be able to create an engaging environment which fosters creation of more organizational builders and curtails value destroying behavior.


Another lever which we could look at putting to use to ensure superior application and performance is Recognition. Recognizing the right behaviors at the right time is one very critical piece of ensuring that we are getting the desired performance from all on the team. First step in this could be around defining the right behaviors and outcomes that would be recognized and rewarded. So, we need to define the right behaviors which propagate organizational philosophy at both organizational level and at the local team level. Once there is clarity and understanding on the expected behaviors it is time to recognize and create "heroes". These heroes would help you showcase the right kind of behaviors which revolve around maximizing your strengths and hence delivering world class performance.


To sum it all up, it may be said that in your journey to create a world class organization it may be critical to design assessment tools which draw on your organizational learning’s and help you identify the diamonds and it is the ability of your local level managers to polish those diamonds that may help you determine how sparkling they will be in their role given the right kind of organizational enablers to lead you down the path of world class performance.

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Creating a Great Workplace!

Almost every OD professional and/or organizational leader has creating a great workplace as one critical KRA item for them. They resort to various tools and tricks to ensure that there is sufficient to activity to showcase when questioned on what they are doing to create a great workplace such as employee engagement initiatives, fun @ work activities (which essentially are only fun activities with no direct impact on creating a great workplace), recognition drives etc.

Seldom do we find our respected professionals trying to uncover what actually makes a great workplace and why do we even need a great workplace. A lot of organizations even with lousy people practices and totally disengaged and disillusioned employees may still be busy booking huge orders and delivering the numbers and in this era of 3 year long shelf life for CEO's if you are delivering numbers, does it really matter what kind of a workplace you are creating.

A lot has been written and argued about the need for creating a great workplace and it is always heartening to see every time a CEO puts his/her foot down and ensures that the whole organization is marching towards a common goal of creating a great workplace with a single point agenda of achieving SUSTAINED BUSINESS success. So, it can safely be said that the outcome a business may achieve by creating a great workplace is SUSTAINED BUSINESS success.

Now, coming back to the basic question, what do we mean by a great workplace?? Without an understanding of this basic definition I am not sure how successful we can be in our effort to create a great workplace.

To my mind a great workplace is one where employees have a psychological ownership of the organization, are willing to go that extra mile, look forward to contributing to the business success, have their personal goals completely aligned to the organizational imperatives, are looking forward to making everyday count at the workplace and see themselves as an integral part of a larger purpose.

If the above symptoms indicate that we have succeeded in creating a great workplace, what is that we need to work upon to make sure that the above symptoms start showing on the ground.

On a closer scrutiny of these symptoms you may find that all of them are actually outcomes of the work environment that we are able to create. The biggest player in creating this enabling work environment which necessitates exhibition of the above mentioned behaviors by our workforce is a function of how effective our local level managers are in their interactions with their teams. It is an established fact that managers are the lenses through which an employee visualizes the organization at large and hence it is the ability of our managers to create an enabling environment which can help our workforce exhibit behaviors which are congruent with that of the employees at a great workplace.

While the local level managers are the lead players in our effort to create a great workplace, they need to be supported adequately at an organizational level with necessary enablers to ensure that they are able to positively impact employees in their interactions and hence provide an environment which creates a great workplace.

In conclusion, it may be said that creating a great workplace is a function of creating great managers and hence our efforts of creating great workplace may bear maximum fruits if we were to root them in impacting, empowering and sensitizing our local level managers, with adequate support and role modeling from the organizational leadership. Every time we are faced with a question of creating a great workplace it may be our best bet to success if we were to keep our local level managers at the center of our strategy and design interventions around them. So, always remember, it is not the OD professional or the HR head who can create a great workplace, they can only be facilitators of change and it is our local level managers who can actually be the change and ensure that we are creating a great workplace for sustained business success.