Building a Center of Excellence through transformational leadership
Aditya Mehta
Transformational SaaS Leader | Scaling Business Expert | Operational Excellence | Strategic Growth & P&L Leadership | Agile Culture Advocate | MBA, IIM Bangalore | PhD Scholar in GenAI Innovation
Modern companies require an optimal ecosystem to consistently and continuously innovate and exceed the employee and customer expectations. This is highly critical for both outsourced offshore businesses as well as in-house onshore teams. It is important for companies to reinvent and out perform their competitors by building a CENTER OF EXCELLENCE.
Revamp of a team or a business from a sub-optimal or mediocre performing unit to a Center of Excellence requires transformational leadership, and a strong implementation framework.
Center of Excellence requires excellence in PEOPLE, PROCESS, and PARTNERSHIP. I will be focusing on these aspects to build a framework that can be used to turnaround a business and make it a Center of Excellence.
PEOPLE
This is the most important aspect, as change in mindset among the employees is what will drive excellence in processes and partnership. Some of the important components include:
- Coaching
- Individual/Team performance management
- Optimal incentive component based compensation
- Clear growth plan
- Community driven motivation
PROCESS
Excellence in process is a key component to ensure the process are optimal, streamlined, effective and automated. Process optimization includes:
- Digitization – automation/semi-automation of processes wherever applicable
- Strong analytics based framework for real time assessment of gaps and mitigation
- High compliance and quality
- Innovation based, continuous process improvement ecosystem
PARTNERSHIP
Partnering with both internal/external stakeholders effectively could be unique distinguishing factor for effective business. A few key modes of effective partnership includes:
- Consider clients as partners – align goals for effective results
- Ongoing assessment , feedback loop for vendors
- Ensure Internal stakeholders understand the ‘WHY’ of ‘WHAT’ – skin in the game
- Critically monitor and manage the feedback loop
- Know your business – in-depth domain knowledge
By building a center of excellence through excellence in people, process and partnership and an innovation based operational framework, complete transformation and turnaround of any business can be achieved.
Director - Professional Services @Cloudera | P&L | Retention & Growth | GTM | Technical Delivery | Big Data | Cloud | Data Platform | Security | Observability | Analytics | Customer Success |
4 年Centre of Excellence has been used primarily for an offshore, centralized operations with an aim to drive quality and operating margin. While the operating margin gets more or less achieved almost immediately by virtue of a cost efficient model, driving quality takes more time specially in perception. It's the people who would ultimately establish a high quality model, both in terms of metrics and perception. Good post !
Driving Positive Change through Responsible Energy Transition | Environmental Stewardship
4 年Great article. I am very glad that you listed "PEOPLE" first. I think that getting your team and the larger organization on board is the most important aspect in projects like these. Do you agree?
ICBB, CSM, CSPO,SAFe 6 Agilist
4 年Proud to have you as our leader sir.
Visionary | Innovator | Profit for Purpose | WEP Signatory | Driving ESG & sustainability | Helping companies enhance waste management practices | Solutions exist, implementation is key | Creating impact
4 年Good read
Nmls # 2185482 //Underwriting manager and licensed loan originator
4 年Leading from front and just being the change you want to bring in... Thank you for inspiring !