Leadership Everywhere! 6-D’s - Cluster Management Excellent

Clustering is a commonly utilized concept in technology, marketing, manufacturing, operations, technical support, supply chain, exports/imports, and logistics industries. Business leaders define this concept in organizational charts, primarily through their HR leaders. A limited comprehension of clustering among HR professionals can hinder business prospects. Inadequate global perspective and practical experience may lead to missed chances to demonstrate business expertise, thus preventing HR from actively engaging with business leaders to fulfill CEO requirements.

Despite the wealth of research available, the full potential of HR Leaders and other experts commonly remains unrealized. Consequently, many Pakistani conglomerates with international operations—spanning sectors like textiles, retail, airlines, engineering procurement and construction (EPC), food, and sports—prefer to recruit International Leads or Pakistanis already residing abroad. While this may be effective, it is also costly due to substantial fees paid to internationally recognized recruiting firms.

It appears that there is an overlooked opportunity for local stakeholders within the integrated value chain to tap into the available leadership talent in Pakistan. Yet, the readiness level of these leaders concerning core concepts seems very limited. Our local 'HR Thought Leaders' are still trying to grasp fully the significance and impact of their roles without any delays wherever applicable in their unique business contexts.

With Future of Work implications in line with the subject, my earlier article written on ‘9R Model - Future of Work’, https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/future-work-workman-workplace-fow3-gtml-chartered-mcipd/?trackingId=6JWsyARzT9CuwhKQx8Xl5w%3D%3D has established a direct link to the Cluster of 3W’s i.e. Work, Workers & Workplace. This Cluster Management concept should be placed in the Workplace, where all three R’s (re-organize work structures, re-design jobs and re-engineering processes) need to be updated based on your ecosystem where cluster management is required. I can recall some of the Pakistani conglomerates which have stretched their business to various international markets in lieu of exports, manufacturing sites, sales offices, industrial services or much more. During such unprecedented times our country is going through, we must appreciate their efforts. That brings me to write about such an important topic for sustainable success for Pakistani organizations with a cross-border presence and more opportunities to register themselves. Both need to define their emerging markets overseas as a cluster depending on their outreach e.g. GCC, ASEAN, SAARC, MENA, APAC, EU, NAM or even a smaller cluster based on two to three countries etc., and that’s how the complexities of the job increase. However, know-how and problem-solving skills are also required accordingly. Here lies the challenge for companies to attract the right talent to deliver and achieve the set targets in turbulent times when the organizations in these clusters are going through initial stages of their life cycle. Before we delve deeper into Leadership Everywhere in Cluster Management Excellence or Managing within such an environment has its own significance, importance and impact on business results.

Let’s have a quick run down from academia about its origin, applications in various industries, merits & de-merits based on the research available.

?Taking from KIS approach (keep it simple), when someone wants to learn about say music, one approach might be to look for meaningful groups or collections. You might organize music by genre, while your friend might organize music by decade. How you choose to group items helps you to understand more about them as individual pieces of music. You might find that you have a deep affinity for hard rock and further break down the genre into different approaches or music from different locations. On the other hand, your friend might look at music from the 1980s and be able to understand how music across genres at that time was influenced by the sociopolitical climate. In both cases, you and your friend have learned something interesting about music, even though you took different approaches. In machine learning, too, we often group examples as a first step to understanding a subject (data set) in a machine learning system.

Grouping?unlabeled examples?is called?clustering.

As the examples are unlabeled, clustering relies on unsupervised machine learning. If the examples are labeled, then clustering becomes?classification.

Figure 1: Unlabeled examples grouped into three clusters.

As mentioned earlier, Clustering can be used in various industries and here are some frequent uses: market segmentation, social network analysis, search results grouping and anomaly detection. The cluster ID has to be assigned after the clustering process. Further, measure similarity between examples by combining the examples' feature data into a metric, called a similarity measure. When each example is defined by one or two features, it's easy to measure similarity. For example, you can find similar books by their authors.

?Coming back to the application and Management approach, my recent research on the subject emphasized on ‘Cluster Management as an entire process rather than an output’. Building on this interesting argument, I have reflected upon the subject with my own understanding for this article today from the Management Sciences perspective.?

?Cluster management can be defined as the organization and collaborating the activities of a geographical concentrated cluster in accordance with certain strategy, in order to achieve clearly defined objectives. Cluster management represents a continuous activity of a cyclical nature. It is a complex, interactive and non-linear process. The main stages of the cluster management cycle can be split into the 6-D’s - Cluster Management Cycle. i. Define ii. Design iii. Device, iv, Demonstration v. Decide vi. Decode. It has been observed that geographical concentration of high-tech, service and manufacturing companies has a positive effect on the economic performance of those companies in a cluster. As a result, knowledge-intensive clusters play a key role in driving the focus on modernization, penetrating into remaining regional development and also remaining competitive for desired results. As learned through experience in my role as HR Transformation Lead for APAC Region (Cluster of 20 Countries), the secret recipe is to have the right talent mix from top leadership to a highly competent middle management and a well-trained & skilled workforce to be there to execute the 6- D’s of Cluster Management.

?Hence, the ability of clusters to deliver high economic performance is often labeled as cluster excellence.

?The stage of defining and setting up the strong agenda is highly critical along with others illustrated in the 6-D’s Cluster Management Cycle.

According to the 2020 Global Drucker Forum, creative models often fail in various environments and setups due to a lack of leadership understanding. The critical cluster networks are poorly understood, little researched, and not well-practiced. Leadership traits and qualities are highly important at the top level in order to navigate Cluster Management Excellence. With this in mind, why do clusters matter? On the business side, clusters can play a significant role in shaping national growth industries and accelerating national transformation. Today, as many countries face an urgent need to transform their fossil energy-based economies, clusters can play a crucial role in developing new high-growth, high-value industries of the future. Therefore, in successful clusters and cluster programs, clusters become the central point where government aspirations, public policies, industry leadership, corporate transformation, and innovative ecosystems meet and interact.

While leading and organizing within clusters is a departure from the traditional approach, it is also more complex. In the cluster ecosystem, we can observe leadership in various forms, from the informal authority of a board member to the influence wielded by a frontline group manager. Unlike most traditional organizations that operate with top-down power structures and hierarchies, clusters function more like informal ecosystems with distributed leadership and relationship-based, networked leadership principles. One of us often refers to successful cluster leadership as a "superhuman task" because it requires navigating the distributed power dynamics inherent in most cluster systems.

?Figure 3: from 5 to 8 levels of Leadership in Cluster Management Excellence.

Extracting from the 5 levels of leadership, there are three critical components that can be added to the recipe for a successful cluster leadership model. By expanding from five to eight levels of leadership and incorporating networked leadership, influencing leadership, and member-focused leadership, significant impact can be achieved on KRA's. Research reveals that all successful cluster leaders place great emphasis on the importance of networks and having access to the right ones. Whether through direct engagement or by leveraging key stakeholders (often the Board of Directors at the cluster level), leaders fully recognize the critical role of working within personal networks and expanding them to enhance the cluster's growth and scalability. Furthermore, the influence that a cluster leader wields within their network is not a new concept, but it is reiterated in our context. The leadership role undergoes a fundamental shift from being a "boss" to becoming an "influencer," operating beyond formal, hierarchical leadership structures. Lastly, cluster leaders primarily focus on serving the members (member-focused), but they must be cautious not to fall into a dangerous trap. If a cluster leader devotes an excessive amount of time and resources to serving existing cluster members, they are less likely to achieve the broader, strategic goals of the cluster. Therefore, the right approach is for the cluster leader to prioritize establishing an organizational architecture and structure that can effectively serve the members, rather than attempting to handle everything themselves and losing focus.

Key Lessons for Organizations and Leaders operating in similar Ecosystems, Clusters, and Networks, especially in our Country where we may face challenges such as 'how do I lead without formal authority?', 'How do I lead without a formal hierarchy in place?' and 'how do I lead in a largely networked organization?'. The answer is 'Leadership Everywhere', which can be achieved through the following fundamentals:

1.?????? VISION - Develop a strong shared vision – but expect this to be far more challenging than in a traditional organization. The breadth of stakeholders you have to deal with is many times larger than in a regular company-based organizational structure.

2.?????? RELATIONSHIPS - Power lies in your relationships – invest a disproportionate amount of your time and energy into building deep, personal, and professional relationships with all key stakeholders.

3.?????? TRUST?- Build trust between your cluster members. This is fundamental to ensure engagement and openness of cluster members.?

?This article will certainly provide essential insights into the leadership style of 'leadership everywhere', by creating energy around the cluster's 3X value creation target and enabling a culture of openness, collaboration, and bottom-up engagement.

Author is a International Energy, EPC & Oil & Gas HR Professional