Much required change!

Covid-19 has definitely changed the way we look at things and do business. Companies have come out with applications; return to workspace (Covid 19), which looks little distant as of now because of another surge in cases. Nevertheless, there are many offices that might open sooner or at least their headquarters, people might continue working from home.

Being working from home for over an year, some companies have embraced and made required changes to run their business effectively while the jaded CFO across the globe think of it as an excuse and want their employees to visit office to effectively run their businesses. They are still continuing with same reporting structures; same data formats, same review meetings, and obviously their mind-set has lots of doubts about their employees.

In Asia, this is more prevalent. Asians usually believe in X-theory. There have been stories that during feudal age, people suffered because of Kings’ ignorance as during the presentation on state welfare, nobles displayed subjects in different light. However, wise kings disguised themselves and spent time with peasants or subjects to understand the ground reality. It was required as there was no other mechanism to figure out how well people under king were performing their jobs therefore he had to mix with his subjects (praja) to clear any obscurity. With every such expedition one or the other trustworthy supporter King got to do his job (governance) better and eventually he built the better governance structure than before.

In today era, data is the pivot of governance but irony is that data governance is not the focus of many companies as they don’t have such teams. Nowadays, we roll into data and we have all kind of data to sniff that usually keep us high and most of the time doesn’t give the real picture; the way data is presented or flawed data; we rest our faith on it; KPIs, KRAs, and so on. Trust me, high-level indicators are worst than no indicators. These indicators should regularly change as per organization objectives, market challenges, and so on and so does the approach of building these indicators. What do you think?

Do we need similar approach by senior management in this era as taken by wise king in feudal age to understand the pain of the employees or with changing times we need different measures to be adopted?