People: The Biggest Bet for BUSINESSES

We’ve all encountered multiple crossroads and challenges in our career that’s required us to prioritize, plan, build a strategy, architect a transformation or even redo the drawing board from scratch. We’ve had to focus on a few ‘Big Bets’ that can be potential game changers in the way we’re running our business and I’ve been part of several such initiatives that I’ve personally sponsored and led.

As businesses focus on their structures, processes, management systems, enablement, etc to drive their objectives through, the biggest bet for me that’s always been the underlying foundation of every big bet that I’ve undertaken has been People!

An organization no matter it’s maturity in its business model, position in the marketplace or size and scale of its portfolio reach, will always be dependent on the diversity and commitment of its people to be able to find its edge and make a difference in any work-stream that it undertakes.

So how do we build an Inclusive, Diverse and Motivated workplace that’s focussed on inspiring its people to strive and commit towards an objective that’s challenging. 

Drawing Talent

There isn’t a single or right definition of what constitutes ‘Effective’ talent. While the world and organizations across are coming to a greater realization in this past decade that diversity is a key ingredient to fostering talent, I’m of a firm belief that leaders across should recognize the fact that it’s not just diverse backgrounds that constitutes a winning team but diverse skill sets that’s potentially equally important.

A winning Sales Team is never made up of only diverse sellers who are great at negotiating with a client or constructing terms of a deal. A winning Sales Team will include members who build and operationalize a Sales Plan, Members who lay the foundation of how Teams go to market, Members who Price right, Members who work on the value proposition, Members who work on the offering readiness, Members who enable, Members who engage with Clients, Members who build cadence systems, Members who support reviewing the system and the list goes on.

Each of these people bring in skill sets that are unique, irreplaceable and to some extent are talents that are domain specific. So, when our outstanding Sales Exec makes that winning deal that exceeds the quarter plan, he is part of a diverse team with skill sets across the board that made this happen. He may be the one that hit the home run, but that home run was possible because of all the backend work that people put in who are not in the forefront when that hit happened.

Recognizing this diversity, acknowledging and appreciating the work & rewarding their contribution will build a culture that will attract talent to build motivated & inspired teams.

Driving a culture of Fairness

What isn’t transparent isn’t fair. A culture of fairness can never be independent from transparency. In an environment that’s competitive, fast paced and ever changing, our own definitions of what success means tends to change. The pace of this change has so rapidly evolved in the past 4 – 5 years that what we begin with as objectives for the year need to have smaller goals and potentially milestones that require constant review with an openness to change.

All of this means that our ability to assess our people and their understanding of both our objectives and their contribution can at times be subject to constant change and hence can lead to confusion, perhaps even a feeling of not being at the receiving end of a fair assessment.

The only way to overcome this is to firstly ensure that every single member in the team firstly believes that his or her leader is transparent, inclusive and open. The risk to biasness towards anyone becomes more and more difficult in an environment that is transparent and hence I’ve always encouraged all my leaders and teams to build this as a key composite of their people approach.

The more information we can provide, the better we equip our teams to succeed. The more our people succeed, the further our organization will grow!

Navigating blurring lines of Communication

So much has been written around the importance of communication, that we’ve probably over simplified on what’s required to build effective communication. The fact that information today is available over media that was potentially never possible even as little back as 3 years ago and the scale at which it can reach within minutes can potentially create more harm than benefit.

Communication today is not so much the lack of it of it but more the effectiveness and the factuality of it. People hear more over grapevine than they do over official mediums. While this isn’t anything new to the ages, what’s new is the ability to reach that grapevine in this age of Whatsapp and Wechat and Line & other Social Media. The water cooler conversations now take place in the comfort of people desk with ‘encrypted’ surety of confidentiality! 

In more cases than not, communication now must have three elements for them to be effectively and positive:

1. The ability to be fast & consumable across audiences. If you’ve got to be a reliable leader that communicates effectively, you need to disseminate your information fast (faster than watercooler conversations) and in bite sizes that are in the league of your audience consumption pattern
2. The intent of authenticity & accuracy of the communication is perhaps more important than the communication itself. People look towards leaders who are genuinely authentic and have an intent to be transparent.
3. Ability to communicate ‘difficult’ decisions. No one expects communication to always be positive. However, a leader always has the support of their people when they are consistent in their communication – Good of Bad. People need to know that there are bottlenecks that are hindering a business and that their leader is committed to removing those bottlenecks. Trust is built over time and such an approach encourages a two-way process to communicate that serves as a win-win.

Hui Li Lee is a passionate Leadership Coach, Mentor & Thought Leader in her domain. She has more than 20+ years of experience in the IT and Consulting industries. In her current role, she is the Vice President for Asia Pacific IBM Global Business Partners.

All opinions expressed are personal.