People Development as your Core Strategy

Purab is the MD of the company. He is very goal focused and always engaged with the company projects. The word that goes around in the company is that Purab just does not take any day off and has been working for at least 18 hours in a day for 7 days a week. Purab’s focus on the company is like a laser beam. He does not spend much time with the family. As a result, Purab is on to his team 18 hours a day and seven days a week. He expects the results to come continuously and consistently. If one target is achieved, he goes on to the next one. His passion towards business is very high and evident in the way he works. Purab’s approach towards the employees is that all of them should deliver on their goals regularly and with consistency. He pushes his top team very hard and they in turn push their respective teams very hard. As a result, there is high tension in the company most of the time. A good part of the team is close to burn out due to their continuous engagement on the goals of the company. There are not many Training and Development initiatives at the mid and senior levels.?Most of the training is focused on the Workmen and junior levels. Purab is also very impatient about the performance of his team members. If he feels someone is not giving results, he does not hesitate in firing them. Purab’s tolerance level is quite low. As a result, every other year you can see couple of senior people and many mid level executives exiting the company. Most of them are fired by Purab. Purab actively participates in evaluating and firing employees who are not reporting to him too. As a result there is a general fear in the company as to who is next!! The company is progressing quite well right now. Purab feels his methods are working ! The general culture in the company is that of ‘Save your ….’. All senior employees are working hard to stay in the good books of Purab. Their focus is not really what is good for the company. It is about appealing to Purab’s ego. No one complains. So, the general environment is one of dominance by the will of one person in the whole company.?

There may be many companies in India that work like this. I am not writing this specifically about any company. But it may resonate with the situation in many Indian companies. Many employees may feel suffocated depending on how much freedom they want. It is surprising to see that majority of employees are quite okay to work like this. But the company as a whole may be missing something. The collective people power is not leveraged in this situation.?

Many of these companies are not very strong when you look at their foundations. There are no systems to really speak about. Whatever the head of the company says is the system. There is no people development. People who are considered to be contributing stay. Others get fired. The more senior you are, the more chance of you getting fired if the chips of the company and down. I have seen managements who fire high cost senior employees when the profits go down. I heard them saying that the employee cost of these senior people add straight to the profit when chips are down. These companies do not focus on training and development. When the business is not doing well, they stop whatever little Training that they may be doing. It adds to the bottom line you know !?

Following things go wrong in these companies:

-???????Majority of the senior management would have stopped thinking. They just follow the MD.?

-???????Over a period of time, only the ‘Yes men’ type of executives work in these companies for longer period of time. Those who can work only independently will leave the company.?

-???????There will be no longer term planning in this company.?

-???????There will be no people development initiatives in these companies.?

-???????There will be many areas that are highly inefficient. Eg. People productivity, Systems will be close to nothing, ERPs will not work well in these companies.?

-???????If at all the MD is not available for a few months, the company will be close to collapse.?

I am proposing a different way of working for these companies. I am proposing them to shift to using ‘People development’ as the main strategy. It is quite opposite to what they may be practicing. The senior management should become less obvious in this situation. But as this is dependent on just one person, it is quite possible that some of these companies can shift to the other end of the spectrum just like that. It just depends on Purab in the above case. I have seen cases where the MD got convinced and they shifted to the other end enmasse. These companies may have problem in adjusting for few years. But if the conviction of the top man is strong, they can do it.?

I am proposing this not because it is the nice thing to do. It is a smart strategy too. When you treat the growth of your company as a sub set of developing people, you get maximum result!! Try it out !!?

Let me elaborate this ‘People development’ focused Business strategy.

The foundation for this strategy comes from the fact that human beings enjoy themselves maximum when they are improving themselves. They would spread positivity around themselves when they are improving themselves. When the improvement stagnates, it would be like a water stagnated as against flowing continuously. It would start stinking sooner than later.?

I recommend the following best practices:

-???????Work out the?Functional and Leadership Competencies?required for each of the positions in your company. Spend some time on this. Do not rush it. Keep your focus on what they have to achieve in the next 3 years. If your company is growing, then what you would do in the next 3 years may be entirely different from what you have done in the last 3 years. Please do not leave out the senior people out of this. It is more required for the senior people. The MD should work it out for himself too. Because if the senior team is not able to move as per the needs of the business, then they will become the bottle neck.?

-???????Prioritise Competencies for the year. While all employees have to learn a lot, you need to prioritise what is needed for this year. This would be related to what you are trying to achieve for this year. If you are setting up new factories this year, then those capabilities have to be brought forward. If you are planning to focus on exports this year, then those competencies have to be prioritized. At the Sales team level, if they have to launch many more products this year, then this has to reflect in the competencies prioritised for the sales team. The MD can identify 3 priorities at the company level. Then, each of the functions can identify one more priority at their functional level. A Company can’t handle more than that many priorities. Then, the competencies needed to achieve these goals will be prioritized in all functions. If the company is setting up new factories, the company can set up a Cross functional team (CFT) to establish the factories. If the company is planning to improve the exports, then there can be a CFT for this. You may want to teach the New factory CFT about Lean manufacturing, Industry 4.0 and so on. You may want to teach the Exports CFT competencies specific to developing overseas markets, Product launches in those countries, developing dealer network and so on. When you prioritise what is needed for your business, you remove the problem of ‘whether the team is using the learnings from training’.??You focus on training these CFTs with an extended team joining this CFT right up to shop floor level.?

-???????Engage Business leaders for training. It is smart to use Business leaders who have been there and done that for training your team. The professional trainers can bring in the theory part of it. But you would benefit only when the trainers tell the teams how to use the theory to improve things on the ground. Business leaders who have handled improvement projects and delivered in their career can relate better to what is needed on the ground.?

-???????Link the training close to the Business priorities: The training should result in better execution of the priorities of the company as decided by the MD. The training can be focused on the priorities. But the training should focus on developing the people involved.?While the focus can be there, the depth should not be missed out.?

-???????People first, results next approach: The senior people should be told that developing people is the focus and results would follow. This may put worry in the heads of the top leaders that results may not come. If this fear is there, it should be discussed well. But the senior management should develop a conviction over a period of time that if we focus on people, they will develop the business. Leaders need to keep their focus on this. Companies should discuss this topic along with the Business leaders who have adapted this approach and succeeded. The company’s team should be given enough time to adapt this strategy. Having said this, the results should close second. Not just for getting return on your money spent. It is for ensuring that your training is effective. It is quite possible to go on a trip of training without any effectiveness.?

-???????Adapt technology for training: Use the E-Learning technology that is available today. This can be adapted for all types of training. We only have to be innovative. The E-Learning will help you to standardize your modules for training the whole of your team. When you look at it at company level, It will be more economical and repeatable.

-???????Run same topics for the senior team and junior team:?When you train your team, it helps to adapt same topics for the senior team and junior team. This will ensure that the senior team knows the topics of training and support the junior team in implementation. In fact it would be good to talk about the same one or two topics in the whole of the company. Example: If you are implementing Lean manufacturing, make it as the discussion topic of the whole company for a few months. This way it becomes easy for the leaders to implement the learnings as everyone understands each other. Usually when the Leaders try to implement new concepts, it will fail if they get resistance from others in the company. Others may not cooperate as they simply do not understand what you are trying to do.?

This way the ‘People first’ approach should be followed in a company in a consistent manner over a period of time. This would make the development of the company a priority for the whole team. You would be developing your team to handle the future of the company. You can be more assured of consistent results while using this approach. The head of the company can relax more as the whole team is owning up the company agenda.?

Leaders need to take a step back and think about adapting this approach in place of the current ‘top down’ approach with no focus on people.?