Staying Relevant

In today’s superfast world, there is an imminent desire to be successful than to be relevant and it is easier to achieve that success than to toil to stay relevant!

Being relevant requires persistence, good intent, and dedicated effort to create individuality. And carving that individuality, whether it is a company, or a person is essential and can only be nurtured through transparency, honesty, integrity, resilience, and adaptability. Well, all this is easier said than done!?

In a VUCA world, companies are in very vulnerable positions, thereby leaving their employees equally vulnerable. Hence, companies that work towards staying relevant turn out to be more attractive employers.

While there are many practices to build that individuality or staying relevant, through my experience, I have identified these 10 practices that can stand the test of time and all possible VUCA disruptions.

Practice #1 – Leadership Intent

‘We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviors’- this quote by Stephen Covey has constantly reminded me of how smart and aware people around are and how easily they can see through leadership intent.

Leadership intent is always reflected through honesty & commitment, and it is not about what one speaks, or how articulate one is. It is more about what one does both when the company’s tides are high and low. Congruency between what leaders think, say, and do is the litmus test of their leadership behavior.

Leadership intent is often witnessed in corporate & financial governance. With recent churn of events with companies like Byjus, WeWork and such short-lived successful companies, there is one reflective realization to consider that it is genuine leadership intent and honesty that drives passion, vision, purpose and motivation to people and creating such honest ecosystem is the most important factor in cultivating organizational efficiency and sustainability.

Practice # 2- Ease with Experimentation

Many people may like to play safe and not experiment with unknown, unchartered arena / roles with the trepidation of failure. However, companies not creating enough safety net for their employees to fail in the pursuit of success can soon wither out during tiring and complex business situations.

So, is the company allowing its employees to fail, of course within certain guardrails! What is the obvious reaction if there is a failure!

Trying and failing is always better than not trying at all.

Practice #3 – Managers shouldn’t control or appease people

Over the years I have seen managers oscillating at two extremes, either being very autocratic or being too democratic. Neither of the styles contributes to building high performing teams. Balance between the two, an inclusive manager who although listens to the team, but is mature, wise and grounded enough to take tough decisions on accountability and performance behaviors in the team.

Being a manager isn’t about keeping everyone happy, it is about keeping everyone constructively engaged and productive.?

Becoming an effective manager is not just about training them. It is about enabling an ecosystem of empathy, survival, experimentation, and empowerment so that managers are able to take relevant actions and decisions.?

?Practice #4 – Let employees do meaningful work and then move on.

Hoarding of any kind is a counter-effective thought.

As a manager, letting go of your highest performer so that the individual continues to rise and shine in a new setting of people and process can be the biggest sense of accomplishment.

Many managers believe in creating teams based on common likings, preferences, working styles and they continue to work together as there is a certain comfort, they strike with each other. This is great as long as it serves the creativity, positivity and productivity of the individuals, the team, and the organization. However, it may restrict a person’s ability to work in an unknown territory and learn the ropes of interacting and building relationships with diverse sets of people and environments.

The company’s resilience needs to be built through integration of diverse, yet collective thinking.

Practice #5 – How does our business work!

Many may find corporate and business finance boring and unnecessary, especially if one isn’t part of the Finance team. ?But, understanding how a company makes money and how do employees in various roles contribute to that success creates a sense of purpose, clarity and accountability, which acts as catalyst to higher performance.

It is not the finance language, but the context that brings business awareness.

Practice #6 – Being straightforward is necessary

Feedback is like a compass that reminds us of what to do, avoid or excel at the moment of an event happening and not in the distant future. People like knowing the truth, however, must be spoken with dignity and respect. Feedback needs to be focused on futurist actions rather than doing mere post-mortem of past actions.

While giving constructive feedback is an art, accepting feedback with panache and maturity is also a concentrated effort that requires handling our emotions appropriately.

Organizations that focus on building soft skills muscle power of their employees often succeed in surviving and thriving through the vicissitudes of a dynamic business world.

Positive behavior is highly combustible and most often breeds good outcomes.

Practice # 7 – People can’t be what they can’t see

Organizational behavior trickles from the top. Leaders need to practice what they preach. They must be the ambassadors of values and right behaviors, thereby setting examples for teams to emulate. ?There can’t be any discussion or debate on this!

Practice # 8 – Every company needs to be excited for change, more so the leaders

Change is the only constant that is inevitable and breaking past nostalgia is the way to creating future excellence. Leaders need to adopt, adapt and embrace change more to set an example for juniors to emulate and learn.

Embracing change (whether it is with people, process, technology) and allowing people to initiate and adapt to any change reflects leadership maturity.

How else will we ever know what not to do to stay relevant.

Practice #9– Driving Employee Experience

We often see companies spending a lot of effort in having brilliant new employee integration / induction programs or have great employee engagement & retention programs to boost employee morale, inclusiveness, performance, and satisfaction quotients.

In today’s day and age where everything is about creating experience, how often have we heard companies having great employee exit experience!? Probably just a handful.

People often forget what has been told to them, they may also tend to forget what has been done to them, however they seldom forget how they were made to feel and when there was no one to hear them out.

Why is that once an employee decides to leave an organization voluntarily (whatever could be the reason), is often sidelined, undermined, and treated with mistrust, disdain, and irrelevance. ?

A disengaging, unkind, awkward, and improper exit experience is not only lived by the outgoing employee, but also viscerally experienced by the existing employees, impacting employees’ engagement, morale, and productivity.

Let us remember today’s exited employee can be tomorrow’s relevant and potential candidate!

Practice #10 – Are we listening to the VOICE

While having employee engagement survey / pulse survey is an HR practice most companies engage into, very few companies take that VOICE seriously and do something concrete to bring constructive change! Simply listening is not enough! Listening, and yet not taking action is again a reflection of leadership intent!

Anything good takes time to flourish. It takes brick by brick, persistent efforts to build that corporate individuality to staying relevant and it all starts with an honest intent among the key decision makers!