The organization is no longer like an aquarium that has a solid defined boundary wall. The organization is part of an ecosystem. Leading the fish in an aquarium is different from navigating the ocean. The digital organizations are as different from the legacy organizations as the butterfly is to the caterpillar. Leading these organizations needs not just new set of skills and competencies but also a different mindset. The hyperconnected customer is more aware and makes decisions and choices differently. The power balance has tilted in favor of the employees and consumers. They own the brand. The leaders role is now about helping the organization go from the aquarium to become part of ocean.
Very often organizations launch an initiative with great fanfare. When the dust settles, people move on to their desk and carry on doing their work as usual. Genpact seems to have found a way to sustain this massive exercise. The leadership team has taken it upon themselves to celebrate learning and the people driving the agenda - the employees.The CEO of Genpact recognizes the gurus and experts in every town hall. He celebrates the guru who has done the maximum amount of skill building. The clients are told about this. The CHRO and the Chief Innovation Officer talk about Genome to the clients and the employees at every possible opportunity. The result is that skill building is not a metric tracked by the L&D team, the agenda is part of the business conversation every day.
Joshua Karthik and his brother are behind the Virat Kohli-Anoushka wedding photos that got 10 million views. Their photos of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas have been viewed 17 million times. When I invited Joshua Karthik to the studio of Dreamers and Unicorns I asked him how much money should one have in the bank to feel confident in quitting the job? His answer may suprise you.
During the podcast I asked Balki what got him interested in movies. He said it was the music used in films that used to generate images in his head. These images were better than the images that he saw on screen. That was the magic of music. Specifically Iylaiyaraja's music. He spoke about his admiration for Ilaiyaraja's music. No surprise that Ilaiyaraja scored the music for Balki when he made Cheeni Kum. And Paa
The Olympics motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius. That means faster, higher and stronger. That motto offers a great faith in human potential. Every four years, people gather together to redefine what is humanly possible. Every four years the record books engrave what is the ultimate achievement in every sport. Four years later athletes gather to break what was once defined as the outer limit of the human being. The world of work is getting reinvented. This episode gets the two talking about stories and secrets they have never shared before.
“Organizations who wish to be viewed as employers of choice provide outstanding experiences at every stage of the employee life cycle—from onboarding through exit,” says Joel Paul, General Manager, Randstad RiseSmart. “Taking care of employees with compassionate outplacement has a direct impact on employer brand, and thus a company’s ability to attract and retain top talent.”
To help employees build the habit of learning, providing them some slack time to learn and reflect plus the opportunity to try it out at work and get feedback.
Technology has made it possible to work 24x7 from anywhere. Companies routinely invest millions in customer facing technology. But the same companies work with clunky systems that are outdated and just simply painful to use. Investing in good HR tech can be a simple way to improve the employee experience.








