“Align Strategy and Work culture for growth”

All organisations have goal oriented plans for developing and strategy plays a vital role. Corporate culture and business strategy alignment is the only roadmap for leaders to take growth to the next level. This is easier said than done and requires constant affirmation and commitment on behalf of the leadership. Gaurav Kumar, Vice President & Head of Strategy, Special Initiatives Reliance Jio, on how players can cultivate a culture of growth that goes beyond money and is able to retain people as well as goodwill of the brand.

Given that almost all companies aspire to grow and to succeed in an increasingly competitive environment, you’d think they would know exactly how to achieve that growth. Well, the facts do not concur. In fact, a recent study showed that 93 per cent of those companies listed on Fortune 500 did not have the necessary prevalent work culture to achieve their targets. But if your aim is to become a disruptor in your sector and reach to the next logical phase of growth with executive leadership that walks the talk, and if you ultimately want to be known as a vibrant destination of talent and capability you need to ensure your strategy and work culture are not at odds with each other.

Thus outlining the problem, Gaurav Kumar, Vice President & Head of Strategy, Special Initiatives, Reliance Jio took the audience through a session on how to avoid the contradictions between goal oriented strategy and the existing work culture that is supposed to achieve it but unfortunately and usually it doesn’t. “Take the CEOs or leaders of most companies. What they profess to achieve in public and what they actually believe in private, are two different things,” he said.

There is little common ground between various departments. Barring one or two, few know the full picture. “It’s the classic elephant and tail story. Some see the trunk of the elephant, others it ears, and some the tail. But no one sees the elephant fully and this lack of vision does not, in any way, help in reaching the goal,” he explained. “But this situation will continue unless your strategy and culture actually meet.”

What is work culture anyway?

“Simply put,” said Kumar, “Culture is the way we are. The way we interact with each other and assorted stakeholders in our company, including customers and teammates, the way we develop and market our products, our ultimate employee and customer centricity and the way we deal with the innovation and competition,” he said.

He added that while his experience showed that while most businesses did have a reasonably defined strategy for business along with the macro level indicators and resources in place, there was an acute shortage of the right culture to achieve the same. “I might add here that culture isn’t merely something that we see from one side, it has many facets to it. We are all, ultimately, customers of some organisation or the other. The way we interact with them and our team defines our culture. A wise man once said: Your number one customer is not your customer but your employee. This is self-explanatory, actually. If your employees are happy with you, everything falls into place,” he shared. “For that, you need a strong culture of learning.”

Hiring good people and paying top dollar to get the best may all be well and good. The crux of the matter is to retain them. “As I said earlier, 93 per cent of organisations just do not know-how. But unless you facilitate the atmosphere for talent to blossom, and facilitate the field that ultimately allows the deserving to succeed, good people are not going to stay,” he adds.

“Leadership that inspires and connects”

Kumar reiterated that as a “people’s manager”, someone who observed people across teams, one thing stood out over and over again. “The teams who succeed and outperform others, in the long run, are the teams where the leaders have connected and bonded with the teams,” he said. “Cliched but true.”

Having worked in an assortment of sectors, including HR, retail, IT and FMCG, he said there was a universal fact connected with future prospects. “Strategy is not in isolation of the existing work culture. You have to enable one to get the other going,” he stressed.

In our daily quest to meet our immediate or quarterly goals, we forget that innovation is the big-ticket ahead. But while it is true that innovation is the key to all significant progress, great ideas are not something that materialises with just a handful of big guys driving the change. Everyone needs to participate and contribute. “It needs to be an open-door culture, one that invites new ideas in and is characterised by a willingness to listen. Get this: innovation essentially comes from outsourcing. It could come from an analyst or consultant you hire, it could come through an open mail asking for new ideas from your employees as it did in the case of Google. The ideas that came in were worth $1.9 bn” he shared.

“Progress and comfort zone are two separate things”

It’s a familiar line. Leadership says it wants to grow but it wants to stick to its strengths. “That’s not how it goes. If you don’t step out of your comfort zone, you will find that you are back to square one, and in fact, even losing ground where you thought you were firmly entrenched because well others are doing the same too,” he said. “And this is a truth valid for both individuals and organisations.”

“While most businesses do have a reasonably defined strategy for business along with the macro level indicators and resources in place, there is an acute shortage of the right culture to achieve the same”

- Gaurav Kumar

How to communicate the right strategy

An important aspect of success, according to Kumar was to ensure that the communication was correct. “When you have a business strategy in place, you need to ask yourself as to what exactly is the message you are sending to your team and other concerned stakeholders”. Illustrating the point with an example from his own workplace, Kumar said that while Jio is a Telco Company, they wanted to be known as a digital one. Also, there was a time when the strategy for growth had to contend with the challenge of less than perfect network and frequent call drops. “The message that was sent out to various departments was that yes, call drops were a challenge that we were working to overcome. That did not, however, mean we ceased to grow. We had to keep marching,” he said. “So it was never a case that a team member came up and said to management that because call drops were happening, they were not generating more sales. Thus, the right kind of communication is imperative to overcoming obstacles. When all stakeholders are on the same page, the results are invariably positive. Therefore, check over and over again if your work culture and business strategy are comfortably aligned with each other and also if the correct communication is part and parcel of it.”

“Facts and assumptions are two different things”

A frequent observation, according to Kumar, was that people assume way too much with out looking at the on-ground facts. “There is a prevalent perception of the way things are at work. Ever so often, you have the promoters of the company saying that XYZ are our strengths. But when you ask that to be tested, the results point in another direction. Thus, it is important to study facts objectively and not give as much weight to opinions.”

That said, changing work culture is no child’s play. “Lets’ be honest,” implored Kumar. “If changing work culture were indeed so easy, everyone would do it. But it isn’t. It’s a honest to goodness, uphill task and the commitment from the leaders has to be binding. Last but not the least, leave nothing to chance. The buck has to stop with the top guys; the leadership has to take on the onus of the outcome.”

“The right set of people comes from the right approach”

Every strategy for growth and every instance of a healthy and prosperous work culture only comes from having the right set of people. But most companies do not have the concept of cross functioning teams. There are HR, security, sales, product development teams. How about giving them the chance to interact? Kumar cited the example of Amazon. “They moved their team to Boston because they wanted 400 people from 24 different teams to corroborate on three products. The move proved to be a huge success,” he said.

Ultimately, the best places to work are those with the right people because that leads to a good work culture. It is an equation that goes well beyond money. “You will be surprised to know that seven of the companies amongst The Top 20 Companies to work for in India are not the best paymasters. They, however, have a vibrant and healthy work culture that helps talent succeed,” he said.