Paving the Way for RESILIENT ORGANISATIONS

A stimulating session is bound to ensue when young thought leaders brainstorm together on building resilient organisations that hold the potential to battle the pandemic. The Y-League (Young Leadership Guidance & Experience) webinar provided a conducive platform to such leaders to share their viewpoints on ‘Building Resilient Organisations’. The panellists including Rajat Agarwal, COO & Head, Corporate Finance, Barista Coffee; Abhishek, COO, Eli Lilly; Aarti Mansukhani, Head, People Experience, Volvo Cars and Manvi Sushil, Director, HR, South Asia, Avery Dennison, shed some light on the pertinent theme, with the session moderated by Dev Jha, Head, HRBP India, Carrier Midea and Core Team, NHRDN Delhi and NCR Chapter. Corporate Citizen brings you the excerpts

"We need to rethink how organisations across different sectors and geographies respond to this pandemic and also change the conventional ways of operating to adapt and survive in this dangerous environment"

- Dev Jha

When a lot has been discussed and debated around the effects and consequences of Covid-19, Dev Jha opened up the conversation saying that the event today was focussed on the need and the method for the organisations to develop the muscle and the business immunity to not just this pandemic but for any such event in the future as well. He added that the rise of the recent Coronavirus pandemic brought with its belief for the organisation to increase corporate vigilance and the companies need to ensure community well-being by embracing virtual collaboration tools and practices.

Jha stressed that we need to rethink how organisations across different sectors and geographies respond to this pandemic and also change the conventional ways of operating to adapt and survive in this dangerous environment. He informed how the GDP shrank by the steepest extent ever -23.9% in the April June period. When the Coronavirus brought the country to a standstill, except agriculture, all other sectors including manufacturing, construction and services, suffered steep declines; most notably, the trade, hotel, transport, communication suffered decline by 47 per cent. These are uncertain times, and the situations individually have raised some serious questions. What does this mean for your business? Is this just a blip in the curve or a long term trend? How does your organisation continue to work and create a value in this new environment? He further added that it is all the more important that beyond immediate actions, the organisations should use this opportunity to reflect on the ability to navigate a crisis and going forward, consider actions to increase agility and become more resilient in the future.

Dev Jha: What are the characteristics of resilient organisations?

Abhishek: Before going into the characteristics, let me share a few examples first. Here, we have seen the brilliance the team demonstrated, and then we will look at the commonalities across. And the first one I suggest or would be our own organisation at NHRDN itself, because if you look at it, we all were habituated of attending NHRD conferences in personal meetings. Now in this new normal, NHRD team quickly adjusted its operational model and the results are in front of us.

The second example I would like to share is the cricket mania, or the cricket season-IPL. Most of us were excited about the IPL season since we are waiting for such an event. They have worked across all the odds to make it happen. It conveys how organisations lead us, manage us and individuals in the organisations make this sudden shift, that’s where organisational resilience comes in the picture.

And to put another perspective is that resilience is demonstrated when the organisation can assimilate high-level of change while displaying or exhibiting minimal dysfunctional behaviour and utilising the available resources optimally. And if we summarise all the things together, I would say the characteristics at the core are something which are fundamental to every organisation; then we have strong organisational culture and the core values of a company. And I must say that a company with these pillars as its foundation is well equipped to thrive in times of transformation or challenging situations and prepared for change.

"Resilience is demonstrated when the organisation can assimilate high level of change while displaying or exhibiting minimal dysfunctional behaviour and utilising the available resources optimally"

- Abhishek

What are the practices that you have at Eli Lilly, that have helped the organisation to build the muscle to adapt to this change?

Abhishek: I would say only one thing, link our purpose and values in everything that we do. And these are, Integrity, which is by conducting our business consistently with all applicable norms and being honest in dealing with everyone, stakeholders is what I am talking about.

The second one, Excellence, which is again from our value system, by pursuing pharmaceutical innovations, provide high-quality products and strive to deliver superior business returns.

The third and the most important one is Respect for people and that we do by maintaining an environment based on mutual respect, openness and individual integrity. Now let me back it up with a few examples. I will talk about the last eight months that we have seen in our organisation. The double tower discount in the last nine months; we were 460 at the end of 2019 and as I speak today, we are 1050 plus and we continue to grow more. Now the commitment we had as an organisation to our employees, to our stakeholders, we are standing by it and delivering it consistently.

The next one is around showing respect for people and integrity towards honouring each and every offer we have had to play this for two months without any productivity during the lockdown, we continued with that but we did not falter in honouring even a single offer. And that has given us the name in the market that people can trust.

We all are looking forward to the medication, the entire organisation is doing its best to accelerate the innovation of the medicine for Covid-19 and you would have heard some news, so we have the antiviral therapies and some other things that are in pipeline, which we are in the public domain. We have set up a walkthrough free testing centre in our corporate office in Minneapolis, so that includes caring for the society as well.

So, in summary, I would say when people come to work every day at Lilly, they bring different experiences, perspectives and traditions. We bring the things which make each one of us unique and Lilly is committed to welcoming, respecting and valuing those differences. I think we are the reason behind this because these differences make a difference in making Lilly a stronger company and a fit place to work.

"We are definitely adapting and I think that agility and adaptability become a really important part of resilience. So, we are adapting and we are adapting fast"

- Manvi Sushil

Q: The past can predict the future. Do you think this holds true even now?

Manvi Sushil: Yes, I think so. Casting models are built upon the concept of past predicting future and I would feel that if you would look at the current situation, I would say that because that statement is still true because it’s not the first time in the history that we are facing a crisis, right? The crisis may have different forms and you know a different variety but I think the resilience of the corporate world, the resilience of the human spirit has always come across, whether it’s in pandemic-like situations in the past or the recessionary situations in the past or the war-like situations in the past, you know the human spirit will always prevail. So, if the past is the predictor of the future, we will definitely come out of this with a flag of victory. But I definitely think that it has changed the way we do things.

I think our habits must change and if there is one thing that we have learnt as an organisation at Avery Dennison is that what got us here will not take us through this wave.

We are definitely adapting and I think that agility and adaptability become a really important part of resilience. So, we are adapting and we are adapting fast. And the way we are working with our customers is never like before, like the entire HR team is on its toes, understanding external focus with a whole new light. I think the only external focus which would end our HR teams earlier was recruitment and you would know what your competition is hiding but now I think our entire talent management is on its toes, our entire learning and development is on its toes, our business partnering is at a whole new level. Thanks to the fact that we have realised that external focus is not just needed by our customer-facing team. The entire organisation needs to be really close to the market because the market is changing because consumer behaviour is changing, buying patterns are changing and that is definitely going to have an impact on the businesses and the way we deal with our talent.

Q: We can, of course, use the past in the terms of scenario planning, in terms of looking at the data, we can correlate with that. But do think that, how do you redefine your HR strategies future-positive when we said that the past can predict the future. How do you redefine the HR strategies to be future-positive?

Manvi: I think there are a lot of things that we can do in an HR strategy. I think the one interesting thing that an HR strategy can do to help the business is to understand if a customer need is changing today, so the talent needs to change. If your entire organisation is matching your customers and its behaviour and planning scenarios around that, we also need to ensure that we do this even for our talent, and here, I am differentiating between talent and employees, and that’s what I would say.

Q: We talked about how leadership has emerged as a more debated context. In today’s world we talk about leadership, we also talk about being resilient. So, what is resilient leadership? And how do you build this culture in the organisation?

Aarti Mansukhani: If you Google resilient leadership, there will be a lot of terminologies that will come up and for me, I can compare it to a lotus, it grows in a muddy environment, and it’s still at full bloom. So, a resilient leader for me would be where despite the setbacks, despite the unknowns, despite the challenges and roadblocks, the leadership still remains the North Star for its people and it’s still leading, maintaining the equilibrium and as Dr Wali rightly said, it’s not just individual resilience, it has to be group resilience. So, we carry away our weight together through the chaos and at the same time maintaining equilibrium. I think that’s what resilient leadership would mean for me.

"Flexibility for Volvo is not really new. We are a very people-centric organisation in the sense that for every initiative or every decision including business initiatives that we take, we put our people first"

- Aarti Mansukhani

Q: How do we ensure that the employees are connected to the company’s purpose? How are you ensuring that at Volvo cars?

Aarti Mansukhani: Flexibility for Volvo is not really new. We are a very people-centric organisation in the sense that for every initiative or every decision including business initiatives that we take, we put our people first. So, there is a lot of focus and compassion on people and for us, this pandemic is only taking flexibility to a new level. But we were already operating at a certain flexible model and we, at Volvo Cars, we have these platforms that we call boards, so these are meetings which are led by a respective function lead.

So, there is a product board, there is a sales board, there is a finance board, there is a marketing board, there is a communication board, customer experiences and so on. But, these boards are open for anybody to attend. The function lead will present what are the opportunities and challenges.

Anybody in the company can attend that board and understand what’s happening in the organisation, draw a link as to how their role relates to. Let’s say, customer experience presents feedback they have received from a customer. There would be somebody from the sales team sitting in that board, and can relate to, “Okay, now I relate to the problem”, what has been the challenge here and why did you get that feedback from the customer?

There is a lot of cross functional experience sharing that was already existing in Volvo pre-pandemic. I think it has only taken it to a different level for us wherein, instead of sitting in a board room physically, they are just meeting virtually. But we still continue to follow that model. So that’s one thing that’s there at Volvo and particularly to the pandemic.

Dev, you rightly mentioned the industry faced a lot of slumps, so, it’s not news to anybody that the automobile industry really suffered a lot. April was a very bad month for most of the automobile companies. I think what we did as an organisation was use this opportunity, use this challenge for people to come together and work again on cross functional teams to put some brilliant business initiatives that we are now out with, now that the markets are open. So, I don’t know if you’ve seen the hassle free XC40 experience or the Volvo contact less programmes. I think these are programmes that our people have worked on during the lockdown and now we are ready and out with a bang. These are initiatives that are ideated by people and implemented by people, and our leadership is only providing coaching wherever it is needed. So, it has worked out very nice for us from the flexibility perspective and the way our people staying connected. Our people are driving our strategy.

"Technology is getting adopted in a big way at a consumer level and we as an organisation, also are looking to kind of change and leverage the technology"

- Rajat Agarwal

Q: How can we leverage new technologies and digital innovations internally to drive high performance teams?

Rajat Agarwal: I being from retail, can only tell you that the organisations in retail, which are still sustaining are resilient organisations itself, so I don’t want to define what resilience is. Retail as an industry was impacted the most, the initial two months, when the cash flow became zero, that was the first time when the business looked like they had to start from zero, something which can never be planned in advance. We were talking about looking at a forecasting model, every time we are trying to do a forecast, it is based on a certain level of precedence. And reading in March, where everybody had an organisation at various SPU levels do their planning for the next years, we as an organisation were also planning and here comes Covid-19, wherein the first quarter is completely eroded. So that’s where I would say that a resilient organisation for most of the responsible entities are organisations which are still sustaining and still holding the post, are in itself resilient organisations.

It’s a big feature, especially, in retail if an organisation is able to sustain almost 30 per cent inventory on retail as on date as we see it is available. That’s the large harrow of this entire pandemic has gone into, at least the retail side of the industry was not able to stay afloat and it’s not over. Still, that resilience has to be shown, we still need to be into the fire-fighting mode in terms of how do we look at sustaining as an organisation first, and also look at how do we cultivate at each level, a sense of ownership to not only look at sustaining themselves but also keeping the organisations. That’s how we took care of the organisation in the last six months, now it’s almost six months into this pandemic.

Talking about technology, technology is again a buzz word and I was attending a webinar a few days back in which a lot of insights came in. What led to technological change in the organisations? It was Covid-19 which led to a technological change in the organisation. Because this is the time, the first time where we looked at technology in a big way. We were not even looking at using technology in our daily scheme of life. Today, even an office boy is using the technology in a certain way, so that’s how the technology is incorporated in the system.

We are an organisation which is madly driven by our need to see exposure with the consumers. We are in the domain where it’s more offline for us. It’s not largely to do with an online business. So, there was a large level of ecosystem change, which we kind of developed on. In the month of April, May and June everybody was talking about social distancing, and digital payments I just recently read an article, it was the first time in the history of India, that UPI transactions of INR 160 to 150 crores were conducted, which is more than the Indian population or almost equal to the Indian population. So, in the month of June, we got almost 150 crores transactions on UPI. So, that’s how a country like us is moving towards the digital environment in a big way. And we as an organisation also had to adapt to some changes. In the month of June, we looked at taking a contactless ordering and digital payment, you have to scan the QR code, menus were shown on whatever app you are using, and then you can select your product offerings. So, all that was technologically enabled.

In our business segment, you have to interact with the consumer to yield a certain value, but somehow, for the initial three-four months, we looked at a physical interaction with the consumer because that was the need of the hour and that is something which is still in practice in a big way and most of the organisations have now adapted that change. We were one of the pioneers in adapting this change. Technology is getting adopted in a big way at a consumer level and we as an organisation, also are looking to kind of change and leverage the technology, which is available for the general and professional scheme of business and also to look at how do we maintain the ecosystem.

We, unlike most of the organisations, cannot be a work from home organisation. We have to be on the field and it’s our moral obligation as a leader. If my worker says it’s pending, there, he was interacting with the consumer, I can’t be sitting at home. We have now at least started, even at the corporate level, four days a week for an organisation like us on a roster basis. All the meetings in the initial three months of the lockdown, the offices were closed this was the first time when we looked at a strategy being discussed, enabled, signed off on an e-platform.

This is the first time I also looked at corporate finance. There was no physical presence or a physical interface between the auditor and the auditee. So, those were some of the technological changes that we adapted for leverage, in terms of getting what we wanted and I don’t think that the results were very varied, it was very much what we used to do in and out of the script and actually it was pretty much similar. So, we looked at making the technology even at the consumer end and at the back end and I’m happy to share that the enablement of technology has led to a lot of time saving, people have a lot of time on their hands, the productivity has increased because people spend more time in terms of not online but on their day to day job based on the use of technology. That’s where we have also leveraged technology in a big way over the past six months which we were doing in a limited way maybe before Covid-19.

Q: We will see a new face of food?

Rajat: There’s a lot of take outs which are increasing in a big way and that’s where we are also benefitting in some of these. Digital platforms have also been a big enabler and a big differentiator from being in the organised space, look at selling and pushing your products versus the unorganised brands which are kind of taking a large beating. This is something which is again differentiating the organised chain from an unorganised chain.