Organizational Transformation: From Before Corona (B.C.) to After Domestication (A.D.) 

"Less than a year back, organizations had the luxury to sit back and have lengthy senior management conferences in their boardrooms to discuss pros and cons of digitalisation, it’s prioritisation and whether these transformation projects justified large budgets. They would also set pace and intermediate milestones, that they thought were aggressive."

I still have memories from last year, being part of the extended leadership team feeling proud that our BCP planning successfully worked and that we pulled-off critical teams working remotely for a few days due to city-wide shutdown caused by unexpected riots. I can bet that none of our corporate “Oracles” could have predicted that our BCP way of functioning would overnight become the new normal and that it would not be optional.

Let’s delve into a few questions that frequently end up being discussed:

Q1: What are some of the common challenges being faced by remote and distributed teams?

A1. Organizations forced to work remote overnight are currently facing challenges some real, some imagined, namely – Infrastructure & Connectivity, Productivity & Trust (decision on degree of management oversight required), Discipline & Motivation of employees, Communication & Collaboration, Uncertainty about future work environment (if these changes are going to be temporary/permanent, positive/negative), etc.     

Q2: Would Agile Methodology play a positive role in this transformation and what are the benefits that it offers to an organization?

A2. Taking a cue from the Agile methodology itself, in general Agile works best if the project has good stakeholder (customer) availability and involvement during all stages, quick launches are required, prioritization logic is based on business value, the organization is able to focus all or majority of available resources to achieve a quick focussed outcome. I believe that we could use this to quickly align teams to our new remote working environment; however it would take additional effort and innovative approach to sustain and keep teams motivated.  Agile methodology relies on fast moving, self-managing teams for innovation (in this case target goal is quick move and adjustment to digital & remote working). Most organizations are weighed down by the structures and procedures of bureaucracy. Agile liberates the innovative spirit, however it also dies when the same Agile mindset and methods are used to micro manage it.  

Q3: What are some of the key factors that organizations should consider while framing a remote model for a distributed workforce?

A3. Some of the key factors, organizations need to keep in mind while drafting flexible working model for remote workforce are –

• Employee & Team dynamics (issues, demographics, size & criticality)
• Collaboration platform (it’s availability, ease of use to both internal & external stakeholders)
• Work Shift timings (Geo overlap requirements, etc.)
• Business Continuity Planning (including pandemic impact)
• Infrastructure/Availability planning & support (access to facility management & procurement teams; with clear approval requirements flow)
• Clear communication/responsibility guidelines with nodal leaders identified

Q4: Can a single model (for remote working) be applicable to all organizations, or is a custom-tailored version required for each organization?

A4. The good part is that remote working is not new to India; we’ve been successfully developing and running Global In-house Captives (GICs) with phenomenal success since the mid-1980s. I strongly believe that we already have the learnings in place. We just need to structure and customize them for the WFH environment for the distributed workforce. Of course, as a country we need to improve our infrastructure and the industry should pool in their resources to come up with a seamless, intuitive collaboration platform; that should follow almost the same philosophy as Free Software Foundation (FSF) without proprietary monopoly but with strong security protocols in place. Think of it as a new “Collaboration Highway” that is available and cuts across boundaries of nations, industries and areas of expertise.

In summary, we have to realize that this change is larger than the organization itself; it demands an industry level thought leadership and initiative, more so because it impacts each and every employee irrespective of their hierarchy or departmental affiliation.

Q5: How will teams across the globe continue with their digital transformation in the absence of physical proximity of team members?

A5. Thankfully, even before the Pandemic hit, most organizations already had digitalisation initiatives in place; the situation today has just reaffirmed its importance and brought it up to the topmost priority. For example, previously it was optional for any new hired employee to be remote-work-ready; which today is a mandatory requirement.

Organizations have picked up an accelerated pace to become more agile, collaborative and are transforming towards – GLocalization – wherein organizations take forms of multi-Geo interconnected nodes; each of the nodes are flexible, local, largely self-dependant, able to operate individually as nimble self-sustained operations, sometimes specializing in specific areas of expertise; each node shares a one-to-many information exchange network not only with other nodes but also with the centralized organization’s headquarters (HQ). The HQ receives and processes the accrued information and acts like a centralized decision-making unit, that is able to see and leverage the big picture view for appropriate decision making.     

RELATED TOPICS:#Agile,Agile Supply Chain,pandemic,Procurement,digitisation,Procurement Strategy,corona,work from home,before corona,teams,challenges,Pandemic challenges,distributed workforce,Organisational Transformation,Digital Strategy,Gaurav Kumar