Leadership has been and will always be about envisioning the future, aligning resources and championing execution. It is about crafting and nurturing a culture that resonates with the DNA of the organization and is aligned with the strategic objectives. Individual excellence, People excellence and Business excellence are the 3 pillars that make a leader stand tall.

The what of leadership will remain the same, and the how of leadership will evolve. Newer competencies like radical kindness, driving employee well-being,  digital agility, change agility and curiosity will take centre stage.

Rebooting Leadership: How the Cookie Crumbles

The emergence of remote work, increasing mental well-being issues, multi-generational workforce, focus on DEI, AI implementation and Machine learning are leading the change.

I am sharing some initiatives that we have spearheaded as consultants in various Organizations:

• Digital Agility: We supported a temperature sensing Organization to transition from a product Organization to a solution-focused service Organization. We also took a clinic Global with digitization – contributing to substantial growth in the Organization.

• Curiosity: In an event Organization we instituted the concept of encouraging teams to dedicate 20% time of their work hours to passion projects outside their formal job scope. This sparking of curiosity led to their launching multiple new verticals in different industry segments.

• Change agility: One of our clients was using plastics for making above-the-knee garments and was running a thriving business. We ignited the urgency about replacing plastics and they invested heavily in an R&D wing. They are now using alternatives and have won several patents. This was a landmark contribution towards sustainability.
• Radical kindness: In a KPO, we initiated offering the employees paid time off to volunteer for CSR initiatives of their department’s choice. In a startup where work is intense – employees are encouraged to gift their extra leave to colleagues who have run out of their paid leave. This generates goodwill within the team and the organization is freed from the burden of carrying forward and reimbursing unused leaves.

Rethinking: To Innovate

VUCA has transitioned to BANI which is indicative of the rapidly changing and challenging times.

A few years back a trend of “doing away with the grey brigade” surfaced. Organizations wanted to hire employees who represent the consumers – (India has the largest absolute number of young people) – so the mandate was to hire a younger team. We have been encouraging our clients to balance between generations to maximize the desired results. Each generation has a different attitude to – work commitment, adoption of technology, communication style, priority to work, work-life balance etc. One of our clients in exports benefitted immensely from this strategy and grew multifold viz. a viz. competition that had aggressively lowered the average age of employees.

With one of our FMCG clients, we drove innovation around quality and timely delivery through automation. In a paint organization, we created and strengthened the B2C route to reduce heavy dependence on rapidly eroding competitive channels.

As time demanded, we integrated new roles like Head of Remote Work, Digital Workplace Manager, Chief Well-Being Officer, Workplace Resilience Coach, Workforce Diversity Strategist, AI Ethics Officer-AI Integration Specialist and Machine Learning Ops Manager (MLOps) in many organisations.

As a strategy in almost all our client’s businesses, we are ingraining the culture of continuous learning.

Redefining Success

Success is now measured by more than financials. Some of the metrics that we like to track are “adoption of technology to measure the progress of digital transformation”. I am personally inspired by Satya Nadella’s emphasis on empathy, innovation, and a “growth mindset,”. He suggests success is about empowering people to achieve more.

Measuring sustainability, environmental initiatives, business continuity, employee well-being and customer delight are some of the most important indicators of success.

Mentors Message

In today’s fast-paced world, distractions are endless, and attention spans are shrinking. The new generation of leaders must cultivate mindfulness.

Lead the change, Embrace a Growth Mindset, be Present, be Patient, be Curious, Learn, and Adapt. As the world demands more, take the time to slow down and self-reflect on yourself because Individual, People and Business Excellence remain foundational as always.