Lessons from Tiger
His school friends found it hard to pronounce his name. So Tyagarajan was shortened to "Tiger". The name stuck. He is now the CEO of Genpact. Today he along with his CHRO, Piyush Mehta were in conversation with the CEO of SHRM, Johnny C Taylor. The occasion: The SHRM India Tech Conference 2020.
Here is what I found useful
Shift No 1: Being digital, remote and boundaryless is not a choice
Genpact has 95,000 employees. While getting the logistics of desktops to employee homes was a logistical challenge. But when the pandemic struck, Genpact was able to get back on track after a brief hiccup of 14 days. Here are 4 lessons I took notes about.
Lesson 1: Have the people where the customer is.
Their leadership team has been located in different parts of the world for the last few years. So decision making has always been distributed. That helped.
Lesson 2: Have design principles to help you decide
In case of Genpact, they used two design principles to make all decisions. This involved balancing the polarities. Many businesses prioritise customers but the employees are the ones who need to deliver to the customers. Just looking after employees is not enough because customers pay the bills. Here is what Tiger used.
The well-being of employees
Business continuity of customers
Lesson 3: A hybrid workplace needs more communication
The CEO and the leadership team have to ensure that there is one common company culture in a hybrid world (whether the employee is working from home or office or part-time in both). We will continue to see a hybrid world. Constant communication helps the employee feel connected.
Put extra effort to include and spend time with new hires. Onboarding them into the company culture is vital. Tiger continued to do his Town Halls and send recorded videos. Being able to communicate on video is an important skill to build. Don't send emails.
Communication must be a two-way process. Listen and act on the feedback. Genpact uses a AI powered chat bot to answer routine questions. That ensures that the employee can get some kind of an immediate response 24x7. I would absolutely recommend using a chatbot.
If being articulate was the big skill that defined leaders in the pre-Covid world, the post COVID world values humility and listening as a vital skill for a leader. (Read about The Rise of the H Factor)
Lesson 4: Rethink CSR to Make a Difference
The idea that left the deepest impact on me was not the business strategy but how they redesigned their CSR.
They used their deep expertise in Analytics to help hospitals predict the amount of PPE equipment they would need.
They opened up their skill building portal Genome to the world. Now anyone can use the portal to take classes and learn from the same resources that Genpact employees have access to
Here is a #Sketchnote I created as I took notes during the conference.
That is a terrific video in which Tiger speaks about how to think of your career. Don’t miss it - even if you have ‘retired’.
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