Using change agents to globalise India Inc

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High-performance businesses have reinvented corporate training to cope with the rapid pace of organisational change. These dynamic organisations have learned to compete in a turbulent and competitive environment by deliberately altering business practices on a continuing basis. Many organisations may be adept at process and technology change management, but they often lack the mechanisms to rapidly dovetail workforce capabilities and quickly complete the implementation process. Burgeoning organisations close the performance gap by working upfront with corporate trainers.

Co-designers of change initiatives say, “The real challenge of change is not just to come up with a brilliant idea—it’s to implement it.” High-performance organisations recognise that people and their ability to perform are what drives businesses to success, during times of transition.

Evidence has mounted that ‘intangible assets’ play an increasingly large role in defining the value of a company in the capital markets, as several studies by economists at the Brookings Institution in Washington have reported. Intangibles such as brands, worker skills, organisational routines, customer relationships, and the like can account for nearly two-thirds of the market place value of manufacturing companies, swamping the contribution made by physical assets such as facilities, equipment, and product inventory. Corporate trainers need to approach the design of training interventions from a deep understanding of the inter-related systems present in an organisation.

As the range of interventions available to the corporate trainer has expanded so has the complexity of the needs analysis required. Because of the inter-relatedness of the systems employed by an organisation, there may be multiple root causes for performance problems originating in different sub-systems. There are four categories of root causes that may be useful in conducting a performance diagnosis: skills and competencies; information; motivation and environment. This shortcoming handicaps an organisation’s ability to assess its readiness for change and identify gaps in key performance metrics.

Common causes of organisational instability brought about by change include: the new or proposed operating environment may confound the workforce’s ability to link individual contributions to satisfaction of the client’s needs; the flow of important information about the status of business operations may be ill defined, and new work habits may be too slow.

It is generally agreed that internal organisation assessment such as system-based, root cause analysis—is less developed, theoretically and practically, than other areas of situational analysis. Situational analysis typically focuses on an examination of the success of the product or service in the marketplace. Such scrutiny might include an analysis of market share, competitor’s product quality, or purchasing behaviours of target buyers. By comparison, most common type of internal organisation assessment involves a functional analysis of a single isolated subsystem such as financial, human resource, or information.

Effective strategic management requires more than an independent appraisal of each subsystem: it also requires a detailed understanding of how each subsystem contributes to and impacts on organisational performance. Therefore, decision-makers would benefit from a diagnostic tool that could measure each subsystem’s ability of to adapt to change; identify critical interdependencies between subsystems, and elevate the performance gaps that could cripple the change process.

The Indian companies face a tough task today as they work in the global environment and compete with some of the best brains and most competitive organisations in the world. The Indian companies have been using trainings to change the behaviours and attitude of their employees by imparting knowledge and skills and this has become an essential part of the strategy of any organisation that needs to move forward. It is a way of changing the way a business works and of making sure that employees perform to the best of their abilities.

However, the New India, as it looks forward to becoming the largest economy in the world is awakening to the benefits of various corporate trainings. It now understands that trainings create qualified manpower that bring in professionalism leading to higher value in terms of better efficiency and productivity. It’s a win-win situation for all as the organisations benefit due increased efficiency and the employees grow with a career path design.

The training profession has learned the value of expanding its training focus to include a broader understanding of the business processes of an organisation. The primary concern must be the improvement of actual performance on the job. There are six types of organisational gaps that the corporate trainers must be prepared to close in order to support human learning and on the job performance.

The six gaps were between strategic initiatives and rewards systems; new-product initiatives and cost-cutting efforts; marketing and production; traditional practices and innovative practices; old knowledge and new technology, and yesterday’s competencies and today’s challenges. The range of disciplines represented in these gaps suggests that a corporate trainer will have been exposed to a rigorous and diverse education regiment.

Academic preparation solely through instructional systems design is an incomplete and indirect route to meet the needs of today’s globally-competitive organisation. We must have development of a multidisciplinary programme of study that draws from many domains outside of traditional instructional systems design courses. Thus, the traditionally defined role of corporate trainer is transitioning to the emergent role of change manager and performance analyst.