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.