What did my stint in HR teach me about transformation?

To integrate the hard and the soft stuff in Transformation Design itself !

Period between roles is often the best time to reflect on the lessons learnt during the stint and to update the favorite frameworks and approaches one uses to concretize the benefits.  As a transformation professional while working with HR professionals, I learnt the need for adopting an integrated approach to transformation design that beautifully marries the hard and the soft stuff, with promise to produce better outcomes.  Let me elaborate:

Conventional approach to transformation involves designing interventions around PTP ieProcesses, Technology and People, bound by the overall objective, be it growth, profitability, competitiveness or any combinations thereof.  Guiding assumption is that If one designs theprocess right, ensures right level of technology enablement and trains the people involved, the transformation will happen.  And if this recipe doesn’t work, the focus shifts to addressing culture factors and seeking leadership sponsorship.  Consequently a change management professional is added to the team to take care these needs and address the low adoption challenges. I have myself used the above approach to varied level of effectiveness.

Although, increasingly there is a realization that process and technology design dimensions are so intertwined, given the systems having inbuilt processes, the two have to be designed together instead of sequentially addressing each of them. 

During my stint in HR, I closely witnessed the significance of a robust competency framework in forecasting future performance and its utility in talent acquisition and development areas. Most of the performance gaps are often explained in terms of competency proficiency deficit and accordingly follow-up remedial measures are designed.   Further, the HR community would always bring employees perspective by asking what is in it for the employee or the manager to support the change? 

My optimism linked to the effectiveness of revised processes would also get countered by the argument that it may not work here.  There are evidently several instances where despite having processes and technology enablers in place, the activities performed did not meet the expected quality and overall outcomes.  If it is a practice that only the selected profiles are uploaded and not those applied against the position, process and technology are not at fault, for instance. 

This made me think: How about replacing the three dimensions of transformation design from PTP with PCI? 

Practices reflect an unique marriage of laid out processes, technology enablement and the actual way activities are performed by the doers.  Practices are observable and closest to outcome.  So define the normative revised practices and then move backwards to get right processes, policies, technology architecture, information integration etc to support the same.  If the focus is on customer centricity, what are the new practices that need to be introduced while dealing with customers and meet their requirements. What are the best practices, that we need to imbibe from the competitors or cross-industry leaders? To get those practices rolling, what process changes and technology infusion needs to be in place?  Defining practices brings concreteness to the leadership sponsorship sought, by insisting their personal conduct reflects agreed set of new practices.

Competencies: Seeing the impact of transformation through the competency angle makes the whole exercise inclusive and comprehensive.  Evert transformation exercise may include revision of competency (functional, technical and behavioral) mix in terms of type and proficiency levels of competencies required. Examining the revised portfolio of competencies required within the team to meet transformation objectives (deliver in practices) allows for making calls on competencies that need to be sourced from outside, invested in development internally, need not be further invested in, etc.  It also allows for including in the consideration set, the competencies available with consultants, outsourced partners, machines (AI/ML/RPO) besides employees, to meet the requirements at collective level. 

Incentives:  “Never underestimate the power of incentives to influence behaviors” is the statement that every economist swears by and is fully agreed to by the HR community.  Well defined incentives (payoffs in terms of rewards or penalty avoidance) are the best way to align organizational and individual goals.  Transformation exercise influences the existing set of incentives by having disproportionate impact on different stakeholders, making a case for revising the incentive framework.  What are the metrics that are measured and rewarded, individually or as a team, at what target level, how much and, in what form- all these elements need to be revisited? If the practices require greater teamwork, continuing with individual level incentives may be counter -effective. Are there (dis)incentives required to establish new practices? Will the additional incentives be perpetual or come with a sunset clause? How closely are the incentives linked to value realization from transformation exercise and to what extent is the value created directly attributable to the individual and team contributions.

While Practices, Competencies, and Incentives do figure out somewhere embedded in the conventional transformation design they do not get the deserved focus.  In the conventional approach, we design the hard stuff and sprinkle it with the soft stuff interventions.  

By using PCI framework soft and hard stuff are collectively considered while designing interventions, thereby leading to greater probability of success.  

Of-course, even in PCI framework, one would have to carry out the required process redesign, technology enablement and people realignment, except may be in a more outcome focused and an adoption centric manner.

Try using PCI framework next time and do share your feedback,