Major role for HR in Continuous Innovation & Churns that Digital Age brings?

This is an age of rapid innovation. As with any cycle, innovation cycle also brings with it enormous churn. In the race to win in Digital, organizations who want to flaunt their Digital prowess as well as those who are Beginners will be trying to grab the next holy grail or to draw advantages.

Organizations will be experimenting with various ideas in terms of process innovation, product innovation, strategy innovation. In any of these areas, there will be a significant change in the organization in terms of processes, hierarchies, flow of work, pace of work, collaboration, operational frameworks etc.

And these have cascading impact on the people working on these areas internally within an organization. Not restricted to the teams / focus groups working towards their Digital goals. The impact will be felt beyond. New paradigms come in, new ways-of-working, and whole organization is geared up and aligned to work in that fashion. 

There could be probably multiple fronts / themes simultaneously happening and few of them will succeed and few of them will fail. Some of the ideas will have to be cast aside and some more will have to be pursued with more support. 

The concept of feedback loop - where an organization Acts, Checks, takes corrective measures, Acts again, corrects again, Acts again... - this is a continuous process. And stability may take some time to come. Particularly in unchartered waters. 

It could be in the area of setting up customer care operations or it could be cannibalising one's own function / revenue towards a better democratized revenue stream. 

When such failures happen or mid-course corrections happen, it will impact the larger organization. New ways-of-working, having been set few months back will be revisited and changed yet again. Same with the way departments & functions collaborate. There could be additional flows or reduced flows. There could be additional roles / merged roles. 

This will look like too many chops & churns. However, it is not so. This is how it is. And probably has to be. This is experimentation. Nothing is certain until it is certain. And in my opinion, this is how organizations are going to be for quite some time to come. 

This is where HR can and should play a major role. 

How HR provides maturity to the organization, its leaders, its managers, its employees will define the agility of HR as well as the organization, not only in innovating but also in casting aside ideas that are not working and moving forward.

Five basic things that will help HR to handle turbulent times:

1. Communication - with Leaders, Managers & Employees;
2. Counselling - Leaders to communicate;
3. Collaborating - with Leaders, Managers & Employees;
4. Coaching - Leaders to discuss and explain the constant changes;
5. Cascading - spreading lessons learnt across the organization

It is those organizations, that have strong HR leadership and presence, that will successfully manage to ride the choppy waters. 

IoT as a Socital compliance tool

We have all been reading about and updating ourselves in the exciting field of IoT. Transportation / Automobiles is one of the areas where good amount of IoT use cases are being explored in a big way. 

However, I would love to see some kind of societal compliance related use cases. This may be a surprise to certain geographies, but however, may be much needed in certain geos. 

Take example of replacing of factory / manufacturer fitted equipment  / parts and using spurious parts or parts which are not in line with the Road rules of a country. Can there be a central control centre in the car which tracks and gives indication to the car owner, manufacturer, service rep, govt. authorities? 

Can a car refuse to switch on high beam when it detects it is inside city limits? Similar to speed governor?

When societal compliance is no longer automatic or is in danger of flouting due to whatever reasons, can Technology help?

Or should technology only focus on profit?

IT Services Industry – System Integrators – Way forward

This follows my post in LinkedIn few months back. I was writing about the state of affairs in Indian IT Services Industry. You can access it here.

A year has passed and we still see the same old story. Anyone who follows Vinnie Mirchandani’s blogs (access here) will understand it.

Recently, Narayana Moorthy (founder of Infosys) lamented the absence of any real innovation coming from India. And Vishal Sikka spoke about identifying / analysing problems rather than solving them after someone identifies them. 

The Analysts and Strategists alike call “blurring of Products and Services”. It might be worthwhile to take a step back and think this through. Is there a real blurring or merging? If you look back, in every space, products were replacing services or redefining the way services were performed.

You bought a vacuum cleaner. The service of cleaning / dusting the house that was done previously by your maid was replaced by the vacuum cleaner.

You bought a dishwasher. It replaced the washing of vessels by a maid or by you.

When you bought a car, which replaced the service provided by a horse. And a driverless car replaces the service provided by a driver. But you still travel from place to place in that.

You have heard these things as part of the narrative of the current “age of disruption”. However, it is not a disruption. The service performed by someone or by something was done better by something else. 

If in the case of vacuum cleaner, it was a human being who was replaced, in the case of a car, it was an animal which was replaced.

However, you still got the service. The “service” in itself was not disrupted. 

You visited another location by airplane for a conference. This was replaced by a product of “Video Conferencing”. Or, in future, by BEAM, as per Peter Diamondis.

But what was disrupted was only the travel part. Not the part where you communicated with others or attended someone else’s communication. You still did it sitting in your favourite couch.

Coming back to the present. In my opinion, the whole concept of “blurring lines between Products & Services” is misleading and in my opinion, this is where Indian IT Industry is making a mistake. They look at their business and think they are providing a Service. And as a result, the moment one talks of “Products”, they go defensive and start talking about being in Services industry and not in Products business.

And totally miss the reality that the so-called “Products” actually give the “Service”.

Transforming themselves to providing “Service” through “Product” is not going to be easy for an industry which was the largest job creator, linear modelled with FTE count and tasted medium-to-large contract values.

The only way the industry can re-invent itself is to innovate – not in the name of process automation to perform a service, but to take a re-look at the whole problem chain and provide solutions that nullifies the problem at the root. Not to introduce a software program with a “robotic process automation” tag and yet still provide the same service.

Taking the human out of the equation is not innovation. It is again a temporary painkiller. The only way will be to take the problem itself out of the equation with solutions. That’s really innovation.

However, this will mean:

• Cannibalising one’s own revenues;
• Trial-Error-Trial-Error-Succeed cycle for which risk taking becomes an innate requirement;
• Ability to look at “Products-that-provide-service” as a separate stream, while creating them and not to measure them through the legacy “Service” mindset;
• Leapfrogging and thinking about Long-Term compared to Q-o-Q earnings.

To me, this appears to be the only way the so-called System Integrators can survive and re-invent themselves. They need to realise that the so-called “Products” actually are providing “Service”. And nothing wrong in “Service-thru-Products” business.