LEADERSHIP - A bottom of pyramid view

In the pursuit of looking for state-of-the-art topic to put forth my views in the canvas of my blog, I decided to write about something that has been considerably bothering me- the ideology of designated leaders around and their leadership skills.

The topic “Leadership” intrigues me, when I observe countless Experts earning their share of whole wheat brown bread and peanut butter (and not just bread and butter) by enlightening the world with their wisdom on this topic. When I reckon “leadership” with the backdrop of my limited ability and experience, the first thing which comes to my mind is “Fearlessness”. Unless one owes that spirit, it becomes no-win to be a leader. Historically you can pick-up any leader from Business, Politics, Sports or War Heroes who emerged as leader, each one of them had this innate quality. Unless you have risk appetite that comes with fearlessness you can’t dare to challenge the conventional trends and henceforth, merely keep eluding change which is the only way to taste success in today’s unprecedented scenarios.    

   

                    source-gitaaonline.com

How many times did we hear this “I don’t have a solution to this? I am looking for answers from you” most common clichéd line from leaders resonating his democratic way of leadership and perhaps projecting him as an accommodative leader. But does this solve the purpose?

I believe that a Leader should have surfeit of innovative ideas, not suggesting he has to know all, but having said that, even one strong IDEA can make you a leader, if it has the power to envisage large scale sustainable change. More often than not I have seen people torment with their individual role, reputation and well-being and not their team and that is de-facto reflection of fear.

Contemplating myself, I shall be greatly exultant and exalted to get someone smarter than me working in my team instead drawing apprehensions or getting afflicted about my status quo.

The reason pertaining to above statement would explicitly be my perception on “Leadership”. Leadership, for me, has precisely been about imparting knowledge, taking charge and onus of all which didn’t work for team, whilst giving credit to the team for everything which falls in place and brings applaud to us.

Who bothers for the credit as long as my Team is shining and perceived as winner’s team!!

In the time of crises or contingency, if the first thing to cross your mind is “what will happen to me (and not my team)?” you are just a supervisor and not a leader.

Pertinent to that, if I am not becoming irrelevant after sometime in my ad dock role perhaps I have been just doing factory set-up supervisor role and not cloning my team to perform what I could do with my respective role. As a Team Mentor, I keep emphasis on “WHAT” and let “HOW” part be driven by individuals in my team because that’s where innovation and creativity will grow in my team.

More of than not pyramid culture mushrooms leader on virtue of experience and age rather than pure talent and potential. It is appalling to find a bunch of elite people carrying hefty weight in their mail signature (courtesy above mentioned process) without imperative and adequate skills. Midst of this cynicism I must admit that I have come across certain brilliant minds that just mesmerize me with their wealth of experience, leadership quality believing in “WE” approach with “I” efforts and inspire many more to become like them in every touch points.

“HCL MEME”- Official2Social- Of the Employees, by the Employees, for the Employees…….

Off late a trend which caught world’s attention and made unprecedented transformation to all walks of life is Social Media, be it changing the Government’s, astonishment Arabic movements which resulted into end of dictatorships in various countries, public outrage on the LOKPAL Bill in India etc. In lieu to all this it was preposterous for Human Resource professionals like us to even think of ignoring this most remarkable business trend ever emerged in known history, which has mobilized the human capital on such a far-reaching scale.

HCL is pioneer of modern computing and known for our disruptive EFCS business philosophy, which frames the tenor in boardrooms globally. Once again one of our adept leader and Social Media evangelists Mr. Ravishankar B, who predicted Linkedin’s scintillating future in India with surgeon’s precision way back in 2007 in one of his interviews, stood up again with radical thought of B2E (Business 2 Employees) akin to B2C (Business 2 Customer) leveraging social media platform after studding B2C experiment from likes of Zappos and SWAs with phenomenal success in Facebook platform.

Social Media is a rostrum for Gen Y to speak their minds out with a digital form of expression. They have a quick sense of evaluation, despise archaic systems and thrive on word of mouth to make their headway. At threshold we had an option to leverage existing social media platform such as Facebook like others but it was onerous for us to unfurl our network whilst respecting our privacy and customer contracts. Henceforth we were left aside, but Ravi put across this B2E idea as food for thought to some young employees to build its technological frame. And as surmised, they jumped on the Idea and that’s how “MEME” took first shape on drawing board.

Now Idea has a name but the prime challenge staring our face was to jot down goals of MEME and delineate a plan aligned to company’s goal. EFCS came to our rescue again which is biggest testament that real business value is created in interactions rather process. Jobs involving the most complex type of interactions, those requiring employees to analyze information, grapple with ambiguity, and solve problems, make up the fastest-growing segment. And we contemplated that MEME will be a revitalizing approach to manage all four generations at workplace, yielding optimum results. It will be encouraging both “personal” and “professional” sharing inside the protected walls of a company’s intranet via collaborative efforts and interaction between HCLites. Such a utilization of internal social networking will build stronger bonds amongst employees and enable them to reach out to unfamiliar employees, breaking glass ceilings of project, location & vertical etc. Their motivations in getting accustomed to MEME will include connecting on personal level with co- workers, advancing their career with company. Overall objective was predominately engaging, learning and viralating the information and best practices across the board, getting to know pulse of the company by a glance to this tool and pulling answers to questions like what are the HCLites happy about? What are they apprehensive about? Which are the policies they are appreciating? Which one they want to amend and why?

While we had some clarity of thoughts for road ahead mentioned above, we were still clueless on MEME’s evolution. Then again Ravi along with another thought leader Mr.Uday (Digital Media Expert) put forth the notion that Employees will evolve it. And it was realized that a fundamental framework was built and floated to employee’s usage. Followed by the employee’s feedback, it could further be strengthened. Now the GenY dominated team at ground were upbeat about it but the challenge was to get green signal from top management keeping in account the size, scale of project and potential repercussions it could have amounted. Each one of them certainly had If’s and But’s with numerous other doubts like people might misuse it raising undue concerns. Amidst of these apprehensions, the legitimate leader Ravi took a firm stand and believed on his Employee’s wisdom while keeping scrutiny. And finally MEME got the nod from management with condition that 10% of population must show interest in its usage, creating communities of interest within 3 months or else it will be cast off.

This further added to the pressure but nonetheless it showed up profoundly. Finally, it was on March 14^th 2011 HCL launched MEME to all its employees with a message to CONNECT, SHARE, LEARN and GROW. On April 6^th 2011 we got all doubts phased out and answered in empathic style by 25000 HCLites who became MEMErs. HCLites bought sharing and collaboration to next level with 521 groups, 4300 posts, 1030 albums, groups like BLOGHER took women connect to unprecedented heights with 83 blogs within a month.

After just 4 months, 30K mark was reached, with groups like MADJAM (Make a Difference) taking the lead, where HCLites across the board submitted 930 business innovation ideas which had have or could create monetary gains to their respective projects or domains moving the value chain. HCLites voted on MEME for these ideas and finally 7 ideas were shortlisted for final, 1 declared the winner chosen by eminent jury of Business Leader’s within company. We took decision to leverage MEME for our passion survey i.e. EPIC which resulted into in increased participation by 10252, 100% jump in USA Geo participation, Geo’s like Mexico has 100% participation courtesy MEME viraling effect. This EPIC portal recorded 1,34,745 total hits in a month. Gradually MEME became one stop solution for all employee engagement programs and we successfully ran various programs with tremendous success like EFC (EmployeeFirstCouncil) election where 20,000 HCLites voted across India locations for 5,891 self-nominated HCLites who would run these councils. MEME escalated fun@work quotient, thereby enhancing employee engagement.

Latest numbers from MEME-

A) MEMEr connections:

1. 59,185 MEMErs

2. 4,38,769 Connections

3. Averaging 7.4 friends per MEMEr and growing

B) Groups

1. 1,579 groups, 38,008 posts

2. With posts averaging 24.07 per community

3. 58,595 MEMErs contributed averaging 37.10 MEMErs per group

C) Photos

1. 49,917 photos uploaded in 15,290 albums

2. 9,516 MEMErs contributed 5.24 photos per MEMEr

3. 3,638 MEMErs sent 38,498 messages averaging 10.58 message per MEMEr

D) Status, Comment, like

1. Status and wall update – 48,378

2. Status and wall comments – 35,543

3. Total likes – 2,10,806

E) MEMEr average time spent on MEME – 10.27 minutes

The real jubilation for team came, when before going to Dalian for WEF our maverick CEO wanted to anchorage MEME for visualizing our employees on Quality Growth, which will aid the world for recovering from current global scenario. A distinct page was portrayed on him, followed by 58K MEMErs today. Around 3500-4000 HCLites visit this page weekly and share their views directly with CEO on various topics, which affect us globally. Today many senior Leaders post their dilemmas and solicit employee’s views on subject.

Meme's differentiators come truly in such thinking as people finder by location to enable applications around it and the increasing ability to perform some of the standard transactions with the organizational service desk, socially. The platform extends to company's system, pro actively used by a Gen Y.

”ASK HR” tab for that matter has been the biggest revolution; and has received 2500⁺ HR queries, which are being resolved in no time in public forum.

Now, imagine a state where employees have the ability to freely comment on a policy and discussions happening around them. That assists the company to fine-tune its policies to attain employee’s satisfaction. It has cut down the bureaucracy of escalating comments / feedback through varied channels to the policy makers. The fairytale journey which we started as Connect , Share , Learn and grow evolved into ‘super-empowerment’ of “I” through MEME for collaborative learning, innovation, retention and growth therefore we have change our tag line to “MEME-Decoding Individuality”.

Our social romance perseveres and burgeons with each passing day and like always, HCL stood unrivaled in developing technology that touches life.