NHRD Journal - National HRD Network

and regional development programs. We also
have a Career Centre, which is an internal job
portal, where employees can apply for
positions across Philips organizations
worldwide These activities are part of our
overall Talent Management process and stand
the Company in good stead with providing
Managers for our present and future
requirements.
Key Learnings
I will now move on to a few key learning's
which we have gained through experience. To
summarize, a successful change process
normally involves the following five steps:
a. Develop an Initial Plan:
This starts with painting a picture or "creating
a vision". Whatever be the state of Organization
or nature of the business, this is an important
step to put together as many pieces together
e.g. what is it that we want? Where should we
be? Where do we want to be? What is the
status today? How do we feel we will get there?
Why do we want to be there? What is not
going well today?
With many of the initiatives and changes that
we worked on - in quite some of them, I realized
that the time and effort spent in envisioning
and putting a plan was very useful and also
formed the Foundation for the next steps ahead.
b. Building a Sense of Urgency:
This to my mind is the most critical part in
organization Transformation. It is indeed a
catalyst to bring about the change. Having a
sense of urgency whilst mostly addressing a
"crisis" could also be directed to address "major
opportunities" too. In other words, it is not
only in tough times that we need to bring this
sense of urgency - but also looking to market
realities in grabbing opportunities. It is
popularly believed that the urgency rate is not
high enough until 75% of the management is
honestly convinced that business-as-usual is
totally unacceptable. Organizations that have
been successful in getting this step right - have
experienced that it smoothens very much
subsequent actions and communication that
are necessary in terms of change. We all know
that a crisis very often bonds large Corporations
and it is this state that brings people together.
• Forming a Core Group to Lead the Process :
Whatever may be the prevalent practices - it is
observed that most often the bottleneck is at the
Top. Even otherwise the troops in the
Organization look to the Top i.e. the leadership.
Be it for direction, guidance and even role
modeling. Hence, I find that in an Organization
wide Transformation - it is useful to have a core
group/steering team at the helm. Here I often
support a Top-Down approach which all would
understand very easily. The key people involved
in this team have to be persons who are in the
leadership group of the Organization and have
the mandate to lead and deliver the end results.
Of course, it is clear that the leadership group
has to own and bring about change. But, often
this role needs to be orchestrated and be seen
across in the Organization - more important is
that a "passion" in the whole process should be
evident rather than be perceived as one more
initiative / instruction flowing from the Top. A
key challenge is therefore getting to the Right
Leaders to steer the process and also more
importantly encouraging these to work as a
team.
• Communication:
This part does not need much explaining - but
truly the role it pays in the Organization, needs
some explanation. Organizational
Transformation heavily banks on a very good
communication across the Organization and
its various stakeholders. We have numerous
examples of the Organization, for whom good
communication has made the day (achieve
results). Simply put - the Organization is
people and people need to know a lot about the
November 2007 NHRD Journal 115