How companies like Citi, Dabur India, EXL & others empower high performers

 

Leaders need to be constantly on call, motivating their team, pushing them to stretch their boundaries and providing the right opportunities. ET takes a look at the strategies used by CXOs to push their best men to perform even better. 

Stretching boundaries

High performers look for challenges, tasks that prompt them to constantly stretch their boundaries and an environment that encourages innovation and professional entrepreneurship. One of the cornerstones of motivating high performers in an organisation is to provide an environment that enables them to constantly raise the bar and showcase their strengths, say CXOs, who deal with such high performers.

A case in point is Anand Selvakesari, head of consumer banking, Asean & India at Citi, who believes in taking calculated risks on his people by stretching them to deliver more through extended roles and responsibilities. For instance, he creates ample opportunity to expose high performers to cross-functional and or cross-geographical markets, either as a participant or as a project leader. He also uses his network frequently to ensure that high potentials have the opportunity to meet senior global managers to further enrich these cross-market experiences. "Through these exposures, individuals invest in building their own global networks that are driven by common interests, which provide for free exchange of ideas across specialisations and allow them to further their career," says Selvakesari.

 

Agrees CV Raman, executive director, engineering at Maruti Suzuki: "We expose them to working on new products, and at times teaming up with Suzuki engineers in Japan. Each project could last up to three years. We throw extreme challenges, such as improve the performance, reduce cost or reduce the weight of parts... Opportunities are provided to present design innovations at international forums, visit global auto shows and technology centres to expand their horizons. Some of them also work on advanced engineering projects."

Allowing freedom

High performers look for a certain degree of freedom in delivering their performance and clarity in decision-making freedom entrusted by their team leaders. Companies have dedicated programmes and policies to identify high performers and give them the needed freedom to ideate, decide and act.

"We foster a culture, which empowers the employee and impacts the 'value zone'. The HCL culture allows employees to become independent while delivering the outcome. Hence, we see that high performers who demonstrate a mindset and behaviour to excel are more committed and engaged," says Sandeep Kishore, corporate VP, global head of sales & practice, engineering and R&D services, HCL Technologies.

HCL follows an inverted pyramid approach i.e. most initiatives are grounds up, rather than top down mandates. Pavan Bagai, president and chief operating officer, EXL, adds: "We give them challenging situations to work on. The more autonomy they get, more they are likely to deliver above and beyond their work responsibilities."

Showcasing Talent

CXOs believe that providing ample scope to high performers to get themselves heard is crucial to motivate in their role. At companies such as HCL, employees are provided multiple forums like Value Portal, MAD JAM, etc. to share their out-ofthe- box actionable ideas. Points of views are encouraged and ideas get reviewed across levels and potential high impact ones get deployed.

George Angelo, executive director, sales, Dabur India, says: "We try to give them high visibility projects with exposure to the highest levels of management in the organisation. In fact, when it comes to some, the biggest initiatives that have been rolled out in sales at Dabur, we have had significant contributions from some of these individuals."

Dabur has a structured process to identify potential leaders that identifies people who can handle large and complex roles. "We then expose them to roles that accelerate learning of different facets of the business. Typically, these will be roles that will provide them exposure to key stakeholders of many functions within the organisation," says Angelo.

High performers are involved in goal-setting and planning along with the senior leadership team and are given projects that involve work usually not entrusted to a person of their level.

Frequent feedback

High performers like to have regular feedback from leadership which not only helps them chart their future road map but also drives them to deliver better. Dabur, for example, has more frequent feedbacks for fast trackers, once a quarter, compared to once a year for everybody else. The purpose is reward and recognition as well as coaching. A high performer would be differentiated with a significant difference in compensation with an average performer in 3-4 year time frame.

HCL has a 360 degree Feedback that can be provided to anybody across organisation units using the 'Happy Feet' feature, thereby complementing the typical Bell Curve responses from the immediate ecosystem and providing genuine feedback for networked high performers.

Succession planning

Some extent of visibility about future roles and functions within the organisation motivates high performers. Several companies have projects to build future leadership pipeline as well as training opportunities to hone their leadership skills. "We are working on a project to build a leadership pipeline, figuring out how to go about succession planning, groom internal talent for future positions by pre-determining attributes needed in an individual to fill such positions," says Nilesh Gupta, MD, Lupin.

Furthermore, companies like EXL uses external coaches for high potentials to hone their leadership skills. "We use external coaches for high potentials as people might have great technical skills, but may not be great with people development, leading capabilities," says EXL's Pavan Bagai.