How did I survive….
When I joined an Indian conglomerate as the Group CHRO, the common belief inside the Group and in the HR fraternity was that in a year either I would leave or I would be asked to leave. When some of them told me directly, I said, “Now that I am in, I must give myself a chance and give the opportunity my best shot.”
I needed to establish my value. I was wondering where should I start? What should I do? I read “The First 100 Days” again. Finally, I decided to conduct an employee engagement survey across the Group. I called a few consulting firms to propose and contracted with one. We had 30+ businesses in the Group. I took the engagement scores of the leadership teams, i.e. CEOs and their direct reports, across all the businesses and correlated it with the operating profits of the respective businesses. The correlation turned out to be 0.86. When I sent the analysis to the Chairman and the Vice Chairmen, I was called to the Chairman’s office within 10 minutes.
The Apex management team was sitting with the printout of the analysis. The Chairman said, “This is a good revelation and a serious issue that must be addressed. Do you have a solution?” I handed over the printout of three slides outlining the underlying issues and possible solutions. He glanced through it and said, “What are you doing about addressing the issues?” I said, “Sir, nothing. All of you own the leadership teams. So, the actions have to be taken by you.” Chairman had a good laugh and said, “You are giving us homework”. I was quiet. He said, “Ok, will you help us address the issues?” I said, “Yes. Of course. That is my job.”
The credit goes to the Chairman and the Vice Chairmen. They took the ownership. Met all the leadership teams one by one. Heard them. And they got me to address all the issues. For three years employee engagement increased every year and so did the operating profits of most of the companies.
I survived for more than four years. Then I decided to set up W.E.-Matter to work with one thousand CHROs in India and assist them to replicate my learning.
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What did you do in your first 100 days?