Building a World Class Organization: Challenges and Opportunities

This paper was presented by the author at the “World HRD Congress” held in January 2001 at Mumbai. The paper reflects upon past, present and future of Indian organizations. Indian organizations have not been able to keep pace with internal and external change in the environment. The liberalisation of the Indian economy in the 1990s has made it imperative that to become “World Class” and remain competitive, organizations need to incorporate many changes. They need to adopt good management practices, policies, strategic perspective and people processes but also new technology. They also need to have superb leaders. Those Indian organizations that have introduced state-of-the-art technology and made structural changes however have found that simultaneous and multiple initiatives has generated anxieties in the minds of the people involved. The role of the leaders in organizations have moved from Phase I (when the organization or leader has direct interaction with most employees), to Phase II, (where the organization become more task focused and formulated some long term strategies), to Phase III (when the organization has expanded, has professionals focused on tasks, quality and excellence), and a synergy is brought about amongst various functions. This paper then defines the concept, “Organizational Excellence” and gives a few examples of Indian CEO’s who have attained “World Class” status for themselves and their organization. Finally, the paper has taken an in-depth view of one Indian organization – namely Mahindra & Mahindra, Farm Equipment Sector, (FES) and has studied the organization how over a time period of almost five years. The FES has adopted BPR and refocused on core areas thus, transforming themselves from being a traditional organization to moving toward a “World Class” organization. The role of the corporate team, the leadership and the employees are the critical factors. There are many lessons to be learnt from the FES experience, the author has identified the following: 1.Incremental excellence versus multiple and simultaneous initiatives; 2. Leadership commitment versus collective commitment to change; 3. Internally directed change versus consultant facilitated change; 4. Introduction and implementation versus sustainability and enduring change; 5. Organization and individual excellence versus work ethos and work culture; 6. Challenges and opportunities for the organization versus giving shape to the institution; 7. Building new traditions and creating pride in the product, organization and the country; 8. Self discipline collective discipline and systemic discipline.