R. Shekar Rajat invited the HR Head to air his reservations on the plan presented to the board and asked for suggestion on how to make it happen. Having been used to fighting tactical fires daily, the HR community was somewhat sceptical about their own state of readiness to embrace something of this magnitude.
Nevertheless they decided to go ahead with a workshop on competency mapping and consolidation and commissioned Sandhya to take the lead.
R. Shekar Rajat Batra's approach won the favour of the board members but the HR head and the CFO looked unconvinced throughout. They had seen many a CEO hoodwink the board before and were curiously guarded in their confidence about the CEO's ability to get them bought by the operational layers of the organisation?
Soon thereafter Rajat convened an `all hands on deck' meeting with over 100 senior and middle managerial personnel. In response to the communication on the commitment made to the board, several ideas emerged that were classified into a 2x2 matrix as laid out across.
R. Shekar Rajat Batra was brought in as the youngest ever CEO at 35 with a stiff mandate to figure out a way of stemming the accumulated losses built up steadily over the last 12 quarter. He was handed over the operational plans and financial statements of 92 different budget centres to study and recommend a turnaround strategy to the board for approval within the next 30 days.
R. Shekar Sangeeta’s summer project concerned the study of mutuality of expectations, set by the employers on the employees and vice versa. By polling the perceived effectiveness of the employees in their current roles using the five questions below, they hoped to improve productivity and satisfaction levels at work. Redundant work that could be eliminated altogether. Repetitive work that was more conducive to automation.
