KEYNOTE ADDRESS In conversation with A.K. Mishra, Chief Operating Officer, Innodata Inc.

HR Leaders

Roundtable Series

Winning in the Future of Workplace Perspective on how to create a high performance culture and what role does an HR leader play in winning the war for talent.

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A.K Mishra leads the Innodata operations globally. He joined the organization in 1997as General Manager and Head India operations, and since then held several key portfolios including Vice President Project delivery, Sr. Vice President global delivery and operations. His current responsibilities include Pre Sales, Delivery, Technology, HR, and other support functions. He has deep insights on people dynamics and has been the guiding force behind the progressive people policies of Innodata. His vision, foresight along with focus on diversifying and expanding the business, has helped Innodata expand its global foot-prints over the years. Prior to joining Innodata, AK ‘s glorious career span of 20 years were in ITI Ltd, where he held various senior management positions in Production, Planning, Process and Quality. AK holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering from Pantnagar University (1976) and a condensed MBA course from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (1995). He also did Component Manufacturing Technical Training from Alcatel France (1985).

A.K. Mishra Chief Operating Officer, Innodata Inc.

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Question: What are the challenges an organization would face while building a ‘winning culture’ at the workplace? So when you say about high performance culture, I think there are a few areas which we need to figure out first and that goes back to a little bit earlier than what we are talking today. Many times in an Indian environment what we have been thinking and trying to do is that once somebody enters the organization and is within these four walls, we can do few things: training, creating a certain program, a systematic approach and building teams. Then people can jump in to a very high performance model very quickly or you can create teams which will be competing very well and still will be coming out with a win-win situation. I think there is a preparedness that happens before. It could be academics or it could even be before academics. Unless things also change there, it becomes very difficult for us to visualize that particular person within these four walls will behave in a

particular fashion. I am not talking about a couple of percentage of the population of the organization. I am not saying the top 5% and I am not taking the entire company. Entire company is of 4000 people and high performers could be of 2% or 5% and you can bracket them differently. High performance teams could be out there and they will constitute (as I have seen) only about 15%-20% of the team. Remaining people are only supporting them. Now, unless you do something about the remaining people and try to see how these all people can go closer to the high performers and I don’t think that we are really building an organization which can compete globally. You can do certain good things based on that performance of certain individuals but not the entire team and that’s where my challenge has been all this time. So when you go and start recruiting, you normally will try to get people who fit in to that mold. Now, the fact remains that we live in these conditions where outside these four walls you are in a culture which is not

a high performance culture. You are many times accommodating sub-optimal performance taken from any field like transportation, household related things, going to the shopping malls and even going out to any other place you see. I mean there is no high performance culture. So by thinking that by doing only a few things we can transform the whole organization into high-performance, I think we need to support it from there. If that support is not coming to you then you need to create that support within the organization. So there are these two factors I have been struggling with all the time that you get can good at some individuals and you can form certain teams but that is the kind of cream of the company. You are still leaving 80% behind and until that 80% performs to your level, you cannot compete. One of the challenges I have seen in the BPO industry is that. .

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Question: What is the role of an HR Leader in the culture building process? Now, HR leaders have evolved so much over a period and I think that is the one role that has evolved maximum over the last 30 years. They have evolved from a very traditional, personal manager to (what we call now) HR Leaders but I still think that a lot more needs to be done. Recruiting of course becomes the first step when they need to lookout for talent, look out for the good resource fit and I believe that’s where the search for high performers start. Unfortunately, traditionally we do not have good means of spotting that talent early. It still remains in personal interviews, or certain tests or certain referrals but still we do not get sufficient data. HR leaders need to find that data from somewhere. In today’s context when we talk about social media and we talk about other digital connectivity which is happening, I think they have a role to play to really analyze that data and then filter out a good cream

which is good for the industry rather than just utilizing traditional approaches. I think even if we say that you can go to online portals and get your people in. Normally what we do is we go out and look for 10 profiles. We find out from the whole pool that which are the 10 (profiles) most closer to mine and then get them over for interview and figure out who is the fit. I think we need to do much more than that. So, HR leaders need to transform to more of analysts of the lot of information that is available and then try to filter it out in such a manner that they really come back and present those candidates that we know to X% of confidence that these are going to be high performers. So, rather than taking a chance and finding out after sometime I’m visualizing that maybe in next 3-4 years that stage is going to come. HR leaders have a big role to play but then I see their role more of connecting themselves into all that social media, digital connectivity, utilizing tools and utilizing approaches and really filtering out good candidates. That

becomes one. Then of course when we talk about how to build that culture within that company? So, normally we have not been habitual of win-win. I think it again comes back to the society you are in, so win-win approach is limited to a certain section. In maximum cases, I think people still go for win-lose or ‘I must win and I don’t care if you win or not’. So, I think HR leader’s role becomes more and more prominent. How do they continuously work on that if anywhere ‘win-lose’ is happening then how to covert that ‘win-lose’ into a ‘win-win’. I think another side that I am seeing is especially in HR leaders since the workforce is becoming global and in my experience of last 15-17 years when I have been doing multi-geographies, multi-cultural, multi-countries team’s management. That is one where HR leaders need to grow, they need to become that global manager.

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There are excellent local, geographical or local country managers but there is a very small pool of HR managers who are global managers. Understanding globally how they can harness the talent and get that over. So, we can again talk about manufacturing verses the IT, retail and the service industry where things are changing so much and I think the big factor is going to be- how do you provide that high performer globally from anywhere and for that you need to be a global manager. You need to figure out ways and means of how you can still interview an Indonesian or a Chinese or an Indian or an Israeli or an American and can still fulfill your needs. So, that is one area where I am seeing HR leaders will be evolving pretty soon.

Question: How does leader’s communication style make or break the desired high performance culture? Communication style definitely is the key because as we all know that human beings listen to a person who is non-confrontational and who has got something to share which is good. So, communication style has to not only take care of these fundamentals but also has to change based on the team that you are addressing and based on the location you are in. Certain human fundamentals remain the same, everybody wants an open environment, transparency, jolly kind of a non-pressured environment and freedom but then you cannot carry your message across in a similar structure everywhere. I will give you one example; If a customer is annoyed, let’s say something happened in a service which you were giving, and the customer is not happy. Now the first thing for the people manager (who is also a functional manager many times) need to understand when that customer is giving you

the feedback. I’ve seen many times people have not been able to really understand the level of unhappiness that the customer has. So, that is first-understanding. Second becomes, how do you carry that message to your team? Certain teams like take the teams in India, you need to be very straight and you need to be very forth-right in communicating that this is what happened and that the customer to this extent. Now, going forward we analyze that these are the mistakes we did and this is how we are going to ensure in future that they will not be repeated and this is the new process and the systematic approach. You can communicate that and then you can share your ideas and they will come back with their feedback. I don’t think if you can do the exactly same thing, I am taking an example of Philippines and if I am sitting in Philippines and I need to communicate exactly the same message then my style changes. .

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It has to change to the local environment so that they can still listen to me as this team has listened to me. One of the fundamentals will be that if I start my tone in that intensity when customer was unhappy and I need to carry some of those emotions into to the discussion, Philippines team will shut down and will not listen. You have to make it very comfortable and share and maybe joke around and even then go through the same thing and they will do exactly the same thing that probably the Indian team would do So, the communication style that fundamentally, everyone wants to be hearing same things but then it has to change in the global context to suit how the message will get across exactly.. Definitely! That is what we are seeing and not only that but probably within our own environment (Indian environment also) and I think when you are talking to your senior team verses middle team verses junior team verses entire company, I think your facts and figures change and then your style also changes.

Question: What are the key drivers of Talent Acquisition today and do you see any change in what will drive recruitment in the foreseeable future? I think I have some challenges there. I have seen the definition of talent itself changing. So depending on the teams that you are in, if the teams are not high-performing and if teams have been not put in those conditions where they are competing a lot then the meaning of talent is different verses the meaning of talent when they are competing a lot, when they are globally answering things and globally competing. So, their talent is different. Let’s say that we all understand what talent is. One of the factor is that most of the companies have been looking in and around as compared to the teams or the companies you look who are very highly successful. I think when we say talent density, it is of course when you define what the talent is and then you can define what the density is. In my 100 people team, how many of

those talented people are there. So, you can say that it is talent density. I think the talent density needs to increase multiple fold and the talent density needs to increase before the growth happens. Mostly, what we are seeing is that it happens along with the growth or it is very reactive as well because if you see that you are lagging behind then you are looking for talent. I think for the talent acquisition, this factor needs to change. It has to be a very proactive approach and you have to plan in advance and you have to increase your talent density of the existing teams and be ready a little bit before the growth happens. If I go from a little side perspective and little from the holistic approach and the world-wide approach. So, whatever we see as outsourcing happening in the country as India is a good outsourcing center right from call centers to IT to everything else.

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In fact this is talent acquisition by those organizations who are doing outsourcing. From that perspective take IBM, take Accenture, take Microsoft or take any of those companies. They were not having sufficient talent and they needed talent to be available to them at a cheaper price and or at a comparable price or at a price that they can expand. That is how outsourcing happened. So, I am not looking talent acquisition only as a means that you employ the resource with you. It could be in any form. You can get out and globally get that talent from anywhere. What needs to workout is your cost verses the talent which you are acquiring. What ratio you can afford? How much you can afford? And then you can go and get it from anywhere. So, the way I am looking at talent acquisition is that it’s changing the term in which you can recruit a person in your company and build the talent pool. You need to be global and you need to get the talent wherever that is available. The very factor that let’s get some people in and then let’s train

them to become talented pool is good and that is needed. But I think it is becoming much more important that you look outside, look in the global platform and wherever that is available then see how that can be used in your organization. It’s changing already and in fact the biggest example is all the outsourcing which has happened. I happened to do a big case study and I did a research paper that was exactly on this and a lot of data is out there which shows that how the talent was not available sufficiently in those countries and hence all these things came up. Fortunately Information Technology accelerated that process.

Question: How critical is measuring candidate experience for long-term brand building of an organization? You are making a very good point which I think has been over looked by majority of the companies and normally the data shows that the selection process is limited to say 5% or maximum 10% of the employees who are applying. So you select probably 5%-10% and not more than that and obviously you are leaving out 90% who have been rejected by you. They have only negative things to talk about. So, it becomes very important for us to figure out that how that customer touch or how that experience needs to change from talking negatives to talking positives or at least neutral but positives is what we are looking at for the brand building. This area has not been addressed so far and there could be various means.

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I go back to 1998 experience. We had opened Innodata and we had a team of I think by that time of 300 or so and in 1998 I think GE opened. GE capital opened their plant somewhere in Gurgaon and the employees who went there, came back happy only with one experience that Coke and coffee was free. I am just remembering 15-16 years ago. So that was at that time a part of brand building. It might be very small thing like just making cold drinks or beverages free to a different kind of experience. Even sitting down and suggesting what else you need to do in order for you to succeed here next time. Giving that positive feedback. Even eluding them to a certain course or a module that if you can come and do this and your position will go up. That is an area which is very important and I’ve not seen many companies still walking out and doing extra steps in that direction. Question: Leveraging technology innovations for transforming the effectiveness of recruiting process.

I think it is a combination that needs to work. So technology is necessary in order for you to reach out to your targeted audience. You go to social media and you go to different sites and pick up information right from LinkedIn to any other ways in order to reach out to your target audience. As soon as you reach your target audience, I think then comes your touch feel experience. How much have you been able to share? How much have you been able to give a chance to that talent and to that resource to share his or her perspective of what that person wants to do in life and how you can create a platform to marry the two? It’s going to be a good combination of use technology to as much as needed because you will need that and because HR needs to do a lot more in terms of harnessing that and we even call that the big data approach which is working everywhere. After that there is definitely a touch which is needed. So you would like to find a combination of something 70% of technology touch and then 30% of the personal touch to make this happen.

Question: Kindly share your thoughts on the relevance of Workplace 2020 initiative. It is a very good concept. As I said that I was a little eager to know what the differentiator is and you made me fully understand that it is the real people out there who have experience and people who have lived it. I think people will not only be willing to listen to them but also but also believe that the curriculum coming out from these people is going to be much better and suited. I keep multiple challenges that how will you keep on changing your curriculum quicker and faster because curriculum is not only changing fast but since new domains keep on coming. Therefore, designing curriculum for those domains becomes a bigger issue but they are good challenges and I think it is a very good effort. My best wishes!

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