Story:
Creating A smarter Workforce to Ensure Competitive Advantage And Increased Customer Satisfaction through leadership eminence

Innovation that matters – for our company and for the world

Introduction: Innovation occurs in all parts of the organization and is a natural part of organizational life. Enough has been written & said about the war for talent. Most organizations combine talent, organizational design and technology in new ways to create a higher value-add per employee than ever before. They, and we, have reached a point of enlightenment:  the founding principles of today’s organizations – standardization, specialization, hierarchy – will not help us to address the talent management challenges we face.

 Anchoring innovation in strategy

Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey company surveys indicate that, for 70% of the sample, innovation is a top-three strategic corporate priority.

 Innovation cannot thrive if it is invisible. Most companies struggle to make innovation visible by quantifying it because they find it difficult to measure and report key figures in relation to innovation. Whilst some larger organizations have defined goals and measures of innovation performance, it often requires significant manual work to compile these figures. Forward-thinking companies are making innovation visible by implementing new technologies designed to facilitate, manage and measure the process from idea to implementation.

 A mandate for change is a mandate for smart

  Our world is becoming INSTRUMENTED - We now have the ability to measure, sense
and see the exact condition of everything.

•  
  • Today, there are 1 billion transistors for each person on the planet.
  • By 2010, 30 billion RFID tags will be embedded into our world and across entire ecosystems.

Everything will become instrumented: supply chains, healthcare networks, cities and even natural systems like rivers

 Our world is becoming INTERCONNECTED - People, systems and objects can communicate and interact with each other in entirely new ways.

•  
  • The internet of people is 1 billion strong. Almost one third of the world’s population will be on the web by 2011.1
  • There will be nearly 4 billion mobile phone
    subscribers worldwide by the end of 2008.

The Internet of things—cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipeline, pharmaceuticals and even livestock—is headed to 1 trillion

 Virtually all things, processes and ways of working are becoming INTELLIGENT - We can respond to changes quickly and accurately, and get better results by predicting and optimizing for future events.

•  
  • Every day, 15 pet bytes of new information are being generated. This is 8x more than the information in all U.S. libraries.
  • An average company with 1,000 employees spends $5.3 million a year to find information stored on its servers.

New computing models manage the massive amounts of data generated by the proliferation of end-user devices, sensors, and actuators. Combined with advanced analytics, these technologies are making us smarter.

 An opportunity to think and act in new ways — economically, socially and technically.

 Growing smart leaders to build a smarter planet

 IBM's corporate learning strategy includes learning solutions focused on specific leadership or people management topics. Each of them is built upon credible research and proven management theory and includes business-relevant exercises and leverages participant knowledge and experience.

 The learning is delivered via a blended model that combines individual coaching, self-study, distance learning and interactive workshops in real and virtual worlds.

 Management Development Services (MDS) - this unique program has also been harvested to create a solution that would help our clients to achieve transformational business results through the implementation of a dynamic leadership culture, strengthened management skills, and consistent approaches to people management across an enterprise.

 The solution has been innovated to enable multiple delivery media, such as delivery via a Learning Management System, an offline desktop widget and PDA devices, to make possible “any time, anywhere learning”.

 Last decade, IBM’s India Software Lab initiated specific focus on Technical Leadership Development.

 Being recognized as a leader with exceptional leadership skills, at every level in one’s career, a clear understanding of leadership and the positive impact it can have on your career is half the battle won.

 Technical Leadership Development is all about engaging with high potential technical employees, energizing and motivating their career aspirations to enable them to realize their full potential. Nurturing their professional interests, identifying growth opportunities, offering personal & professional development opportunities all lead to creating a positive environment for the employees to make informed career decisions which translate to results.

 Within the framework of Technical Leadership Development, alignment to business strategy of the organization is paramount. Such alignment sets the tone towards fostering a technically vibrant community that is able to connect to an organization’s global strategy, use the insights gained to accelerate strategic growth of the organization. Needless to say, professional success and job satisfaction is a natural by-product and retaining top-notch technical leaders is a lot easier.

 IBM’s Smarter Planet Strategy is one such framework with touches every aspect of a Business, be it Client Focus, Corporate Social Responsibility or Global Technology & Business trends. To generate Smart Business Results out of the Smarter Planet Strategy, A Smart Technical Workforce is an absolute necessity. 

 Developing a Smart Technical Workforce begins with identifying individual development needs of high potential employees, developing their individual capability with increased visibility, exposure and learning which in turn contributes to developing organizational capabilities.

Development programs should focus on topics like Qualities of an exceptional Technical Leader, Leadership Competencies and associated behaviors, tools and techniques to enhance leadership capabilities. In addition, the ability to understand Global Business trends, organization’s capabilities and identifying creative and effective solutions to business issues is key to growing a vibrant technical community.

 Another development technique that is least explored is Job Shadowing which is the best example of ‘experiential learning’. A short term temporary job shadowing assignment for a mid-level technical employee with a Senior Technical Mentor works wonders. The technical mentor is generally someone who influences the technical strategy of the organization. Such assignments provide an unique opportunity for the junior technical employee to work on meaningful tasks and strategic business objectives. Technical learning is accelerated with improved networking with key technical people, greater visibility to executives, improved IP portfolio/published works. Success of such programs is when the focus is on learning by “Doing”.

 Business Acumen completes the Leadership Development learning Circle, which focuses on enhancing Business, Customer and Financial Skills. The focus is on providing streamlined, integrated business acumen assets for technical leaders from entry through thought leadership levels. Various modules that constitute Business Acumen program are Client Perspective, Solution Proposal, Business Operations, Managing Execution and Deployment.