5 things your Chief Learning Officer should teach you

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The times they are a-changing. And both employees and employers need new skills. Urgently
1 Managing Employee Diversity
By 2012, 30 percent of Infosys' staff will be comprised of foreigners. It's a common refrain across the top 100 firms in India Inc. But managing diversity is not just about recognising differences in nationalities; it is just as much about race, gender, capabilities and age.

Many Indian firms aren't prepared for the complex changes that they will inevitably have to make in their HR policies, particularly in compensation systems. Compensation issues are usually the biggest bugbear for any firm when they begin to globalise. Is it equitable for an Indian firm to pay its Indian executives more when they post them to Africa? How do they respond when the same executive returns to India? Or as Tata Steel, for instance, found to its horror, its English workers at Corus wanted to know why the Indian workers at Jamshedpur could get pay hikes when they had to face job cuts themselves.

Of course, there are already several models of how other multinationals have managed this process - and very soon, Indian multinationals must start to develop their own code book.

2 Developing a Global Leadership Bench
Shortly after Hindalco took over global aluminium-maker Novelis, some senior Indian executives decided to offer some suggestions to their Canadian counterparts on how to save costs. They were literally laughed off. How could an Indian company tell a global major more than twice its size how to run its operations? It's a tricky issue. And it's been hanging in the air ever since Indian firms began their global M&A drive about five years ago. But now, the real work - of driving synergy and integration between Indian and overseas units - is coming to the fore. Tata Steel's Corus buy is at a critical juncture, so is Essar Steel's Algoma acquisition.

The challenge: Indian firms need a strong pipeline of their own managers who are ready to run businesses in global markets. And that means learning to adapt to new settings and cultural mores.

For instance, Hindalco executives initially found it hard to deal with the fact that Novelis executives were "hesitant" to work beyond the usual hours or come in to office during weekends. But once they began to appreciate local work cultures, the Indian executives were finally able to gel with their North American colleagues. Some groups like Essar aren't leaving it to chance; developing a global leadership bench is one of its big themes for 2010, says Adil Malia, vice president (HR). Malia is driving this initiative through an internal programme - Learning Centre and Virtual University - to first spot and then train group executives for global postings. It is mission critical for a simple reason: More than half of Essar Steel's revenues will come from its overseas operations.

3 Soft Skills are in Focus
How do you stop IT pros from behaving like geeks when they meet business clients? Or prevent shop-floor executives in retail from fumbling while interacting with customers?

Across service businesses, be it in IT/ITES, retail, hospitality and telecom, soft skills training is becoming a high priority area, says Hema Ravichandar, strategic HR advisor and former head of Global HR, Infosys. And it isn't just about learning how to talk shop. It's also about how to talk and write well, listen better and improve body language, eye contact and presentation.

In manufacturing firms, the quality of soft skills is often found wanting when executives step out into unfamiliar territory. For instance, some manufacturing firms simply did not have the ability to engage with local communities while handling sensitive issues like land acquisition in the rural heartland. Unless Indian firms learn to engage with a local panchayat or even a community of farmers, there's the danger that many rural communities could even shut them out.

4 Getting Ready for the Gaming Generation
In another two years, the first of the gaming generation - essentially those born in the '90s - will hit the job market. This is the generation that is more comfortable (or at least as comfortable) with computers, gaming and online media than with books or traditional media.

The trouble is most Indian organisations aren't quite ready to handle this transition, says K. Ramkumar, executive director at ICICI Bank. It'll mean overhauling how work is done inside the organisation, and even the way workers are trained.

Get ready to say goodbye to traditional favourites like PowerPoint presentations and classroom-based training. Ramkumar's advice: Start incorporating gaming concepts into your learning gear. He's done just that inside the bank's treasury department. Folks working on the currency desks have been trained how to detect counterfeit notes through Checkmate, a videogame that forces one to spot duplicate notes. But that's the easy part.

The bigger challenge is to deal with the narrowing age gap between senior, middle and junior management. That'll mean companies will need to put young people on a maturity curve early on, says Ramkumar. Leadership development will have to start as soon as youngsters walk in.

5 Building Nurseries of Talent
So far, most chief learning officers have been inward-looking. They've kept tabs on the firm's internal needs and devised training and development programmes. Very soon, their focus will move to building a nursery of talent for the future.

There's one key factor that will drive the shift: The skills that firms need to compete in future will change a lot faster than the talent market. By now, most firms have realised the futility of trying to influence educational institutions to change their system or tweak the curriculum. So how does one bridge the yawning skill gap?

Many more Indian firms, says Ramkumar, will build their own nurseries of talent. And they'll look for smart entrepreneurs as partners. Together, they'll focus on first identifying so-to-be graduates at least six months before they pass out of college, and then mould the young minds so that their skill sets are in line with market needs. This could soon become the number one priority for all cutting-edge firms.

By Indrajit Gupta, Prince Mathews Thomas/ Forbes India

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