CHANGES that the CORPORATE WORLD experienced and is still going through | Ranjit de Sousa | TBCY

Great to be on the show. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll start with the background of why I chose this name. I believe we are facing a seminal moment when it comes to the labor market and how we work, one comparable to what we saw 150 years ago in the Industrial Revolution. The heart of the Industrial Revolution was the coalyard, because coal really fueled the innovation back then. Coal was at the center of everything which was happening. So I took the metaphor of the coalyard for what is happening today, because I believe that how we work is going to change radically and is changing radically right now. COVID has probably accelerated the process. It's kind of taken us from 2020 into 2025, but it's just one factor in changing how and where we work, and what our relationship is with work. So that's the background and the idea behind it. And what am I doing? I'm supporting companies who are at the forefront of changing work, typically work tech companies, in scaling the business and growing the business on the go-to-market and the innovation, and how they approach and interact with customers. And then you mentioned Lee Hecht Harrison, which was my previous role, where I had the amazing opportunity to lead the largest career transition and coaching organization globally, and obviously they're also at the forefront of the future of work.

So one of the things which is probably the biggest contrast to working as the president or CEO of a large global organization is that you are very much alone. You are a sole practitioner, or you have a small team that you're leading. There, it becomes incredibly important to build your board of advisors, so to speak, who can challenge you and give you creative input and open your eyes to other ways of thinking, which happens more automatically when you're in a large organization. So I think that would be one major learning. The other one is incredible, specifically in terms of what I'm doing right now, the speed at which things are changing. A lot of it is obviously venture capital funded in terms of the startups that I work with, but the speed at which things are changing and being innovated is pretty amazing, and that's one of the other big learnings I've had.

So I'm definitely working with a focus on work tech, which is a broad area that includes things like I would say the narrow HR tech around learning, edtech, etc., and virtual coaching. But it also has a broad aspect of every kind of dimension which is connected to work. This could be building tech around how your workplace looks like or fintech around managing your finances in the work environment. So it's a fairly broad area with that focus around work. What I would say is that what I'm always looking at is the mindset that the founders have. Do they have the appetite and the love for the product and the appetite to really drive the product? And are they willing to be completely focused on the customer? Those are two very important things which for me are indicators of how successful they might be, regardless of what the product is.

Yeah, and I guess there's not just one, right? I think you will make these mistakes, by the way, also in a corporate career, but in a startup environment, there's nobody to save you from those mistakes. I think one is focus. It is very easy to get into many things, and having absolute discipline in terms of focus and saying this is the one thing that I really need to get good at, be it around your product, be it around how you manage your time, I think that is one critical thing which many people get wrong. I think the other one is really surrounding yourself with people who can help you. Many people, and this is again something which you see in the corporate world, but in the corporate world, there are probably safety nets. As an entrepreneur, you don't necessarily have the safety net. You need to surround yourselves with people who are going to help you, who are going to be good sounding boards, who could give you critical feedback. And I think that's also something which people get wrong. Then the third one I would say is you got to make sure that you're not growing too quickly. And this may sound strange, because you'd say why wouldn't you want to grow quickly? But very often growing too quickly can undermine the quality of service and the care that you need to give to your customers as a startup. So I would say that it's very often one of the challenges that startup entrepreneurs face.

Yeah, it's a great question. I think the first thing I would say is timing is everything. When you go into your career, and people often underestimate that aspect of, I guess you make your luck, but timing is very critical in terms of being in the right function at the right time. And that is not something you can always control. But you can put thought into that: what market cycle am I in? And am I going into that role where it's an upside or downside? What do I want to learn out of my next role? Then I think one thing which I heard from one of my previous bosses, and which has always been something I've tried to follow, is when you change roles, do not change too many dimensions at the same time. If you are getting a promotion, you do not want to also change geography and also change industry at the same time, or division. So try to limit the number of dimensions you're changing at the same time, because otherwise it's very hard to really get focused again and try to bring your best performance. And then the third one is also a little counterintuitive, but pick your boss. My experience has been, and this is both my personal experience and having actually watched many other friends and colleagues in large organizations, it is critical who your boss is because you can learn so much. To be fair, I've learned a lot from the not-so-good bosses; sometimes you learn more about what not to do. But having the right boss, and having a boss who really supports you and your development and really challenges you, I think is absolutely critical. I was very lucky, for example, for 8-9 years I had one boss who was amazing, well, I learned a huge amount from, and who was probably the most influential person in my career. I think it's critical that you have somebody like that.

Yeah, I completely agree. I think the HR function and the role of the HR leader has changed radically over the last two decades, moving purely from an administrative and caregiving kind of function to one where you have strategic importance. And there is recognition at the C-level that how you manage your workforce and your talent is actually critical in terms of business success. That means the HR function also needs other qualities. If you have to think about how the setup of the workforce and the skill set of the workforce is the right prerequisite to making the business successful, that requires you to really understand what the business strategy is, what the trajectory of the business is, and what the gaps are in terms of skills. That's a huge change. It has also become a much more data-driven function, which is probably also part of the segue to technology. Today, if you are a progressive HR function, you can really use the data that you have on your employees to understand how you support the progression of employees and how you ensure that the talent setup is really supporting the business and the business strategy. This is everything related to organizational assessments and skill assessments, but also ensuring on an ongoing basis that you're mapping your organization and understanding where you have critical pockets of talent that you really need to support. The other one is the move from being an administrative function to more a strategic function. Obviously, you face the fact that technology in the people space has worked pretty much like I would say 1980s television, a very sequential kind of menu which you can't really choose when and how you want to do things, whether or not it's a great experience. But individuals today, as employees in a large organization, are used to in their private life consuming technology in a completely different way, Netflix style, on demand, great experience. And so that's the other challenge HR has. If you want to keep people engaged, you need to provide them a similar type of environment to what people experience every day in their private life. When you think of supporting an individual from a coaching point of view, this needs to happen in an environment that is comparable to what you would have when you're going through some kind of learning experience privately, which will be mobile-enabled and on demand. So that is where technology plays a great role. So in a nutshell, I would say technology is about data and understanding the data about skills especially, and it is around experience that you need to be providing. And that's a huge challenge, especially when an organization has a lot of legacy systems and is challenged in terms of actually transforming that landscape.

I mean, that's something I'm super passionate about. Having a very multicultural background myself, and having had the opportunity, which is probably part of my own, to actually work and live in different countries and different continents, I think having that on-the-ground experience and really understanding and immersing yourself in the key cultures that you have in terms of your end markets is critical. And there is no shortcut to that. If you are an entrepreneur, say I'll take my location right now in Switzerland, and you say I want to be really global, I want to be able to solve the United States as a big market, I want to solve India as a big market, there is no shortcut around actually moving there, spending time in the market, getting to know employees really in terms of their environment, their daily life, and getting to know your customers in terms of their environment, their daily life. Now, clearly, if you're building a company which is going to be present in 80 countries, you cannot do that for all 80 countries. But I think picking the largest ones which you really need to understand is going to be critical in getting that on-the-ground experience. And then I would say that leads to two things. One is allowing yourself always to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who is in the US or in India, and what does that mean in terms of their frame of reference, but at the same time also looking or hearing through the noise, because people often use culture also as an excuse when it comes to moving at a certain pace or aligning across something globally. Actually cutting through the noise is equally important. I think those are the two things that you get able to do if you have been able to immerse yourself in a couple of cultures.

I do think it's still absolutely relevant. The example you just mentioned, and even when you look at it, it's beyond just respecting, which for me is a baseline of the other culture, but you want to be successful in that market. And so you need to understand the code of how business and life has actually lived in those cultures. Now, I do think one big difference to maybe 20 years ago is that nobody is giving you that support anymore. It is expected that you will do your homework before you actually move to another country. The expat experience is probably more rare today than it used to be, and it is a different one with a lot less support. The flip side of that is we have a wealth of knowledge today which is accessible at your fingertips. I believe that before going into any country, actually figuring out what are kind of the cultural codes, typically what are the rules, there are some great resources also around how people view hierarchy in different countries and how hierarchy plays out in a business context, which is typically what you need to understand. Those kinds of things can be done at your fingertips, right? And so you have the ability to do it, but I would still say it's extremely important in order to be successful.

So first of all, I think it's a huge challenge because we are moving from one paradigm where in many countries, and I would say in most countries, it was accepted culturally or required culturally that you spend time in the office, FaceTime or whatever, to a new paradigm where not only it is accepted that you can work from home or from anywhere, some companies, take Spotify where they've said that you can work from anywhere, and not only is this a new paradigm from an employer point of view, but it is one which has been required from the employee point of view. So if you want to attract talent, you have to be able to show some flexibility. Now, what is HR doing? I think one thing is, and this has been the short-term action which I've seen in many companies, is to say we're going to give you more flexibility, we are probably going to say that you have to be in the office maybe two days a week, and your Team Manager can define together with you and the team which two days of the week those should be, but we're going to provide you more flexibility. Now that is happening on a continuum. There are companies saying we need you to be in the office four days a week and maybe one day we will allow flexibility. Others are saying you can work from anywhere. So it's happening on a continuum, but the pressure is really there from an employee point of view. And I think a lot of surveys prove that point. I think the second thing which HR is clearly doing is supporting individuals and especially leaders in understanding how to use technology effectively to bring teams together. How do you use Zoom? How do you ensure that the results have no proximity bias? Because obviously you have a risk that those people who are closer to the office might drop into the office more regularly and build up a closer relationship, because at the end of the day, there is no doubt about it that we humans are relationship animals and therefore there is an advantage of seeing each other face to face. I think the third thing is innovation: how can you foster innovation in a remote circumstance? And then also, how do you change your whole setup from an office point of view? There are companies who are saying we will do away with our large flagship office in New York City, for example, and we will have smaller hubs across the Northeast of the United States where people can drop in on a regular basis, so create some proximity to home and allow for some bounce there. So I think there are a lot of creative things happening. It's going to take some time for best practices to develop, but I think it is also a huge opportunity to create more flexibility in the workforce and allow for actually a more differentiated way to attract talent and to allow for how people really can integrate work and life in a better manner. I see a lot of positives there.

I think this is one of the big open questions. I love the question. And first of all, I would agree with the hypothesis. I think there's a lot of data to support that as an emerging leader, first-time leader, and even before that when you're more an apprentice in your job, it is critical to have that in-the-moment feedback, in-the-moment support, and also the ability to connect with your colleagues in the moment. And that is obviously not possible in a virtual and remote frame. Funnily enough, many people think of remote as being more relaxed. Actually, I think it is exactly the opposite, it is more FOMO, right? Because you have to share your time, it has a very clear framework. And so that makes it very difficult to get the feedback, that coaching, and the development. How do you bridge that? I think in the short term, there are two things to bridge that. You have to have more one-on-ones. So if I'm a more senior leader, I have to have more one-on-ones with my, if I'm a manager of managers, with those people, my team who are managers, and try to coach them. But I think the other thing which will have to happen over the course of time is you're going to have a frequency of bringing your teams together and spending some time together in a normal work rhythm. So even if that is working from home, you might have a week in the office, for example, every quarter where everybody is working the full week in the office, or where you can replicate at least some of the learning. But yeah, I agree. I mean, I haven't seen a silver bullet there, but this is definitely going to be a big challenge, that whole apprenticeship at the different levels that you need to go through and how do you replicate that in a remote environment.

Absolutely. It's been a real pleasure being on the show. And I look forward to seeing many more of your shows in the future. Thank you so much. Thank you.