Multinational firms have traditionally been dominated by local employment regulations wherever they are situated in. However, with firms ever increasing and challenges often converging a new strategy of common policy across national boundaries has been established. This has multi-pronged advantages. It enables more stringent following of codes of conduct to avoid money-laundering, bribery and corruption.Talent management improves as employees across borders are treated on similar scale while only taking care of local laws. There is now a greater integration of global workforce leading to increased levels of productivity. Local offices also help in improving the public face of the firm, enabling more effective marketing.  

Organizations are so focused on the daily routine of business and implementing projects in time that they forget to include change as an element of their business strategy. Thus, they end up lagging behind when the environment changes rapidly.

Successful organizational change strategy includes analyzing the 5 disciplines of Planning for change, taking Leadership of change, Managing change, change Maintenance and finally change Portfolio Management.

Stakeholders like consumers, suppliers and employees are continuously evolving and the business architecture must support business strategy which consciously implements Big Change processes and Small Change projects to keep the organization aligned to the customer.

Architecting the Business for Change:

1.      Working out ways to improve organizational agility.
2.      Business strategy should incorporate changes in the marketplace.
3.      The 5 disciplines of organizational change should be integrated into the business architecture.

The foundation of an organization with change at its core is maintenance of change. This ensures that the organization continues to focus on change.

Project Planning and Management teams must work with professionals from teams of leadership for Change and managing Change to effectively structure the organization for change.

According to business consulting giant PwC, a consortium of industries is set to add over five hundred and fifty billion Euros to the overall revenues within the zone. This is due to the various opportunities arising and those that will grow due to the industrial internet. This industry 4 will involve manufacturing, process industry, automotive industry, electronics and communications. The degree of digitization is now above 80% or close to that figure in all these industries. The efficiency level has gone up by 3.3% while costs have gone down by 2.6%.

At times of organizational crisis, usually business consulting agencies advice them for restructuring. However, structure is a misleading term as organizations do not work in structures but are instead living creatures. A shift is needed in three ways- management, individual and organizational. Periodic financial data is merely an indicator not the performance analyzer. People are dynamic and with proper corporate training and shift in perspective can become the top resource. The organization needs to possess and further build upon its values and culture which do not develop overnight. Finally the six box leadership model has been subscribed to. This includes people dynamics- culture, relationship and individuals- and process related ones- strategy, systems and resources.  

The Workplace Centre Limited (TWCL) is a business consulting firm in Nigeria which has clearly demonstrated that servicing levels are not up to the mark for customers at large. Much management training is required across industries to educate regarding the value of customer service provided. The image existing at present in Nigeria is of public sector enterprises lacking coordination and consistency over their operations. Nigerian brands will go on to achieve major success in Africa and the wider world if this one detriment can be cleared out.

An HR Tech Conference was held in October, 2015 which looked into the different ways in which technology is getting integrated into corporate training modules. Capgemini is among the pioneers in this change as the organization has implemented a company-wide interface which can be logged on at any time to aid learning and development of employees. Integration with technology has also helped making the training curriculum more global in nature and suitable to the present needs. Tutorial videos, transcripts and regular assessments are all part of this portal.

Ganesh Ayyar, the CEO of Mphasis has provided us with management consulting on ways to transform the corporate culture. He says that physical transformation is easier as it is aided by such instruments as reporting lines or incentive schemes, but the real challenge in organization building is the work culture among the people associated. It is all the more important in today’s digitally wired world where cannibalization is frequent. Also one must embrace failure as it is part of the learning curve and business innovation will not occur without the aid of the same. Apple is one perfect example of an organization bouncing to the top after learning from past misses.