Being in the space of corporate careers, talent and people – many friends, family members and colleagues often request me to guide their children on their career and higher education choices. I willingly make time, as I enjoy doing it.

The first question, I ask them as aspirants is, “In your own assessment what are you good at? and what do you love doing?” Most start by answering what academic subjects they are good at and they straight jump into explaining their potential career choices, such as – wanna become a software engineer, medical and healthcare professional, sports manager, chartered accountant, sales and marketing professional, human resource professional, etc. What I find interesting is that most of them are clear and already opinionated about what they want to do, which is a good thing. But what worries me is that most of them haven’t tested themselves in the extra curricular space as a student and have given very little importance to finding out what their aptitude is, what they love doing or what makes them happy. Please note most of these people are from middle class and it’s higher strata of the economic segment of our country. They have access to good education at reasonably decent schools and colleges.

This makes me wonder about the educational framework of our country and the early counselling they receive in school, college and at home. Making children focus more on choosing career tracks that are more linked to achieving monetary prosperity versus matching their career choices to their aptitude and happiness, begs a question, or rather say many questions. Coz then later in life, somewhere down the road they end up realising they are in a rat race and not a career.

I keep thinking about it and wish to come up with a solution for this. What do you think?

In my observation one big confusion that prevails in many organisations and amongst it people, is to be able to clearly understand and distinguish between “Strategic Work” Vs “Tactical Work” in their roles.

It’s my view organisations and their leadership teams, if are strategically capable and execution focused, they tend to succeed more than their peers. This can be achieved by building a clear understanding of strategic work Vs tactical work in employees roles.

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

In the last one and half years, I interviewed more than 150 bright and talented people across mid to senior levels, I found that more than 90% of those people demanded and aspired for more strategic work in their roles. When I asked them to describe what does strategic work Vs tactical work means to them – I realised how the understanding varies with every individual. About a year ago, I started to maintain notes and began researching and analysing my qualitative data points of each and every interview. Will share some of my insights and thoughts in this blog post.

In her article featured in Forbes Magazine in 2018, Bhavana Dalal, very nicely explains, “What does it mean to be tactical? Tactics refer to the skill of dealing with or handling difficult situations, to achieve a specific goal. On the other hand, a strategy is defined as a comprehensive high-level, long-term plan. Being tactical focuses on tasks, concrete smaller steps, best practices, specific procedures, and resources. Meanwhile, a strategy is tied to purpose, goals, and vision.”

As per my learning and understanding, strategic work involves creating a long term plan for a organisation and working on high level strategic things such as Vision, Mission, Purpose of the organisation. Defining key focus areas, objectives and goals for the organisation and its key people. Being able to design and successfully build brands, processes, culture, technology platforms and talent pipeline and a operating model for the firm also falls in the area of strategic work. On the other hand performing tasks to deliver and execute your strategy is tactical work. In addition, tasks such as responding to a crisis, managing a difficult situation involving customers, employees, suppliers, unions are examples of tactical work. In simple terms, building strategies, plans, objectives for higher value creation for the organisation and it’s stakeholders is strategic work, most other things is tactical work.

All roles of an organisation, cutting across levels will always have a mix of strategic and tactical work. What’s important to note is that as a rule of thumb, senior level employees should have 90% of strategic work and 10% of tactical work as a mix in their roles, responsibilities, objectives and deliverables. Middle level should be 50/50 and lower level of employees in the Org chart should have 90% of tactical and 10% of strategic work built into theirs.

In conclusion, I say, “The CHROs should take it upon themselves to socialise this thinking and approach in their organisation and design and build processes and a culture which will become a value creator.”

In case you are interested to learn more about this. Related articles that, I suggest you read are as follows:

1) https://nesslabs.com/why-most-strategies-fail 2) https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2015/05/17/whats-the-difference-between-strategy-and-tactics/?sh=237ecca57103. 3) https://www.forbesindia.com/blog/business-strategy/the-difference-between-tactics-and-strategy/. 4) https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/five-fifty-strategy-vs-execution

Post the COVID pandemic, the biggest challenge globally for the CEO, CHRO and other CXOs is how to get employees back to office. Most CEOs and CHROs consider it necessary to get employees back to office, for the in-person social interactions which, many feel is the bedrock of team work, collaboration, innovation, etc. But getting them back safely, creating a safer than before workplace and ensuring employee motivation and morale remains high, is going to be a likely challenge.

Most companies are designing a hybrid model which will involve some employees permanently working from home and some working in office three days a week and two days from home. Of course it’s important to note that not all jobs, even office based, can be performed from home effectively. Therefore, clearly define what is the hybrid? Will it apply to all employees/roles? There are no clear answers at this stage and it remains a challenge from equity and fairness point of view.

For the past one year plus most office based employees have gotten used to working from home and if you look into it deeply, you will learn what has changed. Let me share what I have learnt and observed from an employees perspective:

What people have started valuing the most:

1. Office commute time, be it 30 mins or 2 hrs, it’s been eliminated and people have found more time available in the day.
2. Flexibility to plan and juggle work and life demands, has gone up significantly as the factor/variable of going to office isn’t there.
3. Constant supervision by superiors in a contained office environment has disappeared and that has given many people, who were heavily supervised a sense of ease, independence and freedom.
4. Reduced expenses of commute, travel, formal clothing and accessories, etc has facilitated a minimalistic high quality living and increased savings.
5. Freedom to move from large cities and cramped apartments to smaller cities/towns into bigger homes with family, parents, pets and loved ones has enhanced the quality of lives of many people significantly.
6. The devastation and deaths due to COVID in the world has touched and rattled everyone in some way or the other. This has made people re-evaluate their priorities and many are choosing to give a higher priority to their mental and physical health vs wealth creation alone. People have started to evaluate and recognise what’s more important to them and are choosing for a more healthy and better quality of life over a career driven by purely aggressive ambition.
7. People have built significant skills for using remote working digital platforms and technologies and have learnt to be more efficient and productive whilst working working from home.

Now you see the challenge for the CEO and CHRO. So how should they go about doing what’s right for the organisation’s business and people in a balanced manner. Its only wise to recognise and address this challenge very carefully and thoughtfully. In my opinion the “Do’s” and “Don’t” are as follows:

Don’t:

1. Don’t force any authoritarian decisions on your people and expect them to accept and comply. If you do it, you are bound to loose a lot of talent, in the short term but even more in the medium and long term. Talent will find opportunities and move to organisation that are more sensitive to their needs.
2. Don’t be insensitive and dismiss people’s fears. Sensitive and caring leadership is the need of the hour.

Do’s:

1. Request your CHRO and the HR team to independently gather insights about how your employees are feeling and what are their hopes and fears. Articulate and summarise them and present them unfiltered to the CEO and CXOs.
2. Evolve a plan using clear lenses for objectively deciding, as far as work flexibility is concerned and what your hybrid model will look like. Lenses such as; a) List jobs that cannot be performed from home. For example jobs in manufacturing, sales, R&D labs, customer service, retail outlets, office reception, etc. are jobs that cannot be performed from home in most industries. b) Senior leaders at N-1 and N-2 are roles and jobs that are less effective when performed from home permanently. A few days in a week or month is okay. 3) Jobs that are usually outsourced and have little need for collaboration and socialisation in a workplace can be performed permanently from home, with some hot-desks for them in office. d) Since we are coming out of the pandemic, I suggest we use the lens of COVID-19 vaccination and safe behaviour protocol. Open up offices and invite people back when you have crossed some sort of threshold of 75% or 80% of your employees should be vaccinated with both dosages. That will help you create a safer workplace and ensure employees safety while they commute.
3. Educate and train people leaders to rebuild the thinning personal touch and connection with their people. They have to learn to engage with people effectively in the new normal of hybrid working models.
4. Transform the hiring and on-boarding process of the organisation to best suit your woking model. While hiring make sure the contracts are crystal clear to all stakeholders. Onboarding and engaging people who are going to working from home is a new challenge that needs to be addressed. Re-hire or re-contract the working model terms with the existing employees if necessary.
5. Remember, many employees are eagerly waiting to come back to office. People are missing the workplace, it’s social network and experience. They are missing the travel, off-site meetings and all the fun elements that go with work in a great workplace. Welcome them back nicely and continue to build a superior workplace in all respects.

In conclusion, I suggest, what ever model you evolve and adopt, it should be positioned as a pilot, on a trial basis. Keep modifying and refining it based on learning’s and insights. The best model will be the one that enables an organisation to get work done effectively, retain its talent that will deliver superior business results.

Please do share your thoughts and views on this blog post. Me and my team are in the midsts of doing this in our company.