While accountability of the field staff can be measured in terms of business outcomes, accountability of the corporate office functionaries has to be weighed in terms of intangibles like timely support, motivation provided, staff development initiatives and intelligent business inputs, says Anil K. Khandelwal in ‘Dare to Lead: The transformation of Bank of Baroda’ (www.sagepublications.com).
When top executives demand superior performance from the field functionaries, they also have an obligation and responsibility to give the required support, resources, guidance and business wisdom to enable them in delivering profitable outcomes, insists Khandelwal.
Exchange ideas
Stating that a vital role of a leader is to initiate a dialogue and encourage exchange of ideas between the corporate office and field functionaries, he advises corporate functionaries to respect the feedback, insights and inputs from the field functionaries when designing growth strategies and new products.
In a section on ‘communication,’ the author underlines that if we expect our frontline to engage itself with our vision and be a partner in the transformation process, we need to make space for people to speak freely about the issues and problems that hinder their performance. “We need to open the door for regular conversation with our employees. We don’t have answers to all the problems while sitting in the executive suite. The conversation and dialogue with employees help us to create entirely new possibility and solutions to our problems.”
Recommended study.
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