How business & coaching is reshaping with time: Rahul Sinha

2020 was a year that was the move from the Known to the Unknown.

The outgoing year 2020 with its challenges and uncertainties gave to us, a platform where each one of us rise up to the occasion and perform beyond the capacities each one performed before.

2021 would be the year that would have its own challenges. This is where how we respond to these challenges would be different. We started 2020 with certain skills, competencies, and mindset. Now that we have ended 2020 and starting 2021 we have added ourselves newer skills, newer competencies and a stronger, determine and resilient mindset. This added factor/s, within each one of us would be the positive difference with which we are starting 2021.

In my view this coming year 2021 would be handled better keeping certain factors in mind. Let me paint the picture as I foresee 2021 to be and the way I consider it best managed and Won.

I consider that 2021 would be a year that would be approached by all more cautiously but more surefootedly. The budgeting exercise for example would be done not considering ‘as per previous years’, but with a better understanding of how 2021 would be behaving. The uncertainties of 2020 would be taken as known factors. For example

• Work from home

• Controlled working hours in this WFH scenario

• Physical fitness and newer illnesses

• Connectivity Systems and equipment – WiFi, laptops, defined work areas etc.

What I foresee that the corporate today has realized a new meaning of the word employee engagement. The surface level activities that were practiced by many would now have to go deeper. The bonding and engagement of the employee with the organization in the lack of a defined physical space is the newer challenge. The engagement of the employee now is to be done by aligning him to the Organization Purpose, in a way that he fids himself contributing to the Organization wellbeing and growth.

Purpose: each employee must have a crystal-clear understanding of the purpose of his role and how this purpose is aligned to the purpose of the organization. Working in silos under such loosely held physical organizations is going to be disastrous and the only way as I foresee is a very aligned individual to the organizational purpose. It reminds me of working in turbulent times (Peter Drucker) or even rowing in fast moving turbulent rapids (Stephen Covey).

Each employee must be aligned with the organizational purpose and with this he or she can work independently.

Here, I would like to emphasize the difference of an employee working in corporate earlier to what I envisage now. Earlier, the word teamwork, team spirit meant each team member holding on to the other Pulling and Pushing each other together. What I foresee now is each member on his own aligned to that one organizational purpose. At times the organization is very big and has to be drawn into manageable compartments. These compartments are so well aligned to the larger organizational purpose that each member within this compartment is aligned to this department purpose but from a distance, this realignment is so perfect that the departmental borders vanish.

In my view, achieving all this is more than this depiction on Paper. It calls for major shift from an Individual mindset to an Organisational Mindset. This shift would be from the Leaders and with a major cascading downwards.

This is a year of Paradigm Shift and the need for Action…!

The writer Rahul Sinha is an experienced executive Coach and available on uExcelerate Platform for individual/group sessions.