It’s quite evident that the old and outdated system of leadership and governance cannot help organizations deliver high productivity or performance. Good leadership and governance is critical to performance in the changing business environment where employees want more freedom and new organizational structures have emerged. Things have also changed in the outsourcing scene and organizations need to modify their systems and processes to ensure that high performance extends to the extended organization and the business process outsourcing deal.
Delivering High Performance – Organizational Challenges
There are two main issues that organizations face as they strive to meet the high performance goal:
- Increasing complexity in environmental, organizational, supply chain, decision-making, and product processes
- Increased risks and activities, increased accountabilities and responsibilities, dissatisfaction at the workforce level and decline in productivity
Many organizations address the issue of complexity by expanding the number of organizational units. However, managing such complex structures and policies becomes even more difficult. Only a new model of governance can drive an organization towards high performance. Many organizations are encouraging a governance culture that allows employees to take part in the strategic and tactical direction of the organization. A distributed power structure has an enterprise-wide philosophy where everyone is responsible for strong leadership and good governance.
Extending the New Governance Model to the Outsourcing Deal
In order to achieve high performance, businesses have to extend the culture of leadership and governance to the outsourcing partner. Imposing another culture on the BPO company is not fair or something that can be done quickly. The solution lies in developing a mutual understanding of each other’s cultures rather than adapting or changing the existing one. According to a report published in Outsource Magazine, the outsourcing partnership needs to have 7 attributes to attain high performance:
- Awareness:- A better understanding of the changing environment, both internally and externally
- Adaptability:- Be adaptive to the changing needs of business, client expectations and requirements
- Accountability:- Each member of the outsourcing team should be aware of their own responsibilities
- Agility:- It should be ensured that operational teams, processes, structures and systems in the outsourcing group can deliver excellent performance.
- Alignment:- Every part of the outsourcing team should be aware of the responsibilities assigned to the rest of the team. Any improvements or changes should be communicated among the group and should be carried out as a joint effort.
- Action:- Action should be coordinated and implemented across the different organizations and teams. Each member of the team should have the responsibility to perform the right way to deliver the desired outcome.
- Achievement:- Achievements should be linked to general organizational goals and key objectives
Strong leadership and governance and bold, innovative talent and human resources strategies are critical to succeed in a world where competition is growing.
