Whatever you do, do it from your heart. Do not expect any outcome or have any expectations, said Vasudevan Swaminathan – Founder and Chief Executive Officer, ZUCI Systems.
He was speaking at Avtar’s cutting-edge DEI conference, ‘The Power of I’ in the panel discussion ‘Decision-making in a diverse, dispersed, and dynamic workplace’. The session was moderated by Kannan Hariharan – Chief Strategist – Culture and Belongingness, Avtar, and comprised other speakers: Aparna Rao – Country Head and Boar member, CBS, India, and Argenio Antao – Chief Operating Officer, MRICS. They discussed the importance of leadership and decision-making in a diverse, dispersed, and dynamic workplace and their personal experiences as leaders.
Aparna added, “In 2019 (in my previous organization), we had monthly global meetings where colleagues from Europe, Costa Rica, APAC, etc. joined. The meeting did not feel good month after month. People were having fun, had their inside jokes, conversed in different languages and the rest of us did not understand what was happening. When COVID happened, and we all started working remotely, we had the best meetings. Everyone was at the same level, we had fun, everyone contributed, and there was no exclusion. Today, we have a hybrid team but we ensure that the remote employees are not excluded. The ones coming to the office are not the only ones who are heard and can influence. It is leadership which makes a difference.” She noted that leaders must be flexible and agile in a more dynamic environment. If they can lead themselves first and observe the changes that are happening to lead others?
Vasudevan shared his experience as a founder of ZUCI and revealed that ZUCI was bootstrapped in 2016. The maximum growth happened during the pandemic. While many organizations kept losing people, the attrition rate at ZUCI was 2%.
He said they focused on ‘empathy’ and ‘respect’. Some of the initiatives:
• Storytelling sessions that communicated their values and vision
• Ensured leaders communicated with their respective teams and understood the problems and challenges they were going through
• Asked leaders to be active listeners and empathize with their team and make them feel valued
Argenio said that while the world turned to work-life integration, they had asked their employees to bring home to the office. “While they worked from home, we allowed them to have intermittent breaks to attend to their home and family. While video conferencing, we encouraged them to keep their videos on so that we could see them. We had employee engagement activities to ensure that the employees felt belonged to the organization,” he added.
