Reimagining Work

In a world that has changed, businesses are looking at new organisational structures

- E. Kumar Sharma

Andrew Poon, Hong Kong-based partner at global leadership advisory firm Egon Zehnder, while talking to the CEO of an insurance company from the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, heard about his plans to change the structure of his organisation. Instead of the traditional architecture, led by a set of leaders, he was thinking about organising the company on the basis of customer-focussed areas.

Poon, who advises companies on senior leadership issues, is not surprised. He is facing a unique set of questions from clients these days as businesses try to get back on track after a prolonged slump due to Covid-19. Most of the queries revolve around changes in organisation structure that companies want to undertake to become more agile and strong.

For instance, one big lesson from the Covid crisis is the need to plan ahead and think out of the box. Also, everyone, right from business leaders and academicians to sector experts, sees a rise in gig workers, led by more agile teams. Apart from this, as companies embrace new technologies, and virtualisation catches on, new roles around IT and analytics are likely to emerge.

Customer-centric Models

The insurance company from the APAC region is planning to create agile teams sourced from three broad streams – first, the people stream focussing on human resources (HR) and employee engagement; the second, a business-enabler platform covering all the functions that enable a business such as operations, digital, research and supply chain; and finally, the customer stream covering anything and everything related to the end-user, be it managing customer assignments, types of products or marketing propositions. Crowd-sourced teams will work on project mode, focussing on customers and deliverables. The idea is to have shared resources instead of a rigid structure.