Abstract
As the world is changing faster than ever before, change has become ‘the new norm’. This fast-paced change calls for an ability to integrate and develop internal and external competencies to address the rapidly-changing environment. The book Future Ready Organisation by Gyan Nagpal makes its readers aware of the advancements in the business world. It prepares them for the anticipated changes in this Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world. The book presents a lens to the future leaders and managers to perceive their organisation’s history, current reality and keep an eye for upcoming opportunities. This book is intended for corporate leaders, managers as well as students and researchers who wish to know the importance of an organisations talent recipe in reshaping the future organisations.
Explanations provided through the use of rich examples and cases throughout the book truly reflect on how organisations should prepare themselves for the future. The author makes the readers reflect on essential assumptions such as Talent, Automation and Leadership that need a transformation to challenge the status quo in the upcoming years.
Apportioned into two halves, the first half (first seven chapters) of the book highlights the emerging trends in the world of organisations, and the second half (next five chapters) suggests practical tools and frameworks that can aid in stepping up as a future-ready organisation.
The readers can be hooked to the book, at the beginning itself, with four congeneric stories of Apple, Google, Atari and Hewlett-Packard. The stories convince the readers that the book is worth the read. The trends and developments are emphasised well by similar classic examples of successful organisations and personal anecdotes by the author throughout the book. The stories form the basis to explain the concept of talent formally. The first two chapters make the reader familiar with the importance of ‘talent recipe’ for an organisation and how it’s meaning has evolved. The subsequent chapters define and explain the Dynamic Capability Spectrum viz. internal, external and network capabilities in an age of three dominant trends: End of loyalty, Automation and Global nature of work. This first half concludes by highlighting the more significant roles and responsibilities that endows upon the talent with the emergence of intelligent automation.
The author makes a coherent shift from explaining ‘What’ are the evolving organisational capabilities to ‘How’ to develop these organisational capabilities in the second part of the book. This section provides an insight into the readers to build a dynamic capability leadership that is flexible and responsive to the changing trends of the VUCA world. Chapter 9 challenges the current strategies used by organisations for Talent Acquisition, such as Personal Interview due to the inherent deceptions such as Ingratiation, Impression Management and Mental Hijack to appear more genial and likable. The author thus suggests 10 applicable gizmos to cultivate and strategise for a dynamic capability system that is unhindered from these biases. A lot of organisations have started practicing these ideas such as gaming, hackathons, outsourcing and case study contests, however, more and more organisations can start following ideas like ‘Mid and late-career internships’ and ‘Aquihiring’. In an age of mergers and acquisitions, acquiring a firm for its employees than for other resources holds a lot of potentials.
The tools and frameworks provide a direction to the readers to channel their efforts towards a future-ready organisation by testing their readiness to align the talent recipe to the changing customer needs, technology and competition.
The book maintains a consistent flow, extensively covering the relevant topics at hand. Each topic organises into subsections that entice critical thinking and insightful discussion among the readers. This structuring helps to draw linkages between topics effortlessly.
The author has used a descriptive and analytical approach to explain the subject matter. The upcoming concepts/trends are woven together in detail with the help of theoretical explanations backed by research findings. These explanations are further built upon and analysed through data points, giving the reader a realistic picture of the current scenario. Relevant examples, case studies and personal anecdotes support each topic. Organisations are very well resonated with a variety of examples provided. They make the reader analyse the past and the present, along with strategising the future. This analysis becomes necessary to transform into a future-ready organisation.
The book also makes the reader familiar with the idea that to thrive in the future, organisations and especially leaders need to do more than innovations in products and processes. A culture of anticipating beyond the boundaries of the current trends, looking outwards, not only within the organisation should be focused upon, along with creating a culture of leadership, feedback and information sharing.
Given that artificial intelligence, robotics and digital disruption are revolutionising the workplace, HR practitioners, managers and leaders should consider building dynamic capability a vital aspect of it. Instead of mere efficiency, successful organisations must be designed for speed, agility and adaptability to enable them to compete and win in today’s fast-changing global business environment.