Introduction
The journey from good to great leadership
Excerpt from Ravin’s interview in peopleHum.
Vanessa Rose: So, Ravin. Do you believe that there’s a trend for organizations to change perspective from being business-centric to people-centric? How do organizations go about planning this journey?
Ravin Jesuthasan: That’s a really good question, you know, in Davos this year, the World Economic Forum advanced its primary theme of stakeholder value as opposed to just shareholder value. And we’ve certainly seen evidence of people-centricity in this particular pandemic, you know, for having been around a while. If I go back to the last three recessions, you often saw headcount and employees being the first thing that companies turn to when they were looking for savings.
And this time around, it’s been really heartening to see many organizations actually put their people first. Viewing the protection of their employees and the preservation of their well being as being the most important thing. And suddenly my organization has done that as well. Now that’s not to say organizations are not gonna have reductions in force or headcount reductions. But actually leading with their people is a massive change from what we’ve seen in the past.
I won’t say, though it’s not a universal phenomenon, right? So for every one or two examples that you see of perhaps a Unilever or a Willis Towers Watson, you see countless where you just end up perplexed as to what their value systems are that would lead them to make some of the decisions that they make. You see that playing out around the world. In terms of how you think about planning this journey, it really starts with a strong focus on missions in purpose.
We’ve seen many organizations and many CEOs talk about the higher purpose and manifesting that purpose in how they lead, in how they develop their teams, in how they redesigned their organizational systems and in how they make priorities about how they run their businesses. And ultimately, it comes down to the choices they make.
