Change management was built around a reassuring assumption: change would eventually end.
There was a beginning, a period of disruption and, finally, a new normal.
Rajita Singh, chief people officer – India & global delivery HR leader, Kyndryl believes that assumption no longer holds.
“Change is not an event. It’s become the environment,” says Singh, in the latest episode of The CHRO Playbook.
Employees are no longer dealing with one transformation at a time. AI is changing work while business models shift, cost pressures intensify, skills become obsolete and changes outside the workplace continue simultaneously. The difficulty, Singh argues, lies increasingly in the pile-up of change. Pasted text
That changes what adaptability itself means.
Five years ago, adaptability could be regarded as a useful leadership trait. Today, Singh describes it as a survival skill. But flexibility alone is insufficient. People need to learn and unlearn, interpret ambiguity and continue making decisions when the context itself refuses to remain stable.
Her distinction is sharp: “Adaptability without judgement is just reaction. Adaptability with judgement is leadership.” Pasted text
Joining Singh is John Cherian, founder & CEO, enParadigm, who points to another consequence of this environment: the shelf life of decisions and skills is shrinking. Organisations therefore have to move beyond teaching concepts towards changing behaviour in the specific situations employees actually encounter at work. Pasted text
The conversation, hosted by Dr Prajjal Saha, founder & editor, HRKatha, also turns to future leadership and AI. Singh identifies sense-making, learning agility, digital and AI fluency, empathy with accountability and systemic thinking among the capabilities becoming more important. The future leader, she argues, will not necessarily be the person with all the answers, but the one capable of asking better questions and creating clarity when everyone else is overwhelmed. Pasted text
Watch the full episode of The CHRO Playbook, powered by enParadigm.
