How Tata Power fosters transformation through the AMP leadership development model

About two years ago, Tata Power embarked on the journey of transforming itself from just being a utility provider to a solution-providing firm. As Himal Tewari, CHRO, Tata Power, describes it, when he joined the Company, there was a leadership change underway, with a new MD coming. The Company began restructuring its values, and a big transformation — Tata Power 2.0 — started to take place. Tata Power was moving from a Business to Government (B2G) model to a Business to Customer (B2C) model, and preparing to become the utility provider of the future. Some new lines of business, such as EV charging and smart home solutions made Tata Power focus on certain new-age skills and the upskilling of employees and leaders on new functional skills and behavioural competencies. During this re-construction work, a new value was added to the value framework of Tata Power, which was ‘learning’.

To accomplish this change, the Company came up with its leadership-development competency model known as Aspire-Motivate-Perform or AMP.

Now, the Company is training its leaders on various sets of new behavioural skills of resilience, innovation and inclusion.

For every set of leaders in the Company, from a first-time manager to the MD, high-intensity programmes were developed to prepare for the future.

For the first-time managers

As Tewari shares with HRKatha, all first-time managers and high-performing individual contributors go through this programme, for which the Company has tied up with XLRI. Almost every year, about 100 new leaders are created at Tata Power within the batches that undergo the emerging leaders programme. “These are usually people with six to 10 years of experience in the Company,” shares Tewari.

For mid-level managers

‘Achieving your potential leadership (AYPL)’ is a six-month learning journey for mid-level managers and leaders. This programme has been created in partnership with SP Jain University. Every year, leaders are trained under this programme in batches of 50.

For top leadership teams

Tata Power has tied up with IIM-Ahmedabad, where all top leaders attend classes, including the MD of the Company.

“Some of the greatest strategic ideas have germinated from action-learning projects at Tata Power”

Himal Tewari, CHRO, Tata Power

All these programmes have been designed under the AMP framework at Tata Power, to help the Company transition to Tata Power 2.0. Comprising mainly classroom-based learning, the pandemic and lockdown have made the training go completely virtual. As per Tewari, these programmes are not just fun-to-have activities, but also include action-learning projects undertaken by participants. “Some of the greatest strategic ideas have germinated from action-learning projects at Tata Power. These programmes are not just about attending classes for fun, but are high-intensity leadership development interventions at the Company,” enunciates Tewari.

For mid-level and first-time managers, action learning projects are mentored by the senior leadership team, whereas for top leaders, they are mentored by the professors.

Tewari further throws light on the kind of future leaders being developed at Tata Power. As part of the AMP leadership-competency framework, there are six such skills or attributes, which all leaders across levels must have. They must be powerful and nimble; possess the ability to energise customers; be able to deliver desired results; should fuel excellence; and be powered by purpose; and be great learners. In addition, the senior leaders of the Company are expected to have business acumen, be partners for success and be capable of powering people.

The Company has introduced horizontal learning academies, which are run to give domain expertise knowledge in four different areas, to support the Tata Power 2.0 transformation.

Tata Power identified four different areas — digital analysis, sales, customer service and project management — where new skills need to be inculcated to transition from a B2G to a B2C and B2B model of business.

Under these four areas, the Company has collaborated with various learning partners to run certification programmes at four different levels — foundational, beginner, expert and champion.

As per Tewari, almost 400 to 2000 employees are benefitting from these horizontal learning academies and this learning framework is facilitating the Company’s transformation.

“All these programmes are co-created, based on the feedback from employees, and are designed by Tata Power. We believe in building our own set of competencies rather than taking help from external vendors or partners,” asserts Tewari.