Organizational culture shift: A crucial component of Digital Transformation - Rajesh Sankar

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The Pro MFG Digital Transformation Senior Leadership Roundtable, powered by Altair had Mr. Rajesh Sankar, President & Unit Head, UltraTech Cement as one of the esteemed speakers.With an aim to make digital transformation a reality within the manufacturing industry, the panel for the roundtable consisted of seasoned industry experts from various organizations.

Sharing his experience on the challenges faced in terms of implementation of digitalization across organizations, Mr. Rajesh Sankar, President & Unit Head, UltraTech Cement stated that skepticism and lack of trust among 'traditional' leaders is one of the biggest challenges in building momentum in the traditional industries like steel and cement. Another important challenge in this regard is picking the wrong projects often due to overenthusiasm at times, he said. Additionally, there must be a holistic dashboard which includes all aspects of problem solving and decision making in terms of the project.

In terms of keeping up the momentum of projects, Mr. Sankar added that getting the right message to the right person through the right communication channel can be a game changer in terms of building confidence and keeping the bubble alive. In fact, the top management plays a pivotal role in giving out the right message to the team with regards to their trust in people and being a strong support in case of a failure of the project.

We have to look at the unknowns emerging. Every project gives a new set of information which we were not really knowing and we had to keep on adding those things to the project repository. And once it is a success, we have to look at replication, extension and fine tuning. I think this kind of quadrant approach will give sustainable momentum and help in adoption and ownership of projects.

Closing in on the philosophy that drives the momentum at Aditya Birla Group, Mr Sankar shared that "when you give that comfort, the kind of confidence, that yes, I am ready to tolerate your failure, as long as you learn from it. As long as we make a plan, we might make a correct strategy, how we mitigate risk, I think the buy in automatically happens."

Towards the end of his peroration, Mr Sankar reiterated that it's all about creating that kind of positivity. And the positive should be so high, that there is no negative in it. That's how we create that kind of ethic. That's what leaders are made out of.

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