Reverse Shadow: CEOs Start up New Trend
Leaders sit with employees to get
firsthand insight into their innovations and ideas
Bengaluru | New Delhi : A 28-year-old operations
executive at a financial services startup had a VIP visitor a few weeks ago.
The CEO approached his desk and asked to be taken through his daily
deliverables. That could be an unnerving prospect at most companies but such
debriefings — dubbed ‘reverse CEO shadowing’— are increasingly becoming the
norm at startups such as Jombay, Urban Ladder, Rivigo, Pharmeasy and Zerodha.
In the past few months, Mohit Gundecha, CEO of Pune-based
Jombay, has been shadowing his consulting, engineering, operations and sales
teams, under the ‘CEO On The Floor’ initiative. Every Tuesday or Wednesday, he
joins team members to get firsthand insight into their innovations and ideas.
Experts say this reverse shadowing is essential for CEOs to keep
in touch with the ground reality of employee experience, ensure that
organisations react quickly and decision making gets accelerated — essential
for survival, especially in the startup world.
At Urban Ladder, cofounder Rajiv Srivatsa’s strategy is to
regularly shadow delivery managers and service associates when they are making
product deliveries in different cities.
“Making these travels with employees who work on the delivery
side gives me a broader perspective on how things work at the front end,”
Srivatsa told ET. In his last few visits to Kochi and Mumbai, he
has learnt about issues that service associates sometimes face with credit card
payment and route algorithms — these have been addressed accordingly.
Getting a Micro View
CEOs often fall into the trap of focusing only on macro issues,
but reverse shadowing gives them a micro view of the business, said Jombay’s
Gundecha.
Sitting with employees and getting a better sense of their work
helped Gundecha quickly solve an internal issue between the consulting and operations
teams, which had not previously come to the forefront. The problem — which was
related to deadlines not being met — had been causing friction between the two
teams and would likely have escalated.
Urban Ladder’s Srivatsa sits at least twice a week with small
cross-functional groups to brainstorm on issues such as quality assurance and
opening new stores.
These meetings are always chaired by employees and Srivatsa
treats them as learning experiences to hear their ideas on how various
functions can evolve.
Deepak Garg, CEO at logistics startup Rivigo, has shadowed his
sales team in at least 200 client meetings through the year.
Garg also spends more than 20 days a month in the field with the
operations teams to live the life of a field executive.
At e-pharmacy startup Pharmeasy, company leaders have a mandate
that they must spend a minimum of three hours a week doing something that isn’t
core to their function.
“This can include CXOs sitting with the customer support or
sales teams, and there is a log for time spent,” said cofounder Dhaval Shah.
“As a founder, I value this time spent shadowing employees because they give
real insights into what affects our customers.”
CEOS PASS ON LEARNINGS
The process is not just limited to learning pain points and problemsolving,
however. Reverse shadowing employees also means leaders can directly pass on
their learnings and experiences informally.
At Bengaluru-based financial services company Zerodha, CEO
Nithin Kamath has started joining his sales team at least once or twice a week
to engage more closely with them.
“I have been a trader all my life, and Zerodha caters to people
like me. When I sit with my sales team many of whom do not necessarily have a
trading background — I’m able to pass on what potential customers are looking
for and help them get their pitches going correctly,” Kamath told ET.
Pallavi Jha, managing director of Dale Carnegie Training India,
said reverse shadowing is vital for CEOs to develop a sense of belonging with
employees.
“At startups especially, where the velocity of work is so high,
initiatives like this help leaders understand employees’ daily work experience,
thereby giving them a sense of empathy,” Jha said.
This may further translate into appropriate redesigning of work
if needed, she said.
WIN-WIN FOR EMPLOYEES
From the employee standpoint, there’s much to gain.
“When I shadow particular employees across different teams, they
are able to bring up ideas and innovations directly to me and often. I can
expedite the decision-making,” said Gundecha.
Experts say that it is important for CEOs to be able to harness
collective genius because ideas may not always come in a boardroom setting, and
reverse shadowing can often be the way forward, bypassing regular hierarchies.
For Zerodha’s Kamath, the results are tangible. “Every time I
sit with the sales team, I see the numbers go up. It is tough to train 500
salespeople at a go, but spending time with them and making some sales calls
myself brings out a good vibe on the floor,” he said.
CEOs need not always look outside for mentors, said Dale
Carnegie Training’s Jha. “Often, there are equally good lessons to be learnt if
leaders look within their companies, and shadow employees on a sustained
basis,” she said.
Brinda Sarkar & Varuni Khosla
ET27MAR18
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