Freedom Accountability And A

Passion For Excellence

- The Zensar Story
 Company Profile
 Zensar Technologies is a technology
partner of choice for global organizations
looking to strategically transform, grow
and lead in today’s challenging business
environment.
 Backed by a strong tracked-record of
innovation and over 7,000 associates, it has
a global footprint with a presence in more
than twenty location across the world.
 Mobilizing The Organization
Towards A Vision For Change
 In the beginning of FY 2011 Zensar’s
Talent Management committee,
comprising Business and HR Heads,
decided that the talent management focus
for the year would be on instilling higher
leadership capabilities in people managers
and to consciously drive engagement
across the organization.
 This was in the context of key innovation
triggers identified by the committee:
 Zensar’s ambitious USD One Billion goal
by 2016, needed excellent teams, not just
excellent individuals
 Zensar’s engagement score, traditionally a
strength, had decreased consecutively in
the previous two year.
 This was a matter of high concern as
engagement impacts both productivity and
retention.
 Operating in the service-centric IT/ITES
space, non-linear impact was heavily
contingent on the engagement of
associates, which in turn depended majorly
on front-line people managers.
 The essentially project-based nature of
work meant conscious efforts would be
required to ensure consistent people
management practices across teams and
leaders, important for junior-level
associates to experience engagement
across the organization.
 What Zensar did differently to
successfully manage and drive
change
 Zensar was successful in initiating and
sustaining a movement that connected with
employees across levels, invoking the
innate drive for excellence and
actualization.
 While this was a well thought out idea, its
implementation would not have been
successful without these distinctive steps
that enabled that change efforts:
 The active and unstinting involvement pf
the CEO through the entire process was
undoubtedly instrumental in nipping many
a derailer in the bud, and also key for
reinforcing the value that the organization
saw in the programs.
 Another commendable aspect of the
intervention was how it organically flowed
from the success of the vision community
initiative started in 2001, and is still
thriving.
 That the desired change was ‘evolution’
rather that ‘revolution’, would have been
evident from the way in which the
essential life-giving forces of open,
participative management and idea sharing
remained constant throughout.
 Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the
manner in which Zensar managed to link
business performance to the very core
human attributes of passion, esteem and
actualization, would be one prime take-
away from this fascinating story.
 Lessons for change managers

 The Zensar story presents the following

key lessons for change managers
conceptualizing and driving interventions
in organizations:
 In most cases, organizational and
individual employee interests do not
necessarily align by themselves.
 It is the test of a change manager’s
acumen, as to how (s)he identifies the real
business ends desired (not
symptoms/paraphernalia), and connects
them with what is genuinely valuable to
the employee.
 Success at this core level ensure that task
of maintaining urgency and overcoming
pockets of resistance is not limited to a
select few members of ‘Change
Management Team’, but is instead a
people-drive concern.
 Appreciative Inquiry can be useful in many
cases where the change efforts could
benefit from an initial boost positive
confidence in inherent organizational ‘life-
giving force’.
 The approach of leveraging strengths to
achieve the desired state can help minimize
resistance while also enabling directed
efforts at changing systems and structures
as required.
 While the importance of leadership
endorsement is a given for successful
change, this story brings out how to go
beyond paying lip-service on this front.
 Engaging with leaders without taking their
involvement and support for granted, and
leveraging their endorsement for
maintaining both continuity and urgency,
are key lessons one can take away from the
Zensar story.