Ep 59 | S04 Ep04: Roles or Skills? What Breaks Organizations?

[Music] Hello, listeners. Welcome back to the brand new season 4 of the CHRO Mindset podcast. After three incredible seasons, we are back again with deeper conversations, sharper insights and more conversations that are going to help you make your workplace into a better one. Today's episode is special because this is the first episode that we are doing in our brand new studio at HR1. Prior to this, we have been doing all these sessions over remote one. So this is indeed a very special and a historic moment for us. So season 4 has always been about challenging how organizations should look at work, people and leadership. And today's episode is no different. So if you are an HR leader or a people manager or someone who has just gotten into HR, you will gain a lot from today's episode. With that, let me get started. Today we have the honor of having Mr. Gopalji Marothra as our guest, a quick bio of Mr. Gopalji Marothra. He is the group CHRO at Ackman and one of India's most respectable strategic HR leaders with over three decades of experience across FMCG, manufacturing, Pharma and several other industries. Gopalji has partnered close with Boards, CEOs and CXOs to lead last-scale people and business transformations. He has worked across 21 countries, driving global expansions, cultural transformations, M&A and integrated business people technology and digital initiatives for organizations such as HMEL, Estics Consulting, Mile Informa, Zinsar Technologies and ITC. Known for building high-performing teams and future-ready HR leaders, Gopalji is an ICF certified master coach, a mentor to CXOs and a frequent keynote speaker and faculty member at leading business and academic forums. His current areas of focus sit into the intersection of AI, the future of work, skill-based workforce design and leadership development. His recent recognitions include the LND Trail Blazers of Watt 2023, Next-Gen Leader 2024, TIS, LEAP, WALT, Best Leadership Development Initiative 2024 and Influential HR Leader of 2025 by the HR Association of India. Beyond the boardroom, Gopalji is a history enthusiast and avid explorer, often found on Himalayan tracks or off-roading trails, a fitting reflection of someone who thrives on exploration, depth and perspective. Thanks a lot, sir, for joining us on the CHRO mindset podcast today. Thanks very much, Paul Kith, for inviting me and I can assure you that introduction sounds a lot impressive and you read it. I don't think I deserve that, but thank you anyway. Very modest of you to say that. It's great to be, like you said, this is the beginning of season 4. So that sounds like a watershed because just last evening I finished seeing season 3 of the family man. That poor fellow is lying in a forest somewhere, so I guess season 4 has something magical about it. We all look forward to it. Thank you, thank you. We hope we are able to live up to your expectations. We'll try our level best. So with that, I'll just walk you through what today's episode is all about. It's titled When Rolls Die, Skill's Take Over, Building a Workforce that can actually adapt. These are crazy times indeed, right? If you look at organizations in the past, usually rolls have given us a lot of clarity, titles have given us identity, and then job descriptions have given us comfort on what to do, how to do and where to do, right? But over the years, we are seeing that a lot of these three dimensions across organizations are changing and they are changing extremely fast. Work is no longer still, right? There is no skill that remains unexpired forever, right? Till eternity. And the roles that we hire, typically people for, turn out to be very different on the ground when they go about doing them. So the real question is what role, so the real question is in what role you have, it's about what you need to do to be able to adapt better to how skills, roles, identities and organizations are changing. So in today's episode, we are going to look at the traditional way of looking at skills, job descriptions, right? How organizations have been creating talent development workplaces? What skills they need to be able to make sure that it's a skill based approach rather than a job based approach. We'll also look at how CHROs should look at building internal talent marketplaces. What are the biggest barriers for CHROs from moving from role based to skill based design? And we are also going to look at how technology are enabling this transition. We'll also cover advances of succession planning and leadership pipelines when it comes to, you know, looking at skill based approach rather than job based approach. So with that, I will get started with my very first question for you, Mr. Meerothra. If you had to describe your job without using the title CHROs, what are the three skills you actually use every day and why do those matter more than the title itself? Well, actually, you've set the tone, so titles are passé anyway. It is only skills that will matter. So the way I would describe my job, there are three main things that I sort of do on a daily basis. First is foresight, which is, you must realize what the business is going to need before the business realizes it itself. So the second one is sense making. How do you provide direction with clarity to leaders on which they can act upon? And this clarity, you yourself have the task of going through the contradictions, the, you know, the uncertainty that ever evolving business landscape. So you cut through all that and you provide the clarity, which is sense making. The third one is actually, I call it orchestration. So how do you orchestrate the melting of people culture data systems so that you can make it into one flow, one move. So that's what I think I would do on a daily basis regardless of title or context or organization of situation. I think that's a FS go model if I can try foresight sense making and orchestration thanks a lot for sharing that thought. Now let's get into the core theme, sir. Why do you think traditional rules and job descriptions are breaking down so fast today? And what are we still pretending? What are we still pretending will work? See job descriptions are breaking down because a job description is a blueprint of who is supposed to do what when in what sequence and with what chain of command and approval process. So yes, it is a set of responsibilities in a list of tasks. It is also, you know, gives the leaders an illusion of control. I have boxed in a person with the title and with the role. And thereby I have, they feel leaders feel they have predictability of outcomes. But skills are not linear. And thereby how work is flowing and in wall wake cannot be boxed in. So that is why job descriptions which used to be a way to control the work or at least the flow of work since that flow itself is constantly getting impacted by the minute literally. My customers, my markets, my technology. That is why job descriptions are no longer a relevant tool to the organization of work. Next we're sharing that perspective. Now let's talk about how to distinguish between a skill that makes someone adaptable versus one that's slowly turning them obsolete. See any skill which is adaptable and not at the risk of obsolescence will have to be a skill that transfers. What I mean by that is that the skill is in the person. And the skill is not dependent on either a version of technology. Or it is a tool or it is based on a certain process because like I just said in the previous topic of discussion. This is ever changing. So you can't hold fast to having a skill that can create a value only in a particular situation. So skill that transfers allows the person to contribute to any situation that evolves. That will be a skill which you call adaptable and it will be lesser or. negligibly at a risk of obeliscience. What would these skills be? I mean the question begets that because the answer so far has been very general. So these would typically be skills that relate either to human intelligence or to business sense. You know things like ability to influence analytical curiosity, judgment, recognizing patterns. These are skills if they are housed in the person that person can create value in any situation. So that's what makes it transfer. Interesting, great perspective. So I think it all boils on to you know how transferable the skill is right and then somewhere I felt that you're going back to the roots of human intelligence right over the years how it has evolved whether it's intuition you know looking for patterns. So somewhere I think that's the root that you are alluding to but great perspective there. Actually why I started smiling is because I have been at this for so long. You know all company appointment letters have saying that yes this is your location and this is your role but you are transferable. Now imagine how archaic that sounds now. Yes you are no longer physically going to transfer people from location to location or from role to role. It is the skills in them housed in them in their persona. Those are the ones which are transferable and that's what makes it for adaptability and progress. Very true sir. Now let's talk about you know CHRs they have this mandate where you know they have to move away from the role based approach to skill based approach but while they go about doing that they encounter a lot of barriers right intrinsic, extrinsic whatever. So please walk us through what are the biggest barriers for most CHRs in context of what I just said. See the contexts are different and the barriers will depend on that but to me there are two main barriers. See one has got to do with leaders and the other one has got to do with data. Now leaders would still like to stick to the corporate memory of what work was supposed to look like. What I mean with that is leaders would like to have org charts titles boxes so that they can predict how work is going to get performed. So that is a barrier because skills don't flow like that. You can't control you know skill is skill is basically matching capability with a gap. So you can't control because those gaps are not predictable. So one barrier is corporate memory that we would still like to function in the new world but in the old way. And the second one has got to do with data which is basically HR data because you see we have to examine how many companies do really have a true mapping of the skills that they have in house. See in most cases we have titles we have tenure or we have cost. We sort of equate that with skill. What is required is real skill mapping, real analytics and of course the real courage that if we are going to be skill first then we should redesign the nature of work to allow that. And that sort of brings me to my next question because you spoke of in on the HR data front you spoke of title, tenure and cost. So if I were to sort of converse them and look at it from the value that they're adding to the organization. My next question is how should compensation and benefits or pay and rewards evolve. You know when we are looking at skills as the primary measure of what value they bring to the table instead of titles. See one thing that doesn't change is that pay has always and should always follow contribution. What has changed is that we try to arrive at contribution by using tenure or you know role title and we try and compensate we look at the market and then we try and compensate according to these parameters. But skill is not bound by tenure and title. We just examine that. So what compensation and pay and rewards and we're putting all three of them together different techniques to achieve the same goal. Two things will have to change. One is this grade link to tenure link to compensation bands. You no longer can afford them because they're not reflective of reality. Reality is what is the market paying and more importantly likely to pay for the skills which are at a premium. So the compensation bands in a sense will have to be dynamic themselves. The second is that traditionally we have thought that career progression is title of progression and that's how you compensate more and more. You know it is it is tantamount to equating it to responsibility level. But now that we're going to do it with the options and roles and thereby those ever increasing responsibility levels. So pay will have to follow where is value getting created and to measure the impact that the person is having rather than tenure and title. So that's how I feel that you know I've tried to balance how we've done it so far and what it needs to be but what is the path to get there also because you certainly can't throw everything out of the window when incentive is incentive and award is dear to every person every professional. And I think it's a very practical way of sort of transitioning between this new approach and the you know old-school approach that we had. Now let's let's segue to internal talent marketplaces right talk to us what is the link between internal talent marketplaces and skill first design approach that CHROs are about to take or should take. See the internal talent marketplace it still has an important role. It just needs to reflect the dynamism. Internal marketplace it will remain the operating system of how do you harness skills and it allows two things one is it allows the individual who bears though that skill of those skills to be not confined to a vertical because you have access to the internal talent marketplace. The second is it allows leaders to look at talent and spot it outside their own function. So the marketplace continues it's just that it is not getting typified by role or tenure or title. It is a real mapping of skills that are available so you're not trying to match people to boxes. You're actually matching capabilities to caps. So that's how the internal talent marketplace becomes even more relevant and much more dynamic because what it means is that you know now talent is no longer in silos it is not no longer owned by a particular leader. Instead it is the entire organization which is harnessing capability for its own future. Interesting and profound at the same time. I'll lovely answer there sir. Now if I were to go back to the barriers question that I had put in front of you. You spoke of two routes one was the leaders and the other one was data. So I'm trying to establish a linkage between data and all the new technologies that have come into a picture right now speaking of AI platforms analytics. So please walk us through what technology what role should technologies like these play in enabling this transition from a role based to skill based design. See you said it yourself technology is an enabler. Yeah. And my answer is let it be an enabler let it not be a decider. So technology's role is in terms of mapping talent and surfacing talent. Technology should not be used for deciding what happens to talent. See why I say that is because yes AI and platforms that you refer to. Yeah. They're highly useful. You know what is what exists where where are the gaps what are the you know in spotting the agent adjacencies in not only analyzing but perhaps predicting that this is what the market for skills external to my organization is moving to. So AI and platforms and the use of technology gives you all that much faster than humans can do. But after that you have to match that to the aspiration of the individual professional. What is the professional wanting to do? Yeah. So that's how I say that AI can be used for mapping but not for deciding. Let the human leader interact with the other human. What aspiration you know match it with skill and then proceed. I'm so glad you said that because you know there are a lot of chaos right now in the marketplace as to you know AI stealing away jobs. I don't think that's ever going to happen much like how ATMs you know came into the fray and then everybody was thinking that you know the the stellar machine the folks at the banks you know who issue cash will lose their jobs but that didn't happen. I think they moved into better jobs and I think somewhere down the line like you said technology is not a decision maker. It's just an enlipler but yeah that's how we should treat it. I mean I think if you will allow me to mention it here. This my latest article which has been published by HR today on 1st of December. It's actually titled AI versus humanity. AI versus humanity. There are people who are close to me who told me that you know why you're wording it so dramatically. So I say it is not to catch attention. Yeah. It is actually to point out that yes. See AI you have to stay caught up with AI. We referred to skills earlier and I referred to skills related to human intelligence and business sense which will transcend. Technical skills on the other hand. The shelf life is is shortening because AI can actually harness those and get more skilled faster than you can actually teach those skills. So that is where there is a those are the categories of work where the job loss is happening and will continue to happen. So apart from you know humans killing themselves the biggest ability that will matter is the learning agility. How do I be faster? Then what AI is intending to do in a sense of almost you know identifying the problem and finding a solution for it before the problem evolves. Sounds way tough. Yeah. But that's how human intelligence will have to coexist with artificial intelligence and and be relevant and make progress together. Interesting. So it's like a symbiotic relationship not necessarily an adversarial. It has to be a symbiotic relationship. It is what is AI? I mean AI is a creation of mankind right. And mankind has always created automation which has which has diminished certain categories of jobs. But it has always added to possibilities of other kinds of work. Yeah. Similarly we love to deal with AI. Very true. And AI will have to deal with us. Yeah. Because I mean humans are not going to get diminished by something. They invented. Yes. This species is not going to allow that to. Yeah. Interesting. Now let's talk about succession planning. Please walk us through. How do you see succession planning and leadership pipeline getting impacted by this you know transition? See succession planning is already impacted because if you look at succession planning at what it used to be that is who will replace whom in what time period? Now if it's going to be skill based yeah. So we're not no longer talking about people and boxes. That somebody will wait and somebody will get invested in and then that somebody will go and fill up some box. So in that sense succession planning you know the traditional succession planning. So that's that's already the time is passed. Okay. So instead the leadership pipeline is inculcating those skills of human intelligence, business judgment, pattern recognition into people that whom you want them to lead for your future. In my view leaders are not technical skills not what should I say technology or AI platform skills. If you're talking about pure leadership what those leaders will look like are people who have judgment, who have collaborative muscle and who have empathy. Okay. Because these will remain uniquely and essentially human. Yeah. So that's what I feel about succession planning and the kind of leader pipeline that we need to build. Interesting. Now let's get on to rapid fire section. Right. I know a lot of people fear right what's the next question that I'm going to be asked. But yeah, I'm already using water to douse the fires that you would like. Okay. So very first bullet coming your way sir with all due respect. One skill every HR leader must build right now beyond HR expertise. Systems thinking. Okay. There is there is no other way out. Delving into the entire external internal existing evolving, melding it together. That is what will make you so much. I'm so glad you said that. I had the fortune of interviewing one more senior HR leader and she spoke of I asked her which was the best book that you've read and she also alluded to systems thinking and went back to Peter Sange, the fifth discipline and that kind of literature. Okay. It's really going back. My dissertation in Excel I was on the fifth one. Oh, wonderful. Okay. Glad I touched that topic. Next question coming over sir. What fades first? Titles, rolls or op charts? Titles obviously. Okay. Because they are sort of no longer relevant because they are titled typifies what you do and we've said with the skill first thing. You no longer going to typify people and put them into boxes. Orchards will take a little longer because organizations do need those charts to make sense of who is where and what's going to be thrown at them. Very true. Now this is a very interesting question. Higher for rolls or higher for skills? What's your take? Well, the discussion that we've had I mean the answer is obvious you have to hire for skills. Okay. You can combine skills into people. You can develop them into certain professionals and then call it a role. Sure. But again, that role is going to continuously evolve. If the person is going to use skills to create value, let's not box in people anymore. The dynamism you spoke of first. Okay. One skill that will matter the most in 2030. Wow. I think meta thinking. What meta thinking what I mean by that is that something that I mentioned earlier in our conversation. You have to spot the problem and be ready with the solution even before the problem evolves. See, intelligence is now being called artificial. But that artificial intelligence is much smoother, much faster than what humans are right now. So you want to beat that. You have to have meta thinking. You have to be before or ahead of what that combined body of analytical thinking has reached. It's like unconscious incompetence and how do you move up the ladder and become a legendary or a master at you know what one does. Yeah, mastery. I mean, yes. I mean, personal mastery is yeah, yeah, easy is paramount. Yeah. And I think in the age of that nobody can reach now. You always have. First of all, mastery, which is a sub-total of aspirations, effort, that would remain uniquely human. Interesting. Okay. My next question for you, sir. One traditional HR practice that is turning obsolete as we transition from role-based to skill first design approach. I think it will be job families because how we have operated in role-based organizations is that we try to organize career pathways because the organization wanted increased competency and the people wanted their progress. So we created job families. For job families inherently now lead back to one set of cyborg skills. So if the skills themselves are going to be dynamic to fill gaps, we created by technology by markets and customers have already set. So job families will have to go away because now they will actually straight jacket you rather helping the organization address its capability and learning. Interesting choice. I am sure a lot of HR leaders out there who are listening to this answer would go and knock out job families from their technology. But that was the end of our rapid fire section. Now this brings me to the last question of this amazing conversation with you sir. Please finish this sentence. The future workflows will not be about jobs. It will be about what? I think the future workflows will be about the value that a person can create. Even when no one is telling that person what your job is supposed to be. See that was what will make it transferable and transcending. Wonderful. It is a very, you know something which has been said with a very deep meaning I guess in very few words. And I think that was the gist of you know what we discussed if I were to condense that but you're closing thoughts are on this topic of you know what it takes for HR leaders to move away from roll based approach to skill based or value based approach. The future will belong to organizations. I do not see talent as a structure to film but as a potential to be unleashed. Thank you. That's an amazing closing comment sir. It's been an amazing conversation. I must say and this happens to be like I said earlier the very first episode that we are doing at our studio at HR one. So it will remain a special one for all of us at HR one for sure. Thank you so very much for sharing your thoughts and wisdom on a topic something like this which is a contrary and take on how C.H.R.O. should look at reorganizing their design of their organizations. But quick one before we wrap up sir where how can our listeners contact you should they need any guidance or help from your wisdom and experience. Well there is only one gopal g mayor of all LinkedIn. So it's felt as one word g op l g i and then mayor of the so that's there. And if you want to do something which requires more detail it's gopal g dot mayor of the at gmail dot com. Thank you very much. Thank you sir thanks a ton for taking out time from your busy schedule and blessing us with your represents here. It's been an amazing conversation thanks a ton for joining us. It has really been exciting for me. Thank you for all those thought for going for working questions. Thank you. Thank you. An absolute pleasure to all our listeners. Thank you so very much for joining us on today's episode of the C.H.R.O mindset podcast. I'm sure you would have learned a lot. I did learn a lot about this transition from role based to skill based approach. And I'm sure it's going to help you as you go about implementing these practices into your organizations until we meet next time. Please take good care of yourself and wherever you are listening this listening to this episode do drop us a review and share a comment. Thank you so very much. Take care. [Music]