Evolution of people management

Book review of CEO Chess Master or Gardener: How Game-Changing HR Reforms Created a New Future for Bank of Baroda

CEO Chess Master or Gardener: How Game-Changing HR Reforms Created a New Future for Bank of Baroda

Anil K Khandelwal

Oxford University Press

360 pages; Rs 750

It not often that we have an academic who is also a hands-on manager. There are always occasions when senior professionals take a break to write their memoirs, teach and do an academic type of job. The obverse that an academic makes a switch to a job of a hands-on professional is even more difficult. It is in this binary world that we need to see Anil Khandelwal’s book. Although the title may indicate that this is a book on leadership styles, it has much more on offer.

This book has three parts. The first is more academic in nature examining industrial relations in a particular setting. The second looks at the evolving leadership strategies in managing a workforce and aligning it with the overall objectives of the organisation, and the third part integrates the two parts towards crystalised concepts. The methods are systematic and rigorous in the first part, reflective and experiential in the second.

We have a researcher, hired in the training establishment of a mainstream commercial bank who is sucked into the management function where he needs to redefine his role and put his research into action, while navigating the complex functions of banking, much beyond the comfort zone of an HR professional. Since the whole book is set within a single organisation, it is also possible for us to see how the interventions have played out at various stages. 

That Indian public sector banks have a flawed management structure comes out clearly. In any organisation, we find structures for career progression, lateral hires and churn. Organisations also have a strategy on leadership transitions. On reading the book (and seeing the public sector banks) we know that: (a) there is no lateral recruitment; and (b) the top management at the whole-time director level is mostly a lateral hire from outside, and if somebody from within the bank makes it (as in the case of Mr Khandelwal) it is only a matter of chance. 

So, we have a stable middle and lower middle management and a moving top management. In this structure, the organisational culture is deeply set in the lower and middle management and the top management has little time to change any of these with the proverbial tail wagging the dog. Add the complication of the public sector and, therefore, no hire and fire policy, and the tail becomes even stronger. With the near-monopoly that the public sector banks enjoyed in the marketplace, it was a recipe for lethargy and bureaucratic processes to set in.

The first part of the book has concerns about managing employee relations with the linkage to the business performance being weak. The business performance is important, but the management of personnel is more focused on how to communicate, manage militancy, disciplinary procedures, transfers, and industrial relations. Fixing these ensures that the business works. In the second part of the book (also when the banking sector is opened for private sector participation), we see that the paradigm moves beyond industrial relations to developing human resources to take on the challenges in the marketplace and how Bank of Baroda was internally responding to the ecosystem changes.

It is interesting to note that Mr Khandelwal’s career, the larger shifts in the thinking pattern of management of human resources and the competitive and market forces have all moved in harmony. Mr Khandelwal was somewhat junior in the hierarchy when the concept of people management was seen in the framework of union-management relationship, industrial harmony and worker rights. He moved to middle management when the economy opened up when the thinking had moved from personnel management to human resource management and the business imperatives involved incentives, motivation and personal development. He moved to the senior management when the concepts moved to human resource development, empowerment and looking at employees as individuals who contribute to the business. Mr Khandelwal’s canvas gets wider in each of the stages.

The story of Bank of Baroda is unique because of the specific actions taken during Mr Khandelwal’s leadership. However, it is also the story of the public sector banks. The uniqueness is that Mr Khandelwal was there at the helm, with all the tools and academic inputs at his command to undertake fundamental human resource-centric reforms.

As I was reading, one aspect struck me. The book is inward looking (embedded with some interesting academic frameworks from the outer world). At the same time, the paradigm changes in the bank also reflected how the personnel (later human resource) function was changing elsewhere. Given that Mr Khandelwal was active in the HR network, the expectation was that some connections to the changes in the HR world outside of the bank would also have some resonance and relevance in the book. Of course, there is always a wish in every book and it is rare that a reviewer finds a book to be perfect.

The reviewer is a faculty member with Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore 

mssriram@pm.me