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Transcript:

Helen: I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Ajit Menon as my guest this week. Ajit joined Investec Plc in March 2022 as the Head of People & Organisation. He has over 20 years of experience working in the areas of culture, organisation development, change and HR.

Prior to Investec, Ajit was a strategic leadership consultant. He built and ran his own practice, Blacklight Advisory Limited, delivering strategic people and organisation solutions to companies across multiple industries and geographies. He also worked at KPMG in London, where he worked with financial institutions across the UK delivering large scale change initiatives, culture advisory and organisational improvement projects.

Ajit has a doctorate in organisational consulting; is visiting faculty at both the London School of Economics and University College London; and recently co authored a book, What Lies Beneath: How organisations Really Work, published by Phoenix in 2021. Welcome to the Business of Being Brilliant, Ajit!

Ajit: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

Helen: Oh, it's a real pleasure. I'm really delighted you can join us on the show. And I can't wait to get into lots of great conversation about your career and about your role at Investec and some of your HR priorities there. But also more broadly about our world of work and how that relationship between employer and employee is evolving. And of course about your book, because as a fellow author, I'm always really interested to chat to other authors about how they got their book out there and how they found the whole book writing process.

But before we get into all of that, perhaps I can start with just a lighthearted question to say, when you're not busy doing book writing, lecturing, leading the HR agenda at Investec, what do you like to do in your downtime? What's your favourite way to spend your non working time?

Ajit: So one of my big challenges, it's been on my bucket list for many, many years and one of the big challenges I've given myself this year is to start learning to play the piano. And I have just started in, in January and really enjoying it. Even though I bore my family with scales sometimes, but it's, it's wonderful. It's a lovely mindfulness practice in the evening for even 10 to 15 minutes to just get on with it and enjoy it. So that's been my thing this year.

Helen: Oh, well done.

Ajit: I've always wanted to do it, never had the opportunity, but I pushed myself this year to try it.

Helen: Fantastic. And so are you quite disciplined at practicing for a little bit every day?

Ajit: I'm more disciplined than I thought I would be, I have to say! I think it's become my mindfulness practice, that's why I'm enjoying it so much. I come back from work and I grab a few minutes just to sit and go through the scales and it's quite a nice way to decompress as well.

I love music, I play the guitar, I used to sing when I was younger. So this has been a real wishlist thing for me and I'm really pleased that I've been able to get myself on to doing it.

Helen: Oh, well done that must feel really satisfying. And it's been a reminder to me, we have a piano downstairs, I learned as a child and I just woefully ignore the piano day after day and did actually go back and play it a lot during the COVID lockdowns and found exactly the same as what you said. That actually, it just helped from a mindfulness perspective, but also it just seems to tap into a different part of your brain, so it creates a different experience during the day. So that's lovely to hear that you're enjoying it so much.

Ajit: It's interesting you say that because, when I think about the world of work and just linking it to that, the  days we have, the  pressure we're under and the  things that we're doing, there is a gym, there's all those other  outlets that we have and I think it's so important for our well being to be able to find those things during the day or during the week at least, to give us that space to be able to decompress, to replenish before we can get back onto the treadmill or what's going on. I found the piano, people might find other things; my husband does ballroom dancing, that's his thing. And I think that for well being, just for mental health and well being, it's just such an amazing thing to be able to, as you say, activate a different part of your brain.

Helen: Yes. That's so true. And I know that sometimes I get frustrated when I've been playing the piano because I'm so rusty and I can't do what I want to do and I'm reminded of the fact that I can't play as well as I used to. So I think it's important when we're doing these things for pleasure not to try and attach too much of a goal or to judge ourselves too much, but just enjoy the moment of doing it.

Ajit: That's actually quite interesting because... so I've tried to learn to read music for many, many years, and I just, I struggle to read music. It's very interesting: I can speak seven languages, but I'm just not able to learn to read music. And I think what ends up happening, even with now, I've discovered this, as I'm starting to learn the piano, is as I play, I play by ear.

So once I've figured the piece out, I stop reading the music and in the beginning, I used to get really frustrated with myself around that. Until my piano teacher said to me, he said, well, why are you getting frustrated? As long as you're enjoying the music, it doesn't matter if you can read it or not.

And that's what changed, reframed it for me, as you say, is that sometimes the things that are supposed to give us the space can frustrate us because we're not perfecting it. But on the other hand, if you're able to be in the moment and enjoy the here and now, it changes the perspective and reframes it for us as well.

Helen: That's such a good way of putting it. And how wonderful that your piano teacher recognized that and pointed it out and gave you permission to just enjoy learning it by ear. And I have to say you are by far and away the most multilingual person we've ever had on the podcast so far. And I think that's a record that's likely to stand for a long time! I speak three and felt like that was a major life achievement and I've never managed to make it four. So, very impressed by that.

And let's talk about book writing then briefly. Did that feel like an experience that you enjoyed, or did you have that tension or battle with, am I writing something well here? Am I getting my words out, my ideas out, my message out clearly? How was it for you?

Ajit: So the book, the idea of the book was basically born out of conversations that me and my fellow author had, and we were talking about cases and work stories that we were both going through when we were consulting. And we found ourselves in a position where, I would say to him, Trevor, here's what's going on, and then he would give me a different perspective. And then he would say to me, here's what's happening in my work and I would give him a different perspective or point out to him what was happening. And the idea of the book was born out of that. And we said, how interesting would it be for us to each present a story or a case and then provide some supervision to the other person, which is a real challenging conversation about what are we missing in the work that we're doing?

And then for readers, whether it was for business people, for consultants, for the leadership, is to be able to get that glimpse into thinking about practice differently. And that's where the idea came out of. So to go back to your question, it was actually quite, it was easy for us because we were capturing our dialogue and capturing our discussions.  It's eight stories about consulting work we've done in various different locations and industries. Each of us presents a story then the other person helps to make sense of what's going on in the dynamic with the client and unpicks it.

And the idea really is about looking at what's going on beneath the surface, because so much of what we do in our world and our world of work is attending to what is tangible, what is visible. And in attending to what is tangible and visible, we end up missing a lot of data of what's going on below the surface. And by missing that data, I think what ends up happening is that we perhaps try interventions that don't work or the wrong interventions, because we're missing that. That's why it says 'What Lies Beneath', because I have this thing that, what sank the Titanic was not that part of the iceberg they could see, but the part of the iceberg they couldn't see. And if you think of organisational life as such, group dynamics, relationships, agendas, power, politics, all those struggles are unseen dynamics that sit within organisations. And that's what can actually derail strategic agendas.

Because as I said, there's a lovely author called Sumantra Ghoshal. And Ghoshal writes his beautiful saying, which I really love, where he says, 'Structures and systems don't make people work, people make structures and systems work'. And so by not attending to that, what are we missing? And so that's why we got to write this book to really peel the layers of organisational life to understand what's happening behind the problem.

One of the interesting things about the nature of problems is when you get a problem, you get anxious that you have the problem. And usually the first solution we come up with deals with that anxiety, not the root cause of the problem itself. So the book talks about how can we sit with the issues that we have, look what's happening beneath the surface, and then come up with interventions in organisational life that is much more pertinent and much more holistic.

So that's the whole idea. And so in writing it, we had a lot of fun, actually, I have to say.

Helen: That's fascinating to hear. I love the topic and the way you approached it and it sounds a really enjoyable way to put a book together, very different to my experience, although my own actually I did really enjoy, but mine was more of a solitary activity in terms of the writing and the producing it, but very collaborative in terms of the many interviews and conversations I had, but I'm really liking the sound of your approach, it's actually almost have a conversation and perhaps record it and then use that as the basis for each chapter.

And that's a great quote by Ghoshal, who I'm familiar with, but hadn't heard of that quote. And what I love about what you were just saying is about how the book encourages people to attend to what is intangible and unseen effectively because we focus too much on the opposite.  That really chimes for me, because in my book, I talk about growing our time intelligence as leaders and as teams and as organisations. And for me, that's about being more aware of how we're spending our time at work, what we're choosing to invest our time in, what we're actually choosing not to invest our time in, what we recognize and what we don't recognize, so what we're encouraging around the ways we're working.

So I think that's in a very similar vein; it's encouraging us to be more mindful and more attentive instead of just racing ahead with the task, as you say, racing ahead with the easily available information or instinctive responses and taking the time to explore that and look for what we're missing.

Ajit: Yes, absolutely.

Helen: Great. Well, if you're ever getting onto another book, I'd love to chat with you. And likewise, perhaps I could chat to you when I finally start book two.

So let's talk a bit more about your current role now. So you are Head of People & Organisation at Inves tec, and it must be a very interesting slash challenging time to be leading the people agenda at a financial services organisation when, we're still in recession, as far as I'm aware. There's been so many challenging developments over recent months and last couple of years, the war with Ukraine, global supply levels, high inflation, high cost of living, all of that. And there's also the labour market challenges post COVID with a lot of older workers not returning to the workforce and really high levels of sickness absence, so still quite challenging to secure the talent that you want to attract and retain.

So how do you respond to that as an HR director, a leader of an HR agenda in a financial services organisation?

Ajit: I think the context of work has changed tremendously. I mean COVID came and changed it for us in a way in which we couldn't imagine. It's so funny, I feel like I'm full of quotes today. I had this thought that popped into my head, which is Mike Tyson, who says 'everybody has a plan until I punch them in the face'.

And I think that's what COVID did to us, right? We all had plans, various different things and the world just completely changed. Coming out of it on the other side, I mean, I don't know whether this is particular only to financial services, but I think that the workforce in general, the psychological contract with organisations has changed, has moved and shifted.

And what I'm noticing quite a lot in people that we're recruiting, especially, the different generations that we're recruiting in, there has been a shift; a shift from purely money to meaning and people are looking for more meaning in terms of their lives and therefore in terms of the work that they get involved with. You can see the kinds of requests people have in terms of how they want to structure their working lives.

We've had a different taste of things through a period when everything came to a stop and turned around for us during COVID. And so now I think that the workforce is looking for more meaning, more purpose in the work that they do. We see a lot more conversations at interviews where people are asking us about our purpose, our values. How do we actually think about the context that we live in? And I think this is really an important part of organisational life.

Now, I'm very proud to work for an organisation that is very, very purpose driven. And even though we're a financial services organisation, we talk a lot about our purpose, which is to create enduring worth. And it's very interesting to talk about worth, not wealth. So it's creating enduring worth, living in society and not off it which is a very different way of looking at financial services and what can we do. And we bring a lot of meaning into the work that we do, because it's not just about CSR, it's not just about charity and that work. From a financial services perspective, we are looking deeply at how we exist in the context of the world around us. So what does that mean? What are the vendors we use? What are the partners we're working with? What are the funds that we invest in? What franchises that we back? That's all completely part of this strategy of what we do. And then this idea of ESG is very much entwined in that.

Which for people who are coming to look for work with us, they find it quite attractive because again, as I say, there's more of a move to meaning than just purely looking at money. And I think that's something that I am noticing in the industry quite a lot of that's going on.

Helen: Yes, that's so interesting to hear. And I love that mission statement or tagline, whatever you call it, creating enduring worth. I particularly love the enduring bit of it because that to me talks very strongly of the long term vision, the long term goals. Because a favorite bugbear of mine about our world of work is how too much of business and performance and activity is focused intensely on the short term and the problems that that presents in so many ways. So really interesting to hear how you've built that longer term enduring notion into your philosophy as a business. And so how are you responding to that in terms of what you offer to current employees and potential employees around the deal around working here? How has that had to evolve to recognize people's desire for greater flexibility and meaning, for example?

Ajit: So there's two parts to statement, right? There's the 'creating enduring worth'. And the second part is 'living in society and not off it', which therefore means how are we completely part of the context in which we are? So in South Africa, for example where the electricity crisis that's going on completely at this point, how are we understanding that we're part of the context with that is something that's very big.

And I believe we have recently sponsored the electricity for all the traffic lights around the area where the organisation is, to be able to do that because I never realized until I went to South Africa with traffic lights not working, the knock on effects that it has on infrastructure is incredible. So the idea of living in society again is not just about providing CSR opportunities. We do lots and lots of charity work that we don't talk about as well. We do a lot of food charity because we really believe in eradicating food poverty especially in the UK, we do a lot of that work.

Going back to your question, what do we offer to our people? I think as an organisation we offer the usual, I will say the usual benefits that everybody offers, right? That other financial services organisations offer. We recently started an electric vehicle scheme; it's all the, all the usual things, but I think most importantly what makes us unique and what is really the core part of our DNA is our culture.

Our culture is one that is built on strong relationships and the relationships are the glue of our organisation. It's very interesting. We are a place where hierarchy doesn't really work in terms of the fact that it's not about organograms and who sits in what level, and we don't talk about job titles.

And it's a an organisation where we have an oxymoron, which is flat structure. I think it's an oxymoron because how can a structure be flat? But anyway, that's a different debate, but the idea of flat structure really is where we are able to provide access. Anybody has access to anybody. And it is true. And in the beginning, when I first heard about it, I thought this was lovely corporate speak, but now living in the organisation for a year, it is absolutely true in that anybody has access to anyone from the MD, to whoever you are in the organisation.

And that flat structure also means as many voices in that voices are all heard. And so decisions are made through an idea called process. Process essentially is not processes. A process in the idea of dialogue. Dialogue is a really core part of our culture, whether it is about making a deal or making a decision. If the right people are not brought in to have the right conversation about the right things at the right time, then we say process hasn't happened, and we go back to start. Because we believe quite strongly that there is wisdom in bringing the collective together. And the group will really find the wisdom.

So the three really core tenets of our culture, which is flat structure, relationships, and this idea of process is really something quite strong in the glue that holds the organisation together.

And that makes us quite unique in that we know as a company, anybody can copy our products, can copy our services. But what they can't copy is the experience of working with us or being in the organisation. And we're very, very proud of that. And building that culture is something that's very big on our agenda.

And you'll find what's interesting is we're called people and organisation. I'm the Head of People & Organisation, not the Head of People & Culture. In many organisations, it's called people and culture. And I think that's the right move because culture is not the agenda of the HR department. Culture is the agenda of leadership and of the C suite. And I think that that's a really important thing for organisations to think about. The minute it gets outsourced to a department, it's lost. I can tell you in my years of consulting and in my entire career, the minute you outsource the cultural work into the organisation development team or to the HR team, you've lost the plot on that because it has to be sponsored by the C suite.

So coming back to what you're saying, what is the offer? The offer is a unique experience, a culture where anybody can thrive, anybody can show up, anybody can perform. And of course, supported by, as I said, all the other usual benefits that you get. We are, we have always been a flexible organisation, even before COVID.

So the idea of flexibility, how we view it is that you're an adult, if you need to take your dog to the vet, you take your dog to the vet. You don't have to clock in and clock out for that. Because we trust you and we work with you as an adult on that basis. But we believe that relationships are a strong glue so therefore, the need for us to be together to build those relationships is quite strong. And that's how we work as a culture and as a place.

Helen: Really, really interesting to hear all of that and to hear how you are articulating very clearly for people those elements that are really important to you. You're having a good employer employee relationship, but also achieving all that you want to achieve as a business and to serve your clients successfully.

Can I ask a follow up question about the process bit, which sounds fantastic and I'm just curious to know how that works in practice around, how you make sure everybody can contribute their point of view, that you're getting all the right voices in the room in a world where we're pretty much glued to digital devices; we have multiple communication channels and tools; a lot of people that I speak to, and a lot of the data points to rising burnout and difficulty switching off and even just mentally or cognitively overloaded because throughout a single day, we're doing lots of switching between apps and calls and meetings. And it's totally draining by the end of the day.

Can you give me one or two examples of how you make that dialogue, that process work so it doesn't feel overwhelming to people?

Ajit: Okay. So let me bring that to life. If we have a decision to be made, it doesn't get made top down. So let's say in my role as the CPO, I need to make a decision. There are some decisions that have to happen, but if I have not listened to all the voices and then made the decision, we have not had sufficient process.

What process is doing is that it is getting you buy in. It is enrolling people in the decision. And so decision making is a very important thing. So in our executive teams, for example, rather than just going into it and saying, well, this is what we're going to do. We will spend an hour, maybe a couple of hours really debating, listening to the different voices, listening to different positions on the issue. And then the leader has to make a decision. And once that's done, we take a view, you agree or you disagree, but you commit because we've been part of the process. The thing is, if you're not a part of the process and you've cut somebody out, that makes it more difficult to be able to implement decisions in this culture.

So we are about 50 years old as an organisation across the world, from the founding days this idea of process has been very, very central. Whether it's about what client you're going to bring on, whether it's about a credit decision, whether it's about interviews, we have multiple interviews.

Because what we believe is that multiple perspectives adds to the richness of the decision and helps you to make the right one on that basis. Now, there's a shadow side to this. It's not all great and lovely and rosy, there's a shadow side to this. And I think I need to be very upfront about that.

In building process very often, the shadow side to it could be very, very often - and we see this and we need to help our leaders with it sometimes - is to kick the decision down the road. You kick the can down the road because it's too difficult to make it. And you say, we haven't had sufficient process. So, it's an easy way of saying, Oh, I haven't asked this one, I haven't asked that one, and you can keep delaying things. So there is a tension between making the right decision at the right time, but also involving many voices and bringing the organisation along because that enrollment of your colleagues is so important in order for the success of a decision to happen.

That's how we see it.

Helen: Thank you. That makes a lot of sense and I can completely appreciate that shadow side that you talk about. And I think, with every espoused or preferred way of working, there's always a shadow side to watch out for, but I love what I'm hearing about how you approach decision making.

Again, it was something I touch on in my book around taking the time to get the right voices in the room to notice what perspectives you're missing when you're approaching a decision, what blind spots have we not paid attention to? Instead of making the decision on the basis of speed and what we know now, instead of taking the time to fill in some of the gaps. So really interesting to hear how you live that in practice day to day.

Ajit: I might add that it's not for everyone because, it is not a command and control environment because of the way it is, it's not a an environment where I tell you and you get it done. So it takes a certain calibre of leadership to be really open to listening to many voices, leaders who are not open to that will not thrive in this environment because that's I think the really important thing because then decisions get unraveled and undone.

So we do a lot of work in leadership development with our leaders to really help them to empathize, understand how to run proper process. And at what, what point do you need to cut it off and make the decision, but that takes skill. That takes a lot of skill. It takes a lot of patience and it takes a certain resilience to be able to do because often, as I said before, when you have a problem, you want to jump to the solution because of the anxiety of having the problem.

Whereas what process is doing is, is taking you beyond that to understand what's happening behind the problem. And that I think is really important in this.

Helen: Yes. Thank you for adding that. And as you were describing process earlier and the relationships aspect, I was exactly thinking the same that you must have to invest significantly in growing those skills amongst your people and amongst particularly your leadership cadre. So great to hear how you approach that.

And just as we're coming towards the end of our conversation, I'm curious to know, and it's quite a selfish question because it's something I'm. Talking to people about and mulling over in terms of this second book I have in my own mind, which has a provisional working title of 'People Glue' about the things that make us want to stay in organisations and how we create organisational cultures and environments that actually encourage people to stay for the right reasons.

I'm curious to hear, having heard you describe the culture that you have at Investec and all the ways in which you look to strengthen and continue with that, is there something that you hear from people about how that works for them in a good way? What is it that makes people want to stay? Is there anything consistent that comes out about that or is it for a whole load of different reasons?

Ajit: It is for different reasons. As I said, it's not for everybody and it takes a little bit of getting used to. It sometimes feels like a big noisy democracy, which it isn't because at some point people have to make decisions. But people stay because of the sense of really being able to have a voice and feeling heard. We are a large organisation, we're the UK's ninth largest bank. We have close to 8,000 people around the world. But even with that, our leadership teams know individuals. We know our people. People feel like they have that voice; they can contribute; they don't feel part of a big machinery. And I think that is a reason why people stay. We have many people who come, leave and come back like myself; I used to work for Investec in the early 2000s and went off to a number of different things and came back. And I think that these boomerangs like myself are testimony to the fact that when you go out there and you come back because there's something special that brings you back to an organisation where you feel part of something bigger or you're contributing to something bigger.

And I think that's what we hear quite a lot of. The culture really brings people back. It's the ability to be able to have a voice and feel like you exist, not a part of a big machine. I think that's something that's really important.

Helen: That's really great to hear. Yeah. Really interesting to hear that that's people's experience and that you see that boomerang effect happening and having had a very happy, enriching 15 years in a consulting firm myself, although I haven't gone back to that, I know so many colleagues that so enjoyed that experience and have gone back at different times, so I know firsthand what you're talking about.

Well, Ajit it has been really wonderful talking with you. For listeners that are interested to follow your work at Investec and perhaps check out your book or any other books you might have in the pipeline, what's the best way for them to get in touch or follow you professionally?

Ajit: Linked In is probably the best and I'm in the process of launching a website, but LinkedIn is probably the best way to follow me and find access that way.

Helen: Okay, wonderful. So I'll pop a link to that in the show notes and to Investec's website as well, and to your book. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you and tapping into your great expertise and wisdom about not just leading people and organisation agendas, but all that less tangible, interpersonal relationships and dynamics that as you say in your book, really lie at the heart of organisations.

It's been such a joy to dig into that and how we get a handle on it and shape it and guide it to what we want it to be. Thank you so much for being a brilliant guest.

Ajit: Thank you so much for having me, I really enjoyed this. Thank you very much.