In conversation with Shiv Subramaniam, Organisational Transformation consultant, Consumer Centricity advocate, seasoned marketing leader.

Above: Shiv Subramaniam

Susan Mathen, Founder & Strategy Director at Hue & Why, in conversation with Shiv Subramaniam, Mentor for Change.

In this interview, Shiv Subramaniam talks about a very powerful and strategic process - Organisational Transformation and how it helps leverage untapped potential for organisations. Shiv has rich experience in process and culture change in consumer driven organisations across multiple disciplines including consumer behaviour, marketing, communication, digital, social analytics and e-commerce.

Currently wearing multiple hats: Mentor for Change, Strategic Advisor - Node, and Partner - Cosmos Strategy Consultants, Shiv was previously SVP, Customer Centricity at Aditya Birla Group, and Head of Omni Channel & Consumer Practices at Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail Limited. He has also had chapters as Head of Marketing - Van Heusen/Madura Garments & Head of Marketing - Arvind Brands, prior to which he spent 13 years across specialist and mainstream agencies.

What follows is an edited excerpt from the conversation, where Shiv touches upon organisational transformation, consumer centricity, transitioning across professional roles, consistency in brand behaviour, and adaptability in brand building, among other topics.

Susan: Welcome to the Eagle Eye Column from Hue & Why. And a huge thank you for agreeing to be a part of this series.

Shiv, You have had an illustrious career, spanning multiple functions, roles and expertise areas (advertising, marketing, communication, analytics, e-commerce, consumer centricity, consulting and more). Let us start with your current focus, before delving into some aspects of your previous chapters. How did you arrive at Organisational Transformation as a focus area and what does it entail when you work with organisations today?

Shiv: Organisational Transformation (OT) for the most part has been deeply rooted in well-researched and established constructs like Systems Theory, HR/OD, Complexity/Chaos Theory, Organisational Learning and Adaptive Systems, Change Management and Leadership Theory – to name a few. However, my entry into OT was accidental and was based on an unshakeable belief that people would willingly change if they saw a clear connection between their individual efforts and organisational outcomes. As I went into exploring this belief deeper, I realized that these theoretical constructs were exceptionally useful, but in reverse. I found that if the change journey started with a comprehensive OT blueprint rather than a mega OT announcement – the chances of real change on the ground became infinitely more real. Further, I discovered that an OT blueprint that integrated human unpredictability, experience, belief, and behaviour into its design was critical both in its application and for its desired outcomes. When both these insights converged, I came to the realization that there are no poor performers, only unimaginatively designed processes. Addressing the dysfunctionality emerging from contradictory objectives that forced the creation of misaligned processes over time became my primary area of concern. And that continues to be the focus of my work with organisations today.

Susan: How does organizational transformation contribute to refreshing or repositioning an organisation - internally and externally? What are some common hurdles you have experienced when it comes to process and culture change exercises?

Shiv: Even before getting to the HOW, it is important to establish the WHY. Why does an organisation want to transform? What/Where does it want to change from and what does it want to change to? Answering the WHY question first has a disproportionate bearing on the HOW. It establishes a clear reason for the ambition that it can then rally everyone around. At the most basic level, it creates an internal awakening that the organisation could exist in a place that both its customers and its employees desire. For example, if the organisation’s goal is to be customer-centric, it has to create a blueprint of actions that will help it get there.

On some of the common hurdles, here’s my top 5:

·   CEO as sponsor v/s CEO as participant – only the latter works

·   Inability/Refusal to address personal change while driving organisational change

·   Anchoring the OT agenda in a specific function rather at the level of the organisation

·   “Losing one’s nerve” at the leadership level midway through the process

·   Using the same methodology, metrics, and timelines to review both run and change agendas

Susan: At what point do organisations typically feel the need for an organisational transformation consulting process? What should the leadership team keep in mind while deciding whether they should be part of such an exercise or not? Under what conditions will this typically lead to a fruitful exercise vs. a stalemate situation?

Shiv: There is no single type of organisation one can call out – it usually boils down to the type of leadership. Evolved leadership clearly sees, and more importantly accepts frictions that exist in goals, agendas, processes, and methods, and resolves to address them through a singular framework that enables both vertical and horizontal alignment. If there’s one thing that leadership must keep in mind while designing this framework it is FAIRNESS. Being fair does not mean being equal or uniform, it just means there must be a fully integrated and commonly visible framework of role, risk, remuneration and reward.

Susan: You have made a few major transitions in your professional life - advertising to marketing, an entrepreneurial chapter, marketing head to omnichannel/consumer practices head, leading the consumer centricity practice, setting up an independent consulting practice - to name a few. Are there any key learnings from these transitions? How easy or difficult was it for you to transition to these roles? If there is another transition for you, what would it be?

Shiv: With the benefit of hindsight, the biggest difference between a corporate career and an independent one is that in corporate I had to consciously build the strength to say NO and stay focused, while as an independent consultant I’ve discovered the freedom to say YES to any opportunity! However, what has driven my career choices has been an increasing understanding of the interconnectedness of events; the significance of responding greater than predicting; and the magic of spontaneous reaction greater than the achievement of a pre-set expectation. With each transition, I’ve felt more confident of embracing ambiguity and shaping that into solutions that do not already have a playbook.

On another transition, I don’t know. I think I’m living the work-in-progress life, so if the next opportunity takes me to one more unknown place, all the better!

Susan: Could you tell us about the Voice Of Consumer capability (apparel industry’s most advanced such capability) you set up at Aditya Birla and how it helped brands understand consumers better? Were there specific insights that influenced how brands presented themselves or led to changes in processes and practices?

Shiv: That’s been one of the most fulfilling roles in my career. While the Voice of Consumer had always been important on paper for most organisations, the methods adopted to understand them ranged from the primitive to the pedantic. On the one hand you had guest feedback books in stores (often filled up by the staff themselves), while on the other you had focus groups featuring 1.4 people that was supposed to represent 1.4B people. In practice, the consumer (leave alone their voice) had always been a footnote in the playbook of most organisations predominantly constructed on hard operational and financial metrics.

Thanks to Bain, I was introduced to NPS or the Net Promoter System – which we used as the foundation for introducing the Voice of Consumer in a meaningful manner into Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail. I found the framework exceptionally robust and for the first time, a credible design that allowed inputs directly from the consumer and created a meaningful convergence between individual anecdotes and institutional data. The simplicity, granularity, integrity, and volume of data coming in helped us make a case to leadership that led to the creation of a full-fledged analytics team in-house. This enabled us to test multiple hypotheses in real time, design experiments at scale, and transition towards data-centric decision making. One of the most significant process changes was in assortment planning which migrated from a region-based approach to an individual store-based approach. The other significant development was the organisation’s confidence in transitioning to an omni-channel enterprise from a purely physical enterprise.

Susan: You were instrumental in the digitization journey of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited, including setting up the country’s first state-of-the-art social media command centre. As a marketer who has experienced both the pre-digital and current eras, how do you believe narratives and approaches have evolved, especially with consumers mostly seeing, interacting and even shopping for brands online today. What aspects of branding are more important today?

Shiv: Yes, that was in 2014 when social media understanding in organisations was hardly a blip on the radar. I believed then that it would be a game-changer for organisations and that belief found favour in my leadership that decided to invest behind those capabilities at an institutional level, when most organisations outsourced this work, and therefore its understanding.

The most significant change from the pre-digital era to the current one is who controls the narrative. At one point, brands used to not only be in control but also dictate consumer tastes and choices, to a point now where consumers control the narrative if brands don’t keep up. But does that mean brands have no role anymore? On the contrary, a brand will always have a role as long as it knows how to continually morph while keeping its soul intact. The biggest change today is in the nature of relationships between brands and consumers. What brands DO (credibly and consistently) matters much more than what they say. Where a brand meets its consumer is determined by the latter at a time and place of their choosing. There’s no better time or opportunity for a brand to absorb and adapt to these realities.

Susan: Unfortunately there is still a misconception that ‘brand equals logo’. Could you help our readers understand what are the various aspects that play a part in consumers perceiving something as a strong brand - the obvious and the non-obvious aspects?

Shiv: Partly covered in my earlier point, but I think the days of a brand’s mere presence equaling performance is well and truly buried. I guess that should settle the brand equals logo debate. However, brand = behaviour = logo is the reality today, as it should be. How a brand behaves, interacts, empathizes with, and responds to its consumers at every stage of the relationship is the holy grail.

If I take that thinking further, the brand is what a brand does, and HOW it does it. How does it make it not just convenient for a customer to interact with it, but how does it make it fulfilling enough for it to become memorable and become the first choice whenever an opportunity arises. How does it design every single process from search, discovery, navigation, navigation-based information, consequences of selection, logistics and payment options, post-purchase experience, recovery at post-use dissonance – the list grows and evolves at every opportunity. Having an iron grip on these factors requires not only a heightened sense of empathy but also a rigorous sense of discipline. In my view, a lasting brand comes out of a lasting impression – delivered every single time.

Susan: What consumers see of an apparel/lifestyle brand seems more focused on the emotional and the intangible. You have obviously been part of the behind the scenes, crafting the strategy behind such aspects of brands. How does an apparel brand built on sound strategy stand out among the plethora of brands in the market today? Any examples on how strategy informed specific brand decisions?

Shiv: If you’d asked me this question even a decade ago, my answer may have been different! Every brand is a product of its zeitgeist. Which is why it must deeply absorb the appropriate role it should play at each evolution. Many brands mistakenly assume that once a consumer has liked or approved the role it has played in their life, they want it to continue playing that role forever.

While the role of an apparel brand when I started my career was to educate (be it etiquette, fashion, relevance), it operated in a world where conformity was expected. With liberalization came easier and greater exposure to global influences that encouraged independent thought and action – a brand like Allen Solly capitalized on that opportunity and became wildly successful. Over time, brands that did not adapt their role in consonance with other evolutionary factors for their consumers either got stuck with a small niche or became totally irrelevant and out of business. In today’s world the real role models are several D2C brands – with their ability to identify a space, find a product-market fit, speed to market, and build a business around substance rather than cliched expressions of style, are setting the new operating principles. The role for romancing the core product has never been more emphatic than what we are seeing today, and that is defining the brand.

Susan: Brands are not built overnight. But in today’s world of quick success & validation, thumbstopping visuals and attention deficiency, how can brands get noticed, yet have long term success?

Shiv: The core principles of consumer behaviour are universal, uniform, ubiquitous and unchanged. Therefore, the core principles of brand building should be anchored in a deeper understanding of the consumer’s truth. The fact that many brands took undue advantage of a consumer’s constraints in the past – be it awareness, access, or availability – may have created a slew of unscrupulous practices but the consumer’s needs and expectations have always remained the same. With greater awareness and lesser inhibition to demand what they need, they expect a lot more accountability from the brands they consider. That said, if you’re wondering why I haven’t quoted a single example of a brand that is demonstrating all of these virtues (and there are many), it’s because I’d like to measure their consistency over an execution time frame of at least 10 years.

Susan: If you to have to pick three things that are essential for the success of a brand, what would those be?

Shiv: 1. Brutal efficiency 2. A work in progress mindset 3. Consumer-centric business design

Susan: If someone wants to know more about your current practice or get in touch with you, where can they find more info, how do they reach you?

Shiv: The truth is that this piece is more updated than my LinkedIn bio (!) – but if anyone wants to get in touch the LinkedIn profile is https://www.linkedin.com/in/shivarajsubramaniam