Volume 17, Number 4 Article by Sanjay Dhar December, 2005
Evolving a High Performance Culture: Learning from a Turnaround :
Although there have been a number of studies of high performance organisations, there have been few of the individual department as a unit of analysis for understanding high performance. In an attempt to make good this lacuna, Sanjay Dhar studies the performance of the Rail and Structural Mill (RSM) of the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), a unit now emulated by other departments.
In the 1990s RSM Bhilai was the sole producer of rails and structurals in India with Indian Railways as its sole customer. In 1996 Indian Railways made the specification for rails more stringent and simultaneously the steel industry went into recession. When the new demand could not be met RSM zeroed in on the chief cause – the psychological divide between its rolling and finishing mills. A series of HR initiatives, starting with a dialogue with the workers led to several path-breaking initiatives. In 2003-04 RSM made rail dispatches of 707,000 tonnes to Indian Railways, to other customers and for export, from a mill that the Russians had designed for 500,000 tons of rails. The RSM model of change, Dhar discovers, is a reflection of H J Leavitt’s ‘diamond’ of interacting components: people, tasks, technology, and structure, with people being the key to performance. In the evolution to high performance, all the elements change to reset the equilibrium at a higher level, but the change in the mindset and skill sets of people is the driver. It enables changes in structures and technology that enable optimising processes. High levels of positive energy and an internal locus of control enable team based working, which enables structural changes like breaking functional barriers leading to cross functional teams. Process innovations and technological changes are the result. A combination of all these factors leads to a different equilibrium at higher performance levels.
Reprint No 05406b
