Prithvi Shergill
Prithvi Shergill- Founder, Advisor, Investor, Researcher, Ideapreneur Kindly brief us about the outset story of your career since the beginning. My professional journey began when I realised that value gets created by combining purpose, people, and proficiency. Experiencing this in local and national leadership positions and international training with student associations such as AIESEC led me to join AT&T in 1990, where I worked in several HR roles across the USA, Philippines, India, and then Singapore which helped me to understand how important it is for HR to be aligned with business objectives and ensure people practices create happiness. My mandate from 2002 was to transform HR service delivery, using technology and shared service models to impact organisational effectiveness and enable effective integration with joint venture companies. In 2004, I joined Accenture, progressing to be a Partner, working closely with internal stakeholders to shape strategy and ensure execution, enhancing the maturity of policies, processes, practices, and platforms impacting leadership, talent, and culture. These served as the foundation of the growth engines for its businesses across technology, consulting, and operations. My assignments in Accenture led me to work on the human capital strategy to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations, value creation, and people development in various contexts, cultures, and countries. Then I was appointed as Chief Human Resources Officer at HCL Technologies in 2012, where I played a pivotal role in the reset of the talent strategy to re-energise the culture founded on the strategic intent of putting “Employees First, Customers Second”, seeding, nurturing and harvesting Ideapreneurship to multiply profitability and innovation. My experience at HCL Technologies helped shape my experience and expertise on the need for systemic operating models and solutions, combining technology and talent. These experiences at different companies across countries have helped me to develop a distinctive perspective on the opportunities HR and leaders have in engaging, enabling, and empowering people to build their proficiency and performance. After transitioning to be an entrepreneur, I established Tomorrow with colleagues who had shared beliefs in the opportunity to refresh people management by stewarding digital transformation initiatives with an outcome orientation. Tomorrow merged with entomo, where their expertise and experience were codified into a people experience platform that enterprises of tomorrow use to transform performance, talent, and learning. What inspired you to become a business consultant? I have always remained committed to investing in creating capacity, enhancing ability, capturing creativity, and driving change leading to growth. My career as a business consultant allows me to engage with multiple communities across cultures and countries to help companies and people become the best versions of themselves. My intentions, promises, and actions are rooted in the belief that professional consultants should act as trusted advisors to their clients, demonstrating ownership to understand context and shape customized solutions that translate strategy to action. I believe that success requires a deep understanding of the drivers of the client’s business and culture and relationships that truly go beyond the contract. As a successful leader, which three personal qualities do you believe contributed most to your success? I emphasize that the commitment to demonstrate Empathy, apply Adaptability, and build Relationships are three of the most crucial personal qualities that have contributed to my success. By developing Empathy, a leader can connect with stakeholders on a deeper level, understand their pain points, and create a work model that delivers desired results in a culture that is fostered by inclusivity, respect, and collaboration. In today’s fast-paced business environment, change is constant, and leaders must be able to role model Adaptability in changing circumstances, by remaining resilient, agile, and forward-thinking, thereby responding proactively to be future-ready. Finally, I see building transparent Relationships with employees, customers, and stakeholders as essential in inspiring trust, which is the fuel to have people commit to applying their abilities authentically. How do you keep yourself up to date with the latest technology, trends, research, etc. to give up-to-date service to clients? I believe in staying updated with the latest technology, trends, and research, and I achieve this by being curious about things that I do not know, have exposure to, or have experience with. To reach the right decisions, I demand it be evidence-based – and seek data that can be translated into information and insight which inspires the right action. I can often be seen seeking out time with people one-on-one to learn from them, attending industry conferences to learn from audiences I engage with, seeking response and reaction to ideas on online forums, – and seeing “networking” as building a mutually beneficial association. What were some of your biggest technology challenges? I tell that one of the biggest challenges for professionals, including myself, remains co-creating enterprise-wide people enablement technology solutions whose value can be seen in their awareness, adoption, and assimilation to truly augment practices, processes, and policies. The need to appreciate context on what needs to be continued, started, or stopped, given organisational dynamics, often fuelled by cultural differences, language barriers, and different regulatory requirements, is essential. While many technology products profess to be the best in class, the ability to navigate away from the “one-size-fit-all” solution as often is not fit for purpose, to what will make design and deployment distinctive is a collective and individual skill. What have been the toughest obstacles you faced in your career and how did you overcome them? I believe that measuring and managing change is one of the toughest obstacles professionals continue to be faced with. I say that while change is uncomfortable, leaders need to be able to do more than communicate, train people and address employees’ concerns about the change. Investing time and effort to explain the context and build the capability to reset, reimagine and reinvent policies, processes, practices, and platforms is what leads to accelerating from today and changing to be ready for tomorrow. Mention some of the notable recognitions and accreditations received by your organization and person. I have been humbled to have represented
