Tata Motors Limited is Indias largest Fortune 500 automobile
company, with consolidated revenues of INR 1,88,818 crores (USD
34.7 billion) in 2012-13. It is the leader in commercial vehicles
in each segment, and among the top in passenger vehicles with
winning products in the compact, midsize car and utility vehicle
segments. It is also the worlds fifth largest truck manufacturer
and fourth largest bus manufacturer. Over 60,000 employees are
guided by the mission to be passionate in anticipating and
providing the best vehicles and experiences that excite our
customers globally. Of these more than 30,000 are white-collared
employees. 45% employees at Tata Motors have served an average
tenure of over 10 years in the organization. It goes without saying
that such experience has translated into a solid understanding of
the company culture, its processes, its strengths and weaknesses
along with rich domain knowledge.
How can Tata Motors harness this knowledge and expertise?There
is tremendous potential to tap the huge reservoir of knowledge,
experience and wisdom within the organization. This potential is
what gave birth to Iteach an internal facilitator programme for
Tata Motors. Launched in September 2011, the key objective of
Iteach was to leverage the tacit knowledge of internal experts and
convert the same into explicit organizational knowledge and
wisdom.
Who are the Iteach facilitators? How do we recognize them?Two
specific categories of people were identified as eligible
candidates
Senior leaders, for the abundance of knowledge and experience
that they possess in their field, and also for the ability to play
a pivotal role in creating a culture of leaders as teachers
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in various domains
They possessed adequate knowledge and were high performers. What
they needed more were the skills to facilitate, teach and thereby
cascade this valuable knowledge to others. In order to address this
issue Train the Trainer workshops were rolled out. This was
supported by a robust certification process. Adequate mentoring
support during the certification process enhanced the quality of
the facilitators.
A best-in-class on-line reward scheme was introduced to
encourage more trainers to join and teach. As per the scheme,
trainers are credited reward points based on the number of hours
they invest in teaching, facilitation and content creation. These
points can subsequently be redeemed by them against a wide choice
of merchandise on the on-line portal.
This eventually led to increased desire to teach and share
knowledge amongst many of the leaders and SMEs. As a result, Iteach
has become a highly respected and aspirational programme that has
played an instrumental role in changing the culture at Tata
Motors.
Our Aspirations for the Iteach journey ahead:Iteach has not just
equipped leaders with facilitation skills, but has gone a long way
in creating a culture of knowledge sharing and teaching. Today
internal trainers contribute to more than 70% learning hours
resulting in a three-fold jump as against the pre-Iteach era. This
has resulted in increased confidence levels, boosted their stage
presence and generated an aura of respect around them.
To elevate Iteach to the next level of maturity, we will have to
dwell upon the following two aspects:
Todayonly16%senior-mostleadershaveembracedIteach.Inordertodevelopacultureofleadersasteachers,wewouldneedmanymoreseniorleaderstoembarkuponthisjourney.How
can we garner higher senior leadership involvement?
Howdoweensurethatthemotivationbehindbeingafacilitatorisnotjustextrinsic(reward-based)butmoreintrinsic?
