How to keep transforming without exhausting your people

Girish Ganesan: The biggest shift is about moving from managing change as a series of events to building reinvention as an organizational capability. You know, if you think about it, like for a long time companies could point to a transformation, run a program around it, stabilize it, and then move on. I don't think that model holds true anymore. You know, technology's moving too quickly, customer expectations are moving too quickly, business models are shifting too quickly, so the question for the leaders and the organization becomes less, how do we get through this transformation, but more, how do we build an organization that keeps transforming without exhausting itself?

Dan Hibberd: Girish, welcome to Shapeshifters Transformation Series. We are stoked to have you join us today.

Girish Ganesan: Dan, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited about this conversation.

Dan Hibberd: Well, look, to kick off, who are you, what's your role at S&P, and if you're up for my bonus question, how would you explain what you do to my 7-year-old? So, over to you, Girish.

Girish Ganesan: So Girish Ganesan, Chief People Officer at S&P Global. We're about 40,000 employees in 41 countries. My role is that of being the custodian for our 40,000 employees. You know, it's really about making sure their experience at S&P Global is to their expectations. And big focus is helping our people, our organization answer a pretty fundamental question that as the world around us is changing and the business is changing, how do we make sure our people, our leaders can change with it, and what we need to do in order to make them future-ready?

To answer your part two of the question, how would I explain this to your 7-year-old? Um, I think I largely just help people find success in a big company.

Dan Hibberd: Fantastic. And I think that is probably the shortest, most effective description of what everyone does in a people function, right, is we help people be successful in the organization. And so I love how simple you've managed to get with that response. Now, to dive in, you've got this

Dan Hibberd: You oversee 40,000 people at S&P Global. You've already mentioned this change that is taking place. My question for you is as we see all this change, as you see this change, what's the single biggest shift organizations are needing to make to be successful? You're touching on it already, but I'd love you to kind of dive deeper there.

Girish Ganesan: It's a loaded question, Dan, but I'm going to see if I can whittle it down to a single biggest shift. But I do think, you know, this moving from managing change as a series of events to building reinvention as an organizational capability.

You know, if you think about it, like for a long time, companies could point to a transformation, run a program around it, stabilize it, and then move on. I don't think that model holds true anymore. You know, technology is moving too quickly, customer expectations are moving too quickly, business models are shifting too quickly. So the question for the leaders and the organization becomes less, "How do we get through this transformation?" but more, "How do we build an organization that keeps transforming without exhausting itself?"

You know, that means creating clarity on where we're going, giving people enough context to understanding the why, and then building the skills, the leadership, the systems that make adaptation as part of normal work, right? The real advantage is not coming from changing once, it will come from getting better at changing continuously. So I do think that is the biggest shift, because the future belongs to organizations that turn that continuous change from a burden to a capability and a competitive advantage.

Dan Hibberd: Look, I think that's so spot on. And I forget the exact statistic, but I know that over the last few years, the number of projects involving some level of change that people are coming into contact with has doubled. And it was a lot already two or three years ago, right? And AI's just, and all the other change that is taking place have just really leveled up the amount of change

Dan Hibberd: I had an interesting conversation recently with someone about the idea of transformation pacing and this idea of going, well, if we're constantly transforming, how do we maximize our organization's capacity to absorb change? Cuz I think that's possibly one of the biggest challenges right now is going, how do we not just change once, how do we, you know, maintain a rhythm of continuous change and survive? So what are some of the things that you're doing at S&P Global to, I guess, help with that muscle or that ability for the organization to absorb and and continuously change?

Girish Ganesan: It's a great question. I completely agree with that sentiment because it's going to take a bunch of coordinated moves for us to build that capability. Right from building tech fluency and AI fluency with all the disruptors that are occurring in our industry with AI. Because if you understand AI, you understand how to leverage it, and you're being invested in in terms of the skilling that is required, you're going to get much more comfortable in playing with that tool to your advantage, and you'll be much more comfortable in embracing change, because that investment is not just about how do you make yourself ready for an organization, but it's more about how you make yourself ready for the new economics that we're going to be dealing with as humans, because this change is seeping into every aspect of the society whether we like it or not.

The second, I would say, is for leaders to drive change for their teams, they also have to embrace change themselves. And they have to role model, and many a times what happens is there's alignment at the top, there's excitement, you know, in the lower layers of the organization, and the middle management is kind of left on their own to figure out what needs to be done. So we've designed and implemented a Change Leadership Academy with Harvard that all 7,000 people leaders at S&P Global are going through, irrespective of grade, geography, or role, because if you have a

Girish Ganesan: been through this level of change, an accelerated change, organizations have an obligation to get you ready for it. And imagine a unit of team that looks up to their leader for context, for information, for making sense of change, and if that leader hasn't necessarily gone through any of this, how do we expect them to deliver for their team? So, putting them through this academy, it's over six months, helps them really understand what it means to be a future-ready leader is an investment that we are making.

The other aspect, in terms of a coordinated move, is you also have to make sure you balance performance orientation and results that you wanting your organization to deliver on with what's in it for the employee itself. And we have intentionally implemented a internal talent marketplace to say as you get yourself ready, in addition to your domain expertise, as you add more skills to it, it actually opens up other growth opportunities for you. And this AI-native platform that we have implemented shows them different career paths beyond what their traditional career path might have been, so it actually opens up much more for them than beyond what might have existed because of these new skills they're developing.

And to balance that, we've implemented a wellbeing strategy and a wellbeing people resource group, which is for the people, by the people. It has its own board and regional chapters, which are led by our own employees, and it focuses on why, through change, you have to also focus on your health and wellbeing: mental, physical, social, financial, because part of the change, it's going to reconstruct on what your job looks like, how do you make money, how do you enable your performance, and that can have a lot of strain on a human being. And we want to make sure that we are there for our employees and also that they can keep up with this energy, because energy will drive performance and performance will drive results, but everybody needs to find their avenue to find that energy. Listen, I can go on and on. It's a laundry list of things

Girish Ganesan: but essentially what I would say is it requires various coordinated moves in order to make sense of change, and also to mitigate the change fatigue that exists within the organization. The last one that I love to talk about would be making sure, you know, we've got our ears to the ground.

Listening through change is so important. Gone are the days when we could only do just one annual engagement survey

Dan Hibberd: Yes.

Girish Ganesan: and figure out what needs to be done. We need to move towards a continuous listening pattern so that you're reacting and acting to it just in time, and then figuring out what needs to be done in order to support the employees through the change that is upon them.

Dan Hibberd: Amazing. Girish, you've touched on a number of things that I'd love to double-click on here a little bit. I think the importance of leaders and managers and driving that change process, I love the idea of focusing on well-being. I think when we think about lifting people's capacity to absorb change, well-being is absolutely something that is going to enable them in that environment and build resilience, and so I love that focus that you've put on things. And then you talked about some of the difficulty and getting people to shift and change and shift mindsets.

So, I'm going to go back and go, when you think about leaders and managers in that change process, what are some of the key skills that you're focusing on as part of that? And you you can see, I think, from what you've said, so much of the work that you're doing is not about the adoption of a technical skill, but the skill set that sit around the edges, so I want to throw it back to you on that one.

Girish Ganesan: Yeah, you know, um I would first say is not to build leadership capability around certainty, but build it around capacity to adapt and providing clarity. It's not about leaders having answers to every questions, but it's about them being able to ask the right questions to get the information that they need in order to provide clarity to their teams. Tech fluency, AI fluency is table stakes

Girish Ganesan: These days, every organization needs to invest in that, you know, to bring their leaders and people along. But it's how do you complement that with human capabilities that get amplified with AI in your infrastructure? And that would be things like judgment, integrity and trust, creativity, systems thinking, and how do you connect the dots?

So, every AI course that we deploy is actually complemented with human skills, and we call them power skills, that you're required to take in order to in order for you to be more effective, because there's always human in the loop. And whether you're in the indiv- individual contributor or a leader, uh you need to understand, you know, where you sort of intervene as as a person while AI is helping you generate the outcomes through your workflow.

In addition to that, I would say change capability, I just can't emphasize on that enough, and that's why the Change Leadership Academy for our our people leaders. And how do you contextualize change? And then how do you sort of break it down into bite-size for your teams to understand what is absolutely required? And not every change that is communicated across the organization may even affect every unit of team. So, how do you then prioritize? What are the nuggets you take from the context that has been provided that is absolutely relevant for your team? And that's why, you know, change capability is so important for organizations to invest on, and particularly with the leadership, because they're the ones who can make sense for it for their teams.

Dan Hibberd: That makes complete sense, and I think the other thing that we've been seeing emerge in the research recently is, you know, as individuals are getting more productive, operating as a team really effectively, coordinating, collaborating is becoming more difficult as well. Some of those skills, uh you know, the human skills are becoming more critical, and when everyone can work quickly, it can get really messy, or you can be really effective as a team, and so those challenges are starting to surface as well.

Girish Ganesan: And- and Dan, I would just add, you know,

Girish Ganesan: for leaders, we shouldn't assume that because we were successful as leaders for a decade, or 15 or 20 years, they will automatically make us successful in a different operating environment. Leadership is an unfinished business, and the leadership playbook that got us here may not get us to where we want to be. And that's why we have to be open to these new skills that are coming our way for the benefit of ourselves, but also for the benefit of our teams.

Dan Hibberd: That brings me to uh my next question for you here, Girish. And obviously, with all this change taking place, uh you've got different people with different capacities for change, different tendencies to move forward versus, you know, stick with what they've done. How do you kind of overcome some of the mindset differences, and how do you shift some of those people who are maybe more entrenched in traditional ways of working forward? And have you got any experience there?

Girish Ganesan: Yeah, you know, the the strongest examples I've seen are where teams stop treating new technology as an add-on, and start redesigning the work and the way they work and and the way work moves through the organization. And that's a very different move. If you simply put AI on top of fragmented processes, you often make fragmentation faster.

But when you step back and ask, "Why does this work pass on through seven hands? Why are we collecting this information twice? Which decisions really require human judgment?" that's when transformation becomes meaningful.

It's hard work, but that's where I've seen people sort of get on the bus, to use that phrase. And what usually happens is technology conversations quickly become about organizational design then. You start talking about accountability, decision rights, skills, capacity, and that's why I think it's one of the most important lessons to transformation. And, you know, some of it is like history repeating itself through engineering days when we brought in, through Industrial Revolution,

Girish Ganesan: ...tion, a lot of automation, technology transformation and workforce transformation were becoming the same conversation, right? If you automate a bad process, you still have a bad process, just a faster one. The real unlock comes through technology forces you to question how the organization itself works. And when you go through that hard work and involve your people, I've seen much less skepticism because they themselves see how to reinvent versus it being forced on them.

Dan Hibberd: I'm reminded of what you mentioned at the start where you're building this marketplace so that people can also see a vision for how some of these changes can open up new opportunity. And so I love that you're balancing the change and the effort involved in overcoming inertia and shifting to go and, this is also going to open up opportunity, and making that visible for people.

Girish Ganesan: Completely agree, and you know, when someone's expertise has been valued for years and suddenly a piece of technology can do part of that work, the reaction is not going to be purely rational, right? People naturally ask, what does this mean in terms of the value that I provide to the organization?

So I do think one of the most important things organizations can do is help people see their value that is not confined to a or a set of tasks that is performed today. It is really about capabilities, transferable skills. It's in their judgment, their experience, their ability to learn, their relationships that'll help solve new problems. And then we give them the agency and evidence that they can succeed in the new world.

You know, because confidence is built through progress, and you can tell someone a hundred times that AI is an opportunity, but the moment they use it to improve the quality of their work or solve something that they largely owned and had pride for, their posture changes. And that's why I think change has to be experienced, not just explained. And people don't fear change

Girish Ganesan: in the abstract, they fear losing relevance, and I think that's the most important aspect of how we bring people along.

Dan Hibberd: I love that. People fear relevance, and that makes complete sense. As we kind of shift gears slightly here, Girish, and focus in on the kind of L&D, OD leadership space, where do you feel these functions are needing to shift in order to most effectively support these new ways of working? Are there any things that you're thinking need to be left behind, and where do we need to be moving to?

Girish Ganesan: Yeah, you know, I do think L&D needs to move from just anticipating skills to sensing capabilities needed in real time. Historically, if you look at it, we would identify skills, build a multi-year plan, and then execute against it. That works when the future arrives gradually.

Today, by the time you've finished defining the skills taxonomy, the work might have already changed. So, I do think the next generation of learning and OD will need to be much more dynamic, understanding where work is changing, where capability gaps are emerging, and then giving people the shortest possible path from learning to application. And that's why there's so much research on learning has to be embedded in workflows versus being episodic.

This is important because people rarely build capability by consuming more content. They build it by doing something differently, getting feedback instantly, and doing it again. So, L&D has to increasingly design for practice, not for knowledge transfer. So, I do think future of learning is less about knowing more and more, but applying faster, and distance between learning and doing has to collapse rapidly.

Dan Hibberd: Couldn't agree more with your thoughts there. I'm conscious we're going to need to let you go soon, and so as we round out our conversation, Girish, what would be your one takeaway for leaders as they're approaching this change? And I know that you're

Dan Hibberd: ...are still uncovering many unknowns yourselves, but, you know, what would be the one thing, given what you know now, that will help organizations?

Girish Ganesan: You know, if it was one thought I have to leave with, I would say that don't build your organizations around certainty. Build it around capacity to adapt. None of us can predict precisely how work will evolve over the next three to five years or even beyond. What we can influence is whether our people are confident learners, whether our leaders are willing to change, and whether our systems will make adaptation easier, and whether we can create trust for our people to experiment.

And those things compound, right? Over time, they create an organization that doesn't simply respond to disruption. It knows how to use disruption to get stronger. So, I would just say, resilience helps you withstand change, and reinvention helps you benefit from it, and that would be that would be my thought in conclusion.

Dan Hibberd: Amazing, Girish. Look, we have loved having you join us on the Transformation Series. You've got so much to share, and we just really love the way that you are approaching this change with such a broad view of, yes, it's a technological change, but there's so much involved to ensure that people are brought along on the journey and done so effectively and in a way that involves care. And so we we love everything that you've had to say today, Girish. So, thank you for joining us.

Girish Ganesan: Dan, thank you for having me. I'm certainly very proud of the journey S&P Global is on. Still a journey. We still have a lot to do, but certainly feeling very good about where our people have both invested in themselves and the organization so far. So, thank you for letting me share our story.