A successful but hateful Strategy to re-energize Large Pakistani Organizations

Let's be clear on one thing, great leaders don't have time to give a single organization their whole life. They tend to have varied objectives in life, a single organization whether it be PIA, Steel Mill, Banks or even the State Bank of Pakistan has only a small footprint in overall scheme of things. If you are a great leader, you tend to move from places to places making revolutionary changes where ever you go.

At least, this has been the story of Pakistani Organization. A Leader comes in, with great power given to them, tasked to change the whole organizational culture. And there have been more than a couple of successful instances, were the same strategy has worked.

The strategy is simple, it acknowledges that there is no time to improve the current organization so they create a parallel organization within the organization, it has more power, resources and flexibility and it cuts the ties with old organization. The newly hired people in the new organization are comparatively fresh so they can be molded to the modern needs. What we have now are two completely different sets of people, one (comparatively) old aged, slow, bureaucratic, somewhat loyal and the second sets of people are better educated, young, fast paced, without any red tape culture, would work there ass off to complete the project on time and would move to a different organization without a second thought. There is a hiring freeze in the old organization so they don't grow and are slowly washed out, 'golden handshakes' also comes in the picture if they want get rid of them early.

So far the strategy has worked at State Bank, HBL (and other banks), Lucky group, K Electric and some other organizations. The results are somewhat confused but a lot better than what it would have been if nothing was done. Though one thing is for sure, the organizational output increases drastically.

How can you identify whether this strategy has been implemented in an organization or not. You will see on occasion a really frustrated employee who always have bad words for management, who sees the management as someone who are hell-bent on destroying the organization and on other occasions an employee who are specific, young, with decision making ability and people who work late hours.

Whether the strategy is good or not, would have a different answers depending from which angle you see. But one thing is for sure, the performance and quality of output increases twofold.