XA Podcast 019 | A Startup Approach To Nation-Building | People And Talent Series

Startup founders often associate government organisations with being plodding creatures, slow to adapt and reluctant to embrace change. But what if the organisation in question is a tech startup of it’s own, tasked with implementing the tools and tech needed by a future-friendly and foward-looking government? What does it take to build a culture of excellence in such an organisation, that’s tasked to help develop an entire nation and position it to be resilient to changes, while also moving it forward into an increasingly tech-enabled era?

Discussion Topics: A Startup Approach to Nation-Building | People and Talent Series

• Role of GovTech, Singapore
• Truths about people and talent
• Hiring focus for GovTech Singapore
• Maintaining culture through growth
• Learnings from the pandemic
• Lessons for early stage founders scaling their teams
• Building resilience to be able to manage change

Transcript: A Startup Approach to Nation-Building | People and Talent Series

Sergio Salvador: All right, welcome to this episode of the People and Talent Series for the XA Podcast. And today, my guest is someone that I used to work with a couple of lifetimes ago, and that I’m very, very excited to welcome to the program. D.N. Prasad, or DNP, as he’s known in professional circles, is an Executive Coach, transformational HR leader, and talent and cultural strategies with expertise in leading the scale transformation, building and scaling organisations and functions, and shaping and nurturing cultures and careers. He is currently the Senior Director for strategy people and organisation with a Government Technology Agency Singapore, otherwise called GovTech. Prasad, welcome to the program.

D.N. Prasad: Thank you, Sergio. It’s always a pleasure to see you and chat with you.

Sergio Salvador: Fantastic. And maybe just to get started, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself so that our listeners can get to know you better?

D.N. Prasad: Again, thank you for having me. And it’s always a pleasure to be associated with anything Google and XA in some ways, too. So Sergio, you did cover a little bit of my professional background earlier, so won’t get too much into it. You can always find out more on LinkedIn. I’m originally from Bangalore, and Singapore’s home for 14 years now. An engineer by my basic qualification, an HR and OD professional by choice, a practicing exec coach by my calling, and just a very grateful soul seeking experiences, and striving to make a difference to touch people’s lives. My strongest identity has always been that of a father, friend, and coach.

Sergio Salvador: Fantastic. I’m already inspired by your self-introduction and I’m looking forward to hearing a lot more of your thoughts and your philosophy around that. But first of all, I find that sometimes there seems to be a little bit of confusion or perhaps a lack of knowledge about what GovTech is all about. What is GovTech?

D.N. Prasad: Especially coming right after the pandemic, I’d be surprised if a lot of people still have questions about what is GovTech. But yeah, let me take that. We are a very interesting organisation, formed in 2016, in its current avatar, and yet, our roots go back to 1981, and the setup of the National Computer Board.

We are the leading tech agency for the Singapore government, with a focus on building and strengthening the Singapore government’s internal engineering and digital capabilities. We empower the whole of government or WOG as we call it here to centrally design, develop and deliver digital services that are built for our citizen’s and business’s immediate needs. We also play a very pivotal role in Singapore’s continued smart nation journey, we harness the power of technology to catalyse this transformation of Singapore into a smart nation, and drive digital transformation within the public sector.

Sergio Salvador: Thank you for the explanation. And I’ve been lucky enough myself, of course, to get to know GovTech, relatively well over the last few years, be very lucky. And I was always very impressed by it. And the work that the company, I guess does, and I could imagine many other governments looking at you guys, and thinking, hey, I want one of those. And I always found this a very pioneering type of company, the kind created by the Singapore government.

But let’s go back, let’s go back to you, let’s talk about your personal journey which brings a lot of experience in the people space. But that experience, especially originally, was more focused on MNCs corporations, to a certain extent, fairly large companies. And then you became an entrepreneur, you went almost the other way, by creating your own business focused on development, growth coaching, specifically. And in the last few years, you have been in a public agency, I guess. How would you describe that part of your journey? What led you to do all of those very different spaces and how did you fare in the transitions?

D.N. Prasad: It’s a very interesting question Sergio. Before I share about my transition from the private sector to the public sector I’d like to change the phrase that you used. You said I started my own business and that coaching is so sacrosanct and so much for a calling like I said, I’ve always called it my coaching practice. I don’t call it my business at all. So, I associate that with something of a higher calling, if you will. Again, the question that you asked, I do get asked this question a lot, technically speaking, you know, like you summarise, I left Google in 2018 and started my own exec coaching and talent advisory practice. So the transition wasn’t necessarily from a private sector to a public sector.

In those year, year and a half that I was with Noetic Step, that’s my coaching practice, I would often tell people that I was living my dream. And that’s exactly what I wanted to do. And there was a curveball, and I was tapped on the shoulder for an opportunity to serve with the public service and an opportunity that was too good to pass. So here I am, three years into GovTech, but I had spent 12 years at Google, coached a lot, and my 18 months, of coaching practice, has given me a platform to work with leaders and leadership teams, across industries, across the region, and to work with people who are not necessarily similar to Googlers. And that was a brilliant experience, I think that experience helped me settle in very well at GovTech.

So that was number one. Number two, the leadership team at GovTech here, the people that I have the honour of working with, day in and day out, I report to the Chief Executive of GovTech and he’s one of the most transparent leaders that I have ever come across. They’re transparent. So I walked in with my eyes, ears and mind open about what I was getting into, there was definitely a period of adjustment. But I would say that happens, even if we are changing roles in the same organisation that we’ve been in. And the third one, always speaks about the importance of understanding the context, I think I put that to practice myself. So I was intentional about understanding the context, listening more than I spoke, and I would never forget that it was going to be a longitudinal journey.

Most importantly, summing it all up, it was really the mind-set that I put into practice, and then the shift in mindset about how I want you to approach this, and be intentional about it. And of course, supported by lovely people around now, that’s really what’s helped me in each of these transitions, been truly blessed by some wonderful colleagues, leaders, mentors, coaches and peers that I’ve often kind of reached out to, to bounce ideas off. I mean, I remember speaking to you several times, as well. So you’re very much in that list Sergio. So, that’s been my trick for that transformation from each role to another.

Sergio Salvador: Thank you, Prasad. So, that’s also very inspirational. I think you’ve touched on a couple of topics that I would love to cover a little bit later in more detail. The topics perhaps of change, adaptability, and perhaps the topic of culture, which I’m also very passionate about myself. But I think before we get to that point, I always love to ask a question about I’m a great believer that we learn when we face difficulties. And I was wondering, you know, with that experience, that you bring all those years of MNCs very large companies, your own coaching practice, and also the last few years in GovTech, what has been the most challenging, the most difficult project that you had to manage? And what was the story around it? What do you learn from it?

D.N. Prasad: Well, this is a really hard question Sergio, for the simple reason hand on heart, I just can’t pick one project. That there are several that’s what about 23, 24 years in service, and in the people and organisation space does to you perhaps I have been in the middle of some really challenging projects in Infosys and Google with Nordics Step, and now at GovTech, but if I were to kind of really anchor it on, on an archetype rather than naming a particular project, I would often say that anything that was at the intersection of people, culture and transformation, any of these or all three together was always special.

It challenges me enough to keep me up at night and it is exciting enough to get me out of bed first thing in the morning, primarily because we’re dealing with mind-sets, we’re dealing with mostly longitudinal work, it’s not a fly by night, it’s not instant gratification that you get and then you’re leaving a significant change, you’re moving from point A to point B, where point B is better than point A. So I have often been challenged by but also being excited about anything that was in the intersection of people transformation and culture.

Sergio Salvador: Understood. So you’re talking about the length of your experience 23, 24 years in essentially different aspects of the people and talent space and I’m wondering, and this is going to be another difficult question I hope no one promises that you will be getting an easy question for me. But I’m very curious to know, if you had the chance to distill all of that experience into one thought, I’m wondering if you have found the one truth about people and talent that you have learned in your career.

D.N. Prasad: Can I share two? One is overall learning and one is with specific regard to roles as a leader and in some ways, it’s organizationally or functionally a lot of them are leaders. So I will start with the first one. I’ll quote Laszlo Bock here if any one of us who spent time in Google knows who the legend is.

Sergio Salvador: The man, the legend.

D.N. Prasad: Yes, absolutely and one believed that we had even at Google, and I’m sure you would remember this Sergio, he would always say that if you give people freedom, they will amaze you. I think that’s my biggest takeaway. And that can manifest in different ways, you know, there can’t be a bigger truth than that. As a leader, one of my biggest learnings, and then continue to practice as well as it’s absolutely important that we know when to lead, when to be led, and when to get out of the way. I think if we can bring these two together, wherever we have an influence will be a much better place.

Sergio Salvador: Fantastic and thank you for taking me back in time a few years ago, to our own experience in Google and listening to all of these truths about people and talent, which I know you have very much taken to heart and applied as much as you could in the last few years. And I think that takes us directly to the topic of culture. Again, something that I say I’m very passionate about as well. And especially you have had the opportunity to experience various types of culture. When you joined GovTech a few years ago, I guess you had the opportunity to influence the culture of the company in various ways. How do you go about it? What do you find? How has it evolved over the last few years?

D.N. Prasad: I have to admit here that when I came into GovTech, GovTech as an organisation actually has a very strong set of values and therefore a culture itself. And I’ve always believed that we don’t necessarily create culture, we define values, we hire like-minded, like-value people, the collective behavioural manifestation of these values form the culture, the place. A couple of things that are always important is that tone from the top is critical. The voice of the employees is critical. And it’s a longitudinal co-creation process.

And I saw all of this happening at GovTech. Of course, the efforts in the last three years have been here and this is not just me, it’s a collective leadership effort. We have continued to build on our organisational capabilities based on our values of being agile, bold, and collaborative. We call it our ABC values. And we are continually striving to nurture and strengthen our learning culture, an agile culture and a user centric service journey culture.

We recently also in the last about a year and a half, two years, as a leadership team, we’ve worked on defining what our leadership behaviours, the leadership principles should be at GovTech and you see a lot of organisations have that as well. It was important, we had a very strong mission, we had strong values, and there by the culture. It is also important that you’re in our evolution as an organisation, we created the leadership principles that will hold us all accountable as leaders in the way we show up for the organisation, for the teams and for ourselves and we are now on that journey, everything coming together.

So that’s been a fascinating part, it’s been about being a part of a transformational journey of a very interesting organisation that’s very exciting. And again, we are a purpose-driven organisation, and that will not change and that’s true for anyone in public service specifically GovTech as well making lives better is a significant part of our mission statement. And for me, personally, Sergio, who always believes that the most exciting part and the most grateful part of my opportunity with GovTech is that I have a platform to play my small part in nation building, it doesn’t get bigger, it doesn’t get bold, it’s a very humbling experience there.

Sergio Salvador: Thank you for sharing that Prasad. The pandemic obviously has affected everyone’s lives personally and professionally and I was wondering, just in the back of my mind when you were explaining the interactions, the dynamics, the culture, in GovTech, how did the pandemic affected? And how did people fear during the pandemic?

D.N. Prasad: You know we had a very pivotal role in how Singapore managed pandemic, most of the tech that was used for the pandemic management was coming out of GovTech. So in some ways, just like a lot of other agencies and ministries, because it was again, a village that came together to manage the pandemic in Singapore, we had a very pivotal role as well and that gave us that additional sense of responsibility, gratitude, and pride.

It’s not just because of that, it was not that it wasn’t affecting us here, we had to quickly adapt to how things were changing by the day. There were a few very critical learnings. One is that there was no new normal, because we were all and we are all going through a series or phases of what we could call current norms. So that’s a big learning. We had to be agile, we had to be responsive, we had to listen to the employees, put their health and wellbeing as priority number one, and adapt on a day to day basis to the new ways of working, to new ways of engaging and new ways of delivery. And then that comes with its own challenges.

We were an organisation, which was fairly heavy on in person meetings. So getting used to being on Skype on Teams, managing these hybrid meetings, again, we started managing it, okay, it was not about having challenges with tech, once the infrastructure was there, we were managing it okay but it’s not a preferred style. So how do we get used to that? How do we make sure that in a hybrid setup, which could be in meetings, or which could be in learning interventions or workshops, how are we seamlessly integrating the physical and the virtual, so neither party, people on neither side was getting left out. So how do we include them? So all of that was very, very critical learning. How do we engage when we are not in front of each other?

Managers skills were extremely essential. So again, like I said, every day, we were thinking about something we were getting feedback from. So we scaled up engagement, we scaled up engagement with the team. We looked at both high touch and high tech, there could be emails going out sharing our personal experiences of what we were doing, because they wanted to see that, you know, we’re going through exactly similar ones, similar experiences.

And then we got them to share. So we scaled up engagement in smaller groups, specifically, people who are joining us knew there were hundreds of people who joined us, when we were going through the pandemic, who hadn’t seen the office, they would come in, collect their devices, and off they go, they’re working from home. So how do we make sure that they’re settling into the organisation? So I think every day was a learning experience, every day was different that the fact that we had to be agile was probably the biggest requirement at all.

Sergio Salvador: So one thing about GovTech is that it is possibly the largest concentration of Singaporean technical employees anywhere, probably, as far as I know, how do you go about finding those people to continue growing? How do you go about hiring? And how much technology was something that you use or supported that effort to create the engagement to bring additional people on board to create the right experiences for them?

D.N. Prasad: That’s an interesting question. There’s a lot there and I’ll try to cover everything Sergio and if I missed anything, just let me know, I’ll start with hiring. Of course, we definitely have a strong employment brand. We don’t take that for granted. So we continue to kind of focus on engaging just not our GovTechies internally, but also the community at large and the tech community, we do a lot of community engagement.

And then we are responsible for kind of building these communities outside. And then we also focus on young talent, internships. So by and large, our people recognizes people know us to be one of the better employers in the sector in Singapore, and they do come to us. So when we hire, we need to be obviously, really careful. So there are about three things that we kind of focus on. One is their ability to be a culture add and just not a culture fit. The second one is their ability to be a deep generalist, so that they can perform different roles and evolve with PR.

It’s a little bit like it again, going back to our days, Google, where we used to say good for Google. So similarly, good for GovTech, is what we look at here. And the last one is their ability to take the role and the function to a next level. So it’s not that we are hiring for the as in now, we are hiring for someone who can be really good as in now but can call so grow and grow the function along with and grow the organisation along with it. So that’s what we do when it comes to hiring. Now, the second aspect is how do we grow them and how do we develop them? Again, like I said, there is a very strong learning culture that we adopt in GovTech.

Obviously, it’s a technology organisation. So we have developed our own competency framework technology. So, it’s fairly broad. It covers 12 tech functional clusters, about 38 job roles, and 130 odd competencies. So we’ve anchored all our HR processes, starting from hiring all the way to development and performance and rewards on the functional competency framework. So each of the roles that we hire people to date, there is a certain competency criteria. So everyone knows, and we’re transparent about it.

They know where they are, and we hire because they fit in there. And they also know how can they grow within their roles or across their roles. We are big on talent mobility. So that’s how we focus on their development. So there is a Four E model that we use, we call it a 4E model, which is education, which is training like you and I know, there’s exposure, there is experience, and there’s engagement, engagement plays a crucial role, even in deployment.

So that’s how we focus on them. And then again, for anyone being in the public service, or in the tech sector, they can move to roles within GovTech or they can move to roles outside GovTech within the public service. So an approach that we’re taking is that we’re not looking at it as a lifetime employment, we’re looking at it as lifetime employability. So that’s an approach with which we focus on development and growth of the GovTechies. Have I covered your questions?

Sergio Salvador: I only thing I would love to hear about perhaps like to round up that would be in terms of technology, increasingly in the people space thing we see more and more use of technology. And of course, this is the Technology Agency of Singapore. How do you view the use of technology and how helpful or otherwise has been so far in your work?

D.N. Prasad: Yeah, absolutely. Needless to say, tech is absolutely critical. And I’m not denying that for a moment. With tech, there are also other aspects. So it’s the processes are equally important, people are equally important and the programs or platforms that we build are equally important too. Tech is a great enabler, Sergio. And again because we are responsible for digital transformation, the government and we work with several ministries, and the agencies, we’re also deeply aware of the fact that not everyone has the same maturity curve.

So we need to push the boundaries with people who are ahead of the curve, and then bring people along if they are behind the curve so there is a balance that comes in. So looking at that the question that we ask ourselves is, are we managing tech? Or is tech managing us? You know, the answer to that kind of tells us what we should do and what we’re doing. So there is a lot of technology that we use across the people in office space, starting right, from hiring to performance management, etc. We’re also very mindful of tech not just being overbearing, and all pervasive that we focus on other aspects as well.

Sergio Salvador: So, thank you for that. And obviously, as you can imagine, I’m also a great proponent of the use of technology to enhance and to increase capabilities. But those of us who are in people business, I think there’s always a common denominator that we remind ourselves often that we are in that people business, and that technology is the enabler, the enabler that you’re talking about, right?

D.N. Prasad: Absolutely well said.

Sergio Salvador: So maybe in 30 seconds, some of our audience are perhaps founders, many of them can be early stage founders, would you have one or two thoughts for them for when they start thinking about the people side of the business?

D.N. Prasad: Yep. First one, hire strongly and hire right, don’t just hire for the domain skills, every individual plays a part in building the organisation and building culture. So it is going to be important. The second one is focus on the people and all issues from day one. And not can you hit a certain mask. Third one, to facilitate that, you know, it’s important that the founders invest time themselves, but also have a strong thought partner there and you can call them an HR leader, HR manager, whoever it is, but definitely have a strong thought partner who can help you journey this together.

Sergio Salvador: Interesting. Thank you Prasad, I’d really appreciate it. And I always like to finish my episodes with a couple of questions. But first of all, would you have a book, perhaps something you have read recently that particularly influenced you that you would like to recommend to our audience?

D.N. Prasad: I’ll do this very quickly but let me share three books Sergio. One is, you know, given that we’re talking about the talented culture space, Work Rules by Laszlo Bock. It’s a Bible for anyone who wants to understand how Google did things, but it’s also something that you can widely use. The second one is The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, a fascinating book again. And the third one is the Trillion Dollar coach by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg. It’s a book about Bill Campbell, the legendary coach, and fascinating to read, lots that everyone can take away from that book.

Sergio Salvador: Thank you for your recommendations Prasad. I’m very happy to say I have read two of those three. So I am already taking myself something or have something for the weekend, one of your recommendations. Well, so finally, just to wrap up very quickly, if anyone wants to get in contact with you or follow you, what is the best way for them to do it?

D.N. Prasad: I’m both on LinkedIn and on Twitter, and relatively active on both. So look me up and connect with me there.

Sergio Salvador: Fantastic. Thank you very much for that. And I’m sure you’ll have quite a few of those new followers coming your way very soon. From my part, I just thank you again, for your honesty, sharing your thoughts, your philosophy with us and your suggestions, and I’m looking forward to seeing you. I know you’re going to be in quite a few conferences coming up. I’m sure we’ll bump into each other. Thank you so much Prasad.

D.N. Prasad: Looking forward to you Sergio. Thanks again for having me on your podcast. This was fun.

Sergio Salvador: This was my pleasure.

D.N. Prasad: Thanks.

Our Guest: D N Prasad

D N Prasad is currently Senior Director for Strategy, People and Organization with the Government Technology Agency (GovTech), Singapore and is responsible for Corporate Strategy, Human Resources, Workplace, Culture and Organization Development. He also serves on the HR Talent Development Committee and as a Public Service Coach, both with Singapore’s Public Service Division. Prior, he founded Noetic step, an Executive Coaching and Talent Advisory practice, working with leaders and organizations, globally. In his last corporate stint, he served as Director and Head of Google People Services for APAC and as a Leadership Coach, at Google Inc.

He serves on the Board of Management Studies of T.A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal – India and as a member of The Professional Practices Committee for IHRP, Singapore. He is also an invited member of the Forbes Coaches Council.