A culture of trust and camaraderie to drive superior performance

On meeting Anshul Bhargava, his composed gait alludes to his background. There was a time when young Bhargava would look with awe at soldiers dressed in combat greens and dream of donning the uniform in the future. His hometown of Mathura is well-known for temples, but it is also home to one of the largest cantonments of the country. 

“My first school was in the cantonment area. We grew up listening to stories of valour and unmatched leadership displayed by our armed forces in the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971.  At that time, I used to read comics like the “Commando” which were based on stories in World War I and II. It was the love for the uniform and adventure that triggered my journey,” he recalls.

His formative years of schooling were spent in The Scindia School, a leading boarding school which helped mould his well-rounded personality. Later, his varied career in the Army saw him volunteering for special forces to operate in high intensity counter insurgency missions. The structured and rigorous training equipped him with leadership attributes that are required to cope with the challenges of the battlefield.

Before transiting from the army to a corporate role, he secured an executive management degree from IIM Calcutta. Bhargava took the confidence and leadership lessons he learned from a stellar Indian Army career and funnelled them into several corporate roles. He has proven himself a big asset to the Punjab National Bank Housing Finance Limited (PNBHFL), who had taken him on to spearhead the organisational transformation journey. Dedicated to his new career, Anshul has helped rejuvenate a thirty year old, languishing public sector enterprise into the fifth largest housing finance company with an asset book of INR 70,000 Crores in a span of six years with 5000 employees.

“Integrating fresh talent from the industry and merging it with the existing cadre, building a unique value system, culture and DNA of a high performing organisation was one of the most exciting aspects of the job. It was a litmus test for a HR leader’s competency of change management in its true sense,” Bhargava says.

Bhargava has a knack for defying odds, a skill he says he learned with the army. His rich experience spread over his time in the army and corporate world have brought insights that he uses in his life now. The following are just a few of them.

Invest in your leadership pipeline

“Nothing could be more vital to a company’s long-term health than the choice and cultivation of its future leaders,” believes Bhargava. Mission and execution orientation, people skills, ability to see larger picture, and foresight to steer the teams in ever disruptive business environment are a few essential attributes to become part of his senior leadership team. According to him, succession planning and leadership development are natural allies because they share a vital and fundamental goal: getting the right skills in the right place. Succession planning generally focuses on key positions, and leadership development usually begins in middle management. Collapsing the two functions into a single system has allowed PNBHFL to take a long-term view of the process of developing the middle management. The firm recognises the pivotal role that middle management plays and the importance of developing this key group as leaders, thereby making the organisation future ready.

Embrace disruption

Bhargava warns that “globally, the financial services industry is at a tipping point—either disrupt or get disrupted.” Technological changes are disrupting roles, structure, and competitive environment. HR leaders will have to build the organisation's culture and ability to react and manage change repeatedly, as well as consider the needs of the customers before their own products and services. To become agile, there is a need to diffuse decision making across the ranks. Bhargava recalls, “In the army where there is a hierarchical chain of command, counter insurgency operations have decentralized decision authority to exploit fleeting opportunities and help beat terrorists. Free your initiatives and decisions.” 

PNBHFL is proactively combating information asymmetry within the company by encouraging teams to share information. “The business side has learned agile principles from IT, and IT in turn discovers customer needs from the business. Cross-functional engagement is paying rich dividends in terms of developing holistic employee profiles, retaining key talent and also de-risking the company.”

Bhargava shares more insights in the full version of this article. Have a read and explore the rest of the leaders who are powering India's future.