The story of a dramatic transformation of a large public sector behemoth in just three years. Dr. Anil K. Khandelwal, a quintessential HRD professional, in his role as CEO of Bank of Baroda successfully transformed a staid, legacy driven and government controlled bank into a financial powerhouse.
In an exclusive interview with People Matters in March 2011, he shared the turnaround story of Bank of Baroda

The story of your 34 years in Bank of Baroda (BOB) has become a case study of excellent transformation. Please share the major trigger for this transformation.

BOB was an exceptional journey for me and I grew with the bank. The bank had an excellent professional culture and the top management looked into the professional growth of employees. In 2000, the bank was rated as No.1 bank in the nationalized sector and by March 2005, the bank had slid to No.4 position. The analysts were tearing the bank apart because the sluggish pace of credit growth, low retail growth, low technology and recommended ‘Sell’ for the bank shares. I was quite concerned about the bank being labelled as an underperformer. I was not entirely unaware of what was really going wrong. The bank had nothing to worry about its financial health but it was failing to respond to the competitive environment. The bank had not started the technology for core banking as was already done by the peer banks. The bank’s market share on both credit and deposit had come down. The morale of the staff was low and customers were angry as the bank was failing to respond to the new environment.

What inspired you to move on despite the challenges?

When I became CMD, I was inspired by the vision of the Great Maharaja of Baroda, who laid the foundation of the bank about a century back and my internal calling was to create the bank for the next century. I wanted the bank to be highly competitive, adaptable, technologically advanced, customer savvy and a financial powerhouse ready to meet aspirations of an empowered India. The greatest strength of the bank has been the collective passion of our management team and the vital foot soldiers.

I started with a big handicap of not being a career banker. But I truly believed that numbers are created by taking the right initiative in many strategic areas. Our focus on intangibles like the branding, technology, leadership and the people processes eventually brought BOB back into the game. My academic interest and practical training in HR, with a strong orientation in process work, tried to always find a human connect to an organizational problem.

What is the value of communication in leading and unleashing the potential scope of the bank?

The value of communication can never be underestimated. There are many people in the organization who have ideas on new products, processes, and innovative solutions to problems. Being close to customers, people at lower rungs in the hierarchy have better interface with customers and can perhaps provide better insights about their needs. But rarely do they get a chance to interact with top management or get appropriate response to their ideas. The hiatus between the top and lower management often arises because ideas, innovations and imagination are considered the sole preserve of top management. Only if better ways to communicate and receive feedback from the foot soldiers are institutionalized, can organizations do better in their service orientation, thereby improving the bottom-line. Communication is like a satellite that helps you to navigate the organizational change.

What were the business outcomes of this transformation program?

Although my main task was building on intangibles by taking some foundational steps, they produced dramatic business outcomes. The total business of the bank more than doubled in just 3 years from 1.25 lakh crores in March 2005, to 2.59 lakh crores in March 2008. Our overseas business trebled. The analysts uniformly recommended ‘Buy’ for bank shares. The bank received several awards for its performance.

Three Years’ Journey of Transformation

2005 – 2006
1. Kickstarting technology for anytime-anywhere banking.
2. Logo change, appointment of Rahul Dravid (the then Indian cricket team captain) as Brand Ambassador and launch of 8am to 8pm banking first ever in public sector banks.
3. Launching major employee centric programmes like SAMPARK, SAMADHAN and KHOJ.

2006 – 2007
1. Launching project “Parivartan”- a major business transformation programme.
2. A major retail strategy launch by an innovative model, “Retail Loan Factories” offering home loan sanction in 6 days.
3. Launch of SME loan factories offering sanction of credit to medium and small enterprises in 15 days.

2007 – 2008
1. Opening of 11 overseas offices in a single year - setting a record among Indian banks.
2. A major initiative in grooming 300 leaders for the future through a planned intervention.
3. Extending core banking (any time-anywhere banking) and Internet banking in over 1,700 branches.