Invite Dr. Uday Sawhney for a performance enhancement orientation/training session for your organization when your intention is to further improve your company’s abilities to execute on its strategies.
Dr. Sawhney believes in the adage that “Companies that hire ordinary talent and make them work on extraordinary processes will win over competition that hires extraordinary talent and make them work through mediocre processes”. Hence his approach to strategy execution improvement builds from a process-centric foundation.
His proven track record of enhancing organizational performance across industries actually stems from his expertise in leveraging the synergistic powers of three pillars of execution – 1. Process design and improvement methodologies such as Design for Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma & Change Acceleration Process 2. Organizational leadership culture development he learned at General Electric and 3. Technology transformation aligned to business strategy, his focus at Discover Financial Services.
Dr. Sawhney received his education in India and the United States, with a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from IIT Delhi and a Master’s and Ph.D. from Columbia University, New York. He also successfully acquired a Professional Diploma in Finance and Risk Management (1 year diploma) sponsored by General Electric. His learning and practice of management was enhanced by multiple courses at General Electric’s Corporate Learning Center at Crotonville, NY campus, popularly known as the “Harvard of the Corporate World”.
After 3 years of post-Ph.D. work focused on process control and design research as IIT faculty, he moved to General Electric in 1999, first as a Design Six Sigma Black belt supporting a manufacturing business (G.E. Plastics), and then Master Black belt for their Design and Innovation department. Due to outstanding contributions via Six Sigma, he moved to a senior level Quality Leader position in 2001 for GE’s finance business (GE Capital Analytics Center of Excellence (ACoE)). In 2003 he moved to the United States to serve an internal client of the ACoE viz. GE Consumer Finance America’s as their Quality Leader for Lean Culture. His next assignment was Vice President-Quality for G.E. Commercial Finance in India, reporting to the CEO. In 2008 he moved to Discover Financial Services (3rd largest payments network in the world), and was the company’s Director for Lean. All these positions of increasing responsibility were built on a strong track record of process, technology and operations excellence.
Dr. Sawhney’s career strength has been his laser-focus on performance improvement and technology design and management over the last 20 years. Starting as an innovation technologist, Dr. Sawhney was well-trained in leveraging computational models for innovation, design, and optimization in a variety of situations. During his 15 years in the corporate world, he was able to apply his process analysis training to develop cutting-edge operations excellence methodologies and work closely on practical business challenges with operations teams from the front-line to SVP/COO levels. He was able to master the interplay of real-world organizational challenges with practical process improvement approaches, and began to influence organizational execution in a significant way.
The second key aspect of Dr. Sawhney’s extensive experience is his many years in two Fortune 500 companies (General Electric and Discover Financial) together with his equally successful engagements with smaller and more entrepreneurial companies. This has helped him understand the relative strength of both segments and share certain applicable best practices in operating effectively.
The third aspect of Dr. Sawhney’s experience is his extensive work experience across geographical and cultural boundaries. He brings a unique understanding of business practices from India, United States, Hong Kong, China, and Mexico and how these work cultures interact. Beyond best practices, it allowed him to appreciate differing leadership styles, and how to facilitate results when disparate organizational cultures interact. This is of special importance to companies in India who transact with global partners, and are keen on ensuring globally-functional soft-skill competencies in their team.
Large technology platform changes tied to business transformation are his specialty. He has successfully led such transformation efforts in Collections and recovery, Core banking transformation, Introduction of BPM (Business Process Management platforms). He has proven strategies to help businesses avoid pitfalls in such technology changes.
Some of the words used to describe him “Uday has proven the value of the three pillars model of operating excellence, and he is able to convert his approach into successful collaborations and initiatives that start delivering value in weeks, and continue to deliver sustained results over years.” “His down-to-earth unassuming approach allows him to interact with COO’s and front-line staff alike”. “He ensures organizations are able to benefit from his operations experiences, while taking care that other stakeholders’ ideas also get due acceptance and recognition.”
He has consulted for/worked at/provided training at General Electric, Discover Financial, Exl Service, Genpact, and provided Lean six sigma services to GE clients like Wal-Mart, Marathon Oil, Smurfit Stone, and J.C.Penney. His industrial experience is product design at GE Plastics, and factory-floor experience at Unilever. His significant Healthcare experience includes multiple consulting engagements with India’s top super-specialty hospitals.
He has trained over 1000 green belts, over 100 Black belts and over 30 master black-belts, with excellent feedback demonstrating his mastery of the Lean Six Sigma tool-kit. He has launched Lean six sigma programs “from scratch” in 6 world-class companies including 3 Fortune-500 companies. He has been an invited speaker at many conferences include a cross-industry conference on Lean Six Sigma hosted by Symbiosis Centre for Management and HRD.
Benefit from Dr. Sawhney’s experience and expertise for all aspects of improving execution of your business strategy, including Accelerating leadership performance, Lean Six Sigma trainings and coaching, Operations strategy design, Innovation management, New product introduction, Customer experience improvement, Productivity enhancement, and Technology transformation strategy & support.