Over the weekend, I had a fair bit of writing and editing to
do. When done, I thought of surfing the channels on television. I heard
recruitment specialists speak in near unison on a business television channel.
Their views however fell between an apology and an excuse. The apology was for
the job-seeker, and the excuse on behalf of their corporate customers. The
excuse rationalised on behalf of their customers was that they could not find
high quality skills anymore in India, where they once sourced hundreds of
thousands of people with low-end skills! Media can become a mask for shadow
play of the real actors, especially when the lights shine on sensational content.
Bangalore was bashed as the most unfriendly job-market
location in India. IT and IT enabled services began to appear a desolate and forlorn
sector. Even the financial sector in India seemed like a convenient adjacency
to this trend. Retail and FMCG were accorded ‘sunrise’ status. While my words
may seem like exaggeration, let us look at some possible explanations.
1.
Risk Classification : India’s IT sector
was founded on services after a troubled history with vending home-grown products.
Risk reduced, and risk- averse, scale in repeatable services became king to the
cash piles. Services were premised on the availability of low-cost human
resources. Scale became the enemy of relevant scope. In creeping stealth, depth and expertise were
systematically discouraged. IT and IT enabled services customers now see
diminishing returns from such a service provider location."...
(Amex), which outsources projects worth nearly $1 billion (around Rs.5,500 crore) a year to India, has stopped giving fresh work to its software vendors in the country, depriving them of millions of dollars in revenue in the December quarter"
2.
Intangible Assets : Awards, mementos and
certifications were routine forms of congratulations. Despite professing to be
in the knowledge economy, and claiming to be assessed on maturity of business
processes, no disclosure of skills or competency based assets are in the public
domain! Specifications of skills and its
visibility on ‘bio-data’ were signs of recruitment. And how facile the pattern
was, as long as the predictability of demand for mere skills lasted. Capability is an intangible asset and tells on the experience clients have. Paper and screen may be tangible, but like the proverbial book cover, the story beneath could betray the cultivated image.
3.
Measure is not Purpose : Leaders reigned
if they had investment capital. The leaders reduced their purpose to operating
margin comparisons in some firms. In other firms, they modified purpose to
customer retention, even if it meant keeping below industry norms of profits
and margins. Leadership in firms never culminated. Leadership is a capability
that requires a distributed capacity to share aspirations and execute to a purpose
bigger than themselves. “Often short-term solutions become part of a strategy
of consistently avoiding deeper problems” said Peter Senge recently.
4.
Humans as Living Systems : Employees who
had depth in skills and capability left home-grown enterprise for firms that
valued their intellect. This often meant they opted for offshore units of
foreign firms that had business operations in India.
They value the ecosystem
of their first-world employers more than the salary package."
In the West, which is facing the task of reinventing its societies, we can anticipate that a more ecological approach will be needed. Firms and institutions will be increasingly viewed as ecologies, as sustainable complex systems" says David Hurst in his award winning article of 2012.
5.
Experience, not transaction : Services
are competed based on an experiential differentiation. Engagement with
customers requires that bids are won not merely on capability. Deciding on how
to engage with the client would be strategy. However, annual operating plans
are often devoid of strategy, because they are reduced to a shade of the past –
operating margins at the cost of capability that targets a market.
Job market trends are symptoms of an economic system,
although the job seeker is a system in himself or herself. We need more loops
of thinking than the immediate linear ones.
Open
organisations can integrate economic, ecological and employee goals. The
need for
the virtuous cycle is not complete if we discourage feedback in loops
that affect outcomes. The medium is a vehicle, not the purpose. The television remote is for the viewer, not the producer, the featured or the feature! Which button can rescue you from this loop?
