Talent Reclamation

I recently read an article on “Capturing Talent” that was published in the Economist Newspaper .

http://70.86.150.130/financialexpress/ArticleImage.aspx?article=23_08_2007_007_001&gb_W=1456&gb_H=2066

The article is about skill shortage in Asian countries across industry verticals.The opening lines of this article unfurls a compelling story.

“It SEEMS odd.In the world’s most populous regions the biggest problem facing employers is a shortage of people”.

This thought made me remember the old story which I had heard many years back of two sales representatives of a Shoe Company who went to an African country to study the market potential.The story goes like this…

“The first sales rep saw the people in that country bare foot and came back and reported lack of market potential and a problem.The second sales rep went to the same country and also saw people bare foot and reported an opportunity to sell his company’s shoes”.

 That made me think of “Reclamation” a concept well known in the physical world of Land and Real Estate.Land Reclamation we all know is a way to build and develop physical assets.Similarly “Talent Reclamation” is a way to build and develop the soft infrastructure of an enterprise. 

What does reclamation mean?

The dictionary definition is – “the conversion of wasteland into land suitable for use of habitation or cultivation”.We have seen in the last few years , millions of tonnes of earth being moved to reclaim land and build the hard infrastructure in countries like India and China which is today the new Asian home to many global companies.

I see the next phase of reclamation happening around the softer component around Talent.

So how would this work?

Let us take India’s example which has two key assets – Agriculture and Manpower.

We saw in the last decade or two many enterprises that capitalized on the agricultural produce and turn this asset into a marketable output.The growth and success of the Food Processing Industry is well known in India which many companies like the Uniliver and Nestle’s of the world drove here.

I see Talent Processing as the next wave of opportunity to fuel the world wide need for talent.Emerging Markets will lead this new talent centred economy.And just as many core infrastructure projects in the area of telecom,Airports and Inter state highways are funded by global consortiums , Talent Development would need a similar global commitment and investment.

Talent Reclamation will happen with the right collaborative efforts of the enterprise and the academia.The business stakes are high enough to keep it limited to individual effort.The collective effort of global corporations and local intelligence should trigger the change to build an education based talent economy.

Dheeraj Prasad

Talent Life Cycle

Talent Life Cycle is in many ways similar to a Product Life Cycle. Life Cycles help us to understand the entire end-to-end spectrum of a process from the cradle to the grave.

Necessity is the mother of all inventions and all innovations emanate from an idea that is born. I talked about it in my last post on “Globalization and birth of new talent”. The new kid on the block this time is this piece of organizational asset that I would address as “Brand You”. Tom Peters coined this term as far back as 1997 in an article titled “The Brand Called You”. He went on to author a book on the same subject “The Brand You50″.Talent Life Cycle is a management process to enhance the value of “Brand You”.

I have described Talent Life Cycle as a 3 stage process as shown above..

Talent Attraction

Brands are supposed to attract and have a value proposition that will become the compelling reason for others to follow. Great products have a great brand pull and personalization that goes with it. Similarly we have “Personal” “Brand” “Equity” as much as any other brand like Coca-Cola as Tom Peters puts it. Managing this asset should look at adding value to the “Brand You” that individuals come with. Role Modeling as a part of the brand building is a good starting point for organizations to build a value proposition for emerging talent.

Talent Development

Good products reinvent themselves and develop what the customers want. Product strategies work on version enhancements and add new value to themselves.”Brand You” also goes through the same cycle of version enhancements and development cycles to generate the next value in the life cycle. Good talent development practices roll out value boosters in the life cycle to showcase the equity that “Brand You” is building on. The impact is the same as the famous Hawthorne effect that showed a team of welders the importance of the weld in holding the space shuttle together in orbit.

Talent Engagement & Succession Planning

Products stabilize, integrate in the eco system and get recognized for the value they add.”Brand You” also integrates and transforms into the larger gamut of organizational branding which I call as”Brand Us”. At this stage the product is at its pinnacle of success.

Brands succeed when they are anchored in the environment they grow in and become synonymous with the practice itself. For e.g. the way Xerox as a brand became synonymous with photocopying. Organizations can build good to great talent management practices if they anchor the identity of “Brand You” in the work space.

Products transform to the next level of build and so does Talent. There is an EOL – “End of Life” phase for products. Talent Life Cycle also ends with a succession roadmap which helps to proactively transition an old version with a new one just as an exiting talent works toward ushering a new talent that is born and nourished to take over.

- Dheeraj

The Growth Story

As I gaze out from my office window at the ever-burgeoning skyline, it seemed only yesterday that the same view from his window was a barren landscape of stone and earth. But now there stood spanking new buildings boasting the world’s biggest names in Information Technology. Again, it seemed only yesterday that we started with a chosen set of managers with a mandate to grow. And today, after just 20 months of operations we are counted amongst global best, servicing clients around the globe on Enterprise Products & Technologies.

Much like the landscape, the growth was spectacular, but the journey had been strong, steady and measured “Brick-by-brick…Man-by-man”. This story has been repeated over and over by many companies, any many of our emerging regions globally. The growth being dictated by many compelling business factors: the availability of a technically skilled and productive labor pool, cost effectiveness of operations and government support.

For a Support engineer, the work is challenging and the complexities unusual. It requires her to provide support on a complex and vast product which run critical business operations. The customer base is global and with a product coverage spanning different industries, the business diversity is large. The nature of the work calls for high diversity in skill requirement – from deep technical knowledge, to the softer but equally complex aspects of customer management – all through a virtual medium.

Knowledge as a Service – Talent Development as a Process

The IT industry is growing at a blistering pace, and for any organization living in these best of times, what is critical to its performance is how quickly it could scale up a new employee’s knowledge levels to full operational delivery. The skill building process is a critical element in capability management, and a strong process around this would lead to rapid growth and success

People Focus, effective integration

A young employee-set in a knowledge industry calls for more in everything associated with work-life. More of work, more diversity in work, more intellectual challenges, more growth. Managing such a dynamic workforce, and working with them to deliver world-class results is a challenge. To keep focus, it is important to ensure that every employee is aligned directly to a set of tightly integrated objectives at the organizational level.

The Road Ahead

As the industry is transforming itself from selling software products, to making the service offering the main customer proposition, product support is being moved closer and closer towards the customer. It is time to shift to the next gear and orient the mindset of the organization further to mange in this fluid environment. The key advantage of a young and dynamic center needs to be leveraged to adapt itself quickly to current realities.

As these thoughts run through my mind I am suddenly shaken out of my thoughts by the ring of my cell phone. It was my daughter, gently rebuking me for keeping late in office. ‘There are times when one must lead, and there are times when one must follow’, as I press the shutdown button on my laptop. My car joins hundreds of others on their way home, the gleaming skyline slowly fading away in the rear-view mirror.

Tomorrow would bring another challenge… Tomorrow would bring another opportunity…

Rajeev Shroff

Talent management in Global Services.

According to the Harvard Business Review, “The most successful brand cultures offer a single, coherent story where the components work together in a synergistic fashion so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”.

Services is one entity that makes all the components work together in a harmonic state. Did you know that technical service expertise is one of the most critical factors enterprise customers use to select a vendor?

Some important trends in the IT marketplace…

Services has become an important facet of overall revenue.
Quality support relationships help customers to use their products more effectively and resolve critical issues.
As IT professionals expertise remain scarce, customers will look to software vendors to provide greater support services.
As market matures, vendors focus more closely on long-term customer loyalty, and support is critical in this focus.
Satisfaction experienced through the support relationship builds customer loyalty and trust, which leads to greater potential for repeat business.
Greater focus on business benefit and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
Companies becoming more service oriented.
Pressure on software vendors to prove benefit of products.
Support/maintenance are increasing basis for relationship.
Shift from product purchase toward services model.
Service is more than a static single-transaction purchased product .
Established installations require support/maintenance long after initial sale.

Statistically speaking, Customers will spend more time with a service organization than with any other group within an IT provider.

Emerging markets are redefining the entire service industry by offering a vast technical talent pool to meet the demands of the IT customer. We need to make sure the above details are being propogated to the talent bases in making them aware of their unlimited potential.

The Best practices study on Talent Management has a mix of creative minds with various background that can help deliver this message across all emerging markets. I feel privileged to be a part of this team …

- Ramesh

Globalization and birth of new talent

Globalization has no borders. History is testimony of the fact that human civilization has progressed through continuous exploration of economic and human resources and by making products and services available to its customers.

The silk route, a widespread network of caravan ways that crossed Europe and Asia from the Mediterranean coast to China in ancient times and middle Ages probably marked the beginning of globalization as it enhanced business relations and cultural exchanges between the East and West. The “silk route” in the current scenario is being paved by the telecom under sea fibre optic cables that has wired the world. The fibre optic system carries data and digitized voices much farther and faster in larger quantities. This enabled a new form of global collaboration and is transforming the way customer experience is getting streamed on a virtual mode. This indeed has transcended time and geographical boundaries to deliver seamless experience to customers.

A new Talent profile in the fibre optic enabled world has already taken birth. This talent virtually sails the digital seas to work with customers anywhere on the globe, drives a high end technology machine that runs on a culturally neutral gear and works and collaborates with people twice his experience. Talent Management of this asset is as critical as the line of code that goes into building a program or an application. The best practices study on Talent Management in Emerging Markets will help in writing the line of code that will build a people program to help translate it into an end application of building customer loyalty.

Looking forward to working with all of you on this project.

Dheeraj