Marketing Outsourcing through GE and McKinsey alumni

Interesting Newsweek article on how GE and McKinsey alumni are key to making outsourcing work.

GE has been so successful with its outsourcing operations that its managers continue to chant the mantra even after they have left the company. Today, GE veterans are in key positions at Home Depot, Honeywell International, Solectron, and United Technologies, among others, giving (Genpact CEO, Pramod) Bhasin a huge base of potential customers with a deep understanding of just what his company can do for them. "We go after GE alums," Bhasin says.

Marc Vollenweider, a former partner at McKinsey in New Delhi and London, co-founded Evalueserve Inc., a New Delhi company that provides market research and analyzes data for hedge funds and investment banks. WNS Global Services, a top call center and back-office shop in India, was founded by McKinsey alum Neeraj Bhargava. And Rizwan Koita, an associate with McKinsey in Bombay, left the firm in 1999 at age 29 to found TransWorks Information Services Ltd., which operates call centers and does back-office work for banks and tech companies.

What is important to note is that these people have seen outsourcing work and know the processes that are needed to make it a success. They are not running into it just to join the bandwagon.

Leadership Development is not the job of HR !

Of course not !

In this worldview, it is part of the line manager's job to recognize his subordinates' developmental needs, to help them cultivate new skills, and to provide them opportunities for professional development and personal growth. Managers must do this even if it means nudging their rising stars into new functional areas or business units. They must mentor emerging leaders, from their own and other departments, passing on important knowledge and providing helpful evaluations and feedback. The operating managers' own evaluations, development plans, and promotions, in turn, depend on how successfully they nurture their subordinates.

B Schoolers plan to climb to the top of the world.

Well, very literally !

The XLRI Nature Club is planning a climb to the Mt. Everest base camp ! First Indian woman to climb to the top of Mt. Everest, Ms. Bachendri Pal is guiding them.

Wow !

I wish we had done such things in college !

Go ahead, visit the site and leave them a comment. They need all your encouragement. There's a quiz scheduled from today sometime on the site too. Article in JAM.

TuSK hunting

No, this one is not illegal...at least, not yet ! ;-)

As I commented, it's a great initiative by Jeff ! And for HR and recruiting types who haven't been converted to the Talentism religion, please go and check it out.

Thing 2: Get to know lots of areas!

Continuing to expand on this list. Here is Thing 1.

Along with developing an area of deep expertise, what one should also do is build awareness and working knowledge of related area. This helps you guard against the danger of becoming redundant if your area of deep expertise suddenly becomes irrelevant.

It also helps you to keep an eye on emerging trends, and if needed to cross over to them, if an exigency arises.

So if you are a Sales person with an Insurance firm, how well do you know Brand Management? How about knowledge of the insurance industry?

Think functional and related functional areas. Also think industry and related industry areas.

Some of the best ways to do this is to do initiatives that enable you to work on cross-functional projects. These could be of short duration and also help you to get visibility with company leaders. It's the best way to soak the perspectives of one's colleagues.

Be sure to leave your functional stereotypes and blinkers away and think from an organizational perspective.

What other ways do you build knowledge of related disciplines and areas?

A business model for bloggers...

Ha ! It's a little tongue in cheek, but you never know....

The war for talent in India

More than a month ago I had written about Talent shortage in HR in India? and the latest India Today magazine confirms my fears. (see, that's a way to say "I told you so"!)

HR Experts rank in the list of "niche talent" which are seeing a shortage of talent. The others being Pilots, Merchandisers, Auto Designers, Architects and Urban Planners, Actuaries, CEOs (!), Dieticians, Graphic Artists and Drilling Experts (for oil!).

Some other notable numbers from the article are:

16 million new jobs are likely to be created this year. Services will lead the way with IT and ITES sectors adding 350,000 new people, followed by Retailing with 125,000 jobs, Financial Services with 120,000 jobs, Telecom with 100,000 and Hospitality with 50,000 jobs.

The Hewitt Annual Salary Increase survey also finds that in the Asia Pac region, Indians will get the best salary hikes (13.7%) followed by Phillipines awith 8.1% increase.

40 million is the number of registered unemployed in the country.
27 million are employed in the organized sector.
333 million are either underemployed or belong to the unorganized sector.

There are 20,000 recruitment firm in the country.
3,000 of them are in Bangalore !

Barely 10% of corporate India uses formal executive search, feels Rajeev Vasudeva of Egon Zehnder.

By 2010 most labour markets barring India, would be short of people, feels Monster's India head Arun Tadanki.

There are talks of specialized Accounting and Bamking recruitment firm Michael Page International planning to enter India, the article notes.

Classified ad revenues for print job ads have remained almost flat the last 4-5 years, while online firms have been growing at 15-20%. They cost 10% of the print classifieds cost for an organization.

Oh my, we are in for interesting times ahead ! And specifically about the scarcity of HR talent, I told you so!

Innovation and Talent Development

It's awesome to read through some really insightful posts by someone like John Hagel. Yes folks, he's blogging !

Be sure to check this post in which he says:

Of course, we are all concerned about the availability of jobs, but the more fundamental issue is talent development. If people don’t develop appropriate talent and don’t continue to refresh that talent, there will be no sustainable jobs and certainly few, if any, high value jobs.

And in this he takes on Gary Hamel's views on Innovation:

Hamel’s article reflects the bias of a lot of Western executives of large enterprises who are focused much too inwardly when seeking to be innovative.

and,

Hamel reveals a surprisingly narrow and ethnocentric view of where innovation is occurring.

Rather than focusing on breakthrough management innovations within the enterprise, Hamel could benefit from understanding the continuous management innovations across enterprises that are emerging in Asia.

Whew !

Google and Technorati news

You can check out my favourite blogs on this Technorati page, and this only allows me to choose almost 30% of my favourite RSS feeds, so it was a tough decision to choose them!

On other news, the entry barrier to having a web presence has gone down further, if you have a Google account ! Check out the Web Page Creator by Google. Suddenly Geocities seems so clunky and heavy !

That Resume stuff again

This is one of the best posts that I have seen in a long time. Jason Goldberg (CEO of Jobster) has some really useful advice on making that great resume for your next job.

By the way here's my earlier post on What NOT to do in a resume.

Wanna impress a blogger?

Take Guy Kawasaki's advice....

Or rather, don't use any of that. We'll know you are trying to impress us !

Consultants in India have a cushy life !

Don't believe me? See what my friend Vikrant felt when he went to Oman for a consulting project.

The blog is his brother Vedant Patwardhan's. Vedant, incidentally is a ex-Ranji level cricketer who's now a market researcher in the Middle East. Some great posts on cricket on that blog too for all you cricket fanatics out there.

1 thing: Develop an area of deep expertise

Easier said than done.

"Deep expertise" is a very subjective term, but it's easy to recognize than define. The feeling of trust that you get from an expert is very concrete. Building that trust in your client takes various forms in various industries. Let's take one of the most common one: Certification.

When do you trust a doctor? When you see an MBBS (in India) stuck next to his name you assume that he/she knows his/her "stuff" when it comes to diseases and the human body at a basic level. We assume that because the Doc has had 4 years (or more) of life dedicated only to that. Certifications and specializations are your calling card when you want to show expertise.

Reference is the other.

Let's continue the thought further. Someone has a heart condition (high cholestrol, or whatever) and you go to a plain vanilla MBBS doctor who says "this is not what I can handle, go check Dr. Abcd, MBBS, MD (Cardio) for this". Off you go to Dr. Abcd because you trust the first doctor's judgement. If Dr. Abcd succeeds in treating you, Dr. MBBS also gets your gratitude.

You get the drift, I assume.

What happens if your industry doesn't have certifications?

Three things:

1. Do something extraordinary !
2. Let others know about it.
3. Keep raising the bar for yourself.

The focus should be to be over a long period get to know all that is to know, and to do whatever is possible to be done. Focussing on letting others know and informed also helps to get additional ideas about how to do it differently the next time Writing papers or presenting it to peers from the industry also helps one in taking a step back and looking at the whole process of execution and improve it going forward.

Taking assignments where your area of expertise is involved helps you to guarantee higher percentage of success. The focus however, should be to get involved in assignments that are not identical and always to push one's comfort zones.

8 things vanishes?

Very funny, this post does not show up when I click the blog home page !

By the way, the folks at Recruiting.com said that more meat was needed on this post, and I entirely agree.

What I am going to do is focus a post on each of the "things" that I posted earlier.

Check back for more!

Azim Premji on the difference between Innovation and Creativity

Wipro boss Azim Premji spells out his views on Innovation:

Premji says that big ideas often come from customers. Big ideas can emerge from constant interaction. . . and several unsaid things can be elicited and developed making way for big innovations.

While innovation is 'doing' things differently, creativity is all about 'thinking' differently, says the Wipro boss. "Innovation is essentially the application of high creativity. It need not be restricted to just products, it applies to services, employee attitude and across all levels. Innovation is a fundamental mindset pursued seriously by an organisation. It is imperative to imbibe the culture of innovation."

"We also need to have the courage to hire people who are from different work cultures and see to it that they grow in the organisation and are not pushed out in the long run."

Design thinking?

A school tries to teach you design thinking. I would love to see how they go ahead with this.

“Design thinking is a different way of thinking,” said Alex Kazaks, a member of the course’s teaching team. “There are all different kinds of intelligences, and one of these is creative intelligence. Design thinking is an analog for that. This is not something usually taught in a university setting, and we’re trying to make it available to students.”

That sounds like they're following the concept of multiple intelligences that Howard Gardner talks about.

And while at it take a look at the linkages between Gandhi, simplicity and innovation [Hat Tip: The Innovation Insider]

Rewards don't motivate true knowledge workers?

That's what David Gurteen seems to think so.

I had often wondered why Wikipedia did not recognize the contributors to an entry in some way such as providing a meta data page that listed all the contributors by order of contribution. I now had the answer - if they did - people would contribute to Wikipedia for the wrong reasons - for the "reward" of "recognition" and they would "game" the system for that reward. By providing no recognition and no rewards - only the people who were passionate enough about the topic in hand take the time to contribute.

I'd like to add some more thoughts to this.

Wikipedia is different from an organization. You know the organization's goal is to make money for its shareholdders and therefore you expect to be rewareded for any activity that contributes to that end. Wikipedia is different, because it's purpose is nobler and asking them for reward seems very petty.

The other point is that one can contribute to many areas in the wikipedia, depending on the diversity of one's interests. A corporate organization does not usually give enought avenues for us to express ourselves totally.

2nd most favored activity by 100 million Indians in 2007?

Job Search. [Hat tip: Joel]

Heh, what did you think ?

So put youur organiztions in order, Make sure that the policies are addressing what your people want, otherwise you could be faced with attrition so severe that organizaztions might bleed to coma !

Google job process

Joel Cheesman wishes companies' job application process was as easy as this !

On a related note have heard that the Applicant Tracking System developed by Google internally is a dream to use for HR and Recruiters. In fact, the comment was "If Google ever ends up marketing the ATS, it'll fly off the shelf"

Look out Taleo !

Musing on Organizational Culture

It's often true that a strong organizational culture is often an impediment to change , so what leaders in orhganizations need to think about, is the question:

How do we build the ability to change into the culture of the organization?

And as a good friend of mine never tires of reminding us, culture is not the way we like to think we should be, but the way we actually are ! The difference is one of "espoused values" and "values in use" !!

On Strategic Innovation

Vijay Govindrajan says:

Organizations must allocate their resources among three boxes. The first box is for managing today, competition in the present.
The second and third boxes are called "selectively forgetting the past" and "creating the future," these two boxes are about competition in the future.

"For innovation, a breakthrough idea is only a start. Too often successful companies focus on idea generation. The execution part, they think, is boring, and besides, they feel they are already good at execution. But their execution has been in box one, (having to do only with current changes) which is very different."

On organization structures and how they change

Relooked at two long forgotten models after a conversation in office today. Mintzberg's taxonomy of organizational forms and Larry Griener's "Evolution and Revoution" model of Organizational growth

Link Dump

Jobs galore for pharmacy graduates

BPOs visiting biz schools for talent

Embattled Google opens shop in India

Foreign MBAs find India hot

Saudi team to visit India on streamlining recruitment

Temporary jobs up 20% in 2005, salaries closer to permanent staff

Innovation will keep us ahead: Ramadorai [of TCS]

Innovation: Mantra for the Future [for the Indian IT industry]

Sorry, I haven't been posting as regularly as I would have liked, but I shall make up for it soon !

Organizational Innovation in India

In response to this post of mine on desicritics, a comment that Sumanth left said "Innovation and stiff structures do not go hand in hand. So, lets just forget about India corporates getting innovative."

I agree with him on some level, but would take this opportunity to think this through a little more.

Innovation is about knowing when to diverge to come out with opportunities, ideas, options, and then reversing the process to converge and decide on one decision to prototype and test and then if successful launch.

So yes, Sumanth is quite right when he says that "stiff structures" cannot help in innovation.

In fact in the first half of the innovation process is all about the things that large organizations are allergic to. It's about messy, chaotic, instinctive and insightful idea generation. It calls for suspending judgement. It even calls for suspending action orientation. That is not a role for management people. This is the part of the innovation process that is best done in startups, without too much analysis, or in pods away from the mother ship (skunkworks for example).

The management part of organizations comes into play in the convergence of ideas. This is when 'traditional' management and decision making skills come into play. Trade-offs need to be made, analysis needs to be done on feasibility, ideas need to be tangibilised into execution.

It will not be an exaggeration to say that philosophically, these two parts of the innovation process are directly in a state of tension with each other. The people who do one part well, resent the activities done by the other part. There is a feeling that ideas are superior and execution is inferior. However, as Bossidy and Ram Charan state in their book Execution, it's the implementation that makes the difference.

A little bit like yin-yang I suppose.

So that brings us to Sumanth's comment. Will Indian companies never be innovative?

I think the answer is not as easy as a yes or no. There are three types of Indian organizations:

1. The old school, that has thrived in the age of the license raj and has realised that the brave new world of Indian business is not for it. They've decided to sell brands to better competitors, sell their land and live off the earnings that their previous 3 generations earned. Sometimes they also get into property-will issues and spend more time on the court and party circuit.

2. The competitive old school. They've done business in India over the last century and have decided to innovate and take on the world. They're like the Tata group (buying out Daewoo, Tetly and launching a frontal attack on the best consultants - S Ramadorai was named one of the world's top 25 most influential consultants in 2002 !), Aditya Birla Group, Reliance, TVS, Sundaram Fasteners, Kalyani Forge and Godrej. They set themselves global benchmarks (from sales, to quality) and have launched cultural change initiatives (for example, the Godrej group was amongst the earliest to adopt the EVA methodology) that are making them stand and look global competitors in the eye.

3. The homegrown MNCs. These are the MNCs that have always existed in India, but are so indigenised that they feel more Indian than the new ones. They are struggling to contain the group described next. They've traditionally marketed to the mass market, and have tried new innovations, that have travelled thorough the world to other developing nations. Their talent has made a mark in traditional European and American boardrooms. These are firms like HLL, Colgate Palmolive, P&G.

4. The 20 year and less startups. The flood that Nirma (in FMCG) and Infosys (in IT) unleased. They have the advantage of the young age, less legacy, better insight and a desire to beat the big boys in their backyards. These will be the seeds of the innovation that will churn our country in the next 4-5 years. They have little or no diffidence to pedigree, power and history.

As Edgar Schein said "A culture of innovation does not scale", so maybe the fourth type of firm will be acquired and get more "organized", but they would have done their job, to move innovation and its results to the population of India.

Professional Services Firms are better off being private entities?

"When your principal strategic assets are your people, private ownership is the better model," said Ashish Nanda, associate professor at Harvard Business School. "It has the advantage of binding together capable professionals into a shared organization, in which they each have a financial stake, which in turn delivers genuine commitment to produce results."

So does that mean other organizations in which human capability is also a strategic input but happen to be publicly traded have a lower hope to produce genuine commitment to the goals of the organization?

Incidentally I got Nanda’s quote from the AT Kearney website which details how the Executive Search business of AT Kearney was sold by the partners to a private equity firm led by Edward Kelley, who led Korn/Ferry’s business in Europe before that.

The AT Kearney partners who led AT Kearney Executive Search however chose to move to the new private firm. Why is that?

EDS sells AT Kearney's Exec Search business

I wonder why this did not get too much of news coverage amongst the news of AT Kearney turning private.

EDS said the deal, financial terms for which have not been disclosed, was a separate transaction from the expected management buyout of A.T. Kearney, which EDS announced last year. The investment group was led by Edward Kelley, who will serve as CEO of the firm. Most of A.T. Kearney Executive Search's senior management team took part in the sale of the business and are now among the firm's new owners.

None of the partners wanted to stay in the Exec Search business? Hmm, I wonder why... A bit of Googling shows that Edward Kelley is a a former Korn/Ferry International executive.

I found this quote on the AT Kearney website intriguing. Is this finding research based?

"When your principal strategic assets are your people, private ownership is the better model," said Ashish Nanda, associate professor at Harvard Business School. "It has the advantage of binding together capable professionals into a shared organization, in which they each have a financial stake, which in turn delivers genuine commitment to produce results."

Hiring to fit in or to diverge?

Interesting comments on the FC Blog around a comment by Jeff Bezos. What do you think? Do organizations over-engineer the "cultural fit" component of hiring?

Should it?

When we talk about encourging diversity in organizations because (1) our customers are diverse and (2) diversity gives rise to better ideas, shouldn't this notion of "cultural fit" also be challenged?

Or, does the Japanese saying "The nail that stands out, gets hammered in" hold true for all organizations?