High-quality global business requires investment - investment in skill redevelopment and capacity bolstering, among others. In today's unprecedented talent crunch, the services industry in particular is grappling with the problem of developing leadership, talent, risk awareness and, of course, the very task of building up and inculcate positive-change-adapting-attitude.
In today's world global leadership calls for global skills. Today's business culture demands leaders who are true innovators. They are the most sought-after persons in the world of these times.
The time has arrived when we note that even the best of professionals need a team of effective information managers for ensuring optimal productivity. An attitudinal change is a must in such a context as the nature of business is becoming more and more complex.
So, focusing on, measuring and redesigning the customer-facing and internal processes improvements could be in areas like: cost, quality, speed, profitability and other key areas. Arranging for such change-over calls for more than rearranging work-flows - who does what tasks, in what locations, as well as in what sequence.
Business processes must become more mature and the institution must be able to deliver higher performance - spatially, temporally, hierarchically and functionally. Obviously, to achieve the same the starting point is designing [the comprehensiveness of the specifications as to how the process is to executed]; followed by the performers [people executing the process based on skill and knowledge]; owner [persons shouldering the responsibility for the process as well as the results]; infrastructure [information/MIS that support the process]; and the metrics [the measures the company uses to track the process's performance].
In business today many of the most important strategy conversations are those that can close the gap between business strategy and talent management - the very route to sustainable growth and performance through people.
It is the HR (human resources) function that can play the most crucial role on this score. But unfortunately it still remains as one of the vastly neglected areas, especially in countries like ours.
Even in the public sector [training institutes in the financial/rural development sector], which is supposed to play the role of model employers, this aspect has been receiving the least attention as a result of which business growth in many such organisations has been very moderate if not low.
Small always remain small - talent cries in the wilderness!
The target today is to achieve competitiveness through the knowledge worker. Talent is one of the crucial assets of every organisation facing an era of accelerating changes.
Enterprise capabilities are the crucial factors for the ultimate achievement - leadership [executives who support the creation of processes]; culture [values of customer focus, teamwork, personal accountability and of course the very willingness to change]; expertise [skills in / methodology for, process design]; and governance [the very mechanisms for managing complex projects and change initiatives]. For developing high performance processes, institutions need to offer the very supportive environments.
So, for making the new process work the need is there to ensure that the jobs are redefined broadly backed by updated training system to support these jobs and at the same time enabling decision making.
The broad areas under such a change-over method include, among others: reshaping organisational cultures to emphasise on team performance, fixation of personal accountability, customer's importance; managers overseeing the tasks rather than supervising and realigning the information system so that the cross-functional processes work smoothly than simply support departments.
Professor C K Prahalad and Gary Hamel rightly opined that in today's corporate world winning in a business is not about being number one, rather it is about who 'gets to the future first'. They urged the companies to create their own futures, envision new markets and reinvent themselves. It is the idea of core competency that actually boosted business process outsourcing (BPO) and allowed companies to handover the non-core side related to their business operations to others who are willing and can do. It is, thus, better to concentrate on the core competency areas where the performance could be bettered - temporally, functionally, hierarchically and sectorally in the broader sense.
The greater competent institutions emerge as the victor while others struggle to keep their heads over water. It is the strategic innovation and not calendar-driven-ritual that could remain the main source of advantage in the days to come. And it is creativity, passion and initiatives that help keep one stay afloat. It is company's ability and willingness to bring fundamental changes that help transform day-to-day functions.
Tomorrow is just another day - an unpredictable one - where expectations may or may not exceed results. Facing the reality and risk-conscious approach are the best way to march ahead. An overnight success is a myth than a reality.
Now, the central question is: are the training institutes adequately discharging their duties?
A business school that sanctions huge fund for dewali cracker bursting should have utilised the fund towards discharging social responsibilities, serving entrepreneurs of today and tomorrow. As John Mullins from London Business School argues, business schools are more likely to teach about entrepreneurship than to explain what it really is, how to do it, and what not to do. They assume that learning how to build, tune and decorate a piano will automatically make you a good pianist. Entrepreneurship, however, is no different than management: it is not a science, it is not an art. Professor Henry Minzberg from McGill University once said that practice, and only practice will make one better. That is the role of a business school: 'to act as a safe place, a sandbox where entrepreneurs can hone their skills and develop new ones, meet other entrepreneurs and investors, but especially, minimise the cost of their mistakes and decide if the exciting life of the entrepreneur is for them and their families'.
Time is ripe for business schools to teach what they are supposed to teach - best managerial practices, based on good research, both academic and professional, with a focus on how things actually work instead of how we wish they worked. It is time schools start telling students what they need to hear instead of what makes them feel good but virtually leaving them broke. It is time we all embrace evidence-based entrepreneurship. Invite the talent to create further talent - do not crush them on this plea or that.
Dr B.K. Mukhopadhyay is a Management Economist.
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