The One Thing #7: Need Long-term Solutions

You have three geometrically shaped empty boxes in front of you. One is a rectangle, second a triangle and third a square. You need to fill them up. If you act locally (assuming different shaped boxes as different issues in different countries), you might have pulled out a large cardboard and a scissors, cut three different solid shapes as per requirement and filled it in. Now if you decide to act globally, you might figure out creating some sort of fluid, which can be placed in each box and it takes the shape of that container. What have you done here? Created a long term solution (come what may the shape of future boxes) and potentially saved a few millions in cash and a load of time for your efforts.

As business has evolved and technological advancements have made communication seamless across the world, availability of information has become extremely easy. You want to know what kind of product can be useful for a particular set of customers in Chicago while sitting in your Chennai office; you can run a search on the internet, do a poll on a website, and even hire a local resource all without leaving your desk. Isn’t this a true example of the globalized world?

When I look at 2014 and what ultimate challenges it will bring for us, I clearly look at the composition of the workforce changing significantly from what we have witnessed in the past few years. A workforce of the past has relied on a customer reaching out to them while they listen and gather the requirement and then provide a customized solution. We then make it happen and earned millions from it, but things have changed now. Either the customer is looking for choices or cannot really differentiate between a thousand similar looking solutions in the market or is even confused as to what they really want from the beginning.

This is where “Workforce of the future” will come into our picture. It will not wait to get the requirements from the customer and then begin working on the solutions. It will create solutions like the one mentioned above. It will go to the customer, will figure out the challenge and provide a solution, which has been created in a way that it can fit into most of the empty containers smoothly. They might think locally around the problem but when they need to come out with a solution, they will act globally so that they do not only provide a short-term solution in one geography or industry, but create expertise which is transferrable across other demographics. Hopefully, IT tools and systems might be the carrier for this central repository.

This kind of workforce will not be built in a day. It will take a persistent sustained effort and the team most likely to lead these efforts will be HR. It will also be tested on the grounds of its ability to create and visualize this futuristic workforce. How I see it in execution is to build leadership capabilities which can be differentiated from others basis these four crucial pillars: Global acumen, technical capabilities, business acumen and relationships.

If HR is able to create this differentiation and bring in agility to these leadership capabilities across the spectrum, not just at top management, the entire workforce will begin to create an impact which might be acknowledged and appreciated by the business for a very long time.

– With inputs from Naman Kaushik, Manager, Human Capital, PwC India