A few days ago, I was talking to a industry professional about how Infosys business transformation.
My question to him was "Can Infosys succeed in it's objective to partner clients for providing creative solutions that yield business outcome ?. The response he gave was quite alarming -" where are those creative people ? We cant even get collaboration going internally right , how do you expect that these guys will make such a change and be successful in doing it". But is this issue only about internal leadership of change or something more fundamental. Most of the execution happens at lowest client facing levels. So how well are these graduate equipped to deliver on the promise. ?
Hay Group survey indicates that 89% of leaders in India are worried about the quality of future leaders. Young professionals, products of rote learning and consumed by social media are joining workforce at a time when collaborative working to address the challenges of a volatile, uncertain , complex and ambiguous business environment is the name of the game.
My question to him was "Can Infosys succeed in it's objective to partner clients for providing creative solutions that yield business outcome ?. The response he gave was quite alarming -" where are those creative people ? We cant even get collaboration going internally right , how do you expect that these guys will make such a change and be successful in doing it". But is this issue only about internal leadership of change or something more fundamental. Most of the execution happens at lowest client facing levels. So how well are these graduate equipped to deliver on the promise. ?
Hay Group survey indicates that 89% of leaders in India are worried about the quality of future leaders. Young professionals, products of rote learning and consumed by social media are joining workforce at a time when collaborative working to address the challenges of a volatile, uncertain , complex and ambiguous business environment is the name of the game.
The survey indicates a scary reality .
- 74% of the respondents believe that they have hired graduates with deficient people skills due to lack of choice.
- 71% of these respondents believe that less than 25% of these graduates have people skills that matter, for success.
- 80% of these respondents believe that graduates lacking people skills are toxic for workplace.
What do the Indian graduates think ?
- 77% of the graduates don’t value people skills – and believe they will succeed without it
- 57% do not think feelings about people are important
- 77% of these graduates say that people get in the way of getting a job done.
If this is the outcome of our education it is matter of time that we will have inefficient workforce with a crab mindset , pulling each other down. The companies
will be forced to rely on powerful robots with artificial intelligence doing regular jobs so as to
ensure that human ebola does not strike them.
What companies must
do immediately ?
- Invest more in induction of new intake.
- Push these graduates into team based outdoor survival adventure for at least 2 weeks duration or get the armed forces to conduct a 2 week intensive team program.
- Post induction, push the graduates into very small teams demanding high collaboration projects for at least 2 weeks.
- Design Performance Management KPI’s that discriminate in favour of teamwork
