Recently a KPMG senior partner has written an
open letter to all the recent passouts and MBA grads from his personal experience as an employer. Here is the link for the same:
One of my FB friend has written a wonderful
reply to this open letter which completely deserved to go viral. Here is the link for the same. This was inspired by a similar post from the famous
Great Bong
Here is what I think of this issue, and definitely this is not an open letter, this is only for people who know me a little and happened to stumble across my blog / FB page.
First of all, let this be loud and clear: THE WORLD HAS CHANGED, and so have the employers and employees.
So here goes nothing:
Dear Employer,
Kindly note the following important things which need your immediate attention:
1. No matter what rocket sciency stuff you think you are doing, most likely you are not. People have made money with much simpler business models and if you are one of them, no shame in it. Consultant can come, make the jazzy presentation for introducing your organization to the starry eyed MBAs, but you must always know the truth. It is one thing to lie, completely another to start believing it. What does all this boil downs to ? Simple, not every organization need to hire MBAs. Before you take that decision , think whether it makes sense to your organization. Please don't go by what a fancy consultant has told you or what your golf-buddies are doing. Hiring MBA is the easiest thing for any organization. Keeping them and utilizing them is the most difficult part. If you haven't been hiring MBA so far, nothing drastic will happen. if you still don't. Why don't you groom your internal employees for these position ? Answer, because it is damn too long a process and requires patience and effort which like us MBAs no one has. This explains the choc-a-bloc placement weeks at all the premiere b-schools where employers like you make a bee-line to lap up the top talent.
2.So in spite of all my warnings, you still think that hiring MBAs (or CAs for some peculiar organization) is the right thing for you, go right ahead. But there is a catch, these Yum-Bee-Yays you are hiring, won't be like your regular employees. They will come with charmed credentials (because nothing less will do for you), and yes they will treat you as an equal and not some demi-God. They would work hard, deliver quality and expect meaty work profiles, growth opportunity, great freedom at workplace and not to mention, competitive salary. Why ? Because if you don't do that, some other employer who could, will happily lap them up. This is the reality of new age talent (and not labour) market. Market as usual, is always right. Remember that.
3. You hired these self-righteous bastards, paid them well, created niche job roles and gave them quality work, still they didn't stay with you. Why ?
Well... first of all, they are young and just like you once were, not sure what they want from their life, those kind will leave you, don't fret over it, move on. Focus on those who chose to stay, they very well might be your future, they are smart, hard working and like working with you.
Second and more important reason could be that your middle managers are just not ready. They are not equipped to mentor / groom / coach these young guns. Sometimes reason could be the fear of being replaced or jealousy. Other times, the reason could be that these manager don't know that providing feedback on performance, coaching them to deliver value for company is the way to deal with these kind. They would not ask for you to handhold them or spoon feed them. They would love to deliver more than what you have asked them. But in return they would expect feedback and coaching for them to become better professional. You see, loyalty lies with their careers / professions and not with the organizations they are working for.Great companies build great culture of performance review and feedback. Just making them do things is not enough, help them do it better. Remember that similar to your other employee, these kinds also leave their bosses and not organizations.
4.Kindly get over the idea of loyalty of any kind from these kind. If you divide last 30 years into blocks of 5 years and take 50 CV each, you would be able to see a marked decrease in the average tenure spent in an organization by an average employee. The pace of work has increased manifold, no longer you have to write that proposal on paper, then get typed by secretary and send it to your boss. These days you make that proposal on your laptop, send that to your boss over e-mail and work done. Result, new age employees are achieving results much faster and hence learning much faster. Future focused organization will need to be aware of it and act accordingly. Every single MBA who has spent 2 years with you and has not seen a marked increased in his responsibility or work profile is a definite attrition threat.In 2 years, he has done what an average employee would have done in 5 years 15-20 years back. Be aware of it and deal with it. And since you would also not hesitate to fire your employees if all is not well, it is only fair. The days when employer was master and employee was servant are over. So grow up (if you haven't already)
Dear Employees (mostly MBAs / CAs),
Kindly note the following important things which need your immediate attention:
1. Though, you may feel that employers in general are not happy about the communication skills (or English skills) of these new age employees, they may not specifically mean you. So don't take it personal. It is a fact that a lot of us (at least in India) come for non-public school backgrounds and fluency in English may not be our strong suit. Though rightly so, it is one of the requirements to survive in today's globally connected world. Nevertheless, most of us do find the kind of job we are good at (because current MBA selection process ensures that anyone who enters the b-school is at least very good at one thing e.g quantitative aptitude and decent in all others). Bottom line, if we have good communication skills, no harm, but if we don't, time we take a cue and get better at it.
2.To begin you will do some amount of clerical work in one way or the other. It is up to you to add value even to that random work. You owe it to your charmed credentials. There has to be a difference in the way you deliver work and a person without that fancy degree of yours does it. That is the only way we can differentiate ourselves. You will not get to do strategic work right away because firstly, organization don't know you well enough and secondly they themselves are not doing much strategically. Strategy in recent times have become a much abused word like friendship or love. Economical cycles have become so rapid that no organization have the luxury of making long term choices (which strategy is) and hence strategy has become outdated concept. I doubt if even the senior leadership of major organizations are doing strategic stuff. Case in point, even after 2 decades of excellence in Indian IT industry, we have not seen a single IT product worth mention from any Indian IT major. When it is difficult enough surviving and holding up as is, who has time for strategy. So no strategy, don't worry, worry when you haven't done anything new in your job for long time.
3.You are the proverbial go-getter, no mountain is high enough for you, EOD deadline, night out for work, working for the whole month without taking breaks on weekends, you can do it all. But what for ? and for how long, do you want to die at 40-45 or become a diabetic / heart patient in your early 30s. If not, then learn to take it slow, saying no and avoid taking things personally. Not every deadline has to be EOD, not every thing needs to be done by you, not every friend / relative is your competitor. Work is important and you have made your point, but you have just started working and you will continue to do so for another 25-30 years, so work accordingly. In fairly cliched words, when in marathon, do as other marathoners do.
4. Now let me tell you something completely opposite to what I just said, in spite of all tall claims of India Shining and being the next superpower, we still are a developing country. What does that mean for us? It simply means that we can not compare ourselves to regulations in France where people work for 35 hours per week (yes they do and any more will mean overtimes wages ...cool, eh ?). Hence despite of all our dreams of achieving a perfect work life balance, it will continue to be elusive, at least for our generation. Work will definitely be a priority. We can not afford to be lazy, being in a country like ours.
This is our time on the world map and to claim our fame, we would need to work hard. But and a big but at that, remember working hard doesn't mean being a workaholic, a fine line between the two. Decide yours and stick with it.
5.MBA gives us a great way to launch our careers but also robs us of many opportunities may be equally exciting or even better. These opportunities may not be as great paying or as stable as the jobs which lands in your lap, but they may be crucial part of our future. We are different from our parents and our seniors. In the famous words of Arthur C Clarke, " The future is not what is used to be". To actually make a mark, we may have to make different choices (in terms of job profiles,industries we choose to work in ). Since MBA with its high status symbol, may make us blind to these opportunities and trends, it is important for us to look at that as well. Imagine if Nandan Nilekani had chosen to take up PSU job (like the trend of times) where would he be, definitely not at rank of a cabinet minister :P.
And I am done sermonizing... well at least for the time being :)
Stay Beautiful
