Category Archives: Talent

Beware the Perils of Hyperspecialization

A recent article over on the Harvard Business Review on the age of hyperspecialization said that we are entering an era of hyperspecialization and that it will convey a pulsating, world-spanning flow of knowledge work. Heraliding it as the continuation of Adam’s Smith division of labour, it notes that hyperspecialization reduces costs most dramatically when a company can turn to an expert instead of having to reinvent the wheel and alow the company to achieve a better utilization of their own employees’ time.

However, there can be just as many perils, if not more. The article, which clocks in at seven pages, briefly passes over these five perils:

  • Digital Sweatshops
    In developing economies, enterprising industrialists might use hyperspecialization to create “digital sweatshops” where workers, sets of whom specialize in specific tasks, are exploited for low wages by those who have the means to do so.
  • Astroturfing
    If work is divided into small enough parts, it is possible that a worker may not know what they are working on and may be contributing to something counter to their personal beliefs, or even the law. For example, a mathematician could design a new lottery game or a “greeting card writer” could be creating text for e-mail spam.
  • Electronic Surveillance
    Not only can every aspect of the work be monitored, but it may even reach the point where the work in progress, and the person doing the work, is monitored from start to finish.
  • Dull & Meaningless Work
    Even Adam Smith noted the deleterious results when a person’s work was reduced to “a few very simple operations” back in 1776. If tasks become so refined that they become monotonous, there surely will be ill psychological effects.
  • No Guarantee of Payment
    While spec work is not new, today, most spec work is confined to proposals. In hyperspecialization, workers will actually be doing the work and whether or not they get paid could be at the whim of the company that issues the task.

But misses the most important peril of all:

  • Loss of Vision
    If everyone works on a tiny little piece of a puzzle, over time there will be fewer and fewer people who understand how a puzzle is to be put together. This will seriously stifle innovation as the creativity that results from exploring beyond your horizons diminishes as horizons shrink.

How Do You Build a High Performance Supply Management Organization?

A recent study by Dr. Andre de Waal of the HPO Center that involved more than 3,500 organizations across 60 countries confirmed what leaders already know:

  • Leadership
    In High Performance Supply Management organizations, leaders lead with exemplary behaviour, make decisions, adopt a results focus, act with integrity, and coach staff. They don’t micromanage and do the work of their staff.
  • Talent
    Leading organizations have top talent that is diverse, complementary, and able to work well together. The talent is also flexible and resilient and committed to making the organization successful.
  • Openness and Action Orientation
    Everyone is involved in important processes through shared dialogue, change (for the better) is encouraged, and actions are taken to improve performance.
  • Continuous Improvement and Innovation
    There is an eternal focus on improvement and innovation.
  • Long Term Focus
    Long term success take precedence over short term profit. Management and employees are in it for the long haul and act that way.

Want a Skilled Workforce? Train It!

I thoroughly enjoyed this recent article in Industry Week on “Crafting a Skilled Workforce” that describes Blum Inc’s Apprenticeship 2000 program that develops many of the skilled manufacturing technicians that Blum may otherwise be unable to find. While the four-year program costs Blum $100,000 per apprentice on average, 80% of graduates, who are guaranteed a job with a minimum salary of $34,000 a year on graduation, stay with Blum. In otherwords, for ony $125,000, Blum obtains a highly capable manufacturing technician, with journeyman certification from the North Carolina Department of Labour, who will provide the company with years of valuable service. Given that recruitment of even an entry-level technologist can easily exceed $10K to $15K, and that training of a new recruit can take 6 months or more and tens of thousands of dollars of time of a senior mentor, and that there’s no guarantee that the technologist will have the skills, work out, or stay with the company any length of time, investing $125K to produce a highly skilled employee with company loyalty is a small, and brilliant investment.

As SI has said before, Apprenticeship is the Answer.

If You Have to Hire, Maybe You Should Hire At Home (Bonus NPX Take Away 2)

Yes, the doctor is back on his home-sourcing horse, but there are good reasons. It’s now literally cheaper to “off-shore” in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Michigan than to go to Maharastra, Andhra Pradesh, or Rajasthan. At both the Hackett Group Conference and the NPX gathering put on by The Mpower Group, I heard a number of top executives from Fortune 500 companies note how it was cheaper to bring certain operations and services back home than keep them in India where labor rates are still increasing in the double-digits year after year.

And if this isn’t enough to convince you, this fact should really make you think twice. Not only are American companies hiring at home, but now Indian companies are hiring American citizens on American soil to fulfill the outsourcing contracts granted to them by American companies. And this is happening in Procurement, Finance, and Legal. That’s right! There are so many unemployed lawyers now that it’s cheaper for Indian firms to hire unemployed American lawyers than to try and recruit lawyers that know American law because they are few and far between, in great demand in India outsourcing shops, and command ever increasing salaries.

So hire at home before India (and, in short order, China) scoop up all your talent!

You Can’t Hire 100 People At a Time (Bonus NPX Take Away 1)

One of the things I heard at the NPX exchange put on by The Mpower Group is that there are companies out there looking to hire 50, 100, and even 200 Supply Management professionals — right now. What, what, what? I can’t believe I just heard that. While I’m sure most of you are saying that’s great news because, in your opinion, that means jobs are returning and/or faith in Supply Management is finally getting to what it needs to be, I can assure you this is not great news.

What this really signifies is that there is a deep fundamental problem in the organization in question. A well-run company should not suddenly need 200 people in its Supply Management organization. The first thing one has to ask when hearing that a company needs that many people is why. And “we’re centralizing operations” or “we’re expanding our global footprint” are not good reasons.

A company doesn’t have to hire more people to centralize operations, even if it is moving Supply Management headquarters. It simply has to relocate some staff on location and everyone else can work wherever they are. Now that most people have affordable video conferencing on their desktop, and it’s quick and easy to get just about anywhere in the world within two days, there’s no excuse for not letting people work where they are. (And any HR professional worth their salt will tell you that it’s much cheaper to relocate talent than to hire new talent and get them up to speed.) If the organization needs new people because it just got rid of a bunch, one needs to ask why. Did it really have that many people who couldn’t cut it and, more importantly, couldn’t be trained to cut it? If so, there is something fundamentally wrong with its hiring practices and talent management and it’s probably not somewhere anyone would want to work.

A company doesn’t have to hire that many more people to expand its global footprint either. It just has to hire a few local resources in the region and open an office. That’s 20 people, tops, not 200. If it needs more, then it’s expansion plans are too aggressive. There’s no way you can parachute 50 to 200 people into an organization and not expect everything to come to a screeching halt for 6 months. Even if you can figure out where to put 200 people, you need to get them equipment, train them on general organizational processes, assign them specific jobs, train them on the appropriate technology and specific processes, hold their hands until they know how to do their daily jobs, and have mentors readily available to answer questions for up to two years as they learn the ins and outs of the more complex aspects of their assignment.

In short, jobs returning to Supply Management are a good thing, but only if they are added in moderation.