Since writing my other piece I came across this from today's Forbes
Magazine which will reinforce the point I made about China, etc, catching
up with the West (as far as present technologies and consumer goods are
concerned anyway).
Keith
Asian Companies Are Hiring More And More In The West
Because of that, every global company needs a new kind of leadership.
Denis Brousseau
China and India have begun hiring far more people in the U.S. and Europe. A
recent IBM survey of more than 700 chief human resource officers and
executives from 61 countries found that almost half of Indian companies and
more than a third of Chinese firms said they were going to increase the
number of employees they have in North America.
The logic is simple: It's all about expansion. Coming out of the global
economic downturn, companies in China, India and other developing countries
are eyeing North America and Europe as targets for new growth.
We can no longer look at emerging countries as just markets for American
and European companies or cheap sources of labor for products. Companies
there are now competing to sell their products and services to consumers
around the world, becoming truly global and providing new employment
opportunities outside their home countries. This will radically change how
companies do business -- and how they must recruit and manage leadership
and employees.
With new rivals battling around the world, competition will grow more
intense than ever. Leadership that can thrive in this increasingly
uncertain world, where ambiguity and change are a given, will be at a
premium. But the rising competition will also make it harder to find and
keep such nimble leadership.
Also, businesses will have less room for error as they launch new services
and products, respond to changes in demand and expand their markets. Smart
management of a truly global work-force will be key.
Companies will need to cultivate leaders who can tackle this new age of
global competition. That doesn't mean just effective managers; it means
creative leaders who can think across borders, who can come up with new
ways of communicating and collaborating that inspire and connect employees
around the world. Companies will need managers who can anticipate and
thrive on change in a world where competitors pop up all over, not just react.
Executives at only a third of the companies we talked to said they're good
at picking out such creative leaders. Traditional leadership programs tend
to perpetuate an organization's existing structures, but that won't cut it
when we're talking about the challenge of managing a borderless work-force
that's always in flux.
Just as crucial as cultivating creative leaders is making sure that the
right people do the right jobs in the right places. Managing a work-force
becomes daunting as you spread your employees around the world and hire
from different cultures. It gets even tougher as you use more out-sourcing
and part-time workers in order to be more flexible.
Here again, our research shows that companies just aren't prepared. Only
35% of human resource officers say they can globally deploy people
effectively. Just 31% think their companies are effective at rapidly
developing new skills.
How can we get smarter about leadership? If we're facing a new kind of
global competition in which companies from the U.S., Europe, India, and
China all vie for the same talent and the same markets, how can we come out
ahead?
Technology helped create this new borderless world. Technology can also
help companies craft strategies for developing innovative future leaders,
and for managing more employees across a broader span of time zones,
countries and backgrounds. Analytics can pinpoint not only where top
performers are located but what makes them stand out from their peers
around the world. It can help identify employees, wherever they may be, who
have specific expertise a company needs to deploy right now. Yet companies
rarely use analytics to plan for the future, as good as they may be at
using its data to look backward to identify trends.
Many of the companies whose executives we spoke with don't have the
infrastructure to analyze the kinds of skills and capabilities their
workers have. They can't model potential talent shortages or monitor talent
supply and demand.
We all know that employees are our most important asset. It's up to us to
decide how we make the most of them -- and how they help propel our
organizations as we face stepped up competition.
Denis Brousseau is global leader, Organization & People, for IBM Global
Business Services.
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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