Missed Opportunities: Part II

In an earlier post (Read Here) I spoke about missed opportunities.  We discussed four major reasons for these including lethargy in general, being unaware,  being extra cautious or lack of planning. 

While people do keep regretting missed opportunities we should understand how we can avoid unnecessary regrets.    For this consider couple of things.

Often in life many things require decisions to be time bound.  If you delay the decision you may lose the opportunity forever.  We keep hearing, Oh No',  If only I had decided to buy that apartment today I would have earned five times the investment and its just five years since the opportunity went by.   See my friends who joined that company.... I took time to decide and they are at the peak of their careers.

The question to ask is each time you make a delay in decision is :   "What's the Good Reason to delay the decision for".   Once you make that decision don't view it as a missed opportunity,  just view it as a different path or option you chose.   This is what Andrew Lincoln once said about missed opportunities.

Second let us look at it the way the noted motivational speaker Zig Ziglar does when he says  "The top sales person in your organization probably missed more sales than 90% of the sales people on the team, but they also made more calls than the others made."     This sums up another way to look at it. You missed out something to gain something else.   What you did not get by making more sales calls was "low sales".  So even though you missed some you ended up the winner. 

Third and most simple way to look at it is "If you did not try or attempt to do something" then it is not a missed opportunity.  It becomes missed opportunity only if you made a conscious choice to opt for something but then did not do it, not out of constraints or limitations, but as an act of omission.  Only then you should accept it as a missed opportunity. 

Have you heard anyone regret he / she did not become like Michelangelo the painter.  If you did then you must have put in efforts to become a master painter.  

In short, what you did will decide whether you missed out. Did nothing, missed nothing.  

That way you will be able to rationalize your experiences in a manner that does not make you unnecessarily worried and set your mind wandering for a comforting solution. 

Economy in a Sweet Spot? Implication for HR

Euphoria over new Government taking office in New Delhi is slowly fading away.   Now all eyes are on the future.  Economic trends globally are showing an uptick in recent months.   A global survey of over 1300 CEO's including 77 from India shows that 49% of the CEO's surveyed are very confident of their growth prospects in short term and 70% have a very positive outlook on growth in the next 3 years.   

The days to come will now see talent wars as growth and economic confidence returns.  When chips are down you don't worry much about attrition, you give cursory attention to talent shortages (with exception of few critical areas each time there is a down turn) and tide the calm without much problem.  

As things change now,  it is interesting to know that over 55% of those CEO's surveyed saw the loss of key talent as a key threat in coming days.   HR Leaders and Managers need to consider how to ride this wave of growth and progress and how their organizations can come out unscathed.  Some points to consider

a) How do you retain your top talent?  If you have ignored them in the recent years, now's the time to pull levers on all fronts to retain the top talent.  Engaging the solid citizens who contribute to your growth is key.  They need to see something valuable for them, a good career, rewards, recognition (constant reinforcement) and providing greater responsibilities.  Easier said than done.  However for those organizations who looked the other way during the slow down or low growth period the challenge will be enormous.   Your best folks who felt they got a cold shoulder would be the most vulnerable one's when it comes to "continuance commitment" dimension. 

b) Look for alternative talent pools?  In many industries smart thinking in terms of how you can augment your talent supply is very important.  Otherwise the companies will out price themselves on the compensation front and eventually make the industry uncompetitive.  Remember your competition is not going to come just from your industry, so HR and Talent managers should be on the look out where the next boomerang comes from E.g. e-Tailer flipkart.com  is suddenly growing and needs hundreds of new employees every month to keep their supply chain running.  They are giving a run to folks in the pizza delivery chain.   

c) Build Capabilities for the next wave:   As you grow it won't be wise to look at linear growth.  100$  2 people,  1000$,  20 people.  This formula won't keep you growing.  Companies have to look for productivity improvements,  technology and automation to deliver the same with less and keep the bottom line in shape.  This will call for investments both in the people development space to build up and quickly create capabilities required to run the new technologies.   Training functions will also need to rehash their strategies to quickly up skill and / or re-skill sections of the workforce based on the changes anticipated. 

d) Relative Growth of Industries will Vary:  As economies revive the turn around rates will differ across industry. Some will speed up faster and other relatively slower.  But remember your HR challenges does not necessarily come from your own industry.   When Business Process Services companies grew at a rapid 30% plus rates in India in the early years the pressure was felt by banks, accounting firms, financial services companies as well as by retailers.  The need for industry vertical experience among the BPS organizations to serve their global customers led to influx of many banking, financial services professionals as well as retail experts moving into another industry.  HR Leaders need to assess where the next challenge would come from.  

e) How do you attract the right talent:  When economies review the other challenge for HR and Talent Managers is about how to attract the best talent.  After all you would need to hire for growth and this is tough in a growing market.  There will be cost pressures if you relentlessly pursue a wage war to get your talent.   With digital forces like social media and a host of networking platforms making a big presence felt now, it is imperative that the next wave to attract new talent would be predominantly digital marketing challenge. This will need employer branding focus in organizations and creating that pull factor with the right audience.   

While the above are not prescriptive suggestions it is important for HR and Talent managers to reassess their strategic position in the talent market and equip themselves with the right approaches and tactics to survive getting hit by the talent war as economic revival seeps in.