famously revealed<\/a> ten years ago now, the bottom 2% of MBAs end up in HR, and I dread to think the number that wind up on procurement. \u00a0We need a services leader who sits over the operations of a business to ensure the right partnerships are being brokered and the right careers are being developed internally to take maximum advantage from them.<\/p>\n2) Promote the career path of the Capability Broker.<\/strong> \u00a0\u00a0Today’s service practitioner is increasingly becoming less about having specific skills wrapped up in a nice bow, such as \u201cABAP programmer\u201d, or \u201cVendor Contract Manager\u201d; it\u2019s now about being a\u00a0Broker\u00a0of Capability<\/em> \u2013 people who can multitask across multiple disciplines and find<\/em> business problems, in addition to solving them, who can work with multiple delivery vehicles or partners, such as service providers, SaaS platforms, crowdsourcing firms, shared services COEs etc. \u00a0And these brokers must operate as real integration<\/em> points of capability, not simply procurement administrators that negotiate rates and manage contracts. \u00a0This sounds much like an exciting<\/em> career path that incorporates genuine resourcefulness, ingenuity, consultative acumen and ability to think out-of-the box in order to achieve real outcomes for an enterprise. \u00a0So let’s start promoting<\/em> these roles as such… they’re exciting and require smart people to grow into the roles, where there is no defined curriculum and need an ability to handle ambiguity and go with the flow<\/em>.<\/p>\n3) Orient towards Design Thinking over Six Sigma.<\/strong>\u00a0Six Sigma, Lean and process excellence saved the BPO industry over the last decade from the unprofitable excesses of the early days of off-shoring – and gave service providers a frosting of process excellence by which to brand their offshore-dominant strategies. However, we at HfS believe that these are no longer the most suitable approaches by\u00a0which to improve business processes. \u00a0Six Sigma is about eliminating waste and solving imperfections in processes. Instead, we believe that, as a market, we need to lead our process improvement efforts with a starting point based in Design Thinking, which is about finding problems, not just solving them. We need to see the desired outcomes from clients and, in turn, their customers, as the lens by which to look at processes rather than the process itself. \u00a0All too often, we have \u201coptimized\u201d processes for cost, based on a very inward looking view of the business process, which either keeps the view of the external connections of the process static, or just ignores those considerations outright. In the As-a-Service economy, it is flexibility in process design and delivery which will win out, and starting with a Design Thinking approach (after training and converting many of the existing process excellence teams) will be the best model for future success.<\/p>\n4) Ensure outsourcing contracts have real actionable measures to develop Capability Brokers across the buyer\/provider relationship.<\/strong>\u00a0 Moving beyond the “lights on” tedium of an operations contract has to become paramount in all new contract negotiations. \u00a0When you listen to experienced governance executives today, many are proudly talking about how they are emphasizing the joint workshop sessions, the bonuses for achieving innovations and improvements, the incentives for achieving productivity enhancements beyond merely moving work offshore. It’s not easy to contract for innovation, but many firms are now trying<\/em> – and finding some success.<\/p>\n5) Ban personal\u00a0smartphones\u00a0from being used during the office hours.<\/strong> \u00a0It’s just got to be done. \u00a0It’s the disease terrorizing today’s business environment – too many people just cannot focus on their jobs anymore because they are completely distracted by the sheer volume of social media impacting their lives. \u00a0Seriously, I know hundreds of people (and not just Millennials) who cannot concentrate on one single work task for more than five minutes at a time (and you do too…. you just know it). \u00a0Force them to focus – you’ll be doing them a huge favor… \u00a0the best performing shared service centers do it, so why not follow their example?<\/p>\n6) Focus on locations where young people still appreciate\u00a0a service career and have some company loyalty. \u00a0<\/strong>When you visit smaller cities, there is often still the culture of people going to an office and staying with one company for several years to develop a career with it. \u00a0They appreciate a job with some security tied to it and have less grandiose career ambitions. \u00a0In most big Western cities, today, the cost of living is far too high to justify a modestly paid job. \u00a0Someone was trying to convince me the other day that a family of four in Massachussetts needed a household income of $300K a year just to live reasonably well. Sounds a bit excessive, but they are probably not too far off. \u00a0Clearly services jobs starting at $25k a year are not going to be very appealing to people wanting to raise a family on the expensive Eastern seaboard of the US (and let’s not even get started on California).<\/p>\nThe Bottom-line: \u00a0There is no quick fix, but we need to get ahead of this now<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nI dread to think what could happen if we hit another economic downturn (if HSBC’s recent viewpoint<\/a> is correct) with today’s working attitudes of the younger generation. \u00a0There will be millions of unemployed youths angry that the living they felt entitled to never transpired. \u00a0We can’t simply send them to work with a kick up the behind, but we can try to create a career path with a mission, a purpose and strong leadership that inspires the next generation. \u00a0That’s probably the best we can do for now, so let’s start doing it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I recently attended a graduation ceremony and was amazed at the number\u00a0of students engrossed in their phones, occasionally looking up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,48,78,80,81,86,90,831,93,832,830,97,98,99,837],"tags":[303],"ppma_author":[19],"yoast_head":"\n
The biggest threat to outsourcing's future: Unfocused and unambitious Millennials - Horses for Sources | No Boundaries<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n