How many times do we see joggers putting on their i-Pods to their ears and running in a park unmindful of things happening in their surroundings? Don't we see pedestrians walking on the road with their i-Pods or headsets from their mobiles in their ears, not responding to deafening horns ('Horn'y guys eh!) ?
Is this i-Pod syndrome applicable in the Corporate world?
My answer to this question would be 'YES'. The leaderships in organizations wear i-Pods (not literally) and tend to lose touch with the environment. The environment constitutes not just the organization and its employees, but also includes the customers, partners, resellers, distributors, etc, etc who form a part of the 'Supply Chain' of the organization.
The IT industry seems to suffer more from the 'i-Pod Syndrome' than some of the other industries. Let us look at some of the unwritten norms / rules in the IT industry in terms of expectations
Is this i-Pod syndrome applicable in the Corporate world?
My answer to this question would be 'YES'. The leaderships in organizations wear i-Pods (not literally) and tend to lose touch with the environment. The environment constitutes not just the organization and its employees, but also includes the customers, partners, resellers, distributors, etc, etc who form a part of the 'Supply Chain' of the organization.
The IT industry seems to suffer more from the 'i-Pod Syndrome' than some of the other industries. Let us look at some of the unwritten norms / rules in the IT industry in terms of expectations
- Six Digit Salary within 3-4 years of joining the industry
- Onsite trip, preferably to the US, in the first year of work. The wait should not be longer than 2 years.
- Salary hikes that are comparable to the best in the industry.
- Promotions every two years.
All these could have worked with the IT industry was growing at an enormous pace. There was a time when companies showed 100% YoY growth and at least a 30% QoQ growth. Is that the case today?
Firstly, IT industry in India is a business driven completely by global factors and have not much to do with the local Indian environment. Laws and rules against outsourcing is one of the issues that is plaguing the industry. Competition from Philippines on the BPO / KPO front is tremendous. Above all, India is mostly used as a platform for 'service and repair' rather than 'innovation and creation' of new products and services.
Let me make an honest confession over here. These are not facts that most of us who work in the IT industry do not understand. All of us are aware of these and we are trying to increase our individual skills to suit the needs of the future.
This is where the i-Pod Syndrome of the organizational leaderships come to the fore. One of the senior executives from a leading IT company comments "...... Our employees will understand ...." depicts the magnitude of the problem.
As a part of the middle management, in one of my earlier jobs, we had to face a lot of flack from our reportees. In the all employees calls / meetings, our leaders used to compare our performance and pace of growth to that of Usain Bolt. When you are comparing yourselves to somebody who has been winning every race and creating world records, you are giving an impression that you are doing wonderfully well. However when it came to that time of the year where we were supposed to decide on promotions and increments, there comes the quota and the bad news. The middle management takes the blast from subordinates and superiors alike. Reportees shout at you saying "We are told that we are like Usain Bolt, but what you are saying is completely contrary to that. I don't believe you". The management says "You need to own the careers of your reportees and convince them that the times are not the same as it used to be in the previous years. If you can't do that why do you deserve to be in your position ?"
People would have worked very hard year long (At least most of the 'Professionals' who believe that their aim in joining the IT industry is not just to use it as a platform for their MBA) for these pay hikes. The inflation is going through the roof. Price rise has been the order of the day in every walk of life. (Managing a Girlfriend is becoming next to impossible, is what some of my friends say!). All of a sudden a decision like this is communicated to the employees, that too through the media!
What prevents the leadership from listening to what is happening around. All somebody would need to understand the pulse of the employees is to walk into the cafeteria and eavesdrop into some of the ongoing conversations. I am not opining that people should have been given hikes or not. That is purely the decision of the management. However what puzzles me is that the way some of these 'Game Changer'' decisions are handled. Why couldn't the management take their own colleagues into confidence and let them know about the situation? The only point here is, when the leaders speak to their line of influence, they should talk about plans on how they intend to revive the situation. In my opinion, lack of this plan is what prevents managements from communicating directly with their employees, thus making them adhere to forced i-Pod syndrome, where they pretend to be listening on their i-Pods.
This attitude leads to the employees losing faith in their organizations, thereby impacting customer work most of the times. Customers see a dip in the levels of service that they have been getting. Mostly this is a temporary phenomenon, thanks to some amount of 'righteousness' left within us as individuals. But if this process of non-communication continues for sometime, then the person is bound to quit the organization. If the person can influence the decisions of the customer, S/He could walk away with the customer in the long run.
An unsatisfied customer will leave no stone unturned to ensure that their requirements are met. Organizations end up hiring somebody to replace this person at probably a higher cost. The new employee comes into the organization with a completely different work culture and it will take a minimum of six months for the new employee to become 100% productive.
Squeezing suppliers / vendors of all their margins will obviously leave then red eyed. Sudden decisions to fire supplier resources lead to a lot of heart burn and non cooperation from the suppliers when the organizations need more resources once their positions become strong enough.
The forced i-Pod syndrome, where leaders want to isolate themselves from the happenings on the ground will eventually ensure that their businesses suffer drastically. Yes, everybody in the industry understands that these are difficult times. What is needed is more of an 'i-Phone' where there is a two way communication rather than an i-Pod which keeps the leaders in their own world.
