THIS WAR NEVER ENDS
The war for talented people keep continues. These people are the most valuable asset for organizations. Today’s organizations are looking for peoples whom other organizations also look after. These people represent the number of people who are ready to face the challenge, seize the opportunity, and tapped into the most profitable organization not only for financial package, but also for personal development and other virtues.
Just like any war happened in the world, there are always winner and loser resulted from it. The winners-take-all mechanism happens since the beginning of the world. The sound is always so loud that it always better to sweat more than bleed more in the realm of war. How much one side prepared for the battle in never-enough time frame in all side of advantages and disadvantages, calculating the risk, getting all the resources needed in order to win the battle and all others preparations that could determine the result of the war.
However, in this 21st century era, the result will never be as obvious or linear as the traditional physical war anymore. The complexity is raising and the result can be more catastrophic, not only physical but also in the rest of the live of the victim. The number of poor as the result of unbalance social justice distribution, the collapse and bankruptcy of several business organizations or even some country’s poor condition are just few samples of the lost of war.
As every army needs a great general, every organization needs a good leader and human capital. Today’s organizations are facing a complex environment where everything is changing rapidly. The change is not predictable in frame of time, intensity, or even its sources. Organizations need the leaders to keep them on track and sustain the establishment to keep attain their organizational objectives.
Human capital is one aspect that every organization cannot terribly ignore. Organizations need people to gain their objectives in all levels and functions. Another business organization can copy their systems, machines, or even have more financial capital, but still, one solely thing that competitor cannot copy is human capital.
Talented human capital is the source of organization’s energy, it is their soul. If organizations treat them wrong, they will leave and ends on the competitor, which is not really good news for one side as the leader of organizations that has been left. That is why, Summerville (2007) said in his article that developing and retaining talent as their future leader is probably the biggest imperative for managers.
People are learning in a different way. New kind of technology pushes a new way of information’s current. New market drives a new need of set of skills in employee. Structural change in organization also creates a new set of skills in each employee. People need to learn a new way to do things more effectively and efficiently. So does learning. People want to be able to do things as fast as possible to anticipate changes in the world.
Global business expansion does not just affect business with international operations but also local companies that may buy or use goods that have been produced overseas, hire employees with different nationality background and compete with foreign-owned companies.
Many companies area tapping globalization opportunity by exporting their products, building manufacturing overseas, building alliances with foreign companies and engaging in e-commerce. Competition for local managers exceeds the available supply. Furthermore, companies need to attract and retain local talented managers, or potential managers in order to pave their expansion way.
Since globalization burgeons rapidly, people are learning that in order to seize the opportunity they have to be aware that they will compete in a global level, getting into widely varied personalities, interact and manage communication with people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Organizations often provide newbie with mentoring, hands-on job experience, and formal courses to develop employee’s skills. These people realized that it is not only managerial skills needed to compete in this level, but also emotional skills such ability to recognize other’s state of emotion, self-awareness, and for sure, leadership.
Because of these expansions, companies need the local talent to understand the market so they can dig deeper successfully. These local talents have the knowledge about culture, belief, and any other ritual that company does not understand yet. This is why they can be called as knowledge worker. They are needed by companies since they may possess some specialized knowledge that their managers may not have, such as information about customer. This is why knowledge worker have may job opportunities. In order to facilitate this, children are soon being focused on area of expertise they want instead of learning general knowledge so they can be soon absorbed in the work field and be on the top of pyramid of labor market.
As the result of those demands, job requirement also changes which forces people to be ready to have a steep learning curve. Not only hard skills are needed, but also interpersonal skills as a complement to cognitive skills, such analytical and creative thinking skills.
As long as the business changes to operate globally, organizational strusture also changed as well. The structure is flatter than before. Therefore, managers nowadays are demanded to do more things in order to manage their business. This structure provides faster communication in a shorter way of structural change. As the result, they need more skills since the range of respinsibilities also broader than before. As this goes on, people are demanded to learn so many things in a short time.
Technological growth are supporting this needs as well as job rotation and cross-regional work rotation. People are easily getting more information by many ways provided by technology. Technology provides new way to do things, including learning. It is not only as the source of information, but also as a tool for practicing, a tool to analyze information, and also to help learners generate a deeper and wider understanding.
Ballots and Taymaz (1999) stated there are forms of learning that affected by technological changes: learning-by-doing, learning-by-using, learning-by-learning, incremental innovation, and radical innovation, these are popular distinction. Incremental innovation allows an improvement in the capital and labor productivity within the limits of an existing technology while radical innovation provides the best challenge for the talented people to adapt in a new complex business environment.
In a more complex environment, as the technology grows rapidly, it is impossible to make a perfect decision, even with all those learning style walked by some people. The decision that could possibly satisfy one side may not be the result of satisfaction of the other side. The decision that worked a week ago may not be the right decision for the recent situation that seems to be alike. When radical innovation takes place, rule of learning is more intensive and this is important for the success to jump into a higher technological paradigm.
The change of how businesses expand globally, structural changes, and technological changes affect the way people learn. In the more sophisticated environment, one decision may affect all in a good and bad way. The flood of new sources of information, the new best practices, and new tools of analysis change all the things in learning. As effects, people learn faster, wider, and deeper.
It may not be your decision whether you want to change or not, but it will be a great decision if you are the changer for the benefit of goods. Everything is changing unless the change itself, as long as the organizations need talented people, this war never ends.
Note: This is my individual assignment. If its a lil bit far of the box, then u've already seen my footprint..HHahaha.
