Can We Cross-breed Business Services Delivery Talent?

It’s time to question why there is not much talent interoperability between the so-called buy and sell sides. Is it time to be deliberately Darwinian about business services talent, forcing cross-breeding between those folk variously called GBS execs, shared services leaders or strategic sourcers, and denizens of the business process outsourcing provider world? Conceptually, the business services delivery world would be a much better place if we could cross an entrepreneurial BPO guy or gal with one of those internally focused but politically savvy internal shared services guys—creating a hybrid business process delivery exec par excellence. Think ‘institutional knowledge’ meets up with a bit of ‘out-of-the-box-thinking’; or ‘professional client relationship management’ finds nirvana in a captive market; or the ability to sell is cross-bred with someone who is trusted. What a victory for artificial selection! And perhaps the answer for a talent-poor business services industry. But is it in the cards, or should I say, the genes? Can you really cross-breed the species, improving talent genetics? --------------- Go to any conference or round table, or have one of those truthful convos in a plush paneled bar, and the great and the good all moan about their number one challenge—getting the right talent. BPO execs cluck about the dearth of people who can sell effective solutions or effectively manage relationships, while the CXO or corporate services leader recites a litany of openings ranging from process leaders to accounts payable managers. There’s a bright side to this seeming obsession with talent: it perhaps signifies that business services has finally grown up to the realization that performance is not just about the latest disruptive technology or process intelligence, but rather about human capital. Admiring the problem isn’t enough, though; it’s time to question why there is not much talent interoperability between the so-called buy and sell sides. As a goal for the evolution of both species, it’s a no-brainer. Being able to move between client and provider roles makes for a stronger industry. Better understanding of client needs, more focus on innovation, a line of sight between initiative and reward, the ability to work effectively within a very complex institution…all take business services to the next level. I’ve seen the benefits in my own career—going from provider to two stints in corporate life, and then back to the dark side, has given me immeasurable career value and a priceless purview on the industry. So: What’s stopping the cross-breeding of business services talent? Here are a few of the challenges that come to mind. 1. Carbon copies We are a relatively immature industry as industries go. So we try our darndest to eliminate risk—in our relationships, in our careers, in our management approaches, even in our appetite for so-called innovation. Tried and tested is the watchword of the day. As a result, we tend to fall back on what I’d call the carbon copy syndrome when it comes to hiring, defined as trying to attract someone whose career trajectory not only looks similar to our own, but also comes from a similarly-sized company and even in the same industry, just to be utterly safe. Call it the one-step-up-syndrome: It’s safe if we hire someone who only has to stretch to one more geography, or one more process in scope. Leaps of faith are definitely not in the picture. No one expects the hiring officer or recruiter to think way out of the box. After all, past performance in a similar role is always some indication of future success, especially when it comes to matching skill sets. But in a "profession" that’s not institutionalized—like controller or HR director or IT manager—you’d think that the parameters are not yet cast in concrete. Add to the mix the reality that the talent pool isn’t that deep, and creativity is definitely in order. What’s the solution? Hiring based upon capabilities and performance as opposed to copycat roles would be a good start, but no one (to my knowledge) has ever mapped capabilities across the spectrum of corporate services and provider. Perhaps it’s time for the industry to sit down and develop a kit of HR parts, matching career paths, competencies and role adjacencies to create a bigger pond. 2. "I walk on water" The majority of skills necessary on the provider side mirror those on the corporate side, but how value is compensated differs. Many provider personnel, especially those onshore, are used to healthy salaries, fat bonuses and commissions (if they’re lucky) pricing them out of the reach of many corporates. Time in grade and salary ladders still underpin the compensation structure of most corporations, while there remains an illusory trade-off between job security and monetary reward. Making 400-500k USD a year in cash is far from the norm in most corporations, unless the job carries with it an officer role, yet many provider folk flush with last year’s bonus in their pockets don’t cotton on to the difference in reward systems, which are rarely pay for play. They also may be in a bubble when it comes to job switches on the corporate side. The days of 20-30 percent upticks in comp at every job change are gone. Few organizations pay hefty moving allowances. Making more than your boss is not on in a corporate structure where talent is part of a machine, not a solo act. Stepping back in salary to move in a different direction or forge a new career is now the norm. Supply side guys and gals who don’t get that not only won’t be able to make the switch, but will also solidify the hiring agent’s belief that he or she would be best off staying out of the provider pool when fishing for talent. What’s the solution? Career changes require a healthy dose of realism that many, particularly those on the service provision side, haven’t yet copped to. Service provider personnel would be best served by a bit of research, not to mention a lot of navel gazing, before going full bore into a corporate-side job search and wasting everyone’s time. He or she needs to ask themself: Why do I really want to go corporate? Is it because I think I can make the switch, or am I tired of the provider rat race? Am I willing to take less comp for less travel and a new set of business problems to solve? What can I realistically expect to earn? Can I park my ego at the door and learn new things? Is it worth it to me over the long term? Is it a trade-off I am willing to make now? 3. Safe harbor Fewer corporate managers see moving to a service provider role as the ne plus ultra of career moves. Those who do contemplate it often look for assurances that there’s either a safety net, or a way back to corporate life if the provider life is not to their taste, particularly when the midnight teleconferences and travel get too much. If the reward structure doesn’t put corporate services leaders off, the workplace conditions just might. Moving to pay-for-play compensation can be difficult for professionals that have been used to hierarchy and time in grade, not to mention bonuses tied to corporate, not individual, performance. And corporations, worried about their branding as a "great place to work" may provide a more flexible working environment than a provider when it comes to working conditions and accommodations. What’s the solution? Remember the old management training programs, particularly those run by banks (when we still had them on every street corner)? Bright young things were hired and thrown into a programmed and supervised rotation through every nook and cranny of the organization, not only to learn, but also to get a chance to discover where there were career affinities. Why can’t providers implement something along the same lines, giving adventurous client-side types the chance to learn more about provider life and find roles that exploit their skills through a structured program that benefits both? If even half of these folk stay, we’d all be a lot more resilient for the cross-breeding. 4. Lost in translation Have you seen provider and client role mapping, correlating capabilities of each to the other? I haven’t. The industry hasn’t taken the time to dissect the skills on each side of the blanket. So when a vendor or change management role comes up on the client side, or a relationship management—or even a sales role—opens on the provider side, the tendency is to play it safe, looking for someone who had the exact same role in a similar company (back to the carbon copy syndrome). So that GBS manager who’s been able to cajole the Italian country head into coming into the shared services fold may be seen by the provider manager as having no relationship or sales skills. Or the outsourcing guy who spent the last few years doing business case after business case for a provider doesn’t know his way around a ROI analysis, according to the corporate’s finance department. What’s the solution? I guess it’s time for the industry to stop merely admiring the problem and get down and dirty, encoding and standardizing roles across every spectrum of service delivery. So when someone’s talking about a relationship manager, there’s a common lexicon to rely on, with a suggested (and stress-tested) set of capabilities, experiences and qualifications. Services delivery is now sufficiently mature to standardize job descriptions, which will make identification of talent so much easier. And while we are at it, it wouldn’t hurt to establish and publish illustrative career paths. Indicating when it’s optimal to bring in talent from other sources would help leaders from both species. 5. East is East...and you know the rest We know many, if not most, of the guys and the gals with the skills in demand by corporations—deep delivery and process—coming from the provider side live offshore. Most corporate shared services and sourcing departments aren’t inclined to deal with the knotty issues of visas and the expense of international relocations in order to up the level of human capital in a back office function. And there’s also the thorny issue of culture; will corporates without an understanding of the global workforce take the risk of hiring someone at a rank higher than entry level? Turning the tables to corporate-to-provider job switches, the challenge of human capital transference may be even greater. While onshore providers strive to hire onshore sales and account management execs, the operating power base still resides offshore in many organizations. High-powered onshore corporate leaders, especially those shared services/GBS types with strong strategic and operating skills, aren’t generally a) considered as candidates for the jobs that are equivalent to their capabilities and experience; b) too enthusiastic about moving to Mumbai or Cebu; or c) ready to take what in their minds is a step back when it comes to power, reach and brand, by joining the ranks of providers’ horizontal or vertical. So throw geography into the mix as a complicating factor, a sort of geo-cultural mismatch of supply and demand, and career movement between the two sides becomes difficult. What’s the solution? The industry knows what the solution is—it’s the classic onshore/offshore exchange program we all talk about but rarely deploy. Short-term assignments on both sides go a long way towards cross-breeding. Think of it as a corporate exchange program with potential long-term benefits. 6. "There’ll be a fox in the henhouse" Some client-side folk are just downright suspicious of a provider in their midst. If he is in a supplier management role, that former provider exec might just let his former provider brethren off easy in governance. If he is in a strategic role, he will surely push outsourcing, outsourcing, and outsourcing as the delivery model of choice. And if he’s in the selection team, his former employer is bound to be in pole position to get the work. What’s the solution? This is the stuff of urban legend. Sure, if the guy formerly-known-as-provider does move into a sourcing role, he might just favor his former employer (or conversely shut same firm out of the running). But sourcing services is rarely a solo decision; as an ensemble act with a full cast of characters—business, procurement, IT, SMEs, functional owners, process owners, geographic representatives, you name it—the risk of bias is low. What we need is a healthy agnosticism as to the source of talent in favor of the quality of talent. And publicizing a few stellar examples of successful transitions wouldn’t hurt. There are a number of folk that have made a successful transition from provider to client-side; they have done such a good job of assimilation, we all forget where they came from. Summary If we can add vigor to the talent genetics of the industry, that’s a good thing. We might develop professionals with better approaches to problem solving on both sides, perhaps busting such myths as "providers don’t listen" and "the client-side folk can’t think out of the box". We would certainly expand the talent pool. But are we willing to do what it takes to cross-breed? Editor's note: if you have successfully made the switch (or perhaps not) we'd like to hear from you. Please email barbara.hodge@ssonetwork.com. [inlinead] .

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