Generalist Vs Specialists- Where should the balance be?

Last week, I was car pooling with one of my colleague who works in a different department- We were generally chatting about life, work et al and he wanted to get some counseling from me on management [I don’t know how come; he suddenly assumed that I can do career counseling for him :-))]. For the sake of simplicity, let us call this person as Mr. Techie [MT in short]- MT has around 8 years of experience in the Oracle platform and he wanted to get in to management. I asked MT a simple ‘WHY’- whether he did not like Oracle or Larry Elisson or he just got bored with it. Interestingly, MT replied that liked/loved Oracle but he felt that he is not progressing well in his career and he feels that by getting in to management, this perception can go away and he can see more GROWTH. When I probed him deeper on what he means by NOT progressing well in career, he candidly told me that he gets irritated when managers GROW even though the bulk of the work is done by him or people of his ilk. So in totality, MT decided that it was worthwhile to drop his Oracle expertise or a technical career and pursue a career in management- He also wanted to check on part-time or full-time MBA degree as he felt that this will determine his success in management [There are certain management institutes which sell this very well]. He was kind-off mesmerized on the MBA thing – I strongly felt that someone would have told him that MBA is a pre-requisite for pursuing a career in management.

If I abstract this at a higher level, it boils down to your decisions on your “path”. Why do you need a management career when you are good in technical area? Why do people flock for MBA’s when they really don’t know what is in store for management? I agree with Scott Adams again on producing more “pointy haired” bosses! Why cannot we specialize in the area where we are and not get distracted? There are certain folks who have a natural flair in management and they do well irrespective of an MBA. These are tough questions and I can understand that it is tough to go on a path with considerable self-assurance! But I also feel it is an area of improvement/challenge for IT service firms to get technical folks to do technical things for eternity. Outside of India, I have seen project managers who have 20 years of experience just doing project management or program management; I have also seen Technical folks doing coding/technical tasks for 25 years! They feel assured and secure in pursuing their line of expertise- The firm also gives them the scope to do that. Why is it not possible to do it here? The obvious reason for this is the exponential GROWTH of the industry and this has set the expectations for everyone to move up and up[irrespective of the fact whether they are capable or not- This is more relevant in management]? The key challenges from the firm side are to create a degree of security/assurance and keep the technical folks motivated in the same area/space for a longer period of time? The challenges from a individual perspective is to stay focused on the ‘path’ which is difficult with the level of distractions today [cannot imagine a dumb management boss who is more successful than the particular individual who is smart in his core area]!

Coming back to Mr.Techie, I asked some pointed questions to him, viz.,
• What are your goals?
• Are you loving doing your work in Oracle platform?
• How do you know that you will love your work in management?
• Are you ok if you fail in management?
• Are you ok to move in to a generalist role from a specialist role- That’s a big sacrifice in my mind!
• Who told you that you need MBA to get in to management?- This is another common myth!
• Why don’t you do a trial and error role in management before doing your MBA?

Mr.Techie obviously felt as if he was shaken and stirred by these questions- He got the message and figured where I was coming from! Smart boy! I specifically told him not to give any answers right away and asked him to ruminate over these set of questions before looking at part-time MBA as an option. Maybe he would have cursed himself on having car pooled with me! I guess the same is true in many sectors or many industries. Do I need to be in Sales or do I need to be in marketing? Do I need to do the lathe work in the workshop or do I need to open a new lathe shop? Do I need to do day-trading for someone or do I need to do it myself? Should I be in corporate banking or should I be in investment banking? These are definitely worthwhile pondering questions but it has to be associated with multiple ancillary questions before a decision is made.

Just making a decision and then blaming it on others or generating self-sympathy will not work! The other good idea is to do less analysis and move along the path that life takes you and enjoy what you have got rather than aiming for something and losing your sleep.

I also want to connect Malcolm Gladwell’s book called ‘Outliers’ where he brings in the concept of 10000 hours of work [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1858880-2,00.html ] - If you have done more than 10000 hours of work in a particular area, then you can actually call yourself as an expert or be successful in that area. It is not about the talent but about the 'work' that you put in that particular area. Being in the middle looks cool, but you should not do more analysis- Just enjoy the ride and stay committed!

Understanding Captive Centre Dynamics

We had one interesting issue that came up recently with one of our Fortune 500 account- We won this customer after a lot of homework (their Indian captive centre was not given this work!). This is typical of any large organization where they give certain set of projects to captive centres and certain set to vendors- The alignment between the headquarters and the captive centre itself is a challenge. I assume, that this US arm of our customer had given the project to us without consulting the Indian arm decision makers (as they were not present in the decision making at all)- We were completely oblivious of these things and continued our own way of delivering the project.

Our team started working on the implementation plan and they were collaborating constantly with the US arm stakeholders and things were totally fine. The US arm stakeholder wanted our team to work extensively with the Indian captive centre and we were completely fine with that arrangement as well. This project demanded understanding of the customer proprietary environment for us to configure and install the final version- This is quite natural for any vendor to ask for details related to the environment. Our project manager asked for a face-to-face session(termed as “training”) from a stakeholder who is working in the Indian captive centre- Since it involved some expenses, this Indian stakeholder sent an email asking for expense approval from the US stakeholder. The US stakeholder forwarded the same email to the Indian captive centre head of that practice- Now the whole issue started because the practice head looked at the term “training” and escalated to the US head stating that the vendor does not know what he is supposed to do.

The practice head went to the extent of cancelling the whole contract because of a wrong usage of the word, “training” by one of our project managers. It is really frustrating and disappointing for us after having done 60% of the project to be in this state because of us not understanding the overall politics and it was a great lesson. The price of this lesson was obscenely expensive but it really taught us certain dynamics that exist between captives and the headquarter companies.

In a snapshot, whenever any consulting company is dealing with a customer that has a captive centre, it is super important to understand the priorities of the captive centre. The following steps would be useful:
1. Meet the particular captive centre head for that particular practice and if possible explain to them why you were selected in the first place. This can be a ego alleviating thing as well as building networks for future collaboration.
2. Set expectation with the US stakeholder on collaboration with the captive centre resources- Also get an introduction with the right people in India!
3. Direct your team to be extremely careful and sensitive on dealing with captive centre resources- Its important for them to collaborate but they need to be cautious
4. Make sure that you get the common goals/success criteria for the project from the US stakeholder clearly
5. Circulate the common goals/success criteria of the project to everyone so that there is no room for anyone to point something that does not align with the common goals

In my experience, this is the most bizarre way of cancelling a contract- One can cancel a contract if they feel the common goals/success criteria of the project is not met and ideally that should be basis; This was sidelined and nobody looked at the deliverables or the quality of the deliverables!

This was really disappointing for us and our mistake on hindsight was clearly:
1. Not meeting the Indian captive centre head for that particular practice
2. Not circulating the common goals/success criteria with the captive centre resources
3. Wrong usage of certain words (specifically “training”) by our project managers