The Globalization and The Social Issues

“If you can land a man on the moon, why can’t we solve problems of the ghetto?” This was a question raised by Richard R. Nelson in his book ‘The Moon and the Ghetto’.

Over the last decade, we have seen blistering growth on the Technology front, Infrastructure front and Transportation front, contributing to the Globalization phenomena. The BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are closely monitoring the global dynamics, working hard to remain globally competitive and be relevant as part of the globalization process.

When our society is able to make such rapid progress on one front, why is it that even in the 21st century we are so divided when it comes to issues of climate, hunger, poverty, borders, faith and religion? There is the Hindu - Muslim tension, Israeli - Palestine tension; there is the Middle East tension, tensions in Lebanon, the chaos in the African continent – Sudan, Ethiopia, the tension between North and South Korea, the terrorism in Pakisthan, Afganisthan, the Darfur genocide, and the poverty across the globe. If you look through the ‘Non-Globalization’ lenses, the situation looks very gloomy, and it dwarfs the achievements we write everyday about. Innocent people trying to make a living are dying each day, for no fault of theirs. Their only fault was they were born there. It is heart wrenching to see the suffering of the poor and helpless, who have nowhere to go and nowhere to hide – Palestine, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Georgia and Iraq to name a few.

Why such stark contrast?

Richard Nelson puts it best as ‘….uneven performance across classes of wants’.

Also interesting against this backdrop is what C.K. Prahalad questions in his book ‘The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’ – ‘Why can’t we mobilize the investment capacity of large firms with the knowledge and commitment of NGOs and the communities that need help?’

The same may apply to the social and political issues, except that government needs to lean on the NGOs to garner the consensus of the local people to arrive at a resolution. Once the desire of the people is clearly understood, engaging in a dialog and arriving at an amicable solution should not be a challenge.

While it is great to see the progress we are making in one direction, let's not forget the issues on hand.

Global Teaching Standard – Topic based to Context based

- A proposal for a new way of teaching, which can evolve as a global standard

I have always thought, ‘How can we change or improve our teaching methods to make learning a more interesting and interactive experience, and in the process providing a good solid foundation around concepts?’

My wife in a casual conversation said ‘I don’t know why we have separate subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Math and Biology or why do they teach these subjects as 3/4 subjects as if each was totally compartmentalized or isolated from the other, when in reality they are not?’

If you think deeply, you will see that both these questions are fundamentally questioning one thing – Given the advancement in the various fields of sciences and the extent of convergence among these subjects, would it make sense to move from a subject based teaching to a context based teaching?

We learn about Magnetism, Sound, Density, Molecules, Atoms, Velocity, Speed, Acceleration, and States of matter, in disjoint forms. While this helps in learning what an Atom or Density is all about, I think there are some limitations to this approach. First, it makes the subject a bit mundane and at times difficult to comprehend, second it does not provide the context to extrapolate, learn the interdependencies and the related nuances.

What if we were to define learning the way we surf the internet, one hyperlink to the other drilling down based on the area of interest and backing up to the starting point when needed, or backing up to an intermediate point and drilling down on a different area of interest. Can we look at a similar model for class room teaching too, within a smaller context? It may help the students to better appreciate the similarities, differences, the direct and indirect dependencies and establish the connections early on.

For example, let’s take driving on a foggy day, where students are able to relate to it and have a context. The logical hyperlinks for this context could be fog / foggy day/ clear day, fog lights, regular lights, reflection, refraction. In a case like this, you are talking about the environment/geography (clear day / foggy day formations), you are talking about physics (reflection and refraction) and you could be covering reflection and refraction in liquids, solids and gases (chemistry), density (chemistry), temperature, viscosity, etc.. This, I believe would help students to see the connections, influences of one on the other, and would help them appreciate the subject better.

Schools may want to pilot and see how students are able to comprehend and extrapolate relative to the conventional method.

How Enterprises can gain from Outsourcing and Offshoring?

In my years of experience working with various organizations on their IT outsourcing strategy, I have seen organizations starting with intent to focus on the core and outsource the non-core parts of the business. As a strategy this is great but I have often found organizations losing site of it during the course of the implementation.

Some of the expectations, which in my view are misplaced expectations, are:
Benchmarks used for working with staff augment companies would work for outsourcing vendors too
outsourcing would yield immediate cost savings
that having multiple vendors for outsourcing would help reduce costs and the vendors competitive
that the value addition of an outsourcing vendor is that of only flexible resource / staff augmentation. Resources can be added / released at will / as needed
when there is pressure on cost savings, the place to look for savings is with the outsourcing vendor

I am sure there are a few more but the above should be a good set to try and address which should enable organizations help review / assess their (IT) outsourcing strategy in general.

a. Benchmarks

Outsourcing has come a long way. There are the strategic outsourcing / offshoring companies providing application development, maintenance, application support, and infrastructure support services, and then there are the companies which are purely into offering temporary staff augmentation.

Very often, I have seen companies who have been working with staff companies, struggling to make the switch to work with an outsourcing vendor. If your company falls into this category, you need to closely look at your evaluation criteria. You need to ensure that your IT Vendor Management team is qualified to evaluate an outsourcing vendor. Very often the IT Vendor Management tends to use the same yard sticks they were using with the staff augment firms, and if it is not fixed, it will starting hurting the organization - vendor relationship very soon.

b. Immediate Cost savings

This is closely linked to the way you view the vendor relationship and it is therefore very important that you make sure you are clear on what you want to accomplish and then set expectations accordingly. One has to draw a 1-2 year plan defining the outsourcing engagement. The plan should identify the projects to be outsourced, vendor engagement model, cultural integration, cross team training, communication plans between the two organizations, if there are multiple vendors involved then it should define the governance model across the different vendors, if the outsourcing involves offshoring or near shoring then it would require some goal setting on the percentage of work to be outsourced, etc. Typically, the 1st six months is really a period of investment, period of learning and adjustment for both the parties, establishing processes and procedures, understanding the privacy, confidentiality, security, on-boarding and off-boarding processes, stabilizing the governance model, defining the Service Level Agreements, etc. You have to be ready to make that kind of an investment in the vendor, if you have a long term strategic view on the outsourcing / offshoring model. This initial investment of time and resources from both parties, will help in building a true partnership model.

During this period the vendor may have started executing projects, may make mistakes, may run into cost overruns, may miss schedules, may violate the processes and procedures; you have to be patient, forgiving, cutting some slack, motivating, covering them for the cost overruns where there is reasonable justification, and really play the role of a nurturer. This is a critical initial phase and I would say a very important phase. Very often, the clients get into evaluation, critiquing, express frustration, demonstrate impatience, are punishing for cost overruns and unforgiving; and invariably this could be a trigger for the relationship to turn south. If you pass this phase, it conjures up a good sense of bonding between the two organizations. Again, as simple or non-trivial as this may sound, this is a very tender phase.

c. Multiple Vendor

I have seen different cases. I have seen corporations who were working with one vendor wanting to bring in other vendors, corporations who were working with multiple vendors, wanting to consolidate all their outsourcing to two vendors, and lastly corporations working with two or more vendors wanting to consolidate to one vendor. All the options may make sense based on the situation the client is in, sometimes it is the complexity of managing multiple vendors which leads to consolidation and sometimes it is the fear of over dependence on one vendor, which prompts them to look at a second and a third vendor. As a client you want to work with one or two vendors, given them the preferred vendor status and really involve them as a true partner, and engage them in your strategic decision making. This also gives the vendor(s) a better understanding of your business, enable the vendor to be more deeply involved and also try to get involved on risk/reward engagement models.

d. Staff Augmentation - Tactical Resourcing

In an outsourcing engagement working with other vendors, if you goal is only tactical one off kind of staffing then I would not suggest you engage with a outsourcing / offshoring vendor. Typically the high end outsourcing / offshoring vendors provide the outsourcing / offshoring across the entire business value chain and also bring to the table fairly good domain and consulting expertise. These organizations would be an overhead if all you would like to do is hire a few resources to meet some temporary demand.

e. Cost Savings / Down sizing

I have seen clients when there are pressures to reduce costs, trying to reduce their outsourcing / offshoring business. I would caution you that one of your goals to engage outsourcing/offshoring was to reduce costs, by trying to reduce your offshoring / outsourcing costs, chances are you are looking at the wrong place for savings. While it is critical you are constantly measuring your ROI on the outsourcing / offshoring initiative, you may want to ensure you are always maintaining a minimum core team to ensure you are not losing the knowledge base and not landing up having to retrain people.

Conclusion

Like anything else, you will derive great value, with outsourcing and offshoring only when you plan it well and worked out the details. Like anything else, there will be bumps along the way, but things work out well if the relationship is built on trust and is cordial, a relationship which is both give and take, a relationship which is strictly focused on cost, terms and conditions of the contract invariably tends to be a stressful relationship, something neither party will enjoy. You have to recognize that an outsourcing engagement is long term, trusted partner relationship.

Additional References:
Exploding the myths of offshoring

Pollution Is Not Cost-Free

Here is an other perspective where the author tries to high light the potential impacts to the climate as the economies of the developing countries grow. Reference - 'The Moscow Times'.



http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/11/01/005.html

Transform, Don't Replicate

You can’t really talk about economic expansion without making a reference to the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries. The media, magazines, stock markets, the policy makers, management gurus, economic advisors, companies refer to these four countries as key to emerging markets strategies. According to a study, India has the potential to grow the fastest among the four BRIC countries over the next 30 to 50 years. A major reason for this is that the decline in working age population will happen later for India and Brazil than for Russia and China. Goldman Sachs predicts China and India to be the dominant global suppliers of manufactured goods and services respectively, while Brazil and Russia would become dominant as suppliers of raw materials.


To help recognize the changing landscape, here are some changes which are already in the works. The retail industry is making plans to enter the BRIC markets, the Banking and Financial Services industries, some of them who are already present through domestic tie-ups, want to go on their own; the Pharma / Drug companies are looking at reducing their cost of clinical trials by moving these operations to countries like India. Corporations have already moved their manufacturing and service business to countries like China and India.

Infrastructure – Roads, Airports, Communication, Hotels, Medical Facilities, Housing, is being improved to attract investments and to support this growth.

We also notice change in the global movement of human resources albeit small at this point. People from the developed countries are moving to the BRIC countries in pursuit of opportunities.

The landscape is fast changing and fascinating. It is very critical, though, that the benefits percolate down to all strata of the society. It is the responsibility of the citizens of the BRIC (BRIC’zens) to take a hard look at their government, and the politicians and enforcing reform at the government level. The government needs to be in the hands of the people who are forward looking, who are in tune with the global changes, who are willing to learn and adapt quickly to the changes and are smart to look at opportunities, both immediate and futuristic in nature.
The key is to manage this change, as carefully as the way successful organizations drive and manage change within their corporations. To bring in the transformation, implementation of the right organization and the implementation of the right governance model are vital. The functioning of the organization structure surrounding the particular transformation proposal is a key to determining whether and how the transformation would work out. General purpose organizations will not work, what would be needed defining organizations that would work as focus groups whose team composition comprises of people with deep knowledge base and experience surrounding the change.

Very often, we lose sight of the good within the country and many a time change and culture are at cross roads. The organization and governance should work with the masses and help the society to transition, take what is good, discard the rest, as opposed to lapping up the new and discarding the old. Focus groups should help societies see the good and bad of every wave of change hitting their nation. As the developed countries bring in their influence through trade, commerce and global exchange, one ought to study the long term negative impacts, educate the society, so that the society at large is able to make informed decisions.

‘How do you manage the change?’ is going to be a key question, the organization and governance team should address early on. Expand the infrastructure, add additional power generation but plan in parallel to address global warming issues (look at harnessing solar, wind energies), bring in processed food, but ensure people are aware of the change in life style they need to bring about to stay healthy, i.e. through rigorous exercise, etc (fast food will become the way of life due to pressures on time). On similar lines look at Medicare, bring in the best practices, but ensure that there is broader coverage and all strata of society have access to good and cheap healthcare (promote generics, raise awareness, reduce reliance on drugs and lay more emphasis on exercise, yoga, meditation. Build centers which can facilitate exercise, yoga, meditation). Cell phones, iPODS, xBox, PS3, PSP, Internet, Nintendo are fine but ensure that children have parks and outdoor recreational facilities to build real physical social networks, big retails like Wal-Mart, Kmart, Giant are fine but make sure you integrate the small mom and pop shops, which exist on the street corners today through a fair pricing system/margin protection system. Increased reliance on automobile, mass transit system is fine but ensures there is balance with the country’s ability to produce oil without increasing imports (biofuels, hybrid, and biomass, etc. alternatives which reduce Carbon and do not contribute to global warming).

Look at the entire value chain and look at reducing wastage & increase recycling. Offer tax concessions and incentives to activities, investments that promote clean environment. Promote metrics across states, which high lights states health status – clean air, pollution levels, fuel consumption, recycle, waste management, etc.

A BRIC country which is able to transform itself along the above lines will be the true role model of a future society.

By having the right organization and governance model, societies should leap frog and become the role models, for in it lies the contribution of the BRIC countries to the progress of the society and mankind at large. Of course there will be issues, problems but let those be new problems for the next generation to solve, but to land up with the same set of problems 25 years from now, would mean going down in the books as history as a period of blind copy as opposed to bring written as the ‘period of BRIC transformation’.