Talent Redefined: Is the Crisis Also a Crisis of True Talents?
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Octombrie 2009 |
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RADU FURNICĂ - President
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS S.R.L. |
Adresa
Strada Alexandru Constantinescu, Nr. 47
Bucureşti, Sector 1
Telefon
+40-21-224.71.24
Website
www.kfi.ro
RADU FURNICĂ
President
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS S.R.L.
One year ago corporations were struggling to find the people they needed and the market was a seller's market. The demand for quality professionals was at the highest level ever in Romania. By now the situation in the talent market looks radically different.
What happened besides the crisis? Did the best people suddenly multiply over night? Are the corporations much more attractive for top quality professionals than they were one year ago? We could easily answer these questions with a simple No.
The sudden collapse of the demand for top professionals is a direct result of the panic in which most corporations found themselves as a consequence of the credit crunch and the recession, which brought dark clouds over the global economy.
Stunned by the shock, corporations understood rapidly that they have to adapt and, to this day, are still fighting to discover what their true priorities should be: cost control? Restructuring? Down-sizing?
Most corporations ask themselves today if they should plan for an environment of the kind they enjoyed until the crisis occurred or, if this will not be the case, they try to foresee to what extent it will change. Are we going to return to that boom?
If not, what kind of an environment are we going to find ourselves in, in the short to medium term?
Nobody knows for sure what the answer is and most executives fail the stress -test by thinking first about what's going to happen to their career and about the security of their own position, rather than what is going to happen to the corporation they are in charge of.
These are the toughest times the professional world was ever forced to face.
In a recent global study, a top-tear consulting firm underlined the visible dissatisfaction the middle management felt vis a vis the behavior of the top management since the crisis begun. This fact is very significant because it reflects a global phenomenon: the need for top leadership to reconfirm its value in such difficult circumstances.
There are minds that think even further and suggest that, under these new conditions, we need to re-think not only our strategies but also our fundamental concepts, including the one of leadership. Such turmoil at global level has produced after-shocks in young and immature business environments like the ones in the emerging markets, including Romania.
Romania has enjoyed an extremely brief period of success that was generated by the substantially increased degree of interest on the part of the international investment community as a result of Romania joining the European Union on January 1st, 2007. Most people fail to remember this important date. Growth figures above 8% were easy to brag about for the Romanian politicians in 2008. But almost nobody remembers the fact that less than 5 years ago, the situation was very different in the Romanian economy.
In reality, Romania only had 2007 and 2008 to show off as exceptional growth years. It was a very sudden over heating of the system. Like a heat wave. This boom was created - in terms of the talent market - by the explosive growth of the demand for talent. In response the market has created an artificial corresponding growth in the supply of professionals.
As an example, we would only need to point out a representative case: the one of the banking sector.
Within a 3 years period, 30,000 new employees have been brought into the banking system aiming at coping with the explosive growth in the retail sector. How many of these people really had the required skills and competencies, is a question that is very difficult to answer. The salaries of the top executives in the banking system reached levels comparable to the ones in the western economy. Above all, the expectations of professionals vis a vis the potential of their own careers sky rocketed as well. In 2009, the Romanian banking system has gone to the other extreme and started to close most of its consumer finance initiatives. This was the first of several initiatives to come addressing the problem of re-adjusting of organizational structures in the Romanian economy.
If we were to impose over this picture an additional layer given by the state of facts in the educational system of the country, we obtain a very confusing and disturbing image.
The front pages of the national newspapers brought to our attention an extremely problematic phenomenon: the disintegration of the credibility the educational system of Romania ended up having, as a result of the fact that the private education infrastructure has become a printing machine of almost worthless diplomas. Only one private university in Romania, "achieved" the status of the second biggest university in the world with more than 300,000 students and revenues in excess of EUR 300 mn. At the last count, according to Romanian published reports, no less than 296 universities being registered in Romania. Out of these, the Romanian Educational Ministry validated around 60 universities (among which the one mentioned above is). Obviously there is no shortage of diplomas in Romania.
But what are these diplomas worth in reality? The generalized corruption that has impacted massively the credibility of the entire educational system, is very likely to produce extremely damaging consequences over the substance of the professional skills in Romania.
In the middle of all this, we are the specialists who are supposed to insure the supply of talent to the most powerful enterprises in the economy. We have the professional responsibility to prove that we know what the meaning of professional talent is, even in this confusing context. However hard to comprehend, the occurrence of the global crisis has worsened our working conditions substantially. We are faced with the need to redefine the meaning of quality professional output. What troubles us most, is the fact that this sudden crisis has proved to be an unexpected, but extremely efficient litmus-test for characters. Under the stressful conditions created, people show their true character. The resulting image of the Romanian professional market is not really flattering. In the end, we are faced with the opportunity to admit that too much has happened in too short a time in the lives of most professionals in Romania. Many of those who became vice-presidents in 5 or 6 years, are not able to survive as VPs through the crisis.
We must be more than just simple observers of this cleansing phenomenon. We must become promoters of true, reliable, genuine growth in people's careers, because the future growth of organizations will be founded on such long term values. The time for quick fixes and artificial growth in the talent market is over. The only alternative is the return to the traditional values on which the growth of people's careers was always based.
