Flexibility NOT Arbitrage
An outsourcing article on VentureBlog got me thinking. The point that the author is making is based around reinvention:
Question: Since 1995, two million American manufacturing jobs vanished. How many manufacturing jobs did China add during the same period?
Answer: None. China lost sixteen million manufacturing jobs since 1995, a higher percentage of their manufacturing workforce than the US.
Sounds interesting. We should all flexible, adaptable, forward thinking, skill-building, constant-learning individuals who are always looking to the horizon. Not only should we be pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, we should be doing it on a regular basis.
Now, compare this to the dour assessment from the New Statesman:
Personnel managers, he finds, look not for people who are committed to and proficient at specific skills but for those who have the “potential” to cope with change. The upward career mobility so familiar to previous generations has been replaced by downward mobility.
By their late forties, people often work at lower skill levels than employees who joined more recently. And because such a high premium is put on flexibility and seizing the new, “you are constantly . . . walking away from your own commitments”.
This surely explains why everything is done so badly. You don’t try to improve your performance and do your present job well; you get ready for the next big change. It may also explain why the government seems always to be struggling to improve the population’s skill levels.
Souns a bit grim, doesn’t it? There are two sides to every coin, and it seems that our ruthlessly efficient focus on productivity improvement and global reach might have some downside.
My Take
Flexibility is important, and we need it in a rapidly changing environment. Make no doubt about it, things are moving faster and faster. However, taking on the motto of semper gumby isn’t necessarily going to make things work.
- The need for flexibility is often brought on by indecisiveness, negligence or incompetence, and not opportunity. When used for the right reasons, flexibility is key. When used for the wrong reasons it is just an excuse for additional stress.
- Experience has a tangible value in the workplace, and the savings brought by every hour of work not done. To paraphrase a French philosopher, “A project plan is not done when every hour of work is added together, it is done when every unecessary hour of work is removed.”
- Age matters! It is much easier to be flexible when you are young and relatively unencumbered. At the same time, it is easy to feel a sense of entitlement as you get older and have more to deal with.
Overall, the most useful people will be those with the right combination of drive, wisdom, experience, and flexibility to fit the situation. A solid organization will recognize this and in itself be flexible to the needs of their employees and ultimately to the bottom line.
