How do you influence objective decision-making in a group that has race prejudice?

How do you influence objective decision-making in a group that has race/class/citizens prejudice?

Thats a very interesting question, what will one do if he/she is challenged working with people across countries from different race to enable objective decision making. What will one do if there is a clear demarcation of racial undertones/overtones that one witnesses day in and day out localized to specific country/geography. what will one do if one believes it is an accepted social/organizational norm to play one-up race against the other or atleast subtle biases that clouds objective decision making? What will one do if he/she is unable to influence rational and objective decision making?

I'm sure each one of us has faced the above situation working in cross-cultural setup. (sure Mr. Obama you face it everyday as President so does the average common man like me somewhere in India facing it too in my realm). How do we handle such scenarios?

1. Do we do something about it? If yes what are our options:
a. Should we be more assertive in influencing objective decision through facts and numbers?
b. Should we escalate within the organization through ombuds or similar such processes and draw it to management attention to set it right and stter towards objective decsion making? (well ofcourse we need to have all facts lined up to make a strong case)
2. Do we just read Geert Hofsted culture topology and then change yourself to be more "culturally" sensitive?
3. Or do we do nothing about it?

I dont have answers just questions.....How have you handled such situations to enable objective decision making?

Free IT SI and Outsourcing services pointers: Can we offer such services for different IT service categories?

Having looked at the problem statements for free IT System integration and outsourcing services, lets now look at some examples of 4 free IT pricing models based on the categories suggested by Chris Anderson in his Free book:
1. Direct Cross-subsidies: This category is defined by as those services that are offered as free in relation to another good. In simple terms we are cross-subsidizing one service while charging for the other. Given this definition, here are the problem statements:
1.1 For an integrated SI and Support service can we offer the SI service free to client if the support pricing exceeds a certain threshold?
1.2 For just support services, can we offer transition service free to client, instead of charging them for the transition service?
2. 3 Party markets: This category is defined by the fact that IT services are offered free to the actual consumers but being paid for by a third-party. For example in Radio & Boradcasting services, Newspaper and digital newspaper industry; advertising companies pay for the free services to consumers. Going by the statistics provided by chris the market for these services in US alone is USD 45 billion in 2006 and he estimates worldwide this is to the tune of USD 80-100 billion. In IT services space the following problem statement arise:
2.1 Can Hardware and IT product vendors sponsor the free IT service to client? Why not they do charge a huge AMC or Software Update and product support fees every year on clients? What is the minimum portfolio of services that can be offered free in this mode? Are their any companies already providing this in open (lets forget for a moment about IBM).
3. Premium or versioning: The service here is defined by the fact that few clients who can afford and are willing can pay for these services. In reality there can be tiered service offering to clients. For example Flicker and some Startup companies Web 2.0, etc. offer tiered services for free and some features and functionality only for premium clients. According to Chris, in 2008 there is an estimated USD 36 billion worth of business done through this medium: corporate clients USD 800 million, Retail clients USD 200 million, Opensource 30 billion (Red hat ), other apps ~1B, Online game markets (Multiplayer games is USD 1b; Casual is USD 3 B ). Now lets turn focus on IT services problem statement:
3.1 Can we offer a shared service model for outsourcing where we can offer free services for small support footprint? This may also help in smoothening the load of resources?
3.2 Can we charge premium whenever the bespoke service support requirement is high? Typically large and complex home-grown system. The challenge ofcourse is how do we qualify "Large and complex system" objectively?
4. Non-Monetary markets/ Gift Economy: Wikepedia example. Here no dollar figures attached. Apple iPod USD 4 billion, my space 65b (free music), 2b music concert business due to online trading of music.
4.1 Can IT product companies offer these IT support services for free like the Linux ecosystem? Can this atleast be modeled for PHP platforms? I'm sure there are lot of freelancer/mavens who would love to do it for free (just that it gets them the recognition)?

What are your views/insights? I'm sure the model can be better qualified and refined to a great extent.

Free IT Services - Pay nothing for IT Implementation (System Integration, Application Development) & Outsourcing (Maintenance & Support) Services

I was listening to the Free audio book "Free" and was quiet intrigued by why we havent seen any IT service provider offering free IT Implementation and Outsourcing services. This excited me and I had formed some interesting hypothesis based on my insights in the IT products and services industry.

Lets look at good examples cited by the author about 3 formats of free forms in markets and let me problem statements (some lead to hypothesis) on what similarities do we see in the industry:
1. Paying people subsidizing loss making products/services: I never imagined if IBM ever made any money selling some of their Hardware and software products like Lotus notes, z series and so on! IBM shift to services from their product focus may be a great example....see some companies like Sun never managed to make that shift and ended up getting bought out by Oracle...
Problem statement 1: Can we offer some (need to qualify this well) SI/AD services free and cross-subsidise this with some (qualifications needed) Outsourcing service?
2. Paying later subsidizing paying now: Well Red-Hat Linux or Novells Suse Linux is a classic example....no license cost for software but imagine paying their support through your nose...any CIO will keep scratching their heads on how to associate a firm value...wondering why Oracle dropped the idea of acquiring Red-Hat...theyy seem to be happy just allocate R&D investments to support Red Hat platform...
Problem Statement 2.1 : Can all SI/AD engagement services be billed (through claw back clauses) to client on annuity basis instead of charging them upfront?
Problem Statement 2.2: Can transition costs (for outsourcing engagements) be billed on annuity basis instead of levying an upfron fees on clients?
3. Paying people subsidizing free people: Adobe Reader is a great example where the reader is offered as free downloads to all, but some enterprises and media companies will be forced to buy the Adobe Writer so they can use the Adobe reader to reduce their distribution costs...Well ofcourse some may never buy Adobe Writer but use tools like Amyuni or Open-offcie ports to achieve the purpose....Poor Adobe!
Problem Statement 3: Can we offer free services to some clients who cant pay and cross-subsidize with other paying clients? (Ofcourse yes but what are these qualifiers. You have to pay me to know it or implement it!

What are your insights and data points that can help prove/disprove such hypothesis. IOfcourse it should be an econmoically feasible solution...I dont want to sell my brethrens to unemployment!

How can client Short-list the right Outsourcing IT service provider?

Large IT services firm try to offer all types of services to every other client in the market. Most often one in the system realizes that what the big IT services firms are selling to client is really their internal complexities rather than what the client really wants. In good times, clients are willing to tolerate all this complexities and buy services/their internal complexities from large IT service firm. There are few reasons for it:

1. De-risking service delivery by the brand name of the services firm (large IT services firm), rather than their ability to deliver flawlessly.
2. Clients often convince their internal stakeholders by saying that the are paying premium for the brand accretive outsourcing. For example when you are outsourcing to Cap Gemini by paying them premium rates that makes big news in media as the perception built among the stakeholders in the market is that the client is spending on preparing for "high performance" business
3. You must've heard the famous saying, "No one got fired for hiring IBM for service delivery". Large IT services company often have good relationships with boards and senior stakeholders that it affords a middle manager facilitating the decision on the large IT Services vendor easy. As you know the middle manager is just aiding the senior client leadership team to make a safe choice :-)...


You'll often note from above that in a thriving market client is willing to pay premium for the "Value" rationale and buy the complexity of large IT services firm. In difficult times that may not be the case, client is wanting to buy specific services that are simple to manage and enables the client businesses to be run without much complexity. Imagine in this situation if we still try and sell complexity, value and premium service to client!

It is no surprise to see the quarterly results of the Indian Pure play IT services firm continuing to keep their y-o-y revenue growth flat though there are lot of clients who are cutting down agressively on discretiionary IT spends.

Having understood the problem scope, what characteristics should the client look for while selecting the right IT Service provider:

1. Simple service offering.
2. Willing to be flexible (comercially and operationally) to suit client service demands.
3. Demanding less if not zero upfront investments from client in terms of transition cost, setup cost, etc.
4. Ability to pass on lot of cost saving back to client through various levers at the disposal of the IT Service provider.
5. Providing the required value in service and not overplay and charge premium for even the basic client service requirement.
6. Understand clients position in market and engage in a mutually beneficial relationship, rahter than trying to protect your interests alone in an already difficult market. Some of the cases here are that some IT services firm go an extra mile to protect themselves from failure points (on SLA, paymet terms, etc.) and try and inpose a very tight legal T&C.
7. Last but not least, be willing to make investment for the client especially in areas where you dont have a strength. This will help you in more than 1 ways, help you build/strengthen your own service offering at a marginal cost while at the same time provide the basic service to client.

I'm sure client would have access to the competitor analysis for Q1'09 for Tier 1 players and Indian Pure plays from their TPI's. ofcourse, they can gain the above insight with some difficulty from the TPI's/analyst reports.

Now compare the above with the leadership position of the IT firms mentioned in the earlier article? What are your views on who is best positioned to emerge out of the current scenario competitive and well-positioned to serve long term in IT Services outsourcing market?

A perspective on competitive positioning of IT Services companies?

Not every IT services company have the same strengths or short-comings, nor do they claim to differentaite themselves similarly in the market-place. Their differentiators are often subtle and somtimes it makes it very difficult for clients to make an objective selection or short-listing of an IT services firm. The choice of a right IT services firm for a desired service (AM, AD, Consultng, Trasformation) varies widely be some key factors

1. Cost (Delivery, Year-on-Year Savings, etc)
2. Quality (People, Delivery, case studies, Services, etc.)
3. Capital (experiences, Assets, capabilities, productized services, etc.)
4. Flexibility (ability to meet client diverse requirements and remodel their delivery to suit client requirements)
5. Scalability (size, ability to grow in size and scale to provide services across the regions where client may require servie)
6. Portfolio (the ability to handle different portfolio of services, products, etc.)
7. Commercial/contractual limitations (FX, COLA, Tax treatment, Partnerships, Jt. GTMis etc.)

There are lot of other soft factors (relationship, ongoing service, prior experience, preferences, perceptions, etc). These often tend to not very objective.

The perception that I document here are based on the insights of different IT service providers in the market. These are not based on any objective assessment (based on factors listed above), survey results or facts. Some of these could be superficial/erroneous, neverthless I would take a pass at it for some top-tier companies in India that seemed to have being great offshore players:

TCS - Cost Leader
Wipro - Quality Leader
Infosys - Flexibility Leader
HCL - Commercial/Contractual Leader
Cognizant - Scalability Leader

For the large tier 1 vendors their
IBM - Portfolio/Capital Leader
HP - Portfolio/Capital Leader
Accenture - Multiple dimension (difficult to clearly get their sharp market position)
Cap Gemini - Unknown

There are lot of niche companies whose positioning has superceded the above common factors. These niche players are identified below:

Tech Mahindra - Telecom Services (this assessment is before Satyam was acquired)
Sasken - Embedded Product development

What are the other factors and perceptions you share based on your insights?

Enculturation and Acculturation of IT Solution - Does culture influence the IT Solution design and delivery?

This is an interesting  question that has been nagging me for a while. I've been designing and delivering IT solutions for clients across the globe: Americas, APAC and EALA geographies. I got inspired by Geert Hofsted works on assessing culture of different countries based on the 5 dimensions: Power-distance, Individualism, Masculanity, Uncertainity avoidance and Long-term orientation. While, these dimensions may or may not (followers of Brendan Mcsweeney  and Ailon G articles cannot agree less) be relevant or even correct in the current context, but still provides a sound perspective to compare culture across countries. Another interesting observation I noted after reading these articles is that the Occupational culture is not the same between employees within the same organization. Ofcourse, one could argue as McSweeny did; where the organizational culture across nations may still not be the same.  My thesis here hinges on challenging the fact that Occupational culture differences between nations for IT services segment and also that fact that I worked in multiple organizations transcends the premise that it is unique to an organization culture as well!. So give these premise and the belief that national culture does exist and is homogenous, lets look at the patterns I saw in IT solution design and delivery.

 

The IT solutions that are designed and delivered across different countries seem to have some pattern that further elaborates the "uncertainity avoidance" dimension of Hofsted. I got a Self Reference criterion (SRC) whenever I look at some solution designs and sometimes even search for these traits in the IT services execution. In my SRC, I have abstrated few dimension that characterizes IT solution design and delivery.

 

1. Engineering/Structure: In this dimension, we see how the levels of engineering for a solution design and delivery varies from low to High. Generally we have seen German ways to design and delivery is high leading it to be too complex. On contrary we see the other extreme, bieng the low engineering and design and delivery of IT services to be low for India.

2. Clarity: The amount of clarity (scope, outcome/deliverables, schedules, efforts, etc.) required to design and execute the solution seems to be high for typical European client than the american or APAC clients. This can be construed in other ways to minimize the unfacourable outcomes and the propensity to tolerate ambiguity.

 

 Are there anyother dimensions that you have witnessed? I'll be happy to hear it.

 

I'm not sure we can give a quantitative score for each of the above attribute for each of the country. It may be a worthy exercise to pursue. The study result can be put to use effectively in devising a solution for clients in the geography. What do you think?

What options/scenarios lie in breaking the People-Revenue jinx for IT services firms

It is not suprising to see that the revenue growth and profitability of IT services firms have been closely knit with the people scale. The levers (Strategic, tactical and operational) for growth and profitability that have been driving this industry has not changed in the last decade and neither are we seeing any innovation that would break the jinx. This is quiet contrary to what we see in the IT Software products companies, where the relationship between people and revenue/profitability does not exist. Why is that different for IT product companies? It is simple their economics of operation is not very different from that of industries like FMCG, CPG, pharmaceutical, their levers of revenue growth/profitability is the unit of product sold and the cost of creating them....Definitely NOT PEOPLE.

What are the options are available with leadership of IT services firm to break the people-revenue jinx?

Lets look at what IT services firms have been talking about lately:
1. Commercial pricing plays: There are several variants, whereby one can claim to break the jinx between revenue/profitability from people. They all go by different names like Fixed-price delivery, value-based delivery/pricing. All these as I've seen are just the variations in pricing plays. The underlying delivery construct had hardly changed. We still see that the core drivers of revenue and profitability are still based on people.
2. Shared services: Services delivery with 1-many client realtionships. For example 1 resource serving multiple clients and thereby changing the linear relationship between revenue growth and profitability.
3. Productized service: Offering more products and building layers of services around the product that require less people to service. The companies then charge premium for selling such productized service.

But none of the above three seems to set the tragectory or crossed the required threshold or gained the required meomentum to enable the IT services firm to break the revenue/profitabilty-people jinx.... Atleast they are trying, not by design or forethought but my compulsions to meet their short-term numbers!