Three Fields, Three Rings, Troika

What makes a company the company one wants and will work for? In other words, why are people leaving in droves from one company, but are clamoring to work at the other? Is it money? Prestige? Benefits? No. Certainly money plays a large role, let’s be honest here. And prestige never has hurt - heck, one would love to work at Google or IBM.  But that’s not what actually keeps employees within the company.  What actually motivates employees to stay with the company beyond the usual 2-3 year span is the way the company approaches its employees. If the company’s management structure has been set up well, both vertically and horizontally, with extra focus on finding and nurturing potential talent, then it has already provided a fertile soil for the employee base that’s not just content but is willing to devote extra energy and time for the company’s goal(s), and thus, its bottom line.

I always think of the plant and soil metaphor when I think of the employment. Just as cactus that flowers brilliantly in desert during the brief days in spring cannot grow in a  temperate climate, the employee that performs the best in small, tight knit team environment will not perform the same at a large, devoid of person-to-person teamwork corporation. And vice versa - the person who is adept at navigating the bureaucracies at a corporation and excels at geographically dispersed corporation will have a very difficult time adjusting to the ad hoc nature of a start-up.  Of course, there are exceptions to the rule - but even there these exceptions have benefited from the way the management structure has been set up.

The education and the innate talents of the employee at a large corporation actually may matter little if the soil the employee is planted into does not allow for that employee to fully leverage his skills and knowledge.  And if the management around that employee fails to recognize it, and fails to actually work with the employee to figure out the ways this situation can be amended, the employee is a lost one for the company, for all the practical purposes.  Then this situation becomes a cancer - the employee becomes demoralized, his/her productivity tanks, his/her reputation within the company is shot, the company itself loses thousands and thousands of dollars in lost potential (be it ideas, initiatives, or projects), and in eventually re-training a new employee.

What a waste…

It’s been absolutely crazy month so far. Global markets are panicking.  I myself made a quick trip to St. Petersburg, Russia.  I’ve got to admit, despite the financial crisis now hitting Russia and the small-medium businesses there, never mind the foreign corporations with offices there, I wouldn’t mind working abroad. Nothing ought to stop an ambitious young individual from maximizing the opportunities and intellectual openings provided by the ability to work in more than one country.

Speaking of the deepening crisis - this is the time at which those who can digest news quickly and derive conclusions and reasonable projections on one’s feet will succeed. I am not speaking of obscure financial instruments such as derivatives or complicated transactions such as foreign currency exchange transactions  made in N currencies (think of such transaction: euro->yen->pound->dollar->euro).  I am speaking of basic conclusions such as that the lower price of oil will eventually give rise to profits at trucking companies, profits at large corporations such as WalMart - those whose products’ prices will lag the trends in oil prices by 6-12 months. Why? Because currently the goods’ prices are higher, have been increased to pass down the increased cost of transportation and oil to the consumer.  Now that oil is trading at $63/barrel, these companies derive higher profit, as they aren’t decreasing the prices of the goods just yet. This will bump up their balance sheets for next 6-12 months, thus improving the overall business sentiment. This will inevitably lead to bull market in stocks, etc.   This is just one of the thoughts.  Obviously, this insight is dependent on assumption that the customer will not cut consumption by say, 30%! Let’s see what happens.

US Dollar is falling with no end in sight. Overseas the managers of sovereign funds are itching to diversify their assets into other than weak dollars (think China with its $1.4 trillion in reserves).  Financial powerhouses deliver us bad news every day, if not week. Oil is inching towards $100 barrier.  Are we becoming the Argentina of 21st century???