The leadership state of the union: Welcome to the tech-ade

To kick off the recent HFS Super Summit in style, our CEO and Chief Analyst Phil Fersht hosted a star-studded panel of industry titans. We heard from Traci Gusher, Cliff Justice, Mary Lacity, Nitin Rakesh, Milan Rao, and Tiger Tyagarajan. If you missed it, you can watch the entire session here.

The panel touched on the talent war, how we could be entering a “tech-ade,” and the current macroeconomic environment.

Win the talent war, win in your market

We’re living through an extraordinary shift in the labor market. Digital natives are embarking on their early careers and demanding new ways of working, and the pandemic has transformed how even the most established employees want to work, with an emphasis on labor mobility. Exhibit 1, which we presented at the HFS Super Summit, demonstrates that 70% of employees will leave their current employer if the right opportunity presents itself.

Exhibit 1: Seven out of 10 employees will leave their current employer if the right opportunity presents itself

Source: HFS Winning the Talent War study, October 2022M
Sample: 1,800 employees across leading IT/business services providers

Growing employee mobility means talent must be on top of the C-suite agenda. Nitin Rakesh explained that if a global service provider like Mphasis finds it difficult to attract and retain talent, it’s even more difficult for its clients. As we’ve said, whoever wins the talent war will win in their market. But how do you win the talent war? Genpact’s CEO, Tiger Tyagarajan, told us:

Talent management is all about defining a purpose and rallying people around that purpose. It’s not about promotions or compensation. More than 50% of my time is now spent on listening to and solving people problems.

— Tiger Tyagarajan, Chief Executive Officer, Genpact

Traci Gusher explained how leaders must demonstrate their sense of purpose and passion. By serving as role models, enterprise leaders will encourage employees to discover and express their purpose, keeping them engaged in the workplace and hopefully improving talent retention. Further, every panelist agreed with Mary Lacity when she explained that leaders must have resiliency, empathy, and humility, highlighting the importance of identifying and promoting the right people within your organization to senior positions.

The next 10 years could become a “tech-ade,” says Nitin Rakesh

Looking back at the pandemic, we can see the significant impact it had on the adoption of emerging technologies and the global economy; Cliff Justice described the pandemic as hitting the reset button. Meanwhile, Milan Rao explained that “anytime and anywhere” became his motto as these offerings prospered through the lockdowns and subsequent economy. Rao expanded that he believes we have seen a decade of digital transformation in the last two years.

Rao wasn’t alone in that belief. Genpact’s Tiger Tyagarajan agreed, explaining that the pandemic highlighted technologies and ways of working that were always available but never fully embraced. To summarize, Nitin Rakesh described the next decade as a “tech-ade,” a golden opportunity for technology to thrive.

But the bleak state of the global situation must not be underestimated by enterprise leaders.

Organizations must be aware of the ongoing macroeconomic situation to make informed business decisions

We’re still dealing with the pandemic’s economic, social, and environmental aftershocks, which completely transformed the world. To that end, the current economic environment was a hot topic among these industry leaders. Looking at Exhibit 2, also presented at the HFS Super Summit, we can see that inflation and supply-chain disruption emerged as two of the leading three macro-environmental factors adversely impacting organizations’ goals. Alongside them at the top was cybersecurity, for which HFS already has an extensive catalog of research.

Exhibit 2: Inflation and supply chain disruption emerged as two of the three leading enterprise challenges

Sample: 602 executives across Global 2000 enterprises
Source: HFS Pulse Survey, 2022

Tiger Tyagarajan told us that Genpact’s clients are extremely pessimistic about the future thanks to the global economy, particularly inflation, more so than he has ever seen. He explained that it’s even more challenging because, despite the economic environment, many organizations still report record-breaking revenue, margin, and growth—their data doesn’t support their pessimism! Tiger then told us about a client, the CFO at a global drinks company, who said his supply chain problems were so deep that he was no longer concerned by price; he simply needs to address his supply chain challenges, whatever the cost. Unfortunately, this laissez-faire approach to spending will likely lead to further inflation, creating a snowball effect.

Mary Lacity told us that globalization was at the core of the problem. Interconnecting economies create systemic risk, something we saw with the financial crisis of 2008. She warned that we cannot be so connected with our infrastructure, and we must “get distributed.”

The Bottom Line: Engage, engage, engage, and then engage some more. Engage with your employees and engage with your customers to survive this “assault on everything we know.”

Engage, engage, engage was Nitin Rakesh’s final message of the session. Organizations must understand how to better engage with their people if they hope to tackle the talent crisis, and that means promoting the right people to management positions. Further, they must engage with their clients and collaboratively develop joint approaches to tackling inflation and supply chain challenges if they hope to thrive—or survive—in the current economic environment, all while maintaining healthy investments in innovation throughout the next “tech-ade.”