A Pragmatic Dream Perhaps...

I must say I am surprised to see votes in going after aspiration at all cost. I wonder if these voters define that statement differently than I do. I am really interested to know their opinions. But so far aspiration matters in the votes. There is really no right or wrong response, it all depends on what the individual wants to pursue in career. Do feel free to disagree with my comments.

I personally think without aspiration, career is without meaningful purpose – a pursuit that is governed by our own core values. I know some may say money can be considered a purpose, after all profit is ultimately pursued in corporate work. This is what I think and inherently believe, money is a means of survival, some may say it is a means toward luxury and comfort. But my point is in analogy money is like nutrition, oxygen and water that we need to live but do not live for them. We need money to live but we do not live for money, I believe we can choose to live for a greater purpose in life.

Within the corporate context, among the most enduringly successful corporations never mention profit in their purpose statements, because profit is only a means for them to continue doing what they aspire for. Too impractical? No, it is because they understand what drive long term profit is often driven by building intangible assets within the corporations and delivering non-monetary values to customers that they always aspire to do really well.

In the past career stability might be defined as getting by with minimal repetitive work, incremental salary is also ensured primarily for increased seniority. Say goodbye to it. I really believe we should discuss stability in today’s context. Globalization process and technological advance have been key drivers to shape career landscape. Job destruction can be as fast as job creation. We may want to reassess our sense of security in knowledge based and high value jobs today, because we can be replaced by equally efficient outsourcing firms at a fraction of our pay in the future. That is right, outsourcing is no longer restricted to low-end manual jobs. Outsourcing of high value jobs is exactly what some Wall Street firms are doing now.

So what exactly is career stability now? Pause to think for a moment, time has changed, accessibility of information was the key not long ago but now it is about the speed of turning amassed information into enhanced value output. Efficient customized production replaced mass production. Creation of professional service jobs over manufacturing jobs as economy matures. Reduction in communication cost with enhanced network infrastructure and communication technology. A simple word to define these phenomena will be ‘progress’ that is redefining career. If I am to define career stability too it would be progress over changes and obstacles to ensure self survival. Put it simply, this is the only guaranteed form of stability, you either progress or wither. May be we can shield ourselves from competitive progress for a while, but not for long.

Given new definition of stability, it is equally compatible with aspiration because pursuit of aspiration requires us constantly improving, learning and adapting to changes. It is really unnecessary to compromise one for another. So I believe it is possible to pursue both aspiration and stability in career. It is a pragmatic dream perhaps… would you redefine your career?

Vote Please...

Dear friends, I really will not bother to track your votes... I just think it is really interesting to know your perspectives on career aspiration and stability in today's context. The following weekend I will post a discussion on this topic, if you do not mind to participate and comment, all the better! You can always do so anonymously without serious implication! :)

The Case For Oil Subsidy

Last weekend I attended a volunteer training camp in preparation of an advocacy campaign to raise fund for underprivileged children living in third world countries. The definition of poverty and discussion of ways to alleviate poverty naturally became the central theme of the camp. When oil subsidy was brought up there was such euphoria that I believed was due to common perception that we need oil subsidy to alleviate the hardship of the poor. My curiosity led me to reason deeper to what extent it really helps.

The commonly known principle of this perception is that oil subsidy relieves the poor from excess burden of rising costs of consumer goods and transportation. Indeed this is a valid reason, but if we look from the long-term sustainability perspective, we will see that oil subsidy is a superficial quick-fix that will cease along with dwindling oil revenue.

Notice that oil subsidy is mostly in a form of indirect benefits passed along by producers and service providers to the poor. But when there are no mechanisms and regulated policies in place, there is never any guarantee that the poor will benefit, simply because price hikes of daily necessities are contributed by dynamic factors beyond oil prices, producers and service providers may have no incentives to maintain product and service prices. The key point is that without a comprehensive feasibility study, oil subsidy that is supposed to help the poor may fail to reach this deserving group. The trickle-down theory that says when wealthy corporations benefit, the poor living by subsistence level will eventually benefit too has persistently failed to materialize in reality. That is why growing inequality among the rich and the poor amid channeled assistance in the form of oil subsidy is still a real threat.

Provision of oil subsidy also implies some form of compromise and expenditure cut will be required in other development programs that may include basic infrastructure projects that will actually benefit the poor most. It is important not to fall into populist demand that oil subsidy is what we need the most currently for the poor, it is a short-sighted assessment that does not take into account the multi-faceted root causes of poverty. Oil subsidy alone will not help the poor to lead independent and sustainable life. In fact, it can also pose as a disguise for the lack of concrete effort and investment from oil rich countries to continuously under-invest in human capital that form the basis for closing the gap of inequality, promoting competitive and sustainable growth. That is why resource-rich countries tend to suffer from what the economists called the paradox of plenty. These countries usually have the form of opaque and authoritarian governments with excessive dependence on petrol money to maintain superficial growth and struggle to reach developed economy status. Revenue from non-renewable resource is not going to be infinitely meeting their needs in future.

We are also living in a world with increasingly interconnected global economies, however many of us are still confined to narrow local perspectives. This is basically the reason why we rarely address the negative impact of oil subsidy toward our neighboring countries. Never mind that it distorts global market price, demand and supply; never mind that unrealistically subsidized oil prices encourage excessive usage for superficial growth and exacerbate environmental degradation; never mind that our poorer neighboring countries without rich oil resources take the brunt of pollution and unfairly outpaced in competition; never mind to pile more misery to their poverty for as long as we can progress faster then we do not really bother.

Yes, I am a proponent of moving toward free market price, it will compel the governments to be more efficient in development fund allocation, take long-term interest in human capital investment for economic growth, to be more responsible and ethically fair in global competition and environmental protection, and most importantly, adopt a more comprehensive long-term perspective to tackle poverty unaided by unrealistic subsidies. Therefore, the implementation of any aid policy and development program should fulfill the basic objective of gradually lifting the poor out of vicious cycle of poverty. There is no short-cut to replace sustainable development for the poor, not oil subsidy due to populist pressure.

The Case For Oil Subsidy (Post Preview)

Post for next weekend...

The Case for Oil Subsidy
The theme will be centered on if oil subsidy can really alleviate the hardship of the poor. Is it possible that growing inequality occurs amid channeled assistance that is supposed to help them? I will also discuss the impact of oil subsidy at international level and whether current populist demand in some developing countries to focus on oil subsidy should really be the emphasis to help the poor.

Generalists Or Specialists?

When Thomas L. Friedman in his earlier attempt to put forces of globalization into perspectives, he talked about the increasing complexity of dimensions within his journalistic work in the arena of international finance and politics. The main challenge he confronted was interconnecting culture, environment, finance, politics, technology and possibly more future dimensions arisen out of subsequent globalization progress. He suggested that we need more ‘globalists’ or generalists in a world where issues are increasingly complex, can only be understood through multiple perspectives and interpreted in new ways.¹

It brought me into thinking more of the implication within corporate context where the emphasis is still creating more specialists. Will the impact of globalization toward business also imply we will soon move toward a new breed of knowledge workforce?

Even before globalization process was visibly felt within corporate context, classic management literature had already stressed the need of outward-looking leadership. It said strategic decision-making should not be confined within internal knowledge alone, an outward-looking leader should always consider industrial competition and even benchmarks outside practiced industry in a wider context. I believe this is already a strong hint that specialist knowledge is needed but so is general knowledge about the external forces shaping the business. When globalization eventually slid into business world in full force, the integration of financial market, corporate business, political and social system has become greater and current trend signals it will continue to grow.

Consider a recent chain of events as followed: Excess demands on oil for economic growth and potential strike on Iran – a major oil producer in the world send oil prices soaring for fear of supply restriction. Developing countries urgently revise oil subsidy and social safety net in order to assist the poor and meanwhile ensure adequate development funding for sustainable economic growth. Volatile oil prices send automakers scramble to shift machinery and production line to fuel efficient vehicles for their failures to timely anticipate the grave impact. Finally consumers re-assess lifestyle and turn toward energy saving measures.

The chain of events above is not a description of direct causal relationships as a result of oil crisis, for the actual situation is far more complex and involved more driving factors than what I had described. My intention is to point out the fundamental change in the chain of relationships that involves international financial community, nation policy makers, producers and consumers. This is reflective of today’s business context in which it is governed by more complex and rapidly changing external forces, and that specialists alone will not be able to sustain current business operations. Even if they are experts of their practiced industries is no longer sufficient, they need to be experts of economic, environmental, political, social and technological forces that are shaping their business operations. To answer the question I asked earlier: Will we need a new breed of knowledge workforce? Yes, I think we need more workers with selective specialist expertise of their industries, synergized by broad expertise of external forces shaping corporate business.

But I really think the more urgent question is: Are we prepared for this rapid transformation with enough workers to succeed in current and future corporate environment? Our current school curriculum and business model still stress on specialization and may be incompatible with the pace of change, when will we see a major revamp? It will be a trend to watch.

Notes:
¹ See chapter 2: Information Arbitrage, the Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman