Thread by @faizansiddiqi

Competitive Markets, WFH, Saiths, HR & Talent. The way things are evolving & the way the pandemic is settling in we are in for the ride of a life time with regards to our markets being more closed loop than competitive. We will have further job losses led by saiths optimizing 4

Personalities vs talent and Dumb ass HR heads optimizing at the cost of the work force.If you follow me u know that I'm no fan of second, third generation led businesses run by millionaires in training who consider them selves entrepreneurs & equally not a fan of traditional HR

Heads who either due to loyalty, fear, control, coercion and lack of the saiths understanding around human capital have provided a dis service to this nations human capital.Most HR heads have a serious occupational complex. They will never be paid as much as the CXOs/professional

Management teams, because historically they are also a product of the system. What do I mean? Do a linkedin search for HR heads at local companies. Most of the folks aren't classically trained via an educational background in human capital development. So I dug around.

Most HR practitioners are those who typically didn't want to or couldn't do much else in their careers. I hate to generalize but do your self the courtesy of said LinkedIn search. The anatomy of said HR leaders says that they at best were average students at avg universities

The smart ones went on to do typically hard things such as engineering or medicine & the undecided went on to do liberal arts. But the ones whose calling in life wasn't particularly well defined, fumbled & pursued a bachelor's degree akin to a mix chat. This mix chat syndrome

Got us subpar grads who didn't passionately cry at night reading HR theories and wanting to be the best they can be, they were the average folks who did average things to then get into average roles. The only not so average thing about them was the desire to no longer be average.

Let me explain. When you have a hard life, given you end up in a position of leverage or dominance u develop insecurities & complexes that can be best summed up as the TSA syndrome. What that is, the person who is an outsourced contractor at western airports manning the Xray.

The power dynamics are such that, the person who makes minimum wage is the gate keeper to your entry at the airport, your flight & your destination. These saith led HR mavens are the same. They wield outsized power and act as gatekeepers in a market where ppl don't have choices

There in lies the fault in our stars. Self professed brown nosing politically savvy cockroachesqeue individuals who understand politics, power dynamics and the saiths ego and their need for outsized loyalty, slowly work their way as the gatekeeper to the saiths world. How u ask?

Saiths aren't angels. Most of them are hiding organizational issues to labour issues to under paying and breaking known regulatory items. It's a marriage of convinience. The price of admission to the saiths club is to be an extension of their implementation tool kit. Those who

Learn to never question the saith. Do very well. Those who are ruthless as the saith and or worse do the best. But what it doesn't do is bring out the best in people be it HR leaders or the talent that gets hired into otherwise decent looking organizations because of the lack of

A decent organizational culture that nurtures personal and professional growth. If at the helm of any organization there is an owner operator who made it big by squashing the hopes dreams & aspirations of the general public by the support of an HR leader who acted as an enabler

Then there is little to no positive culture. Rather a toxic environment that people get caged into as the general public has little to no options. A closed economy problem that my friend @Huk06 so passionately hates. Now imagine if the market was competitive & not saith led?

The first thing would be that would not get genetically led management teams. Much like politics the awam becomes the subject off the offspring how ever far the apple may have fallen from the tree. Also we'd not get munshis masquerading as HR leaders. We don't have an HR problem

What we have is a munshi problem. It's true. Most saith based businesses replaced their traditional munshi who was a trusted person but not some one who had real power besides the saiths ear. HR heads perform similarly to a munshi but the world has moved on. We are left with the

Munshi mindset in a digitally led world, with saiths that have a diminishing return on their human capital investment because they have made none. Making our workforces drones for doing tasks vs being trained to think, execute or grow professionally. This is only getting worse

As the aging work force in current roles has no new skills,they will be replaced with millennials who will not stand for unfair treatment handed out the generation prior,the saiths children view the world from rose colored glasses & wonder why their companies aren't like Disney?

Add work from home an increasingly young urban work force & the ability to do virtual or offshore work, the power dynamics will soon change but sadly for a very small majority who have digitally monetisable skills. The rest will have to put up with saiths and talent developers

Big and small that really have no interest in skills development. Some one pointed out to me a construct that clearly defines the mindset of HR leaders & how people view self worth with the wrong lense. The person is a behavioral psychologist. They said to me look at the car

And it's parking location for HR Leaders in saith led companies big or small in Pakistan. I cursorily ran a metal image in my head of the HR folks I know.They then asked me to tell them what cars they drove & I was stumped with an outsized data point that most of these folks have

Big ol cars. Meaning 15-20 yr old Suvs or jeeps or what he called the 'pajero' complex.They can't be the saith so can't buy a new ones but will typically get used ones with clean tyres and park near by.They said to me this projection of self worth & importance is a tell tale sign

Of an unhealthy and potential power dynamics at companies. They said to me, that is not always true but some thing to keep in mind. How HR leaders project self worth by showing 'they have arrived' vs for example displaying a book case in their office full of the current

Literature around HR or organizational best practices. This conversation was a revelation. Again can't cast all into one mold but it is food for thought. So startups I'm looking at you to bring competition to our markets & give talent the opportunity it deserves so that the young

Folks have opportunities at scale to be judged for their courage to take decisions and be given the chance to experiment vs being marooned into drones that loose out their intellectual curiosity under the guise of yet an other sahab who is a proxy for a saith.

There are 2 many proxies & we need radical change.Radical change comes when we move to a professionally driven environment,that happens when we are no longer in a closed economy where we are only competing at best, internally. Talent development or the lack of it is a real issue

We need better leaders, coaches, mentors, business owners and most of all empathetic classically trained HR leaders in the art and science of organizational development vs being classically trained as munshis who serves as a yes man to saiths.The saiths will go & we will be left

Left with an ineffective aging workforce devoid of real skills and in demand expertise.Just because we have a manpower surplus doesn't mean we have an efficiency surplus. By adding more people vs more talent to solve for things we are only delaying the inevitable demise of things

Act now. Learn new skills even if it's on your own. New Market economics dictate that u don't rely on ineffective leaders for change. @rebootdude @jehan_ara @LabsKatalyst @babushka99 @fmsheik @YusufJan @Ash_Kalim @raza_matin @SaadGH @TalhaIzhar @amaarikhlas @FaizaYousuf @ZMoosaPK