How Future relevant you are?

“I should have been a lawyer or a doctor” remarked my 42 year old MBA friend, a marketing head of a large FMCG company. I was very amused as I tried hard to get admission into MBA as one of the more sought after degrees but it was the gracious CPA institute who found me fit enough.

Anyways, he shared that the role of the marketing head is not the same as it used to be. These days we are seen as guys who just talk a lot. Given that the company’s revenue was stagnant, he feared that he might be replaced. A lot of folks once seem relevant get ruffled due to variety of shocks.

In the changing world order, folks get shocks. The shock of business being reorganized, mergers and acquisitions (they need to pick up one candidate among the two or more), business processes being outsourced or migrated to other low cost countries and as a result while roles stay, the jobs go.

Is the world changing faster for certain roles. Though all roles in a company are important and no one individual is indispensable but it seems that relevance quotient of different roles are very different. As time goes by certain roles increase in value, certain roles continue to contribute same value and value of certain roles go down.

How measurable is your work – Higher you go up the ladder, more difficult it is to co-relate with work one does and the value he brings on the table. However if the contribution of the role is directly measurable then your relevance quotient is high. It’s unlikely that you run the risk of being thrown out. Even senior guys are getting questioned on what value they bring on the table. Just having spent 15 years in one company doesn't mean a damn thing.

Brains are being taken out of the roles – A lot of standardization is happening in the industry and is required as well for the company to stay relevant. Standard operating procedures are being written. This is followed by automation, leaving very little possibility of intervention or for that matter discretion to be applied by an individual. So if someone is doing standard stuff, the relevance quotient is not very high. Not only this if you are in a managerial or a leadership role of a team who is doing this kind of work, your relevance quotient is lower. There are chances that you could be replaced very easily due to automation or having very little impact on the organization.

Dealing with papers and tools and not individuals – If your role requires you to deal with papers or tools in a routine manner then your relevance quotient is lower than the one who needs to interact with human beings. So if you’re high on social skills then you as an individual will stay relevant for long. These days patience quotient is getting lower as people cannot seem to reconcile with the different points of view. If you are someone who has natural reconciliatory skills, you are going to stay very relevant.

Creating knowledge or creating something new – If you are in a role of creating value by doing new things or doing things differently, your relevance quotient is indeed very high provided of course the company’s management is forward looking and gives you all the support. In contrast, if you are purely maintaining the work processes, then your relevance quotient may be lower. 

Application of the things you learnt in College – If your role requires you to apply the same skill or same knowledge that you learnt in college then your relevant quotient is not very high as compared to someone who has to learn new things. If your role requires you to study everyday then you can bet to be relevant throughout the working life. 

Not having a very high relevance quotient is not a problem per se. Every company needs to have all types of necessary resources to the tasks. The question is whether you are the individual who will continue to get an opportunity to work or you can be replaced either by a bot or by someone younger or someone located in offshore center in other low cost location. 

The only thing that will continue to maintain or even increase your value in your company is to embrace the change, find time to acquire new skills or enhance your social skills. However if you are not of that type, no need to lose heart. There are many companies such a start ups etc. who will value the contribution you bring on the table. What is a support function for a company can be a line function for others. One needs to have an open eye and navigate through the new threats of the changing world order.