Become a polyglot to survive a world with fewer jobs

By Naveen Narayan

In boardrooms around the world, senior executives are discussing a common dilemma: how to create transformative experiences and business models that improve their customers' lives, drive growth, and boost profitability and efficiency.

Regardless of industry or location, businesses are facing a new world.The continued evolution of digital capabilities is pushing businesses to rethink their fundamental views on customers, competitors, products, and partners.Digital business transformation is of urgent importance among executives.

In fact, SapientRazorfish's 2016 CMTO study determined that, while nearly all organizations (96.9 percent) are addressing digital in some way, six out of ten (56 percent) have made Digital Business Transformation a priority.

While businesses struggle to deal with the new empowered consumer who expect businesses to deliver with agility and speed with digital at the core, they face a new set of digital first competitors who no longer belong to their own categories. In the wake of such a dynamic environment, organizations are seeking partners who can help clients through their transformation journey. These partners need to have talent that don't subscribe to the old ways of working of traditional IT. This new breed of talent, also known as 'polyglots', is multi-dimensional in skills, understand the business environment/domain and understand the consumer as well.

These 'polyglots' have an in-depth understanding of the technology ecosystem, which helps them be tech agnostic and enables them to pivot faster and adopt newer technologies. They come with a problem solving mindset, and have disruptive ways of working. They believe in 'failing fast' and building on success.They subscribe to new ways of working and bring agility, knowledge and discipline to the table with a shorter learning cycle. Their learnability quotient is very high and they are naturally curious people.Companies now see this quality as a fundamental requirement to handle multiple assignments with shorter turnaround time.

The need for re-skilling and upskilling talent is topmost in most in the minds of all HR and business leads. According a study by City & Guilds Group, 91 percent Indians feel threatened that their skills will become obsolete in the next five years. The emphasis on the need for skill development is not only identified in India but globally too.

Nurturing and developing polyglots requires a cultural shift in most organizations. Agility and co-creation are attributes that clients value dearly today. These traits can only be displayed if organizations break down functional boundaries, create a shared language and incentive that allow diverse teams to talk to one another. Polyglots, lead the way when it comes to breaking silos. Their ability to navigate ambiguous situations and collaborating with multiple teams helps them not only be technology experts, but bring together disparate groups for a common objective.

As you think of your career today, spend time to learn on the job and keep up-skilling yourself. The only way you will continue to be relevant today is if you become multi-skilled.

(The writer is Vice President, Hiring, SapientRazorfish, APAC.)