WHAT IS MISSING? (FROM INDONESIAN TALENTS)

WHAT IS MISSING?
(FROM INDONESIAN TALENTS)

(Pambudi Sunarsihanto)

Last year, I spoked in front of 800 HR professionals in Indonesia Humab Capital Summit 2016 on the topics of Developing Global Talents.
Interestingly the speech was conducted on 28th October which is the Youth Day in Indonesia.
The organizer asked me to share what we can do to develop Indonesian talents to be able to compete in the global competition.

One thing is sure, the macro economy is very promising.... GDP growth is positive.. and the companies in Indonesia demonstrated a very encouraging (and promosing) business performance.
This is fun and exciting.
If you like football it is more fun to live in Germany than to live in Mongolia.
Germany has one of best league in the world (Mongolia is the 202th rank in the world).
The same analogy goes for the business.
It is much more fun to live and conduct the business in Indonesia while the economy  (and the business) is growing at this speed.
The competition is much more interesting and we learn so much more.

If the business is growing fast, obviously it is because it is run by incredible (and competent) talents.

The next question is ... How about Indonesian talents?

The best football leaguea should export their players. And their players are demanded everywhere (look at the players from German league).
But where are the Indonesian talents?
How many Indonesian talents excell developing their global careers.
Ouch... the answer hurts.
(The French say "La realité blesse"... only the reality hurts).
I am surprised by the minimum number of Indonesian talents who work and develop their careers overseas.

What's wrong? What is missing?
Are they not competent?
Off course they are!
Otherwise the business will not be growing at this speed.
So .... what is the missing link of this puzzle?

Some years ago I conducted a survey to 100 Indonesian working overseas (yes, actually we have a bit more than 100 Indonesian working overseas, we managaed to "sell" 100 talents among 250 million population, and we would want to see much more than that).

I asked them what make them excell in their current role?

And surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) ... competent is only a hygine factor. At that level, everybody is expected to be competent.
You need something else....
Competent alone will not bring you far away.
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying, competency is not important. It is actually extremely important. You need to be good at what you do ...
You just need something else to be successfull in developing the clobal careers.

So, what else do you need ....?
Based on my experience on managing and developing the talents accross the different countries ... this is what we need.

1. CONFIDENCE

Those globbal high performing talents have high self confidence,  based on their competence but also based on the feeling of self confidence that they built and develop accross the years.

2. COMMUNICATION SKILLS
You need also to have great communication skills.
When I said communication skills, I meant the ability to articulate
- the question or request for clarification
- your proposed idea
- your volunteer to be part of the team's tasks/activities
- your constructive feedback on other people's idea/performance ...etc..etc

Practice and improv your communication skills!

3. CHANGE AGILITY
The global talents watch and observe the trend, then they learn and adapt to the change.
The world (and the business) will continue to change.
The talents with high change agility will have much higher chance to succeed.

4. CULTURE UNDERSTANDING

As a global talents, you may be working overseas (and dealing with people from other nationalities) or working in Indonesia (and also dealing with foreigners who came to your countries).
In any case, you cannot avoid that you will work with people from other nationalities.
They think, they work and they say things in the different way.
You need to have a good culture understanding to conmunicate with them and to influence them.

5. CONTINUOUS LEARNING

The business (and the consumer behavior) will continue to change.
You have to learn to adapt.
Your strength (of today) mey no longer be relevant in 2 years time.
Your strength can change quickly to become your weakness.
Learn new things everyday.
Improve your differentiators  by increasing your skills and knowledge.

So remember, this is what you need to develop your CAREER facing global COMPETITIONS:

- COMPETENCES
- CONFIDENCES
- COMMUNICATION SKILLS
- CHANGE AGILITY
- CULTURE UNDERSTANDING
- CONTINUOUS LEARNING

Warm regards

Pambudi Sunarsihanto