Revenue Per Employee
More than 91,000 people have been laid off from the U.S. tech industry so far this year, per a Crunchbase News tally. Every week brings about several thousand more job cuts in the industry, at both large tech employers and smaller venture-backed startups. Here is a crunchbase tracker https://bit.ly/43wVZIo
The years of 2022 and 2023 will be a watershed for not the number of people laid off. That is already a significant number but there is more to come. The layoffs now are not owing to shedding the overhead. They are because the People laid off are not “Valuable” to the enterprise anymore. Those who did not get laid off are not less dispensable. The expectation of what they deliver is not critical to the overall Value Proposition of an enterprise’s growth. So they are safe for now. And that is the absolute harsh truth.
RPE is not New
This is not a new metric. It has always been there whether in the calculation of Return On Investment (ROI) or Capital Investments for growth. There are different classes of Value delivered by different categories of skills. The people getting laid off today are mostly those who are required to front end technology development and growth. And therein lies the irony.
The Revenue Per Employee (RPE) applies to every single one in an enterprise. But there is a premium on those who contribute to growth. Those who are currently being laid off are exactly those; who were expected to deliver to the growth potential and are found short.
When the CEO’s are saying they made an error, they are being smug. The deeper significance is their inability to convert their Vision into Execution. They have been unable to renew the New Resources, Materials and Energy to the relevance of the enterprise’s growth. And they are still clueless on how to get that going. In the meantime, this is just stopping the bleed. In this context, Individuals are better off renewing their Capabilities (The Capacity to Transform + The ability (Skills) to Perform to the relevance fo the emerging challenges.
52% of laid-off workers have found a new job with a higher salary, according to Revelio Labs. Those in sales, software and marketing are faring better and quickly getting new jobs compared to those in HR and communications.
Strategic & Technology Debt
This is the story of changing the aircraft flying at an altitude of 30,000 Ft above sea level. These enterprises took on the digital transformation journey without really being prepared for the seamless transition of being organized to renew the Structure, Synergies and Systems. In the past, somehow things either fell into place or a spin was sufficient to hide the holes under the carpet because it was well within the four walls of an enterprise. This is an Open World and there is no place to hide the engine that fails to start. The trajectory of growth is significantly exponential to that of the past. The Visualization of the engine that not only overcomes the debt but accelerates to this new trajectory is nothing but a lack of Leadership Vision and Capabilities.
Innovation is not Negotiable
The management challenge of the last 50 years has now come to roost. How do you make an Full Time Equivalent (FTE) divide 8 hours in a productive day to prioritize the work task between Operational Accountabilities and Innovation Responsibility.
Finding the balance of Intelligence and Motivation is the biggest management challenge that must be addressed through the Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) initiatives of an enterprise.
Innovation Infrastructure in the world today is mostly mistaken for fancy buildings, fancier gadgets in them and a great amount of spin around comforts such as beds to sleep, couches to lounge and fancy restaurants to eat. None of this really contributes to the two factors of Intelligence and Motivation.
The need is to adapt a seamless and stage gated process of transporting Intellectual Property (IP) from Conception to Engineering to Personalization to Commercialization; in a Continuum. And this demands a mindful focus on the triage of Value, Intellectual and Human Capital. It is at the sweet spot of this triage that any enterprise be it the Big 5 including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Meta or the Startups anywhere in the World will find the right capital to deploy for growth.
Growth is spiral
The demand of Growth today is a spiral; not horizontal or vertical. How this is progressive or regressive is the the art of Leadership springing with Aspiration, Agility, Anticipation, Authenticity and Ability. Instead of lionizing or lambasting these leaders, it would be of great significance that the leaders in any organization stopped projecting and started staring at the mirror to relate to the status quo, discard the hubris and aligned to a Progressive Tomorrow today.
The above is easier said than done but the danger is that should this not happen, there is a great economic disaster right round the corner waiting to happen. This disaster will be far more impacting than any previous human disaster because of the landscape of landmines that lies beneath the economic sheath globally at Institutional, Industry and Individual levels.
The Pursuit of Excellence
The Pursuit of Excellence is inevitable and this is the exact definition of Innovation. How we find our Status Quo and our North Star and pursue the pathway with dedication and determination. Giggr Technologies is focused on guiding Individuals, Industries and Institutions on this pathway. https://giggr.app
