Skip to main content

Uberization: Superspecialists?

In a world of cannons, what is the need for a sniper? Plenty.

Cannons are common. Snipers are not.
Cannons can hit a lot of places inaccurately, Snipers get you one target - spectacularly right.

This is mostly a game analogy - I have zero military experience to comment on the reality. The example was more to derive a point that - to take advantage of the uberization of work, there might be merit for companies (big and small) to try out super specialists.

For example, instead of going to an organization that will support you - but actually has the lowest common denominator preparing a rather stupid questionnaire - leading to fairly blah business results - why not engage the super specialist who will engage herself and diagnose your ailment correctly - or if she is  a real super specialist - will actually refer you to another super specialist.

When I was in my corporate avatar - this happened to us - more than once. We had engaged a company for a consulting engagement - but the outcome of the whole process was quite lame. The questions framed were lame - the administration was equally poor - and eventually the outcome was clearly nowhere close to the stratospheric levels we had aimed for. And this - not because the company lacked the expertise- they did not - but it was delegated to the lowest common denominator with very less input from the person who truly had that expertise.

This is worth thinking about. Engage an organization because they promise scale or engage a super specialist (the sniper) for that one hit? Do you know who those super specialists are? 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...

And the unconference happened

 Most conferences have an agenda. No, not the stated agenda, but an agenda of marketing, airtime to sponsors, ensuring the past and future customers are invited, of ensuring that the "stars" of the industry are invited and attention showered of them. All in all it is a your scratch my back, I scratch your back syndrome. Some of these become cliques and claques and therefore the real point behind a conference is lost. And then there is the unconference - organised and run by the alumni of the ISABS ODCP program. And as the name suggests, this is truly an un-conference organised by the alumni, for the alumni. No funders - except the alumni themselves. No sponsors. Just the team.  I havent seen a more tastefully organised conference (yes, its an unconference).  To begin with - the location - not a typical star hotel, but an outdoorsy place. The food - simple. The welcome - personal. It was like a homecoming. The setting was warm and welcoming. It was a smaller conference. Ju...

Why does elearning exist?

 Elearning is one of those niches that does not deserve to exist. Yes, it was a novelty 20 years ago, but not now. It cannot exist. But somehow it does. Disclaimer: I used to head a content team once upon a time. And I used to ask those whom I hired - tell me the last thing you learnt from an e-learning. The answer is - pretty much nothing (and this is a good decade ago).  Why?  If you want to learn a recipe, you go to Youtube, or Reels or something like that. If you are terribly old fashioned - as in, you read - then you go to a website and read the recipe and make it.  Most other things you learn by doing or learning on the job or asking an expert.  If you have to learn something in depth, then there are other ways.  So, where does e-learning fit in all this? E-learning is one of those products that the customer hates, but has no choice, because someone has decided it is the best way. For instance, you have to learn a new CRM or some other product - you w...