Mass Career Customization

Mass Customization may seem like an oxymoron. When you think of something as individualistic as career choices, it begs the question how far such a thing is possible. Organizations have long defined successful careers to represent a ladder. Ladders were for lads and too bad if the ladies chose to opt out of it. With the changing demographics, all that is changing at a reasonable pace. The Wall Street Journal bestseller Mass Career Customization by Cathleen Benko and Anne Weisberg point out that the demand and supply gap will force corporations to explore new ways of defining careers which will look less and less like the ladder people have used to scale the organizational pyramid. Individuals are using lattices to move to different directions and vary the pace and nature of their assignments while still remaining valuable contributors to the workforce.The corporate ladder gave people an up or out choice everytime life stages placed demands on them. The ladder approach assumes that your needs remain constant over time and that the employee will continue to opt out of the race forever if their family situation placed demands on them. Women have for long had to face a choice of ignoring their bio-clock if they had to keep their career ambitions intact. There are many men who are increasing unwilling to trade-off life stage demands and opt out of thriving careers. It is not for nothing that it is called the AND Generation of employees. They want to have flourishing careers and also nurture other roles as they happen. Whether it is to take care of aging relatives or to spend time with their children and take up an interesting assignment that is professionally meaningful, they want it all. They want to have their cake AND eat it too. So the bakery has to redefine what a cake looks like. It looks like a lattice.Forward looking companies like PepsiCo have long defined careers to be like a web. They have recognized that it is an essential part of their strategy of retaining talent. It is not about a vertical growth always. It is about collecting a bunch of experiences in line with the way you define your career. I had drawn this cartoon strip for one of the brochures that Pepsi was planning to illustrate the choices that were possible. In Compensation & Benefits (C&B for short) there were almost 200 possible combinations of roles at various levels and business and locations. So what was driving that approach to careers. More women in the workforce, changing expectations of the male employees, changing nature of the family and of course the options like remote working that technology has thrown up. You do not need to be in the office to join a meeting. While that may throw open its own set of challenges, there is no doubt that we can offer such options to more and more people at the workplace.Mass Career Customization relies on four factors on a 6 point scale:1. PACE: Options relating to the rate of career progression that range from Decelerated to Accelerated2.WORKLOAD: Choices related to quantity of work output from Reduced to Full.3. LOCATION: Options for when and where work gets performed ranging from Restricted to Not restricted4. ROLE: Choices in position and responsibilities from Individual contributor to Leader.This Mass Career Customization or MCC Profile of each employee can be worked at different stages of their career and life stage. Adopting a child may create demands on the person that may mean a relook at Pace, Workload, Location and Role in order to make space for the new realities.Like it or not the demographic changes are going to make all this happen faster than you think. Just look at the comparison of the Population Pyramids of India in 2010 and 2050. Looking at the visual representation of age and sex ratios changing over the next 40 years can help us think through what changes it will bring into the workplace. Add to it many other social factors eg Increasing number of nuclear families where both husband and wife are working could lead us to think of how it will affect choices of such couples when it comes to mobility and career. It is not going to be ladders but lattices that will define the workplace architecture.Read the book to learn about how companies are dealing with the shifts in demographics.Finally a lighthearted look at the notion of the Career like a spider web that I had referred to.