T
TALKING HEADS
Raising a tiger: Lessons for human capital
re you kidding? There’s teeth
on the other end!”
If you’re an adult of a
certain age, you will know that
line. It comes towards the end of Disney’s
animated 1967 classic The Jungle Book:
Baloo the bear arrives in the nick of
time, clamping on to Shere Khan’s tail
as he chases Mowgli. The vultures get
Mowgli to safety and urge Baloo to let the
tiger go.
Experienced senior leaders will
understand the sentiment. Here, at the
dawn of the fourth industrial revolution,
those of us at the leading edge of
business are holding the very large
tiger of talent by the tail — and there are
definitely teeth at the other end.
Unmanaged talent or the lack of it,
could leave our business and industry
in tatters; carefully handled, it will take
us charging forward. Our solution has
been to raise our own tiger.
Hand-rearing a tiger is not for the
faint-hearted. It’s both art and science,
requiring careful observation, accurate
records and a willingness to learn
and adapt. Knowledge is paramount;
expending tremendous effort a given.
But the outcome is unmistakable, rare
and amazing to behold.
The same is true of hand-rearing
talent. Much has been written about
the importance of the talent pipeline:
building it, feeding it, managing and
deploying it; rinse and repeat. But a fifth
element of stewarding — of raising your
own talent — is key.
As capitalism gives way to ‘talentism’
— the primacy of human over financial
capital — there are concerns, possibilities
and hard questions to consider. The
divide between the highly-skilled,
high-income, high performers and
the less-educated, low-skilled workers
continues to grow, for example, raising
the dim spectre of future turmoil and
stagnation. How do we avoid creating
an increasingly hollow middle?
How do we transform our people
for tomorrow’s jobs today? How do we
not only find, train and retain the right
people, while ensuring our human capital
function stays several steps ahead?
The onus is on business leaders who
have a clearer view of the future to model
“A
Mustafa El Rafey
Raising and
developing our own
talent is vital in an age
of ‘talentism’.
50 // Future Talent
the change we need in the present. We
know just what skill sets are going to be
needed in the years ahead; what are we
going to do with that information?
At Majid Al Futtaim, we are invested
in upskilling our people. We know, for
example, that the top 10 emerging jobs
in 2022 include data analysts and data
scientists, digital transformation and new
technology specialists, so we ensure
“Instead of hoping
for a solution to
arrive in the nick
of time, we are
proactively
building ours”
that our employees benefit from the
recently opened Majid Al Futtaim Retail
Business School.
The emphasis is that these are our
people – existing staff who understand
our business, our sensibility and are
committed to us and our customers.
Training and developing them is a
no-brainer: it’s succession planning,
family-style.
Instead of hoping for a solution
to arrive in the nick of time, we are
proactively building ours. We are putting
our investment capital to work for our
human capital. Digital literacy, disruptive
technology — all these things will be
pivotal to the cities, companies and
economies of the future, so why not
future proof ourselves by creating our
own capacity?
It’s early days for our model, but we
feel we have made a great start. Although
our governments are moving at warp
speed in the UAE and wholeheartedly
embracing future technology, innovation
and skills, there is a major role for private
sector players — one of leadership.
Mustafa El Rafey is senior vice
president of human capital at Majid Al
Futtaim Retail.