Interviewers: Mariham Magdy & Mahmoud Mansi
“Stable jobs won’t exist anymore; in the future we won’t find the typical employee who works for an organization for 10 and 15 years. People must have more mobility options and organizations should provide people with more mobility as well. The future skills-set will be different…”
Jonathan Holmes
Managing Director & Regional Chair, Korn Ferry, Middle East & Africa
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWEE
Mr. Holmes is currently the Managing Director and Regional Chair, Korn Ferry, Middle East & Africa. This encompasses six offices and over 230 people. His consulting career spans over 26 years and six countries, where he has undertaken Board & General Management projects across a range of geographies and industries including: industrial, consumer and healthcare. Prior to his current position, he was the Managing Director for Korn Ferry’s Korea business for 10 years.
THE INTERVIEW
1- HR Revolution Middle East: “An amazing career journey inside KORN FERRY for more than 26 years over six countries; we believe nothing more can testify how KORN FERRY has succeeded to build, over the years, a unique management model inspiring business professionals worldwide in the field of consultancy. Can you share with us what are the unique characteristics of this model that support its sustainability over the years?
Jonathan Holmes: I started working with KORN FERRY (KF), London office in 1993, almost 26 years ago. Since joining, I have been fortunate to have worked across six countries, each of which has been a unique learning experience for me and this diversity has taught me an incredible amount about working in different cultures with different people.. Each time I move to a new country I have to re-calibrate to the business culture, the social culture and the people culture. It has been a very enriching experience for me and I hope I have been able to add value to the countries and KF offices / businesses I have started or built.
Any global business and especially a business consulting organisation needs to develop an operating model that, on one side relies of robust Intellectual Property at its core, and yet retains a level of flexibility to adapt to the huge diversity that exists in the world across different cultures and business operating models. A reward project in Russia can require uniquely different facets to a reward project in the Republic of Korea, yet the foundation of the solution is build on robust data we have, locally, regionally and globally to support validation of the reward solution.
KF generates tremendous amounts of data and information and this enables us to understand what makes companies successful; what makes them tick. These insights enable us to help businesses evolve the human capital agendas, and in cases transform these agendas. What works in Egypt may be quite different for what works in Singapore. KF looks at aligning talent and organizational strategies to help release the power of human capital and drive superior performance
KF has grown an international format in order to be able to adapt tailored solutions to suit different cultures with different business challenges.
Professionalism, diversity and inclusion are also other important factors that characterize the KF model.
2- HR Revolution Middle East: Mr Holmes, you have managed KF Clients in six different countries / regions (UK, India, Russia (CIS), Singapore, South Korea, Middle East & Africa), what main differences characterize KF Clients in those different countries, and how is KF able to adapt her products to accommodate the different needs and perceptions of business professionals across those countries? How different was this experience for your good-self in comparison to your current role in the Middle East?
Jonathan Holmes: Naturally, the span of countries and cultures I have worked in is quite broad. Each brings a unique challenges and opportunities and as a firm we must adapt our global offerings / solutions to be relevant across all these diverse human capital environments. The world is agile and we must match this by being as nimble as the locations we operate in.
On personal level, it has been a very rich learning experience for me; I have had to build my skills in each new country; how to be successful in each new market and this cannot be a simple, one style fits all, so I have had to be as equally agile to adapt to each of my new locations. I recognized the importance of relationships and building rapport in middle-eastern cultures with clients, whereas in other locations I have needed to me more directive and affirmative. My style in South Korea would not work in the Middle East.
3- HR Revolution Middle East: During your participation in the Arabian Business Forum past November 18th, you highlighted that the Augmented Humanity would be a real genuine social problem in 10 years of time since countries and governments are not addressing the issue now. So, what piece of advice would you give to business professionals world-wide to start preparing themselves to confront this problem from now?
Jonathan Holmes: We need to recognize the future “Talent Crunch”; for example roles like the “Uber Driver”, “Drone Pilot” & the “Millennial Specialist Advisor” exist today, and didn’t exist before.
Organizations then, need to adapt more quickly, and be more agile in the way they look to people.
Stable jobs won’t exist anymore; in the future we won’t find the typical employee who works for an organization for 10 and 15 years. People must have more mobility options and organizations should provide people with more mobility as well.
The future skills-set will be different, so organizations need to be more flexible, adaptive, and a lot more sensitive to developing their people and investing in them. Upskilling the workforce will be critical to enable people to be relevant to the new economies; standing still is not an option and those firms, regions and governments that act quickly to create relevant workforces, will win.
4- HR Revolution Middle East: KORN FERRY has been providing businesses with precious insights and consultations on a number of today challenges, such as: Digital Transformation, Diversity & Inclusion, Future of work, Gender pay, Women in Leadership, and others. We believe that “Women in Leadership” is one of the most challenging issues in Middle East, so can you kindly share with us one success story of KF on this issue in the Middle East. Do companies in ME have the sufficient awareness and interest to build female cadres of leaders?
Jonathan Holmes: KF provides the region with well-researched and well-proven studies about the subject. We see that women in the Middle East are still under represented in senior positions. Companies who don’t have gender diversity are less competitive than those who embrace gender diversity. The focus must be on capability & competence-based, not gender-based. We really work on changing the view, the mind-set of people, and the natural human prejudices that exist in the workplace. Changes culture and mindsets are difficult but it is critical to inculcate a new way of looking at people in the workplace and women must be recognised as a critical enabler in the workforce and treated equally as any other employee..
I believe that companies in the ME speak a lot about this subject, but we have not yet moved enough to the point of action. The words are easy and now we must action our words into reality. Culture is quite embedded in the organization so we shall work hard to change the Organization’s prejudice and stereotypes. In the end, we will look back with surprise at why the change was so hard, when we see the value added by creating a diverse workforce, so now we should embrace these changes and move on.
In KF Korea we succeeded in moving our employee base to be 70% females and we did this because we focused on championing the best people for the work and this just happened to be women. We believe we have a great opportunity to make impact across the region by supporting organizations to have more women in leadership positions.
Boards of directors in ME still have few women; there is amble statistical data to demonstrate that organisations with more diverse workforces, including at the board level are more successful. We need the female perspective in a company and their views and decision-making processes are important. We have a strong diversity and inclusion business in KF and whilst this topic is gaining traction in businesses and governments in the region, we still have a lot to work to do in order to empower women in the workforce and the value will become apparent which will no doubt be the catalyst for accelerating this agenda.
5- HR Revolution Middle East: KORNFERRY is always in a race against time to provide her clients with the-state-of-the-art consultations on the current VUCA world. Can we know more about the business research efforts exerted in the back ground in KF enabling her to be always in the vanguard?
Jonathan Holmes: KF has a research academy (Korn Ferry Institute) that drives a lot of our thought leadership and research programmes. We have a tremendous amount of data (over 3 billion data points); every three minutes we place someone in a new role; we have assessed over 49 million people; have reward data on 25 million people in 25,000 companies. We have data on the most successful organizations in the world, across different regions and can use this information to support the solutions and advise we provide our clients. We develop innovative solutions to empower people and activate human capital in our client organisations.
We developed KF Advance as a 360 career management tool to support individuals and organisations accelerate the personal development using our data to hone career management advise and solutions.
So our research is very critical for us as it helps us shape our conversations with organizations. Without a solid platform of data we cannot validate our recommendations. The VUCA world requires speed and rapid adoption of new ideas and our real-time information ensures we remain contemporary and that our clients benefit from the latest trends and developments, gleaned from real data.
6- HR Revolution Middle East: Mr. Holmes, you are currently working with the C-suite across all industries in ME; what other enablement factors do you believe Middle East Leaders still need to go further with it?
Jonathan Holmes: I believe boards in the Middle East need to harness more governance and involvement within organizations. The very nature of the region with large family groups and quasi-government businesses has meant that boards have not needed to play such an active role in defining strategy. As the region becomes more competitive and the markets tighten, the boards become more critical in the role they can play for defining organisational success.
I would like to see more diversity in boards and senior leadership teams. Half the populations are women and this needs to be reflected in organisations at all levels to gain insights we are currently missing.
We need to move from a very hierarchical environment to a more inclusive decision-making environment driven by teams and not necessarily by one person, to have more diversity in decision making.
7- HR Revolution Middle East: From your valuable experience in this field Mr Holmes, to what extent does business consultation impact countries’ economy?
Jonathan Holmes: I believe that businesses in the region can really gain a lot from the advises given to them through consultancy firms.
In a simplest example we can say that consultancy given on driving women in the workforce will drive benefit at many levels. Organisations will be enriched with greater market insights; the working environment will mature; the economy can benefit from double income families increasing disposable income, etc.
Advise given to businesses to realize more organizational effectiveness, improving performance and delivering more returns to the business will positively impact the economy and make the region competitive in a world. People / talent has a choice in destination preference and where the right talent will become an increasingly rare commodity, remaining relevant and attractive to people will be a game changer and will generate long term value.
Consulting firms can helps organizations deal with internal inefficiencies to make improvements; for example to shift to automation and up skill their blue-collars to a more value-added work. Thus governments have to shift the core education systems to science & technology instead of the vocational learning.
Concluding, we can definitely find on the long term a direct impact for consultation on countries’ economy.