H

ave you read any surveys lately? If you believe that advances in one's country come first from the quality of its human resources, you have got two new surveys to skip a heartbeat about.

The first was a survey on Asian universities by the London-based firm QS. Surveyed on six factors, including academic reputation and assessments by employers of the graduates, all Indonesian universities suffered a decline and only one was left in the Top 100, University of Indonesia, which slipped from 50th to 64th place.

The second was a report on Indonesian human resources by Boston Consulting Group. Beyond the much-discussed problem of unskilled blue-collar workers, it predicted a future shortage of white-collar workers.

Our managerial talent pool pales in comparison, in quantity and quality, to those of the Philippines and India and, with the current economic growth predicted to continue, by 2020 there will not be enough qualified Indonesians to fill middle and top management positions ' which sounds so much like the 1980s, when the economy and standard of education were at a lower level.

The two surveys were conducted with different objectives, yet both speak volumes about the quality of Indonesian people. And it doesn't take a genius to realize that the subject of the first survey might have contributed (in)directly to the outcome of the second survey.

Sadly, I was not surprised. Two business consulting works I have done in the past few years involved executive search and providing a professional and cultural 'bridge' for relocating professionals, mainly for multinationals (MNCs). I have consulted for foreigners relocating to Indonesia and Indonesians relocating overseas.

The Indonesians who had the skills that were deemed valuable for the organization outside their home country had almost always graduated from a small number of Indonesian universities.

Although it was not a policy, some HR executives admitted that many MNCs had unwritten rules to limit hiring to these few universities, arguing that previous hiring showed only these graduates had qualities suitable for the level of professionalism required within the organization.

And even those graduating with high GPAs, which made them great entry-level technical workers, tended to get lost in mundane routine and were reluctant to build the organizational skills or business acumen needed for promotion to higher management, as HR executives noted with exasperation.

Once they got nice perks, they did not make the effort for self-improvement or take up new challenges, another executive wryly added.

I could not have agreed more. Tunnel vision is what I have observed in many of the skilled personnel I have come across in my consulting.

While they had solid technical skills related to their job and could speak in great detail about it, they were not as well-versed in issues that a higher level manager would need to know about; how to factor into the bigger picture of any business ' macroeconomic indicators, political climate, social dynamics or the state of global current affairs.

A small example ' I remember having to tell almost all of my Indonesian clients relocating to the US that the word 'negro', as Indonesians would use it, however non-
maliciously, to refer to blacks, had long been deemed insulting in English and replaced by 'African-American'.

These future expats had been working for MNCs for years and earning enough to access books, movies or cable TV that would have contained cultural or historical references to this information, they had not registered it until I brought it up during our coaching session. They were like a computer with all the right, shiny hardware and none of the appropriate software. A one-story house with decent walls and a roof to give shelter, yet without sufficiently sturdy foundations to be upgraded to a multi-story building, or to
 accommodate expansion.

Many of them never seemed to find a comfortable footing in leadership, either. Many who were touted as 'great' leaders turned out to be more like pack leaders ' the ones who would bring their entire team whenever they jumped ship.

Yes, trust goes a long way in forming a cohesive team but true leadership is tested and proven by the ability to lead a myriad of talents instead of skirting the challenge by sticking with underlings who already know what makes you tick. And isn't that some kind of tunnel vision, too?

We can argue until we are blue in the face about how the education system should be revolutionized. But while revolution is taking its own time to brew, there are three things that we can do to help ourselves: exposure, exposure, exposure. Just because the economy is booming and they can now afford fancy accoutrements, the upwardly-mobile should not be complacent or ever assume that they've already got somewhere.

There are always more pastures to graze and areas to spend valuable time on to explore and learn, instead of just killing time at the nearest mall, in order to color their mind, enrich their experience and to turn them, from productive human resource perspective, into a more well-rounded talent.

Because, we sorely need that particular kind of resource. I hope you will not wait until 2020 to see the first flock of middle management expats filling up jobs that we do not have enough qualified talent to fill.

That would be a more tragic trip back to 1980s than all the shoulder pads, legwarmers and neon-colored tights combined. Eeeeek!

Lynda Ibrahim is a Jakarta-based writer and consultant, with a penchant for purple, pussycats and pop culture.