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In the IT Midpros Survey 2008, when only 5% of the respondents said that 100% of their potential was being utilized in their current job, 51% felt that their potential was being used between 50% and 80%, and a significant 23% felt that less than half of their potential was being usedit is something that companies need to worry about. Add to this the fact that 40% of the respondents said they intend to leave their current companies in the next couple of years. And a grim picture emerges. Companies are going to be losing out on critical talent that they need to retain and nurture, to keep the growth engines revving.

The above findings are from a survey of Indian mid-career professionals, mostly in the IT industry, conducted in early 2008 by midcareers.com, which focuses on placement and career enrichment services for midprosmid-career professionals. The disgruntlement at the mid-career level is not a unique phenomenon in the Indian IT industry. In fact, Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson and Ken Dychtwald, authors of Managing Middlescence (published in the Harvard Business Review, January 5, 2008), coined the phrase middlescence for the mid-career restlessness arising out of burn-out, career bottleneck, and boredom that affects a significant percentage of mid-career professionals.

While this is the mid-career professionals point of view, the Employers opine that mid-career professionals are just not productive enough.

G Ramu Chief architect, Midcareers.com

A report by the Hay Group on a survey of middle managers found that 38% of UK directors believe that their organization is paralyzed by an ineffective middle management, and a significant 40% identified this as the single greatest barrier to achieving company objectives. Also, over half (54%) of senior managers felt that middle managers were uncommitted to strategic goals.

Why the Lack of Productivity?
Midpros are different from the other three segments of employeesfreshers, juniors, and the senior management. Their uniqueness comes from firstly, the unique position in their personal lives and the associated priorities, and then, their professional preferences. Attention to family, rearing of kids, caring for aging parents, investing to create assets are some of the priorities in their personal lives. On the professional front, one critical aspect we realized was their alignment toward roles. At the fresher level, the anchoring of jobs is on aptitude, and at the junior level it is on the skills, while at the middle level it is on the roles. Roles are much more than skills, encompassing the organization context and function in which the knowledge and skills are applied. For example, midpros would like to get aligned to roles such as technical architect, delivery management, business analyst, consultant, business development, product development, etc. But, sadly, the importance of the alignment of midpros to roles is not well appreciated across the IT industry.

How to Correct the Situation?
Focus on three areas:
n Identify and deploy capabilities in appropriate roles:
Roles demand certain capabilities and also personal adjustments. Some are oriented toward technology, few toward management, and some toward both. Some roles are external focused while some others are internal focused. A few roles allow for immediate quantitative results to be seen, typically in a service environment, while others take a longer time for results to be seen, as one would observe in the product development environment. Then, different roles place different demands on individuals. Some may demand extensive travel, some may require long hours at work (within and outside of working hours), and some need a high degree of cross functional interaction and so on.

To start with, organizations need to invest time in understanding and describing the role. In our placement experience, we have seen situations when we get calls saying, We want a delivery manager. Thats it. One phraseDelivery Manager! We politely refuse to work on such a requirement, knowing very well that this is headed for disaster, both for the company and the incumbent. We had a colleague who was a great success when he was heading a practice for a leading services company. He moved to a product company and he failed to deliver. Reason: he was accustomed to seeing results on a daily basis. For him, a product company, where projects take a longer time to develop and execute, was a wrong place to be in. Predictably, he left within months and is now doing extremely well heading a practice in a large and fast growing IT services company. Describing the role in detail, understanding the profile of the person who could fit the role and evaluating for the fit, would help organizations in ensuring a good fit between the role and the midpros.

It is not just during an employees entry into a company that we need to pay careful attention to alignment with roles, but also when the employee is growing within the organization. As years go by, midpros become aware of what and where they are good at and what they are not. Organizations need to let them express these thoughts and decide what best can be done. The most common problem we have heard is that of technically-tuned professionals being placed in managerial roles and vice versa. Such wrong placements result in both the companies and the midpros losing out.

n Empathize with their life position and its demands: Given their unique life position, midpros need to be handled with a lot more care and empathy. They need to be listened to and understood, they need flexibility, they need to feel valued for their maturity.

In this fast paced economy, life is not easy. Even when work is interesting midpros can become unproductive, for the simple reason that they find it difficult to manage their life. The starting point is empathy. Unfortunately, HR is not geared to face this unique challenge. HR needs to have people with whom the midpros can relate and dialog.

The midpros need to be heard. Town hall meetings covering all sections of employees are fine, but we need to have dialogs with midpros, exclusively and periodically. Many things will surface out of such interactions and can be addressed. Maybe till the time we develop and identify seasoned and mature HR professionals for playing the role of empathizers (of midpros), we could try some options: create an online community exclusively for midpros within the company, let someone from the mid-career level take charge of this role full time, but not load them with transactions; or perhaps, we could get seasoned HR professionals to work on part-time basis in this role.

n Facilitate, but make midpros responsible: Adults learn best by experiencing things themselves or from the experiences of others. Organizations can at best create avenues for adults to experience and share experiences.

Are organizations really valuing learning and development at mid-career levels? Yes, some are. Particularly the bigger and more mature ones. But otherwise the scene is pretty bad. Maybe the industry is doing a fabulous job in training freshers, but the same cannot be said about mid-career professionals. At the fresher level, taking an approach of training them on skills and using similar methodology works well. At mid-career levels, the one program fits all approach doesnt work. With increasing differences in preferences for roles and preferences for learning methodologies, we need to carefully create mechanisms by which we can align the learning goals of the organization and the learning process of midpr

Starting with laying down the broad learning goals for the coming years, organizations could let individuals choose what they want to learn from these select areas, and in the manner they want. Whether they want to do satellite MBA programs, undergo certification courses in architecting, write and present papers, participate in forums, form a discussion group on a subject within the company, support them but let them take responsibility for the same.

Middle Level Needs Attention
As the Indian industry strides forward with ambitious growth plans and aspirations to move up the value chain, whilst facing increasing pressure on the bottomline, boththe organizations and the midproswill have to ensure that the constant value add at the middle level is maintained to fulfill the aspirations of the individuals and the organizations. I want to iterate that middle management professionals are a critical link between strategy and execution. They are placed uniquely in life and career. And, hence, organizations must pay attention to their unique needs and aspirations, create opportunities for developing and learning, nurture them and deploy them in the right roles, to guide them to leadership positions in future.

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