Effect of Endocrine System on Human Behaviour
Nervous system protects our body from various dangers by following a sequence of interpretation and reaction to the stimuli. Endocrine system secretes chemicals called hormones throughout our body which influence our feelings, moods and behaviour. Endocrine system is composed of glands which is a group of cells that secrete hormones. Various glands perform various functions […]
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo: Convicted Criminals?
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are arguably the best soccer players in the world. Their performance in the recently concluded FIFA World Cup was highly viewed as well as highly scrutinized by the critics. Their fans often argue and even fight over who is better than the other. Their supremacy over the soccer field is […]
What Should Companies do to Actualize Collective Knowledge Management
The Internal Dilemma of Employees Unwilling to Share Knowledge Managing the accumulated and discrete knowledge in an organization can be tricky. For instance, organizations might have knowledge about processes and projects that are distributed across the organization and not collated and centralized in one repository. This is where an effective knowledge management that centralizes and […]
Companys Risk vs. Project Risk
In the past module, we concentrated on calculating the returns part of the project. All our articles were focused on calculating cash flows and we saw the various special cases that arise while determining cash flows and determined how we must deal with them. This module is all about the other component i.e. risk. The […]
Disadvantages of the BPO Phenomenon
In previous articles, we looked at the humungous benefits that the BPO phenomenon brings to the economies of the host and the target nations. Mainly, we focused on how cost savings for the companies outsourcing their back office work and increased revenues for the companies doing the outsourced work have been actualized leading to a […]
A common problem across organizations in the contemporary corporate world is about person dependence and the ways and means to manage person dependence. The term person dependence refers to the phenomenon wherein the organizations are overly dependent on individuals for their success and even for day-to-day operations.
For instance, companies like Apple and Microsoft were dependent on their founders (Steve Jobs and Bill Gates respectively) to find new business models and to come up with innovative ideas that are game changers for them.
Similarly, in India, Infosys is heavily dependent on its founders for inspiration and ideas for growth as is evident from the troubles that the company has been going through in recent times with the retirement of its founders. These are some of the big-ticket companies that are overly dependent on individuals.
The banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are also examples of companies where there is too much reliance on the CEO’s and the top management without which they flounder for lack of guidance and are adrift without direction.
The point here is that excessive dependence on individuals is fraught with risk as we live in an uncertain world where anything can happen to anyone anywhere.
On an operational level, there are many companies that are dependent on individuals at the middle management level without whom the success of the organizations is in jeopardy. Further, many project teams in organizations often depend heavily on key team members or project managers without whom the project teams cannot function efficiently and profitably.
The key aspect here is that organizations must reduce their person dependence because the individuals might quit, take emergency leave because of personal exigencies, and in the extreme cases, might even die which means that once the individual is not in the picture, the organizations that have learnt to depend on them would be directionless.
Apart from this, there are many startups and SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) where the entire setup is run by a few individuals or a single individual and as mentioned earlier, if any of the risks come true, then these companies are in the danger of folding up.
On a personal level, many of us would have visited hospitals, service providers, and legal offices where a single doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer holds forth and when we visit them for assistance, if that person is not around, our work is not done or is postponed.
Therefore, there is a need for any organization, big or small, to develop contingency plans in case of the key individuals being absent and this is a critical and crucial aspect of business continuity management that every organization must put in place and plan for.
There are many multinationals like Citigroup, Fidelity, and P&G that make their employees go on mandatory leave for a few weeks every year so that the rest of the teams and the organization learns to operate without them.
The rationale being that any individual is replaceable and is not indispensable when it concerns the organization. This practice along with having continuity plans in case the key employees or for that matter any employee is absent from the scene, is essential in this 24/7 real time business landscape where the need of the hour is for the show to go on despite any setback.
Moreover, person dependence is dangerous as the other employees learn to take it easy secure in the knowledge that the individual on whom they depend on a day-to-day basis would step in case of any crisis.
Finally, the requirement of many risk management agencies and process maturity certification institutions is for organizations to prove their person independence for them to certify the organizations as having managed risk or achieving process maturity. This is the reason why many companies in recent times have started the task of making themselves person independent.
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What the Current Wave of Protectionism and Populism mean for the Future of Globalization and Free Trade
February 12, 2025
