This session was really refreshing one and I was confident about this session as I have had read articles of Pankaj in Harvard Business Review and they were all very top class and was in fact looking forward for this one.

He agreed about the recession and his contention was that we (the IT industry) is not going back to horizon 2 or horizon 1 but to Horizon “0” where we don’t have the experience of dealing with it. His advice and recipe to deal with the impending are,

- Survive and Thrive is the mantra

- Reshape and don’t just retrench

o No blanket reduction in headcount

o No untargeted buyouts

o No LIFO approach in retrench

o No hiring freezes

o No moratorium on training and development

o No business as usual either in terms of bench management or outplacement

- Rebuild the organization

- Improve the bar on the quality expectations of the people

- Need to rebuild the industry’s collective reputation (which is tarnished of late)

- Resist protectionism

o His fear is that the new US government might impose it and might create problems for sure and it is not just government but there was data which showed most educated Americans felt the same way too and he said protectionism is not the right step forward.

- Reach beyond prices

- Re-structure the business

He mentioned a Warren Buffet quote which is “only when the tide goes down one will know who is swimming naked and who is not” comparing it to the downturn and who is well grounded and who are not.

He stressed on the metric of revenue per employee which he showed that the graph of the same versus time, the graph has flattened out in the last 7 to8 years and should be a reason for worry for the industry and this metric should be constantly measured.

He was not in favor of measurements over longer period especially in these periods as he mentioned, “in the long run we are all dead anyways”J.

He concluded the speech with a positive note that he has lot of hope on this industry and he feels has lot to offer and lot of potential too.

Manjunath M Gowda, S7 Software