Three mega trends

30.09.2011
Three mega trends are creating a 'perfect storm' in our world: economic crisis and lack of leadership, changing consumers, and changing employees.

Global IT services company HCL's vice president and CEO, Vineet Nayar said this at a gathering of HCL employees, business partners, customers, media professionals and analysts in Singapore on 29th September (Thursday). He was sharing his views on the future of technology and trends that are shaping the world and how organisations can lead the change through disruptive management.

Nayar sees a vacuum in global leadership as a US-dominated world of the past is becoming history. "There is a need for an alternative point of view in the G-20 leadership," he said. "The world needs a collaborative working style but I don't see it happening. Countries are making politically correct decisions in their own context but those decisions are politically incorrect in the world's context."

Nayar sees a global slowdown for sometime because of indecisiveness in Europe, failure of collective decision-making in the US, China battling her own internal problems and struggling to assert herself globally, India being frozen because of internal politics, Japan struggling with her financial woes, and the Middle East facing revolutions. In this scenario, he said, "we will just drift along".

At the same time, he said, the consumers are changing. According to Nayar, brand loyalty is dead and the Gen 'Y' in the emerging countries is responding to brands based on their perceptions, shaped and strengthened by their peers through social media. He said that this Gen 'Y' is more receptive to the emerging local brands.

Along with the consumers, the employees are also changing. "Employees don't trust us and yet we ask for their passion and energy," he said. "Employee expectation is different today. Bring employees at the centre of your solution."