Build global talent shortage into planning

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Andrew

The global water talent market looks increasingly constrained, with a shortage of mid-level talent even in countries with high levels of unemployment. I cannot emphasise enough that you should build high salaries and talent-shortages into your business planning.

We are observing the most severe talent shortages in Brazil and China, where it is very difficult for global companies to identify English speaking talent with a reasonable level of techical knowledge and relevant experience. I will reiterate that companies should not expect to pay substantially lower salaries for high-impact professionals in China than they would in Europe or North America.

In Brazil they can expect to pay more.

Australia continues to lead the world on water industry salaries, with another resources investment boom working its way through the economy; mine infrastructure construction is sucking up the tiny amount of spare capacity that was there previously. Expect to pay between 1.5x and 2.5x what you would pay in Europe or North America for junior-mid-level Engineering talent.

For high-impact, strategic hires (H2Otalent‘s specialty) you should be prepared to offer both competitive salaries and a compelling organisational structure and strategy. See my earlier post on attracting leaders here.

Even more critically you should have a policy in place for opportunistically hiring and utilising water leadership talent even when you do not have a formal vacancy in your organisation. The alternative is to make-do with whoever happens to be available when you have a vacancy, which could mean the best people going to your competitors.

Filed under: China, china water, industry trends, Uncategorized, water careers, water industry trends | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

China and Point-Of-Use

Posted on June 15, 2011 by Andrew

Could China be bypassing the centralised potable water treatment paradigm and skipping straight to POU?

I recently attended Aquatech China in Shanghai, the biggest water technology trade show in China. There were hundreds of Chinese membrane manufactures present, with both high-pressure and low-pressure membrane solutions.  Most were targeting the domestic market, and it was clear that the government endorsed strategy to grow a domestic membrane industry is working.

More interestingly though, at least half, and perhaps two thirds of the exhibitors were selling  point-of-use products. Over the years I have heard many  people argue that it is ridiculous to send potable quality water through the network for all household use, when only a tiny fraction of the water consumed is actually for human consumption. Third-pipe systems are an alternative, but require costly duplication of infrastructure.

The alternative is to send partially treated water down the network and have consumers treat their own water at point-of-use. This idea is an anathema to those steeped in the John Snow school of taking control away from the consumer for their own good, and seems unlikely to get anywhere in developed countries.

In China however, where the availability of high quality potable water out of the tap is far from universal, but a relatively wealthy and educated middle-class is growing rapidly, demand for high quality potable water is resulting in a high demand for point-of-use treatment solutions.

I wonder if the bulk of China’s cities may bypass the John Snow paradigm and move straight to consumer control of their own water quality.

Filed under: China, china water, Uncategorized, utility management, water industry trends | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

Water Leadership – the H2Otalent doctrine

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Andrew

The global water industry is going through a transition. A transition from  an industry focused on the incremental improvement of a century-old water management paradigm, to an adaptive industry that can manage the rapid and dramatic changes occuring  in climate, technology and society.

Incremental improvement and rapid adaption require very different leadership approaches, and this has created  a leadership deficit throughout the industry.

This is complicated by the fact that water management is one of the most challenging wicked problems we face. It has more stakeholders than any other industry, making for a highly complex socio-enviro-political environment. It intersects pretty much every human endeavour, meaning to optimise water management at a society/ecology-wide level is a task of extreme complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty.

Leadership is this kind of environment is really as hard as it gets.

In this post I am putting forward a universal model for leadership in the water sector. This is based on H2Otalent’s experience recruiting across the sector, as well as the latest thought on leadership in complex systems. I would love to get readers views on this set of leadership qualities/strategies as this is just one step of an iterative process.

Leaders need not be managers, and leadership can be displayed at all levels of organizations, as well as outside organizational structures. Leadership is also much more about what you do than who you are.

1. Self-Aware
Having a good understanding of ones self is absolutely the most critical leadership skill. If you don’t know your own strengths and weaknesses, and your own biases and tendencies, you will never be able to lead effectively because you will not be able to manage yourself. Self-awareness naturally leads to an understanding of others.

2. Internal locus of control

Individuals with an internal locus of control fundamentally believe that they can influence outcomes (rather than being the victims of circumstance), and are willing to take responsibility for outcomes.

3. Visionary
In a changing environment leaders must drive for change, and that requires clarity, a big-picture perspective, and a vision of what can be.

4. Authentic
People will follow you if they believe what you believe. Leaders must take a position and be true to their values

5. Enabling
Leaders must empower others to act. You can achieve nothing on your own. This requires giving authority and control to others, not just delegating tasks.

6. Emergent
While leaders must provide vision and values, in complex environments it is better to allow solutions and tactics to emerge in a bottom-up way rather than take a hierarchical directive approach. In complex environments undergoing rapid change, there is no way that one person can always know the right course of action. It is the leaders responsibility to create an environment where this is possible, and let go of certainty over outcomes.

7. Experimenting

Complex system environments are non-deterministic, so planning and forecasting are often doomed to fail. The best way to test ideas is by trying them, and trying lots of them.  Leaders must provide an environment where early stage failure is encouraged, so that major failures can be avoided.

8. Disruptive

Continuous adaption to a changing environment is much more desirable than the step-change phenomenon that tends to occur in natural systems when a system is pushed beyond its level of resilience by external change and collapses. Leaders need to be able to continue disrupt the status quo to provide room for change

9.Transcendent

Powerful leaders have the ability to consider a choice of two or more undesirable alternatives, reject both and find a third previously non-existent path which combines the positives of both.

Readers, tell me why I am wrong and where I am right on this list of key leadership qualities/approaches. Different parts of the industry will have radically different perspectives, so I am keen to hear them.

Filed under: IWM, Leadership, Uncategorized, water resource management | Tagged: | 3 Comments »

Japan Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Andrew

The scale of the disaster caused by the Tsunami in Japan last week must be unprecedented in modern times. It is absolutely chilling.

As a former long term resident of Japan I have been getting most of my fine-grain news from the facebook updates of friends on the ground in Tokyo and in Chiba and Ibaraki prefectures.

An interesting lesson to come out of the disaster is that the only one of my friends in Ibaraki that currently has water supply and electricity is the one with his own solar PV array and his own well.

In a disaster situation the benefits of decentralized systems are abundantly clear. The resilience of decentralized systems should be given a weighting in decision making…resilience can trump efficiency.

I would also like to make a prediction, which is that many of the towns most seriously damaged by the Tsunami will never be properly rebuilt.

Japan’s rural and small town population was already in rapid decline due to their fast aging population. Now with many towns suffering the death of more than half their residents and the horror associated with the location for the survivors, as well as the environmental contamination in the area, who will have the spirit or desire to rebuild?

I believe that with the exception of Sendai, which has sufficient scale to stand alone and has a large area of high ground which was not inundated, there will be no rebuilding worth speaking of anywhere North of Iwaki in coastal Tohoku. Small towns and cities need other small towns and cities around them to survive.

The bulls who are expecting an economic resurgence in Japan on the back of the reconstruction driven building boom will be disappointed.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Decentralised solutions gaining momentum

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Andrew

In a small suburban development on the far western outskirts of Sydney’s urban sprawl, the city’s first suburb-wide, privately owned decentralised wastewater reuse scheme is about to start construction. The development is Vermont, in Pitt Town.

The privately-run scheme will collect sewerage from 900 houses and deliver third-pipe recycled water back to the same homes for a slightly lower price than the state-owned utility currently provides drinking water. The scheme will operate under a new regulatory frame-work specifically designed to encourage new market entrants, and I would imagine that it could be highly profitable, given that they will be collecting sewerage rates on top of the price of the recycled water but only have to run one plant. I suspect that the cost of constructing and maintaining a third-pipe is not dramatically higher than maintaining two.

No doubt the recycled water will be plumbed directly into the toilets and gardens of the homes before purchase, so they have a captive market.

Small scale reuse schemes seem likely eat away at the market of major utilities by providing decentralised solutions to outlying suburbs and small communities. The major utilities are vulnerable in the locations where pumping distance and geography erode the efficiencies of large centralised plants.

 If the population ever accepts recycled sewerage as potable water then the decentralised business model becomes dramatically more compelling. If you can bundle in stormwater harvesting then you are really talking.

It seems to me that if the major utility business are able to create divisions that specialise in operating and maintaining decentralised schemes, then there is no need for them to lose that market share to smaller players. For better or worse I think that they are unlikely to do this. Large utilities tend to be big, lumbering, heavily unionised beasts that are impossible to steer and which crush innovation.

A smart utility executive interested in entering a more lightly regulated market might see an opportunity to create a 100% owned subsidiary with a separate management structure to target these potentially highly profitable opportunities. It would require a far less hierarchical management approach and very lean and very smart operations. They will need to select executives and management who know water and sewer well, but who also have an entreprenurial mind-set and the ability to rapidly innovate.

If they don’t, then they can kiss that market share goodbye.

Filed under: utility management, water industry trends, water resource management, WSUD | Tagged: | 8 Comments »

talent – THE source of sustainable competitive advantage

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Andrew

One of our market contacts that delivers white label package treatment plants and skids recently informed us that clients are increasingly willing to accept copies of well-known water product brands produced in countries with minimal intellectual property protection.

So with intellectual property increasingly under assault as a source of competitive advantage, how can organisations survive with reasonable margin in the water industry?

It will come as no surprise to readers that in my view, talent is the only true source of competitive advantage. As long as you have an innovative R&D team in your organisation, you can keep ahead of the imitators.

With the water industry capex set to grow at around 6% year-on-year for the next five 5 years (Global Water Intelligence) the competition for that talent will remain intense.

So how do you attract and retain the best people? The good news is that most organisations are not very good at this so it is easy to outperform. The bad news is that your organisation is probably one of the bad ones.

Here are my top three tips.

1. Have a coherent strategy! 

I rarely come across a company in the water industry that has a coherent strategy which all members of the organisation are able to articulate clearly.

Smart people know that working in a company without a coherent, comprehensive strategy can be hell. Have a great story to tell…people love a great story. Make sure it makes sense from every angle because great people will see any inconsistencies.

2. Give real responsibility with accountability

 Great people want agency. You must give your star employees the room to do great things. If you have the high-level strategy in place then micro-management will be unnecessary.

3. Be generous

Reward high achievers. Give your people the best technological support available. Make their work lives comfortable. Give them access to plenty of training and development opportunities.

                                          -

If you can nail these three things then you are well on the way to attracting and retaining the top people, and achieving sustainable competitive advantage.

Filed under: career management, China, employer branding, industry trends, Leadership, water careers, Work/life | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

China and the Global Water Talent Market

Posted on December 21, 2010 by Andrew

In spite of the ongoing rocky global financial situation, H2Otalent has been busy, and the fact that I have not posted to this blog for six months (sorry!) is a good indicator of this.

We can largely thank China for this…as a resources industry exposed Asia-Pacific based business we are inside the China growth bubble.

I am convinced that China is going to continue to be the main water industry growth story for the forseeable future, both due to the big catch-up job they have on their hands with municipal and industrial water and wastewater treatment, but also because China is so water resource constrained that they are going to need a lot of technology to facilitate further growth.

It makes sense then that at least one leading global water technology business is running their global water business out of China. This glocalisation trend makes a lot of sense, because if you don’t get your head around doing business from what recently became the world’s second biggest economy, you can bet that the China based business that is eyeing off your market is going to enter with a significant cost-advantage.

This glocalisation trend creates a very interesting talent dynamic, because multinationals then need to employ international business savy Chinese engineers without driving up their China cost base excessively.

In my view they are going to have to accept, as Chinese firms will have to do, that the talent cost of running a global business out of China is going to be higher than running a domestic one. The only way to find Chinese engineers who have extensive multinational experience is to pull expats back from overseas, and these guys have mortgages and kids in school in Sydney or LA, and are not in a position to take salary cuts to work back in China…even if they want to.

H2Otalent is setting up a Shanghai office in January ’11, primarily to serve global water businesses operating in China. See you there!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Aquaporin – disruptive treatment biotech

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Andrew

I have to confess I am a little behind the eight-ball on this one, as the potential of aquaporins has already been extensively covered in Global Water Intelligence, but aquaporin based membranes certainly look to have the potential to be a truely disruptive treatment technology.

Put simply, aquaporins are proteins that occur in cells and regulate the passage of water. Rather than being osmosis powered, aquaporins recognise H2O by its electrostatic potential, and water molecules pass in single-file through protein tubes.

According to Danfoss, one of the two Danish firms attempting to take Aquaporin based technologies to market, Aquaporin membranes will use 70% less energy, and be 5 times more efficient than RO.

Looks like a truely disruptive biomimetic technology, which is remarkably close to market.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Aquamembrane

Filed under: industry trends | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Next Big Thing

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Andrew

I am confident now that the Next Big Thing in water in Australia will be urban stormwater harvesting for potable water supply.

 Why do I think this?

We recently heard here that our population is forecast to almost double in the next 40 years. Australia’s most densely populated south east corner has already experienced dramatic falls in average rainfall, and this is expected to worsen with climate change. Perth has already experienced this http://andrewkable.com/2009/06/19/step-change-next-decades-key-concept/ .

Meeting the water demands of population growth with declining rainfall will require every water supply and demand management option available.

Desalination will of course remain a growth area in spite of its challenges, but the big desal boom is already well underway and the market is already highly competitive. Potable  Reuse faces such high levels of societal pushback that it is politically very tricky.

As we have seen in Perth, conventional catchments experience dramatic falls in yield under climate-change conditions. Because of increased evapotranspiration and drying soils, the reduction in run-off far exceeds the fall in rainfall. Much less water gets to dams. Also our dams tend to be 100kms or so inland, and those catchments are very vulnerable to geographical shifts in rainfall patterns.

Our major cities however are all immediately next to the ocean, and get reliable rainfall. Urban impermeable surfaces are not effected by the evapotranspiration and dry soils effects, so urban water harvesting is a climate-change resilient option for water supply.

For the past 10 years or so, capacity to deliver stormwater harvesting solutions has been increasing, and Australia’s first potable stormwater harvesting scheme was commissioned last year in Orange, NSW, last year.

Delivering urban stormwater harvesting solutions requires water providers to go far outside their traditional scope. The only way to make it cheap and effective is to build your urban area around water sensitive urban design principles. This means that everyone has to get involved, from the urban planning phase onward.

If you are going to be involved in the Next Big Thing, how will you respond to the challenge of stormwater harvesting and WSUD?

Filed under: industry trends, utility management, water resource management, WSUD | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Water management crisis – victims of our own success

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Andrew

Watching a video on Circle of Blue recently, one comment jumped out at me.

Paul Reiter, Executive Director of the IWA made the point that in industrialised countries, engineers have been so successful in solving two of the main water issues (providing potable water to the home and removing wastewater from the home), that water is no longer front-of-mind for most people; in fact it is completely taken for granted.

In countries without these sophisticated and costly engineering solutions, water and sanitation management is time consuming, and often takes much of their time and energy.

Removing water and sanitation from urban people’s conciousness has had serious repercussions.

Firstly they abuse the service because they are not stakeholders in its management, they are simply end-users who bear little or no cost of that abuse. They now believe it is their right to have unlimited potable water come out of the tap at their house.

During the water supply crisis in Brisbane, Australia, people were temporarily prepared to cut back their use, tolerate large expenditure on infrastructure, and support innovative solutions like planned potable reuse, but as soon as the immediate crisis was over they returned to the passive user role, demanding water on their terms.

Successful water managers are going to have to somehow get the community to participate in planning decisions. This will involve getting through to people that getting hundreds of  litres of  potable water piped to their house everyday is actually a massive challenge, which has been accomplished to-date at significant economic, environmental and social cost. If they want to continue getting this service in a changing climate they are going to have to make compromises, and pay more!

Filed under: IWM, Uncategorized, utility management, water resource management | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.