Bench Strength is an interesting concept. I don’t know why they never taught us in our MBA program

Well after Ashish clarified the terminology and what he meant by bench strength, I have no disagreement with him. Attrition, illness, randomizations are some things a manger must plan for. That is part of doing business. No question about it.

Only slight disagreement I have with Ashish is when he applies this principle universally and says, “…(employees) acting as backup when there is need”. It sounds good in theory but in practice that need may never come. In practice you will be out of business if you are paying employees without some anticipation of true need. What prevents your competitor from hiring your best people when your competitor needs them? Are there processes in place in your business for not allowing your competitor to do just that? Most employers think this can’t happen to them. But I have seen this happening all the time.

What I am saying is backup is good thing for some businesses but it cannot be applied universally to all the businesses in same way. Businesses need to do Benefit/Cost Analysis for their unique situation.

In simple terms, each business should be able to put a $ (I also mean Rs not just dollars) figure for the Benefit each additional employee will provide (harder to compute $ figure due to some intangible benefits). Business should also be able to put a $ figure on the Cost each additional employee will incur (easy to compute $ figure, mostly tangible costs). In simple terms, higher $ for Benefits than $ for Costs indicates to the manager to hire an additional employee, and vice versa.

Some businesses need more backup than others.

Like I mention above, each business is unique, therefore, some businesses need more backup than others. For example if you are in the businesses of outsourcing or in the business of supplying temporary staff to other businesses, you need a good backup. In this case, you are much better of having backup because opportunity cost of not being able to serve a customer can be huge as compared to incurring a small cost of additional employees on bench.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can have a well managed commodity business, where demand is well known several months in advance. This is a very low margin business and only way to be competitive is, lower costs. In this scenario, you keep minimum number of employees that need to run the core functions. You outsource or hire temporary help on-demand. Ironically, we are taught a great deal about “Stick to your core” concept in our MBA program in US . In US, most business leaders believe in “sticking to the core” and outsourcing non-core activities. (How businesses define core vs. non-core is another discussion topic . Most companies fail to distinguish between the two. )

Now if you look at the big picture, these two distinct concepts (“bench strength” in India vs. “sticking to the core” in US) worked out good for both India and US. With its mindset, US was ready to outsource non-core activities, and India, with its mindset, was ready to accept the work as India has a large number of qualified people on bench. Timing could not have been perfect.

Jatinder, Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I agree with a few of your disagreements and I also disagree with another few By bench strength – I didn’t mean that people are not doing anything or they are free. I believe that every business need to have some buffer, some bench – just to guard against many things (attrition, illness, randomizations). The difference is that, like cricket, the bench is working on further developing their and the team capabilities and acting as backup when there is a need.

I liked your point of being able to attract talent globally. Point well taken

I liked your idea and out-of-the-box thinking that ‘Business is like Cricket’. Your post makes an interesting read. Since I am very passionate about Business and Cricket as well, I could not resist myself replying to your post. However, I tend to disagree with some of your logic.

Starting small and having bench-strength

This particular logic of cricket teams does not apply to business. In business you really don’t need bench-strength, meaning you do not need any of your employee to be on bench or without enough work. All employees should be working and producing efficiently (to almost full capacity) at all times for a business to be competitive.

Your analogy of Kenya, saying, “Total number of players playing the game is so small that there isn’t much of a concept of bench strength” is also flawed and does not apply to business.

First Kenya is limited to picking players from her limited pool of players in Kenya. Similarly India is limited to picking players from her limited pool of Indian players. But this limitation does not exist in business. In business, you are free to attract talent from other companies. And why only limit to local companies, you are free to attract talent globally. If a company says it is unable to attract talent, that company should close its business as it will be out of business sooner of later anyways.

Second, in this highly competitive global economy companies that will win are not the ones that have bench-strength or buffers but are companies that can tap on strength of other companies (strategic alliances is just one example) or attract talent globally on-demand (outsourcing is just one example).

Flamboyance is exciting but substance is preferred

“…this does not mean that the products from the smaller companies are any inferior – it is just the ‘comfort factor’ that makes a small company lose.”

I agree with you that the products from the smaller companies are not necessary inferior. However, the term ‘comfort factor’ you are using is in fact capability of a company. It is not about the size of the company, it is about how mature are your processes. Or how mature are your capabilities. A company can be very big but can still be immature on some of its processes; on the other hand, a small company can be quite mature on some of its processes. For example, a company can have a star programmer who produces excellent software products but if that star programmer leaves the company, there are no processes in place to replace the programmer and produce excellent products consistently.
(Note: Jatinder Kapur is six sigma black belt and teaches process improvement to management professionals through American Society for Quality (ASQ))

Importance of each team player

One important analogy between cricket and business that you have missed is “contribution and importance of each team player”. In cricket, there are bowlers, wicket keeper, batsman, fielders, etc. No one player is more important than other. Every one has a distinct role to play to win the match. This is very true in business as well. Some team members are good at marketing, some at product development, some at handling finances, some at building teams, some at influencing others, and some at analyzing the business landscape better than its competitors. Again no one-team member is more important than other. Business cannot win unless all team members work with cohesiveness and crystal clear vision.