‘Yohanisation’ and ‘skill marketing’

Yohani’s musical journey, her educational and international exposure, her language proficiency, her skills development in singing and music, her family background, and networks and socialisation, have been the right exposure to emerge and sustain in the industry

• Could Yohani be the second case for Rani Mundal in India?

What is ‘Yohanisation’? It’s all about the outstanding musical invasion of singer Yohani in the international arena. Uniqueness of Yohanisation is characterised with Yohani’s musical journey, her background, her educational and international exposure, her language proficiency, and her skills development in signing and music, her family background, and networks and socialisation. 

Yohanisation is a great example for all Sri Lankans on exemplary skills development. The creativity that is based on short-sighted and myopic mindset, and tunnel visioning will not expand local performance to international level. The standards for judging quality that are based on such narrowly defined creativity involves mismatches with what the rest of the world accepts. For an example, almost 200 million people around the world accepted Yohani’s performance, and they enjoyed ‘Manike Mage Hithe’; though it is simply composed with enticing lyrics, Yohani’s unique voice and tonality added a new flavour to the original version, sung by Satheesan, that brought Yohani’s new cover song to first hit the Indian music industry that started outflowing to the Middle-East, Europe, and then sluggishly in the USA. 

But, within the local context we don’t hear that song, played in the main media, and only the social media promotes it. It seems that the main media is not interested in this outperformance as we still could not see many public appearances of Yohani for interviews with the main media, except some news clips. This local neutrality and Indians’ craziness in responding to Yohani’s song mean that what the world accepts is not necessarily accepted within the premises of Sri Lanka. 

In other words, it shows us what our people accept as good quality or standardised performance is different to what the rest of the world perceives as what they are. Performing to confirm the local standards that ignore what the world prefers is a main cause for lack of international appearance and acceptance of local talents. This stands as a main barrier in the skill marketing of our people which I introduce to combine both HRM and Marketing together for fruitful people development. 

The concept of skill marketing is basically, making our skills valued by the others leading them to demand and buy our skills. The skills may be sport skills, singing skills, business skills, management skills or any other types skills. Sri Lanka has good cases for skill marketing in practice in the apparel industry, IT and software industry, and cricket. Yohanisation can be such a first instance in the country’s music industry for going global. I define skill marketing as ‘an activity, a set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging skills as offerings that have value for those who consume or use them’. Like in 4Ps in marketing, I propose 5Ss for skills marketing: ‘Skills’; ‘Scale’, ‘Salary’, ‘Spot’, and ‘Sell’ which I would like to elaborate in another article. 

In the skill marketing process, we need to focus more on what rest of the world really values. Accordingly, our skills should be sharpened, and finetuned. Good talents decaying and dying after remaining only ‘within’, mainly due to the lack of confidence and know-how to go out of local norms and flavours. Skill marketing is needed to break this ‘downward spiral of underperformance’. 

There are some good lessons for us to learn from Yohanisation, that arouse me to conceptualise the new concept of skill marketing with its few salient characteristics, discussed here below. 

Exposure

This emphasises obtaining the right grooming in your field to perform. Factors such as family background, education and training, network and socialisation, are important to appear as a performer. Simply, ‘one must do homework and practice prior to perform’. Yohani’s musical journey, her educational and international exposure, her language proficiency, and her skills development in singing and music, her family background, and networks and socialisation have been the right exposure to emerge and sustain in the industry.  

Strategic imitation

At the initial stage of Yohani’s music endeavour, she started picking up some songs that had touched the hearts of people of Sri Lanka. Initially, she mainly depended on singing those songs, may be, with a caution of obtaining the consent of the original singers. Such strategic imitation enables us to earn a sudden or quick or prompt attention of the community that is important to boost the moral and confidence of being successful. Strategic imitation on the other hand reduces the risk of being failed. Yohani was successful in this phase. Once you build your confidence, then you need to analyse the world trends. 

Trend analysis

At this stage, it is important to ‘wait and see’ the feedback you receive from people on your success or performance on how they accept you. People’s criticisms, comments, and compliments will be useful in this regard. 

The new trend in the field and the globe needs to be analysed in capitalising on the opportunities and neutralising the threats. Ignorance of trend analysis, sometimes, causes your sudden death in the field, though you are just born. Besides, such failures will destroy you in the face of calamities and ‘storms’ in the field. 

A critical factor in being successful in the trend analysis phase is your success in the first phase — ‘exposure’. Your, education, training, backgrounds, networks, and all other aspects of your social grooming and the maturity you have obtained in this phase will decide your accuracy and the success in this phase. Failure of such analysis may cause your quick rejection by people. 

A good example is the overnight rise and fall of Ranu Modal in India. Mere imitation with no proper exposure did not enable her to be successful in the analysis phase, causing her sudden collapse. A successful trend analysis brings you to the third stage, that is adaptation. 

Adaptation

This is all about changing your initial strategy of being successful with the feedback and trend analysis. Your initial strategy of imitation should be carefully analysed as now you are at a critical juncture of making your identity clear in the field. This is mainly a phase of changing and adapting to the new situations. This change involves four aspects. The first is the ‘cognitive adaptation’. This involves shaping one’s attitudes, values, motivations and qualities like endurance and firmness in responding or facing to the criticisms and unfavourable events after the first phase of performance that may sometimes make you down.

Becoming cognitively strong enable you to heal your mind for carefully selecting the next cause of actions. In the case of Yohani’s endeavour, it is known that she was exposed to some rejections by her own seniors in the field. Once, a famous singer, in a main television program, refused to work with Yohani, in front of her, when she expressed her willingness to work with him. The reaction of Yohani to that on stage was heart touching and I am sure she has answered to that singer rightly that shows the power of cognitive adaptation.  

With the cognitive adaptation, what you need to next achieve is the ‘body adaptation’. Body adaptation prepares you to build the right body condition that rightly fits with the next wave of your performance phase. This includes the way you dress; your body stature and colour; your accent of walking, taking and behaving; and your fitness, that in overall shape your personality to respond to the next strategic phase. Your discipline and commitment are crucial in this adaptation. 

The transformation of Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, and even Yohani is noteworthy here. New protocols in physical fitness training in cricket in selecting people for national teams is another example for testing such body adaptation. 

Performance adaptation

This refers to the decision to be carefully taken with regard to the performance expectations, performance activities and performance measures, new strategies of performance, and motivation for such new performance. 

This is your actions, taken in the second phase after obtaining feedback, analysis, and body and mind adaptations. So, you should be well-aware of how you should change your performance to which direction so that ultimately you can capture the minds and touch the hearts of people. Your agility and flexibility determine the success of your efforts in this regard. 

Contextual adaptation

Performance adaptation is simultaneous with the next adaptation, called ‘contextual adaptation’. Having emerged in a particular context, does not demand you to think that you really belong only there. Defining your next context to be operated or performed is a crucial decision. Few options are available in this regard: to continue further within the same context; to vertically connect with a new context; to horizontally connect with a new context, to operate within multiple contexts; or to abandon the former and focus on a new context. An evaluation of facilitations and hindrances that are available in different contexts enables you to assess your future success or failures. 

For Sri Lanka, India is the most potential context for many skills and talents, but ignored. India, being a world for worlds, provides many opportunities for Sri Lanka. Diversity across different states of India is a great bless for Sri Lankan talents. Yohani’s popularity and level of acceptance is different in different states of India. Another context that Sri Lankan talents can have opportunities is the African continent. Africans’ mind is free and changeable, except in some tribunal societies. 

On the other hand, Sri Lanka’s rich culture and heritance can be properly positioned within the African countries due to the fact that competencies in terms of skills and training, and the conditions of human development in Sri Lanka is better than in Africa. Such new contexts need to be further evaluated, perhaps those are not very much popular. Yohani’s physical appearance in India is an example of new context analysis after the first level of success. 

Method adaptation

With the contextual adaptation, one needs to think about the ‘method adaptation’ which, decides how you access and drive with the new context. it’s all about skill promotion and doing general marketing and adoption of new practices, technologies and so forth that I called ‘know-how and how-do’. Studying about alternative approaches that someone else has tested is important at this stage as a risk minimising effort. Methods from the local ground and foreign contexts need to be assessed. A mixture of methods to have synergetic effect is a probable solution to hit new contexts. Innovating new methods rather than mixing or copying is another approach to be applied here.

Management adaptation

Management adaptation refers to managing all available resources in reaching out to one’s goals. Here, it involves various kinds of management. Financial management, resource utilisation, general marketing, human resource management for working with the right people, and other fields of management. So, in my skill marketing, management comes under management adaptation. 

After the phase of adaptation, the next move is to upgrade or update. 

Upgradation and updating

Upgradation and updating aims at refreshing your competency profile. Doing one’s homework through relevant learning and training exercises is essential. 

Though this development phase is presented here, it should be concurrent with all other phases as a day-to-day operational matter. This leads you to thinking and working for your next capacity enhancement level. 

Current performance is led by the old capacity, and for the future performance, we need to make sure that we possess a new capacity level. 

This is needed to avoid decaying or going outdated in the face of competitions. Your survival depends on how successful you are in your upgradation. Value analysis is the final phase of skill marketing. 

Value analysis

At this phase, you again consider the feedback you received and what people talk about you in different contexts you operated, specially, how your fan base or demanders or clients perceive about your performance delivery. 

This again reactivates the phases of skill marketing from strategic imitation. Yohanisation that I used to explain my theory of skill marketing, still needs to complete the stages of contextual adaptation, upgradation and value analysis as such evidence is yet to come. 

We have to further observe how Yohani manages India and other new performance contexts, how she outperforms her own strategy of imitation by new selected performance strategies, how she further enhances her capacity and finally the value that the rest of the world gives to her. In the meantime, we will wish Yohani all the success for her future endeavours in conquering the world’s musical arena. 

(The writer is a Senior Lecturer and Consultant in HRD and HRM.)