Continuing Education for Employees: Consistent Strength for Organizations

Two things never stand still in life; the first, of course, is time, and the second, less recognized, is knowledge. Knowledge gained through education is the prime ticket for career entry. Thereafter, consummate application of such formal knowledge as well as experiential knowledge gained in one’s career is the key to further progress in career. Industrial and business organizations are paradoxical. At one level, they are at the leading edge of technology. At another level, they tend to stagnate at past levels of knowledge, which is attributed mainly to employees being engaged in repetitive jobs and not being challenged to be at contemporary standards of knowledge.  A study of different companies reveals that those companies which invest in continuing education for their employees tend to be more competitive.

Continuing education even in the best of companies is a misnomer. Usually, it is limited to providing “canned programmes” to a proportion of employees, “allowing” a few employees to pursue formal part-time degree or higher degree programmes, and “sponsoring” even fewer to executive development programmes. Some companies eschew all of these on the basis that there is no substitute for on-the-job-training on a continuing basis. These policies cause a stagnation of skill levels and lead to competitive decline. In some cases, companies which are impacted by competitive decline engage external consultants at an aggressive pace and at great costs to reinvent themselves. In contrast to such uncoordinated efforts, it would be more appropriate to embed continuous learning in organisational culture, with emphasis on contemporaneity and quality rather than just coverage.

Shared responsibility

Continuing education is a shared responsibility of both the company and employees. While the company has a lead responsibility in articulating that it places a premium on knowledge, and following it up with a learning environment, employees also need to consider continuing education as their responsibility too. In fact, continuing education is a very useful platform to align the career possibilities that a company can offer and the career expectations that an employee has. Continuing education helps in that it could derive greater competitiveness through skilled-up employees and be in a position to offer them better opportunities.  For employees it is an opportunity to offer a superior or different value proposition to the company and seek career progression in the same or different track.

The extent to which responsibility for continuing education is felt by company and employees varies based on the business context. Start-ups by definition are innovative and, where required, learn by experimentation; they are likely to have little penchant for continuing education. Growing firms evidently are competitive and successful but also cost conscious; they are likely to adopt a need based approach for continuing education. Mature firms are engaged in defensive strategies and are likely to be open to a skill based approach for continuing education. Declining firms are engaged in survival strategies and are likely to have little time for continuing education. While employees may like to prefer a degree or skill based approach, the company context determines their approach.

Multiple approaches

Companies could adopt one of the three approaches in fulfilling their share of responsibility. The first is a ‘qualification gap’ based approach. In this approach, the company determines an optimal qualification for each role (as contrasted with minimal qualification required for entry) and encourages acquisition of degrees or certifications/accreditations for bridging the gap. The second is a ‘competitiveness gap’ based approach. In this approach, the company maps people competencies to company’s competitiveness and does whatever is required to make the company competitive. The third is an ‘industry leadership’ approach. In this approach, the company believes in a heady mix of superlative qualifications and competitive competencies for a differentiated performance. While most companies would follow the first or second approach, top ranking consulting firms, law firms and investment banking firms appear to be following the third approach.

Employees’ approach to continuing education, by and large, depends on the nature of the company. A technology and research intensive industry will require skills that are typically offered in leading educational institutions. Skills required for other industries may be more easily sourced in the general marketplace. Regardless, in general the approach tends to favour the acquisition of higher formal degrees. Whether employees do it through part time education or by taking a break depends on personal circumstances, company environment as well as career shift that is desired. Research indicates that employees do not consider in-house training as being supportive of career aspirations; they also consider external short term courses as little more than of marginal support for either on the job performance or career shift.

Education as mind-set

The primary objective of industries and businesses is to provide products and services, and not to educate. Similarly the primary objective of industrial and business employees is to put their knowledge to use. To conceive, therefore, of a situation where industries and businesses as well as employees focus only on education is somewhat impractical. However, the need for continuing education as brought out above is critical. The blog post suggests a few mind-set approaches to accomplish the objectives.

Continuous as lifelong

The first is to consider continuous as really meaning lifelong. As a concept, continuous education has lesser emotional connectivity to an individual than lifelong education. Once an individual gets into a mind-set that education is a lifelong, value adding process, he or she will surely develop ownership. Similarly, it focusses to the company that the continuous education initiative would need to be a part of life skill development of an employee. The concept of ‘lifelong’ is humbling as well as futuristic, for both employees and companies.  

Company as campus

Companies take many structural approaches to supporting their versions of continuing education. These include setting up their own in-house technical training centres with pilot equipment for on-hands training and management development centres for development of executive and managerial skills. These, however, tend to be just a part of the company infrastructure and figure more as slots in training calendar. The compelling proposition, on the other hand, is to consider the company as a campus wherein every piece of equipment, every bit of procedure and every interaction with a person provides learning opportunities.  

Individual as learner

While the company has a lead responsibility to provide a learning ecosystem, it is for and up to the individual to mould himself or herself as a perpetual learner. Being a learner does not make one a novice; only the insecure would feel that way. Being a learner and asking questions should never be seen as infra dig by employees or management. Wise scientists learn from every reaction of an experiment, wise operators from every rhythm of their equipment, and wise executives learn from every interaction they have in the company.

Learning processes

When we think of learning processes, things like classrooms, flip boards, audio-visuals, presentations, course materials etc., come to mind usually. Some think of off-site events and programmes as great learning opportunities. However, all these are at best accessories and aids to the learning processes. The real learning, that too perpetual learning, happens through the following personal approaches.

Listen, observe, absorb

In keeping with the prime responsibility on the individual to learn, the prime responsibility for learning approach also shall be that of the individual. It is fairly simple too. For a perfect learning process, the individual must listen intently, observe closely and absorb earnestly. These processes must take place in all interactions, peer to peer or boss to subordinate. In several cases, there could be learning opportunities from the younger reporting staff too. Learning environment is usually an expressive and empowering environment.

Follow, emulate, excel

The objective of learning is to excel in performance. This is usually preceded by two fundamental stages of following and emulating. Following is the process of merely implementing the learnings as absorbed. It is task oriented learning, putting into effect the ‘know-how’ learnt. Emulation is the process of thinking and acting like the person providing learning inputs; it is mastery of both ‘know-how’ and ‘know-why’. Excelling is the process of creative thinking and execution based on the learnings imparted/ received. Excelling is the result of empowered learning.    

    

Teach, share, coach

Everyone has a responsibility to disseminate learnings as much as they absorb. This again occurs through a three stage process. Most people who are well-versed in their art tend to teach. Those who teach prepare their learners only for ‘know-how’. A few others not only teach but also share their thinking around the subject matter of interest. Such people help the learners absorb both the ‘know-how’ and ‘know-why’. A few go beyond both the stages and truly coach the learners overcome their issues and limitations, and become what they can truly become.

The winning twelve

This blog post has reviewed the ticker of continuing education that most organizations would like to carry, and proposed that it should be considered more as lifelong education. It has reviewed current shared responsibilities between a company and its employees, and noted that while a company has the lead responsibility to create a learning ecosystem the prime responsibility for learning must be that of an individual. It has considered the multiple approaches currently adopted and postulated that they serve to accessorize rather than elevate continuing education as a lifelong journey.

The blog post proposed twelve elements of a lifelong learning journey. On one plane is a true learning platform that embeds the concept of lifelong learning, with perpetually learning individuals considering the entire company as their learning campus. It also proposes an easy and feasible multi-step process to learn through listening, observing and absorbing to be able to follow, emulate and eventually excel. It legislates that those with superior knowledge must endeavour to teach, share and coach all the time. Lifelong learning is a humbling feeling and a rewarding experience. It is a win-win for both employees and organizations.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on May 18, 2016  

     

Global Education for Global Leaders: A New Bilateral Paradigm Towards 2030

Dr Marshall Goldsmith, one of the top CEO coaches of the world and the author of several bestsellers on leadership was in India recently to deliver a speech for the National HRD Network’s silver jubilee. Addressing the CXOs he made a point that despite cultural differences across countries, the CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies have a lot in common. Amongst such common characteristics, he mentioned Western education as an important feature even if they went to school in India. He also said that a future CEO should have five things that were not required in the past: global thinking, cross-cultural appreciation, tech-savvy, building partnerships and shared leadership. Though he was candid about the egoistic and other problems of leaders, his insistence on Western education seemed as his quick aid for global thinking, one of his five leadership ingredients.

To interpret Dr Goldsmith’s comments in a perspective, it could be that he views Western education as a surrogate for some of the important attributes of the Western (the US, for simplicity) educational system. These could relate to a graded educational experience that emphasizes logic, openness, boldness, expressiveness and experimentation, and benefits from superior laboratory and other facilities. These contrast with the Asian (Indian, for simplicity) educational experience that supports tradition, caution, deference and conformity, and suffers from constraints of campus infrastructure. Western educational system focuses on expressive, at times even overwhelming, competitiveness in everyday life as opposed to the Indian educational system that emphasizes competitiveness more in examination routines, and accommodation in day to day routines. Western culture promotes inter-personal independence of the individual with dependence on one’s head while oriental culture promotes interpersonal dependence of the individual with dependence on one’s heart.

Flood and trickle

American education continues to be the first choice for higher education for Indian students and parents, whether they have a strong materialistic mind or a strong nationalistic heart. As a result, the number of Indian students applying for US student visas has been growing exponentially. While 90,000 students went to US in 2012-13, 113,000 students went in 2013-14, registering an increase of 26 percent. In 2014-15, a further 40 percent increase to 158,200 is forecast as per current trends. Only, China sends more students to US. Together, China and India contribute to nearly 50 percent of US student visas. The question, however, is whether the students prefer the US educational system for higher education for the sheer educational experience for global leadership or to pursue an American dream of a career in a superior ecosystem. While both could be viable reasons, probably not many are so futuristic as to pursue American education as a global leadership qualification.

For the few who have become the CEOs or CXOs of multi-billion multinational corporations such as Indira Nooyi (Pepsico), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Harish Manwani (Unilever), Ajay Banga (Mastercard), Anshu Jain (Deutsche Bank), Shantanu Narayen (adobe), Ivan Menezes (Diageo), Rakesh Kapoor (Benckiser), Vikram Pandit (Citi), Sundar Pichai (Google), Nikesh Arora of SoftBank and Ajit Jain (Berkshire Hathaway), the reason  is not necessarily the Western education as several had higher education in India too. Various others have occupied leadership positions in Indian multinationals without any Western degrees.  While Bloomberg commented that Indian cultural ethos of empathy, humility, patience, emotional bonding and passion for growth as a reason for Indians becoming CEOs in global MNCs, it is also clear that out of the flood of Indians seeking US higher education only a trickle makes it to the top. This leads us to wonder on the validity of Dr Goldsmith’s prescription of Western education is an essential prerequisite for future global leaders. In likely fact of the future, there could, on the other hand, be a dramatic shift in favor of Asian education and experience.

Asian resurgence 2030 

According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) published in July 2014, India will be the third largest economy in the world by 2030. According to rankings of the top economies of the world, India would leap seven steps to become a USD 15 trillion economy by 2030, next only to US at USD 38.5 trillion and China (at the top) at USD 53.8 trillion. In fact, the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) would have an economic scale of over USD 85 trillion by 2030, far exceeding the scale of the five developed economies of USA, Japan, Germany, UK and France together at only USD 66 trillion. Clearly, the emerging economies of today would be the dominant economies of tomorrow in terms of workforce and population, economic scale, diversity of research and manufacturing and market potential.  Today’s drawbacks of the BRICS economies should not be viewed to conclude that the emerging economies would always be dependent economies.

Today’s challenges of the emerging economies in terms of deficient urban and rural infrastructure, underdeveloped transportation services, inadequate power and energy, rather uncontrolled population, poor healthcare and sanitation, and so many other shortfalls would be great opportunities of tomorrow, calling for massive investment in infrastructure development and economic growth. A qualifying requirement for this transformation would be the importance attached to organic technological innovation. India’s Mars mission (Mangalyaan) that has successfully placed India’s satellite in the orbit of Mars in the very first attempt at a cost lower than the cost of a Hollywood blockbuster movie (a point eloquently made by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Madison Square, New York address) illustrates that Indian engineering and scientific talent can achieve technological self-reliance even in the most sophisticated fields, with a structured mission and progressive leadership. Indian Scientific Research Organization (ISRO), a Government of India body has certainly shown the way for a techno-savvy India.

Factors and markets

Eventually, global economic development would seek a global equilibrium, driven by differential factor advantages and differential market sizes.  Like water flows from a higher plane to a lower plane and heat transfers from a higher temperature heat sink to a lower temperature heat sink, technologies and finances would flow to economies where they can be best utilized. Global developmental equilibrium would need to happen, even if it were to take years and decades. In this process, leadership is a critical driver of how to access and deploy resources, be it finance, people and machines, or naturally occurring resources like oil, gas, water, wind, minerals, metals and any other element. Leadership is also a critical ingredient of understanding various local markets, developing customized products and services and integrating with local consumer needs. If these are the imperatives, leadership must understand local factor endowments and local market needs, and explore how multi-national resources can be networked to synergize each local economy.

It goes to the credit of global Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies that they ventured into underdeveloped markets decades ago despite several challenges and uncertainties and in the process secured a place in such countries that is on par with indigenous companies. As the underdeveloped economies moved on to become developing economies a few years ago, and now emerging economies with potential to become fully developed over the next two decades, the pioneering FMCG companies have discovered that their venturesome strategies fueled sustainable global growth for them. Companies like Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Proctor & Gamble, Gillette, GSK Consumer, Microsoft, Pepsi, CocaCola, Henkel and Reckitt Benckiser come to mind. In other fields as well, companies such as Suzuki, GE, Siemens, ABB, Nokia, Philips, Cummins and Alstom have taken early roots. All such successful companies viewed India as an important market and supply source but some like Unilever have seen India as a select leadership talent source for their global needs.

A new bilateral paradigm

As India and China match the five developed economies by value less than 15 years from now, global corporations must develop a significantly different paradigm for nurturing global leaders. The conventional models that local leaders must be Western educated to have global acceptance (typical Goldsmith’s type prescription) or that expat leaders must spend a few years each in several emerging countries (typical  global automobile industry’s practice) would be found wanting when India and China (as well as other emerging market economies) race at full economic throttle. Fundamentally, future global leaders would be developed with specific collaborating countries in mind. Such combinations could be US and India or US and China, Japan and India or Korea and India, UK and India or UK and China, India and China or India and Brazil, and so on. The Western origin person who would have graduate education of the West would be immersed in post-graduate education of the East while the Eastern origin person who would have graduate education of the East would be immersed in post-graduate education of the West.

Put differently, the new global leader would not rest content with viewing education as imparting only professional knowledge or leading to a different employment opportunity. Education would be seen as an immersive cultural experience of a different nation with a style of pedagogy and a community of co-learners and co-executors unique to that national culture. As much as an Indian student with US employment aspiration would like a US higher education so must a US student with the aspiration of becoming an India-centric leader should take to Indian higher education. Ahead of this paradigm being a part of mainstream general education, executive education could be the right vehicle to develop the new generation of focused global leaders. Executives should be encouraged to take up fulltime residential higher education courses in diverse emerging market countries on sabbatical depending on the global growth orientation of the companies. For the new bilateral global bilateral education paradigm to be effective, educational institutions in India and China (and other emerging nations) must elevate their campus ecosystems, learning communities and curricula to integrate the best of locally embedded and intrinsic culture, knowledge and practice with globally applicable professional knowledge, tools and techniques.   

Posted by Dr CB Rao on October 4, 2014

New Generation Technological Education at the IITs: Optimal Track, Rather Than Fast-Track?

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), India’s central government owned premier institutions of national importance for technological education have been the Indian icons of globally competitive technical education. The initiatives they take, and the reforms they usher in, have a ripple effect in the entire field of technical education in India. IITs’ latest proposal for fast track engineering (B Tech) degree based on accelerated credits (in three and half years instead of four years) has the potential to churn the technical education scenario in India if it is not appreciated and improved in a holistic perspective. This proposal has to be viewed in the perspective that not several years ago, engineering degree in India required five years of full time study. If this proposal of three and half years becomes real, India would probably the first major country, after the USA, to provide a bachelor’s degree in engineering in such a compressed time frame.   

IITs are known to be cradles of high pressure, high performance education. The entry into IITs is itself a resultant of highly competitive Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) system, for which school boys start preparing years ahead through high intensity coaching. Given this context, an emphasis on credits for a compressed time frame could be seen to be adding to the high pressure robotized study system in the IITs, making students vulnerable to the dangers of intense competitiveness. If other competitive institutions like National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and other key universities follow suit, it could be a larger phenomenon of ‘race to degree’. Another worry would be that other regional universities and colleges may try to follow suit, and given the reduced level of study and examination solidity in such universities and colleges there could be a dilution of study standards in such institutions. At the same time, there also seem to be certain higher order goals in the proposed change which are yet to catch the attention. This blog post discusses the latest proposal from the IITs in the totality, and options.

Flexibility

The IITs proposal, announced by Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, the Director of IIT Kharagpur at the 60^th convocation of the Institute on July 26, 2014, has an important concept of flexibility. The fast-track option is essentially for those students who can accrue the requisite credits. The proposal also allows a more languid pace, extending up to 8 years for the ‘slow learners’. The fast track option envisages that the ‘saved’ six months can be utilized for job or entrepreneurship. It also allows inter-IIT portability of credits to utilize the centers of excellence that exist in various IITs. With these features in tow, the fast track proposal would appear more holistic. This, does not, however take the focus away from the weighty nature of a true technological curriculum and whether adequate justice is being done to it under even a four year program. The pitfall in any credit based system is the equation of credit to learning and subjects to knowledge, all of which require certain minimum periods of time for attention, absorption and assimilation.

The undergraduate level engineering programs are both foundational and specialist in nature. Despite the proliferation of various engineering streams, each engineer irrespective of the specialization must be well versed in certain core engineering studies. These relate to mathematics, sciences, humanities, design and drawing principles, and a foundation of each of the core or basic engineering specializations like civil, mechanical, electrical, electronics and computers. And, each of these has to have a corresponding laboratory practice, which should expose the students to a wide range of machining, forming, casting, welding and bonding practices related to various kinds of materials. Given the heavy knowledge and practice load on one hand, and the extremes of extracurricular pulls and social media distractions on the other hand, the case seems to be more for extension, rather than compression, of degree granting period.

Flights away

One question to ask is to whose benefit the acceleration would be if the fast-track graduate were to choose a job or another degree instead of the well intended entrepreneurship. As we are aware, many of the IIT graduates end up taking up management diplomas in the equally reputed Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) or go abroad for higher education or research. In the IIT Kharagpur convocation, Bharat Ratna Professor C N R Rao exhorted the IITians to stay in the country and contribute to India’s scientific and technological capital, citing his own example of success. If the fast-track graduates see the credit based graduation as an opportunity to explore other options elsewhere, the basis of advancing gets called into question. A total credit score of 182 in 7 semesters, covering theory, laboratory, workshop and fieldwork seems to be an intensely packed study and learning schedule (a typical course take 190 credits over 10 semesters).  A dual degree program is also offered under this route, though details are not yet available.   

By the same token, allowing a highly relaxed period of 8 years for course completion may also be misplaced. Given that all entrants to the IITs are competent and competitive, allowing that level of extended flexibility would be a loss in the formation of intellectual capital in India. Considering that certain students do find the pressure a trifle too much, flexibility for completing the course up to 6 years could be more in order.  Also, extending inter-IIT portability to cover at least one year of residence could expose the students to not only other centers of excellence but even to other residential cultures as well. Given that the new program will be rolled out from the academic year 2016-17, and in a phased manner, there is an opportunity to reinforce the good points of the fast-track program (in fact, it should be called optimal track program!), overcome the weaknesses and develop a techno-entrepreneurial ecosystem that maximizes the benefits of the proposal. 

Specializations

The key to success of a flexible credit based system is the availability of a number of specializations and micro-specializations on one hand and well coordinated academic planning. Providing total flexibility to the student in course choice could lead to diffused learning while too much control could lead to the defeat of the system itself. It is important that the academic deans of the IITs develop a course planner which explains why a cluster of related specializations would make a holistic sense compared to a random choice of courses. The course credits must be hierarchically defined based on complexity and relational synergy of the courses. It may be a good idea for the IITs to develop an App exclusively for course and credit planning under the fast-track system. The App must also link specializations offered by the various IITs to define a total universe of specializations. There could be certain thorny issues related to different IITs providing differential values to similar specializations based on the excellence they think they possess in the domain. This will be one challenge of flexibility.

The other challenge will be providing the specializations themselves. For a mechanical engineering stream, the range of main and specialization courses can range from thermodynamics to robotics. Whether a robotics specialization could be common for  mechanical and electronics mainstreams, or whether it would need to be customized to each mainstream would be one call. Given the fast paced developments, what would be the life of a course (say, 3 or 5 years) would be another call. Whether courses that belong to a graduate level (for example, prosthetics) would be a good fit for an undergraduate level mechanical engineering course could be another call. Whether specializations should be only subject matter or whether even laboratory or workshop practice could qualify as specializations is another call. Ideally, specializations should have a range that plays on one’s aptitude for further academic specialization or industrial practice. The challenges are likely to be more in domains where product life cycles are getting shorter. One way would be to link up academic expertise, research directions, consulting practice and industrial inputs in development of state-of-the-art specializations.

Entrepreneurship in IITs   

Given that an important aspect of the fast-track proposal is to release one semester for entrepreneurial activity, availability of an entrepreneurial ecosystem within the IIT system, or otherwise, would be a prerequisite.  A few IITs, notably IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, and IIT (BHU) Varnasi have experimented with creating entrepreneurial ecosystems as adjuncts to their educational systems. IIT Madras has set up IIT Madras Incubation Cell. IIT Bombay has set up Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. IIT (BHU) has established Malaviya Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship. Each of them has incorporated specific initiatives funded by the IITs, Central Ministries or IIT alumni themselves. Even a newer IIT like IIT Hyderabad has set up E-Cell for entrepreneurs. Although some of these have been in operation since 1999, there is no evidence of any major entrepreneurial startups that emerged from these incubation initiatives. Even though IITM has provided physical infrastructure through IIT Madras Research Park adjacent to IITM campus, startups have been few to leverage the facilities.     

Undoubtedly, the strong technological foundations at IITs, and the personality strengths of the IITians make them look at entrepreneurship as a career option more confidently, the only inhibiting factor being the hugely attractive job opportunities they automatically command. That said, convergence of futuristic research with foundational technology, and combination of financial support with commercial insights would be necessary to create an ecosystem that would make entrepreneurship widespread across IITs. Special emphasis should be laid on socially relevant low cost, high technology products. Entrepreneurship, however, requires more than a feasible product idea. A recent research suggests that an entrepreneur with a product idea needs a core organization of likeminded passionate friends to make a success of entrepreneurship. Even some of the biggest globalized startups of today such as Apple, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Salesforce.com as well as regional startups like Project A Ventures, Eyeota, Flipkart, RedBus validate this thesis.

Indigenous ecosystem

The other aspect is that successful entrepreneurship needs certain other skills in addition to wholly technical skills. This has prompted the Hyderabad based management school, the Indian School of Business (ISB) to launch, as a two-year programme at ISB, Technology Entreprenurship Programme to equip select engineering students with skills to become entrepreneurs. It is stated that Microsoft Ventures and Google are supporting the programme. The larger question still would be whether even a broader educational curriculum for entrepreneurship or cross-collaboration between IITs (and/or NITs) and IIMs (and/or ISB) would be completely sufficient. The philosophical question is also whether entrepreneurship can only from arise from premier institutes, or could emerge as a broader national phenomenon. Prima facie, creative technological ideas ought to emerge from any institute which has higher technological and research competencies. Idea incubation (example, IIT Madras Incubation Cell) and licensing of patentable ideas (yet to happen in a big way) from institutes of higher technology is one facet of creation of a broader national entrepreneurship ecosystem.

The real answer could lie in restoring and rejuvenating the traditional economic employment system of India which was rooted in skill and craft based self-employment system but has faced dilution due to the attraction of readymade and assured career options that could arise from formal educational qualifications. It is, therefore, gratifying that some of the IIT entrepreneurship schools are focusing on socially relevant product or service ideas (example, Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation at IIT Madras). Real developments that can be commercialized would need to focus on market applications rather than technology roots. For example, could a variable speed micro-motor be developed that could make a potter’s work more productive, more consistent and of higher quality? Can a portable ultrasound linked with tablet computer be designed to take ultrasound diagnostics into the rural areas? Can there be a sanitizing solution for dry leaf plates (used extensively in certain southern states) to obviate the need for paper plates? Can solar panels, inverters and electricity power be integrated to reduce generated power consumptions? Can there be water purifying technology which does not waste any water? The optimal track for IITs could be in not fast-tracking credits per se, but in integrating latent market needs with creative technologies.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on July 29, 2014          

 

 

Foreign Educational Institutions in India: Right Priorities and Relevant Pathways

For a country which has its share of debates, a new item has been added for diligent debate in India. The move by the Government of India to allow foreign educational institutions to set up bases in India is considered an unnecessary cost-push move by some educational experts given that the Indian educational system has reached a state of maturity. On the other hand, the proponents feel that the move is a logical extension of globalization with Indian universities being allowed to set up shops in foreign shores and vice versa. It is also hoped that foreign universities bring in the required investments for world-class educational experience in India. Some experiments of liberalization in India have had unwelcome fallouts of mass entry; some caution, therefore, is probably well merited.

Foreign educational institutions in India

Over the last ten years there has been a significant proliferation of the so called foreign educational institutions in India without commensurate qualitative change in the educational scene. According to the Association of Indian Universities, the foreign education institutions in India have increased from 144 (in 2000) to 631 (in 2010). The maximum number were from the UK (158), followed by Canada (80) and the US (44). Of the 60 foreign education providers, who have programmes of collaboration with local institutions, only 25 local institutions were affiliated to Indian universities or approved by regulatory bodies. Only 32 of the 49 foreign institutions operating under twinning arrangements have had approval or affiliation. A review of the institutions or the institutional collaborative arrangements indicates that the arrangements are usually aimed at awarding a degree with a “foreign tag” rather than achieving any institutional transformation.

The Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations Bill) 2010 has been pending before the Indian Parliament for the past two years. There has been growing concern in recent years that fake foreign varsities were duping students from India. Now, over 600 foreign education institutions operate in the country. The UGC put its plan to allow foreign universities to set up campuses on hold after a large number of members felt that there was need for greater deliberations from different areas of study, including technical, medical, law and architecture. There are also questions raised on the need to allow foreign varsities to function as "deemed universities''. Overall, it is clear that the existing framework has not enabled the real Ivy League institutions enter India; nor has it stopped the pursuit of higher education abroad by India’s talented students.

Enter UGC

The Universities Grants Commission has oversight and approval authority on the Indian university system. In an attempt to rein in fly-by-night operators who could money making educational shops in India, the UGC has made its approval mandatory for all collaborations between foreign and Indian educational institutions. The new regulations approved by the UGC on June 2, 2012 give existing institutions six months to get approval. The UGC has also laid down dual criteria to ensure that quality academic institutions are allowed to run joint degree or twinning courses. Only those foreign institutions will be allowed to collaborate who figure in the top 500 of the Times Higher Education World University Ranking or the Shanghai Jiaotong Ranking. The Indian varsities should have received the highest accreditation grade from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) to be eligible for a tie-up with a foreign institution.

The degrees will be awarded by the Indian universities for their acceptability in India. Institutes failing to abide by the guidelines would be penalized. The UGC is empowered to stop grants in case of public institutions while it can recommend to the Centre withdrawal of recognition in case of deemed universities. As stated by the UGC, the regulations aim to set a quality bar to the entry of foreign educational institutions into India, as well as for collaboration between the foreign and Indian educational institutions. The regulations, however, do not, and probably were not intended to, provide a canvas for structural changes in the Indian educational system, even in the higher education band where such foreign educational institutions operate. A more fundamental appraisal is needed.

Indian education, more with less

The Indian educational system has certainly its world-class achievements. The numbers of Indian students who gain admission in the top rung US educational institutions annually and the numbers of the Indian scientists and engineers employed in the US constitute a clear testimony to the Indian talent and Indian universities. In addition, the strong base of science and mathematics from the school level in India contrasts with the diffidence to engage in those studies in the US. However, these achievements are more in keeping with India’s ability to “do more with less”, rather than with a natural potential to “do even more with more”. The gaps in the educational system can be seen at different levels from primary school education to higher university education.

The need for a massive transformation in the primary and secondary school educational systems together with strict enforcement of the right of every child for education is keenly felt in India. This is, however, a domain which is, and has to remain as, the core competence of India. Foreign institutions would have little incentive or capability to play a role in this area. The fact that the pre-school and school years are also the years of solid foundational grounding in the Indian culture and Indian ethos, there is a case for the Indian institutions to display their moorings. Given this situation, this blog post focuses only on the higher education component of foreign institutional entry. The higher educational system has serious shortfalls in terms of infrastructure, faculty and research direction.

Higher education, lower resources

The largest of the entities in the Indian educational system, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have an annual budget in the range of Rs 2500 million (USD 50 million). They have typical faculty strength of 500 and student strength of 6000. In contrast, the top rung US universities have budgets of USD 1 billion to 4 billion (20 to 80 times over). The faculty strength tends to be the order of 2000 to 4000 and student strength of the order of 20000 to 40000. It is not uncommon for the top US universities to receive USD 500 to 1000 million each in research grants or alumni gifts. It is also not uncommon for the US universities have research budgets of the order of USD 750 million. While clearly there are differences of scale and scope, these are particularly pronounced in funding channels and their scale as well as research budgets and their scope.

The Indian higher educational system has done particularly well to equip each of its students to higher education or higher research abroad. What the Indian system failed to do is to create a base of fundamental research and development in its institutions in India that could serve as the further developmental grounds for the Indian talent. Even today, the breakthrough research continues to get done in the university laboratories of US, Japan and Europe. The Nobel prizes continue to get won by professors of US and European laboratories (despite several Indian researchers working in those laboratories). The entry of foreign educational institutions should address this fundamental infrastructure, research and resource gap rather than aim at providing run of the mill degree award and executive development programs.

Building a new research ecosystem

Foreign educational institutions can make a significant contribution in building a new research ecosystem in the Indian educational institutions. The work in the foreign laboratories is continuously focused on the fundamentals of matter and biology, oftentimes exploring the linkages. For example, at a time India is looking at genetics, epigenetics has been taken up in a big way in US laboratories. Interdisciplinary research is an institutional approach to provide new solutions. Microrobotics for less invasive surgery, nano-structured meta-materials, development of new materials such as graphine, ultra-sensitive diagnostics, human protein sequencing, personality genetics, amino acid studies, solar energy development, and so on. While not all research makes it to commercialization and while some is hyperbole in advance, the fact remains that many new problem solving directions are emerging from the US academic research.

The dilemma or disconnect for the Indian educational system lies in having a valuable stock of academically trained scientists and technologists in India who necessarily have to find a research base in the advanced laboratories of the US, Japan or Europe. Clearly, the value proposition for the foreign educational institutions must lie in accessing Indian talent without barriers and for the purpose creating the requisite laboratory infrastructure, research processes and information exchanges in India. This would certainly be a more complex process than sourcing products or processes from India because of the sensitive nature of intellectual property generation and patenting issues. By acting innovatively and responsibly with enhanced capabilities of scientific and technical communication the Indian talent can actually accelerate the publication and intellectual property record of the foreign universities. On the whole, a new ecosystem needs to be the sine qua non for getting the foreign educational institutions in to India.

What the governments can do

The governments, state and central, should treat setting up of state-of-the-art laboratories under the Indian-foreign educational system on par with attracting global commercial manufacturing and research proposals. Liberal provisioning of land and supportive infrastructure such as roads, power and telecommunications would go a long way in creating world class educational and research infrastructure in India. The Government of India and the Indian universities can also address the intellectual property constraint or barrier through a vibrant intellectual property office (IPO) system in India. Proposals of collaboration between the Indian and foreign universities must specify clear domains of research and goals of development. Commercial viability could be attempted for the initiatives through sponsored research projects.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on June 3, 2012

Hard Skills and Soft Skills: Differences Real or Unreal?

A manager’s competency set is expected to comprise both hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are those that reflect technical and analytical capabilities while soft skills are those that deal with communication and collaboration capabilities. A well-rounded manager should be adept in both hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills, which are technical and professional in nature, are predominantly acquired through education while the soft skills are predominantly personality based, and are improved through experience. Trainers typically tend to view these as two distinct streams of learning and development. Hard skills are rarely imparted in organizations except through on the job training. Each time an equipment or facility is upgraded or product and process specifications are bettered, experience of working with the changes teaches the employees new hard skills. On an exceptional basis, employees also are retooled through customized educational programs in universities.

On the other hand, experience which helps the employees upgrade their hard skills ironically very often leads to hardening of soft skills. Employees tend to become somewhat egoistic and rigid (depending on their cultural evolution) as well as authoritative or withdrawn (depending on whether they are extroverted or introverted respectively). Functions become rigid organizations within organizations, with growing inter-functional distances, making communication and collaboration exceedingly difficult, both at functional and individual levels. Given these cultural characteristics, the concentration of organizations tends to be on developing the soft skills of employees on one hand and changing the cultural dynamics of the organization on the other. Trainers and human resources managers generally concur that such programs usually have limited impact and fail to bring about fundamental and lasting improvements to employee soft skills or organizational cultural dynamics.

Hard versus soft; or hard with soft?

The distinction between hard skills and soft skills is real but the attempt to treat them as two distinct streams of continuing education is unreal. A person’s soft skills determine how open he or she is to improve his or her hard skills. Hard skills are not merely skills of engineering or accountancy that are robotically imparted. Hard skills also require significant person to person interaction to imbibe new skills. A person who is egoistic and rigid is more likely to be closed to asking questions and seeking knowledge than a humble and flexible person who is likely to be all eager and willing to learn new knowledge. More importantly, hard skills are likely to involve a host of technical and professional disciplines which need to work together to deliver the total systemic effectiveness. A manufacturing engineer, for example, would need to understand how his machine tools operate and fail, and how they are maintained. A maintenance engineer must understand why and how design and manufacturing tolerances are achieved. Clearly, interpersonal communication and collaboration, across technical functions, are vital to optimize the hard skill learning processes.

Equally, soft skills do not exist in vacuum. The soft skills of communication, collaboration, and time management, for example, may be required in teamwork for designing products, conducting operations, managing finances or developing markets. However, these goals themselves require hard skills. Without hard skills that lead to design creativity, manufacturing excellence, accounting integrity and market mapping these hard jobs cannot happen successfully. Possession of mere soft skills cannot lead to delivery of technical and functional jobs. Also, in addition, several of the soft skills require a measure of hard skills, be it language skills, computer skills or presentation skills, to be expressive, efficient and effective. It goes without further elaboration that hard skills and soft skills are integral to each other, and even symbiotic to each other. Organizations must find holistic paradigms to impart both the kinds of skills amongst the employees simultaneously.

Laying the foundations

In the Indian educational scenario, technical and professional educational stream is considered distinct from the language and fine arts educational stream. As one may surmise, the latter stream provides the foundations of soft skills. In technical and professional institutions, language courses are limited probably to just one semester and fine arts courses are virtually non-existent. As a result, students could be technically brilliant but tend to be lagging in terms of soft skills. As a converse phenomenon, arts and language courses have very few technical and professional subjects that could enhance the conceptual and analytical capabilities of a student. This differentiation is further accentuated by the fact that from the school going stage itself, the school children and their parents tend to zero in on their preferred careers and accordingly focus on the related subjects, and defocus on what they consider to be unrelated subjects. The foundations of basic education thus tend to be less than holistic, even if they are specialty oriented. Efforts by certain higher technological institutions such as the IITs to have one or two language or business communication and technical writing courses hardly provide complete alleviation.

Even in the job scenario, given that the emphasis of the organizations is on achieving immediate delivery from its employees, most training programs focus on adapting and updating the hard skills rather than on overcoming the deficiencies of soft skills. As a result, by the time someone reaches a managerial position some of the soft skills needed for getting effective delivery from others or effective collaboration with peer managers would be found to be missing, impacting organizational performance. Although organizations mount soft skills programs for middle level and senior level managers, such attempt would often be a case of “too little, and too late”. The problem is also accentuated by the “ego hurt” seniors feel when they are expected to develop the soft skills at a late stage, and the consequent defensive as well as aggressive reactions, making the desired culture of collaborative delivery even more elusive in an organization. Another negative consequence of this distinction is that technical specialists tend to get confined to line functions while non-technical people gravitate towards staff functions, making holistic leadership development to meet the requirements of apex positions even more challenging.

Easy to lose, difficult to acquire

The hard skills and soft skills are inversely correlated with learning and longevity. Hard skills are acquired in a relatively well-structured manner through the educational system but are easy to lose. As employees become accustomed to operate in established technological systems of firms, the gap between emerging technologies and established technologies widens leading to knowledge obsolescence. As the employees move up the hierarchy, ecosystems and management processes distance the employees from their machines, as a result of which they lose the hard skills relatively easily. The author’s observation is that employees tend to be technologically and professionally contemporary in the first one-third of their career span and later on experience a decline in their hard skills. The hard skills are easy to lose for employees who do not make special efforts to update themselves. There is no permanence at all in hard skills, and as certain organizations and certain employees encourage acquisition of soft skills, hard skills become easier to lose.

In contrast, soft skills are more difficult to acquire but once acquired tend to be more difficult to lose. Soft skills are acquired not merely through educational stream but more importantly through life experience itself. The propensity to acquire certain, if not all, soft skills is very much a personality related matter too, and in a sense tends to be a genetically influenced factor too. Depending on the congeniality levels that existed in family, school and college environments, a person could be positioned in terms of propensity to absorb soft skills. Interpersonal skills are experiential and once acquired are difficult to lose. While one does comes across instances of aggressive people mellowing or self-effacing people becoming more emphatic over a lifetime, basic changes in personality disposition are difficult to come by. While language skills may be easy to acquire equally by diverse people, the manner in which communication is conceptualized and delivered by each person would continue to be personality-specific. While people may be trained to adopt a particular style of interpersonal relationship, more often than not, adopted behaviors tend to wilt and natural behaviors are likely to surface under stressful circumstances.

C-suite requirements

The way hard skills and soft skills are taught in educational institutions, the manner in which they are imparted by family and social ecosystems and finally are updated by on-the-job experiences ironically run counter to the need to develop holistic business or corporate leadership. Like several of the managerial templates, the managerial grid which advocates that leaders should have more of strategic skills and less of technical skills, or put in a different way more of soft skills and less of hard skills, at leadership level is deficient. A music conductor, however eminent, he or she is cannot afford to forget how the notes are written. A surgeon, the more eminent he is the more skillful, the more technologically updated and the more behaviorally competent, he must be. The requirements of the corporate C suite are no different, and require holistic technologically and behaviorally competent leaders. The concept that with experience and hierarchical progression, the typical executive can afford to lose the hard skills and needs to be adept only at soft skills is ill placed.

The C-suite leader, the CXO of whatever domain or the CEO himself or herself, needs to keep the technical and professional competencies as strong and as updated they have been at the beginning of the career, and also have the appreciation of what soft skills can do to enhance the leadership. The educational approaches and the experiential strategies which make the hard skills easy to lose and soft skills difficult to acquire need a complete redefinition. If these development models are re-tuned to develop holistic students, holistic executives and holistic managers who are high on both hard skills and soft skills we would have a C-suite bench that is far larger and richer than what India, Inc has at present. The enriched C-suite would be a great leading factor in India’s quest for globalization. There would be a greater all-round entrepreneurial and big business development in the country and a greater emergence of Indian multinational corporations across the globe. It is time that Indian executives, managers and leaders who are strong on either of hard skills and soft skills appreciate the need to become equally strong on the other dimension.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on May 6, 2012

From IIMs to IILs: From Masters in Management to Leaders in Leadership?

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have been the most successful of the Indian efforts to clone and absorb, and even excel over, the Western educational thought. The IIMs are a group of public, autonomous institutes of management education in India. The institute at Calcutta was established first, on November 13, 1961, and was named Indian Institute of Management Calcutta or IIM Calcutta. It was set up in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management, the government of West Bengal, the Ford Foundation and the Indian industry. The institute at Ahmedabad was established in the following month and was named Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Like MIT Sloan in the case of IIM Calcutta, Harvard Business School played an important role in the initial stages of IIM Ahmedabad. The success of these two premier institutes prompted setting up of more Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) from the 1970s. Today, India has thirteen IIMs. The success of the IIMs triggered the mushrooming of standalone management schools and establishment of management divisions within general and technical educational institutions.

The IIMs offer a wide variety of management courses. They were established with the objectives of providing high quality management education and to assist industry through research and consulting services, and have more than fulfilled the vision and objectives. IIMs are considered to be among the most prestigious and elite business schools in India. Like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) which attract the best school leaving talent through nation-wide Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), the IIMs attract the best graduate talent through their Common Admission Test (CAT). The IIMs primarily offer postgraduate, doctoral and executive education programs. The two-year Post Graduate Program in Management (PGP), offering the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM), is the flagship program across all IIMs. Some IIMs also offer a one-year Post Graduate Program for experienced executives. Some IIMs offer the Fellow Program in Management (FPM), a doctoral program. The Post Graduate Diploma and Fellowship are considered to be equivalent to MBA and Ph.D., respectively. Many IIMs also offer short-term executive education courses and part-time programs.

Expectations and realities

According to IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA), students admitted to the Post-graduate Program in the past have had scholastic achievements in different disciplines such as arts, commerce, science and professional streams such as medicine, engineering and agriculture. Some of the qualities which characterize past students include high levels of initiative and energy, capacity for hard work, strong task orientation, willingness to learn, and a temperament suitable for teamwork. The PGP classes have had a mix of fresh graduates and persons with work experience. Among the recent PGP students, a significant proportion has had full-time paid work experience of more than six months after their graduation. The influx of experienced graduates into the IIM stream reflects the gap between the expectations developed in fresh students by the IIM education and the experienced maturity levels that most brick and mortar organizations need. The IIMs typically prepare the students to leapfrog over the first executive steps to become managers straightaway. The fundamentals of products, processes and the marketplace are therefore not mastered to the requisite extent by the management graduates. Many times, the intelligence and grasp of the management graduates enables them to overcome the lack of frontline experience. Even so, the gaps between the demands posed by the role intricacy and peer group imbalance in organizations on one hand, and the aspirations fueled by the strategy oriented management education and the initial jumpstart of the career, on the other hand remain high.

Despite this realization and the influx of experienced personnel into IIM studentship, even if the majority is with experience of six years or lower, the challenges of expectation-reality gap and aspiration-delivery gap have not dimmed. The practical circumstances force that, out of the thousands of IIM alumni that join the ranks of industry and business each year, only a few become the most successful entrepreneurs or most effective leaders, managing total enterprises meeting all the benchmarks of true success and effectiveness. In a career, spanning four decades leading to enterprise leadership, so much emphasis is put on just two years of management education at the base of the career, which is subject further to the rollercoaster of organizational dynamics. One way of looking at the elite management education system of India is that the IIMs teach leadership to the unprepared far too early, actually make them managers quite early and let them lose the leadership potential eventually. Given that India’s quest for global economic position requires leadership in multiple domains, clearly time is opportune to define the limits to management education and also explore the next frontier of leadership education.

Early genesis and emerging logic

Despite the adverse image India’s post-independence socialistic polity has, many of the more progressive institutional initiatives of India owe their origin and inspiration to administrative analysis and political wisdom. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) were established by the Government of India, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India who believed in scientific and technological self-reliance. The IITs were set up as a group of autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education, declared as “institutions of national importance”. They were created progressively from 1951 to develop a talent base of scientists and engineers, to support the economic and social development of India. Today, India boasts of sixteen IITs. The establishment of the IIMs was also envisioned and initiated by the Indian Government, based on the recommendation of the Planning Commission. India grew rapidly in the 1950s, and in the late 1950s the Commission started facing difficulties in finding suitable managers for the large number of public sector enterprises that were being established in India as a part of its industrial policy. To solve this problem, the Planning Commission in 1959 invited Professor George Robbins of the University of California to help in setting up an All India Institute of Management Studies. Based on his recommendations, the Indian government decided to set up two elite management institutes, Indian Institutes of Management. Calcutta and Ahmedabad.

India today has a civil service cadre of over 20,000, manning the huge all-India governmental and administrative apparatus. These belong primarily to the all-India services and the central services. The all-India services consist of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Forest Service (IFoS). The personnel of these services are allotted state cadres and primarily work with the State Governments. They also serve on deputation to the Central Government. The Indian Administrative Service, with its federal nature, forms the backbone of the delivery of basic services and poverty alleviation programs. The seven central services comprise Indian Audit & Accounts Service (IA&AS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS), Indian Revenue Service (Income Tax), Indian Revenue Service (Customs & Central Excise), Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS), Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS) and Indian Postal Service (IPoS). The cadre of all these ten services is perhaps insufficient to cater to the needs of the huge 1.3 billion population and their development needs in India.

India has over 3000 central and state ministries and over 650 administrative districts, each of which requires several individual service heads, over 300 major central government owned public sector undertakings (PSUs) and over 5000 state government owned PSUs, and over 100,000 joint stock, public limited and private limited companies, each of which requires multiple corporate officers and enterprise leaders. The leadership pool is supplied by scientists, engineers, professionals, some of them with formal management qualifications; all of them acquired at the starting phase of their careers. Most of the leadership capabilities and competencies are acquired by these officers as they progress through their three to four decade careers. Given that the environmental context, in terms of political, social, demographic, economic, business, and technological trends, changes significantly every five years it is a moot point if the currently available educational structures, including the management capstone education offered and acquired typically in, and by, one’s mid-twenties would be adequate in one’s later half of the career between forty five and sixty five years of age when the leadership impact is expected to be the maximum. There is, typically, a mid-career inflexion point in one’s leadership journey which is completely unattended to in the current educational system.

Breaking the journey

The mid-career point, say the period between forty and forty five years of age (corresponding to fifteen to twenty years of experience) is the inflexion point when typically a mature manager begins to morph into a potential leader. By then, a successful manager would have reached a level of functional mastery and cross-functional capability demonstrated by successful headship of a function, division or a region. What lies ahead is the opportunity to head a business with profit and loss responsibility and later the total corporation. In some cases, the emerging leader would be required to even start up an entirely new business or open up a new region for the corporation. The leadership skills for this transformational journey would be significantly different in terms of developing a business or enterprise vision, formulating a transformation strategy and executing it through a leadership that walks the vision and strategy. The mature manager’s skills of orderly resource management, compliance to established systems and procedures and programmed people management would be necessary but would fall short of the leadership needs. Non-recognition of this inflexion requirement causes managers to continue to act as managers even when they are catapulted to leadership positions.

The answer to this lies in the managers and the companies as well as the civil servants and the governments retooling the mature managerial talent base and transforming it into an emerging leadership talent pool at the above identified mid-career point. The transformation requires the reinforcement of the managerial skills in the new-generation and next-generation contexts and the absorption of what it takes to be a leader in the changing environmental context. For example, the contemporary marketing head must understand the importance of social networking and how it could further change in future and the transformative products and services that are needed to leverage the social networking. Amazon leadership, for example, transformed the industry through electronic book, Kindle and online digital book libraries, leveraging the Internet and telecommunication technologies, and built for itself an industry dominating position. Online music technologies and cloud platforms demonstrate the need for leadership to transform lives through transformed corporations. This transformation requires the mature managers to shed the past partially and take on leadership development fully.

Indian Institutes of Leadership (IILs)

Just as the IITs and IIMs provided a fundamental and lasting breakthrough for India in the scientific, engineering and management education from the 1950s and 1960s, a new network of Indian Institutes of Leadership (IILs) would mark a pioneering transformation in the buildup of leadership development in India. The IILs, like the IITs and IIMs, should be deemed institutes of national importance, and set up as autonomous institutions under the Act of Indian Parliament. The admission to the IILs should be open only to the practicing civil servants or corporate managers in the age group of forty to forty five years, with a corresponding experience of fifteen to twenty years. The admission should be open to mature managers who qualify through a Common Admission Test Customized for Leadership. The admission should also be open to those managers who are sponsored as well as those who reigned from their managerial services, with appropriate years of experience as stipulated. The Government, the industry and the industry associations have a role in supporting the establishment and ramp-up of IILs. It also requires that IIMs confine themselves only to their current educational formats and not open up new leadership course streams for highly experienced candidates. However, IITs and IIMs should be encouraged to establish either on their own or in partnership with the government and the industry discrete IILs.

The curriculum of IILs should obviously be innovative and challenging and also state-of-the-art in terms of adaptation to the dynamic external environment. It should focus on transforming functional managers into business leaders without losing the core technical and professional strengths. Capabilities and competencies to start and grow startups, green field expansions and diversifications, achieve globalization and leverage pioneering technologies should be the unique deliverables of the programs. The curriculum should promote networking between industrial leaders and civil servants as well as between entrepreneurial leaders and professional leaders. The sponsoring corporations should treat the study period of twelve to eighteen months as paid sabbatical period, and seek no direct relationship between the study stream and the company domain; on the other hand, the companies should see the IIL programs as multifaceted leadership development initiatives. The faculty competencies should also be commensurate with the lofty and challenging goals of the IILs; the best of business leaders from India and abroad should constitute the core faculty with fulltime involvement. The IILs would be as transformative in India’s leadership drive as the IITs and IIMs had so far been, and would continue to be in India’s educational drive.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on March 11, 2012

Skill Development as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): The Example of Maruti-Suzuki

Many shareholders of Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) recently received a proposal from the company relating to establishment by the company of an Automotive Skill Development Institute (AMDI) with the following objectives: (a) Impart technical training to school pass-outs to make them employable on the shop floor as well as in service workshops; (b) Besides technical training, train the students in proper value systems of work culture and team work; and (c) On successful completion of the course, absorb the students at service networks of the company and also at its manufacturing facilities depending on the manpower requirements. An interesting aspect of the proposal is that the students would be free to join any other organization that could decide to recruit them. Equally interesting is the resolve of the company to treat this project as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activity. Hopefully, the proposal will receive an overwhelming support from MSIL’s shareholders.

The above proposal is not only novel but is also germane to the Indian society. The Indian society is characterized by significant dropouts after school education. Not all interested in college education are able to move into colleges due to family pressures to earn a living. Certain jobs, for example automobile servicing, product selling, transport services and hospitality services are, in contrast, are not considered suitable avocations by college graduates. Given the peculiar social structure, school pass-outs as well as dropouts, who could not get the necessary educational background, occupy certain jobs which require technical finesse as well as business acumen while the graduates and post-graduates seek predominantly technical supervisory and white collar jobs. Although the Industrial Technical Institutes (ITIs) were set up in the 1950s as a vocational training via media between inadequate school education and higher technical education, there remain a large number of jobs which require a more practical and socially acceptable option. The AMDI model of skill development initiated by MSIL offers a great new option.

Skills at the bottom of the pyramid

Skills of the organization are at the core of business success. MSIL itself has been a striking proof of the proposition. In the 1980s, a major argument of status quo advocates against technological modernization in the Indian automobile industry was that it would be impossible to service a modern vehicle such as Suzuki car in the country which was accustomed only to urban and semi-urban use of cars of dated designs such as Ambassador. Rather than be baulked by such arguments, MSIL pioneered the concept of authorized service stations with factory trained service personnel, with well-stocked spare parts, to ensure that the modern cars are maintained with thorough product knowledge. This has enabled the service and longevity oriented Indian customers to welcome the new car technologies. The MSIL model has since been replicated by other automobile manufacturers, with similar success. Over a period of time, the ability to have such skill based service infrastructure has become an entry barrier too. Dissemination of skills to the bottom of the organizational pyramid is clearly a matter of core competence for organizations.

Skill development need not be limited to service. Ashok Leyland and MRF, the noted commercial vehicle and tyre manufacturers respectively have focused on driver training institutes as a methodology to reduce the shortage of trained drivers and enable better transportation services. Certain engineering giants such as L&T are reported to have set up training institutes to train construction workers in good construction practices. Certain corporate groups have been quick to realize the need for trained front-line customer facing manpower and have established specialized institutions for the purpose. NIS Sparta Education and Learning Technologies Pvt. Ltd., which has started in 1991 as an institute for salesman’s training, has rapidly grown to become Asia's leading training, education and learning solutions provider. It is now a part of the Reliance ADA Group. NIS Sparta today offers training solutions to organizations and employability linked, skill based programs to individuals. More recently, the concept of finishing schools has also come into play to enhance the employability of individuals at various levels, and not merely at workforce and salesman levels.

Unskilled as an archaic concept

While the above sounds good, it is ironic and paradoxical that even large corporations still suffer from the syndrome of unskilled and skilled differentiation as an institutionalized concept in the bottom rungs of the organization. In a new world which seeks equality and dignity of labor, besides perfection and productivity in products and services delivered, the institutionalized concept of unskilled and skilled differentiation is completely archaic and even counterproductive. One has to observe the poor artisans who mold clay into works of art or the indigent masons who provide impeccable finish to buildings to realize that skills are an integral part of any job. There could be arguments that all workmen who undertake predominantly manual labor can be classified as manual labor, and that no trained or educated workman would in fact accept to do such “unskilled” jobs. This again is a specious argument. Even in the so called unskilled categories a level of skill exists. For example, a so called unskilled workman who clears the sludge in a reactor of a bulk drugs company needs to know the right way of removing the sludge besides the material and process safety specifications and the correct sequence of carrying out various activities. As a paradox, whenever a so called unskilled or manual work gets substituted by robots, it is technology at the highest level that replaces such unskilled work!

Organizations have tried to reduce the proportion of the unskilled workforce within the permanent rolls by outsourcing such unskilled jobs to third party service providers. Services such as janitor services, civil construction services or maintenance services come to mind. As an apparent truism, the differences in skill levels of the in-house personnel and contracted personnel tend to be visible, with the former working on jobs that require higher levels of skills and education. Unfortunately, this may perpetuate a system by which such service providers due to their financial and other considerations could perpetuate an “unskilled” environment for their personnel. As a result, progressive organizations are forced to undertake special programs for the contract workforce to enhance the skill levels. Fortunately, most progressive organizations now realize that contracting jobs out has nothing to do with jobs being manual or otherwise but has everything to do with how specialization could enhance the skill level and delivery efficiency regardless of the type of the job outsourced.

Skills as sinews of strength

The visible part of any job hides the need for latent skills. In fact, latent skills serve as the sinews of strength. The job of an airhostess or a flight attendant may appear to be one of receiving the passengers and serving them food with a smile. However, when a crisis confronts, be it a suddenly sick passenger or a flight malfunction latent skills are expected to come forth to save the flight and the passengers. A janitor in the hospital may not be, in the ordinary course of work, expected to know anything more than wiping the floor and other accessories clean. Awareness of the nature of the infectious bugs and microorganisms that affect the human safety and how the job of cleaning has to be performed to protect safety represents the inner skill that is required. Every job, however naturally simple or manually heavy would have its own undertone of skill requirements. Skill development involves anticipating all the ordinary and extraordinary situations that a workman could encounter routinely or sporadically and equip him or her with such skills. It is the robustness of the underlying skills that enables the seemingly most ordinary personnel exceed expectations and avert crises, as the case may be.

Once the premise that every job has its own battery of skills is accepted, it is easy to see how a progression of skills could enable individuals to progress in their careers and achieve self-actualization. Organizations must move away from unskilled-skilled classification which creates increasing pools of disgruntled unskilled workers. On the other hand, organizations must define the jobs from the lowest level upwards in terms of a hierarchy of skills that are required in all natures of operations and business. The reserve skill levels of a job and the innate skill levels of an individual help employees progress from the lower levels of careers to the higher levels. There have been cases in India of individuals becoming entrepreneurs from what were seen to be ordinary avocations, be it product distribution, product selling, household plumbing or restaurant food-making. Only when individuals recognize the skill-sets as innate sinews of strength can such career progression be possible.

Developing skills

One’s skill-sets come from a combination of inputs; comprising formal and informal education at school and/or college levels, vocational and skill development institutions, and on-the job training. However, all these inputs can go only as far as the individuals are capable, eager and motivated to absorb skills. Particularly, skills come from keen observation, sustained practice and perfection for quality. Preparing the individual’s mind to the challenges of skill development through practice requires behavioral coaching. A willingness to work with hands and without inhibitions of blue collar work are the other two essential requirements. Unlike broader education, skill development in any vocation requires certain specific preferences and aptitudes on the part of the individuals. The challenge of skill development is one of customized practice and selection.

It is fascinating to watch and conceptualize how skill development takes place in a practical setting. Received skills, observed skills and practiced skills combine to form a progressively enhancing skill-set. Continuing practice remains the key however. It is in this context that specialized skill development institutes such as AMDI with openness to allow the products of the institute to join other companies is a welcome initiative. If leading companies in all other industries reinforce the initiative by setting up similar skill development institutes, the Indian economy would be the best in the world. Skill development cannot be an end in itself. At appropriate stages, it should be possible to supplement the skill epitomes with higher education, so that individuals can graduate from operational excellence to strategic exposure.

Skill development as a corporate social responsibility

Skill development on the lines envisaged by MSIL AMDI is an enlightened move to expand the talent base of the country while ensuring a somewhat captive skill base for the sponsoring firm. That said, the format offers enormous scope to provide education to indigent sections of the society in partnership with government and non-government organizations. NIS Sparta has partnered with the government in that direction, for example. Ministry of Rural Development’s (MoRD) Special Projects for Placement Linked Skill Development of Rural Below Poverty Line (BPL) Youth under Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY), is designed to equip the unemployed rural youth from the BPL Households with marketable skills, with an objective to ensure a time-bound training and capacity building programme for bringing a specific number of Rural BPL families above the poverty line through placement ensuring regular wage employment.

Without specialized skill development institutions like NIS Sparta such social uplift through skill development would not be possible with optimal efficacy. When education-for-fee institutions such as NIS Sparta are able and willing to participate in such CSR programs, industry sponsored institutes can be even more effective. The new Companies Bill requires that public corporations spend at least 5 percent of their net profits on activities of corporate social responsibility. It also requires that the Board of a company is obligated to explain the reasons if the company is not able to invest in CSR. The skill development initiatives outlined herein provide a perfect vehicle with appropriate business and social rationale to fulfill the mandate voluntarily. It is hoped that all corporations would be able to follow Maruti-Suzuki example, and create a multiplier effect in the economy.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on February 2, 2012