Learning @ 100 miles an hour

Recently I had visited PICT; one of the leading engineering colleges in Pune. Me and couple of my friends were hoping to select a group of students and sponsor their final year BE project. Rather than using a commonly accepted method (of aptitude test + technical interview) for selecting students, we used a completely different approach. We assumed that PICT being a top rated college in the city, students would have acquired the necessary aptitude and technical skills. We rather gave students business problems and asked them to come up with business ideas to solve them. We also forced them to talk about few technologies / technical areas that we clearly knew they would have not have been exposed to (via college curriculum). We essentially looked at creativity, proactive-ness and technology savvy-ness / inquisitive-ness.

Intrigued by our selection process, a professor asked: “Aren’t we (industry) expecting too much from students these days? I learned most of these skills after completing my engineering, and while I was on the job. Humans haven’t changed that much; then why do we make students learn so many things at such an early age?” 

Here was my answer … 

I believe 3 key industry trends … especially observed over last 15~20 years … are responsible for this.

First: Average age of employees in companies has constantly declined. (Especially in export industry companies and even more in India’s export industry.)

Second: While technology advances have improved the overall experience of end consumer, the tasks performed by company workers have significantly grown in complexity.

Third: Most businesses have truly gone Global, forcing companies to constantly innovate; in-turn making business models complex.

Cumulatively these 3 trends have forced faster learning onto the young students. As soon as you get into an organization, you and your company expects you to start climbing the responsibility ladder immediately. Younger people are in senior roles than ever before. Being a manager at 25 or an expert business negotiator at the age of 28 is more common now than a decade ago. Due to globalization, at work you often have to learn culture of another country (or two) within your first year of joining (when you might have barely understood the Indian work culture). Over and above, competition is forcing companies to constantly innovate, which means you have to learn new tools and processes your company might use.

Key is to learn how to keep learning … and that too at the speed unheard of. Engineering, mathematics, computer languages are all important … but not sufficient in the new era. The real skills are:

•  Thinking on the feet
• Constantly seek new information and convert it into knowledge / your own opinion
• Use current technology to its fullest and learn to explore new technologies constantly
• Thinking out of the box … and having courage to take your not-so-common idea to implementation
• … (and many more softer skills)

But if I have to end this blog with one single skill that you must have … it’s “learning from people who have already been there”.

Go get yourself a mentor; not a godfather, a mentor. Someone who has learned by first principle (by trying and making mistakes and learning from them), and is willing to pass that learning to you (so that you can avoid mistakes and learn faster than ever before).

Do you agree? If yes, do you have a mentor? If no, do you know how to find one?

Let me know if you need help. May be I can help. Good luck.

Work from your position of Strength

Over last weekend, I took 'Strengths Finder 2.0' test and read the book (with the same title). While I had known this test for several years, I never actually took one. The reason this time around was a mandate from my boss … he had planned on a team building event and wanted all of us to take the test in preparation to this event. But now I am happy that I read the book and took the test.

At its core, the book asks you to focus on your strengths (and try not to focus on ‘fixing’ weaknesses). To help you with that, the test finds out your top 5 strengths and suggests actions to leverage them. Pretty simple stuff; without too many jargons.

What gave me satisfaction (and assurance) was the list of my strengths … and their descriptions. It turns out that a) I can identify strengths in other people and can help them focus on those strengths & b) I am naturally good at working with students and mentoring them. Due to my interests in Education field and my working with educational institutes, lots of students come to me … for career guidance, for help with their projects, to bounce off their entrepreneurial ideas, for understanding how to transition from college life to industry life, or just to use me as sounding board. I am really happy that I am working from my position of strengths.

But what if I was not leveraging my strengths … more importantly, what if I did not know what my strengths were? Frankly, that would have been detrimental to my professional career. I do believe that I have had a reasonably good career so far … and luckily I have thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

But, I did not always know what was best for me; let alone knowing my strengths. I was lucky to get good guidance in every stage of my career, from someone who acted as my mentor / guru and was an expert in my chosen field (of IT services). Looking back, I do think that having access to such a mentor / guide / guru / expert, has been one of the most important factors in shaping my career.

Now, I and some of my colleagues, are trying to extend the same help to students. We are creating a group of right Industry Experts to act as Mentors … and we are also developing an easy access platform … to bring together Students and Industry Experts. I truly believe that we will make a difference. We will be able to provide the guidance and help to students in choosing their careers and in maximizing their strengths.

Interested? Stay tuned for more info on this initiative.

Worried about your SSC result?

SSC results are out. ICSE and CBSE boards have already declared their results. Over next few days, media (especially news papers and local language TV channels) will be all praise for the high scoring students. Such students, their parents, teachers and friends, all must be feeling very proud. Many schools will brag about 100% of their students clearing SSC exams and many young parents will line-up to such schools for their kids admission next year. Colleges will measure their ‘success’ based on movement of 11^th admission cut-off (cut-off moving few notches up, is time to celebrate). I surely hope that you are one such proud student / parent / teacher.

But this blog is not about high scoring students. It’s about those who are on the other side of the spectrum. It’s about students who have scored less than their expectations (so less that they are worried about getting admission to their dream college); those who might have barely cleared the exam; and even those who failed. At the same time, I am no expert in various career options and hence this is also not about non-standard career options. I just want to express my feeling about the situation.

And first let me tell you my own story. I did all my schooling in Thane; appeared for SSC way back in 1983 (27 years is a long time); and scored 78% that time. Over the 10+ years of schooling, I had developed quite a few deep friendships. All of us wanted to do 11^th/12^th (Science) from B. N. B. College in Thane. And that year the college cut-off was at 80%. All my friends had scored more than 80% … so they got in, and I did not. That was a real shocker for me. I was never very studious, and did not care much about the quality of teachers etc.; but I really wanted to be with my friends. College admission process had singled me out. I hate that memory even now … it was one of the most humiliating experiences I ever had.

Over the years, we all still remained friends … rather very close friends. SSC marks could not separate us; and I am really happy about it. Looking back, I do not think that low score in SSC affected anything adversely in my life. But would I’ve been even better, had I got that admission in B. N. B. College? I do not know. I do know that I would have been happier then… one scar less in life.

So if you are a disappointed student / parent / teacher; don’t lose your heart. 27 years and many more exams later, I can confidently tell you: all you have lost is an insignificant battle (if life is like a war). And:

-     If you are feeling bad; it’s OK to feel so.

-     Study-wise, any college can be as good or as bad as you want it to be. So if you do not get admission in a particular college, go for the next best choice. Use next few days to have these choices ready … spend time in browsing though lots of data, talk to people, identify +ves and –ves of these colleges and finalize your preference list. You will be surprised to find that it is not that big a deal after all… there are many +ves in each case.

-     From now on, your attitude will be very important (much more than your aptitude / skills). Learn to pay attention to it.

-     No matter what you decide to do … be prepared to work very hard; and yes, perseverance always pays.

-     Last but not the least: Do not have any hard feelings about your score; or about what happens in next 2~3 months.

And as I always tell students:  A) Do fewer things; B) Know exactly why you are doing them; C) Do them well.

Winning every battle is not important; stay focused on the war instead.

May God bless you all!

Being right-minded about right-brained students

Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

‘Right To Education’ bill will probably bring basic education in lives of millions of children in India. And these children will take first step towards being self-reliant … in some sense. As government focuses on speedy implementation of this policy, it’s also time to re-look at ‘what and how’ of basic school education. It’s also time to make schooling an inclusive experience for everyone; especially for right-brained students.

While some (right-brain) courses in higher education are getting popular … most notably, design related courses offered by various prestigious institutes … most socially acceptable education and primary schooling is still very aligned to left-brained learners. This is a big gap that we somehow need to bridge. (After all, about 50% population is right-brained)

Right-brained people are believed to be better at problem solving, creativity and solution innovation. These are the exact areas that India in general and business in specific will need to leap into next era of all rounded development. I was following a discussion on India Leadership Network … ‘Why India has not produced a Google or Apple or Microsoft’ … and there were more than 650 respondents on this discussion thread … clearly demonstrating that somewhere deep inside we recognize the problem and feel passionately about it. While one can argue about India’s innovative-ness, there is no question that we need to do more … lot more in this area.

And it should start at school age. Our schools have made limited progress on usage of audio-visual tools in primary education; subjects like mathematics still depend on student’s ability to memorize tables and formulas; science is taught fully in classrooms and not in laboratories or on the field; history is more with remembering specific eras and warrior names than with stories and learning from those stories; and languages are lengthy as against beautiful. While few schools are willing to make a paradigm change (using tools and solutions from companies like Educomp … with deep rooted change in teacher mindset … may be both), the main stream examination system has not changed even a bit. Most education boards do not offer any subject options to Mathematics and Sciences at 10^th grade; exams are purely based on textbooks; admissions to 11^th grade are given solely based on marks obtained in 10^th board examination; and all these exams follow the same old text-book based questioning methodology.

Even worse, most teachers do not even understand clearly what is being ‘right-brained’. They equate right-brained people with being good at specific skills like drawing and crafts. They intrinsically think that right-brained people are weaker in science and technology skills… almost treating them as slow learners.

So what? Is there anything we can do? … We should do something, even if we do not know exactly what.

I propose simple baby steps … a) Spread the awareness about this issue and b) help right-brained students survive through their 10^th and 12^th exams, by not pressurizing them to study what they don’t like and by allowing them to select topics of their choice. Some boards, like the NIOS board, allow students multiple subject choices for 10^th and 12^thth and 12^th, these students will do well … they are creative and innovative; all they need is we letting them be that way … even in their early formative years. If our kid at home is right-brained, we will need courage to do this; if we know someone else who needs this help, we need to do well by extending helping hand and awareness. exams. Beyond 10

We all need to be right-minded about primary and secondary education. It will help right-brained learners to excel and they will in-turn help us with their innovations and creativity.

30 days in open office

Recently, about 30 days back, I joined an interesting company … ThoughtWorks. These are the 30 days I am referring here … 30 days in ThoughtWorks’ open office.

I have been working in corporate world for 20 odd years. It’s a pretty long time to form opinions and to believe that you have seen it all. But I was fooled by this company. Today, the place I work in, the open office, is hardly any office in reality; at-least not in the same shape that I knew all these years. When I was called in for an interview, I saw people working off the dining tables … everyone in the office sitting around these tables with their laptops (and most of them using Mac … as ‘Windows’ for this company are real windows with glass panels and not some program on computer). So my trained corporate mind told me that this must be a garage start-up company … only to be surprised to know that ThoughtWorks is pretty old company with offices in almost all continents (barring South Africa) and that they do some real cool work. Anyways … I do not want to bore you all with company propaganda … but do check out www.thoughtworks.com if you feel like it.

But I do want to talk about open office that stretches beyond just open sitting. I am more impressed with the ‘side effects’ of this open sitting environment. These side effects have caused few WOW moments in the span of 30 days. I want to talk about couple of those wow moments.

1. For starters, I was having real hard time finding out who are the ‘senior’ people in the company … as I wanted talk to them to get an idea of how Pune office is run. You see, there are no cabins and not a single soul wearing tie or a coat or even business casuals; so how am I suppose to find ‘key people’? And then someone told me, everyone is important. I need to talk to everyone. And sure enough, as I started talking to people … I struggled ever harder to find a non-key person... I could not. WOW! So this is for real … not just some ivory tower man saying “people are our biggest assets”.
   
   
2. Next week I participated in an account prioritization call. Just before the call, my colleague told me that “ThoughtWorks takes only Java / Ruby / .NET projects … and that too only development projects. We are a technology company and we ensure that we work only on ‘interesting’ projects. Additionally, we make sure that customer is fully aligned with ThoughtWorks way of working, i.e. customer is ready for Agile project methodology. We also are very serious about our social commitment … e.g. we do not generally work for Tobaco companies. (Revenue) Numbers are important for us, but so are people and our values; at-times we have walked away from a potentially good revenue generating account if it did not fit our value system”. And I actually saw all of this reflected in the account prioritization call. WOW! I came from the world where top-line and bottom-line came first, second and third; and all other stuff was for quarterly all-hands meetings.

3.     …

There were more … but I am sure you get the idea. If any of this has triggered your interest, go read http://bit.ly/cIssRq. ThoughtWorks is indeed more of a social corporate experiment.

I am sure, not everything in ThoughtWorks is great and I will eventually come across things that I do not like, policies that bother me, work-life balance that tilts more towards work than life etc. I am also sure that following such ‘principle centered’ way of working must be very very difficult. But for now, I am impressed with the company that is walking a different path. Hopefully I will have the courage to walk that path too.

Oh, and the last line … ThoughtWorks is hiring.

Speed or Direction? What one should concentrate on?

I learned about this interesting concept …  of People having better sense of Time (Speed) than that of Direction … in a management development program at XLRI couple years ago. I liked the concept; it was interesting and vague enough to attract my attention. Before I tell you why bring this up all of a sudden, let me explain the concept in few lines:

There was a famous study conducted, in early 90s, as part of the research topic (do not remember the author details etc), trying to figure out the professional career success mantra. The not-so-surprising part of the finding was that: Successful people had obsession with not wasting time. The finding was based on interviews of all types of successful people … businessmen, politicians, great teachers, social workers, sports personalities, religious leaders and even movie stars. They all had this obsession with not wasting time.

Now the surprising part:

• Of these 70% said they  feel they wasted their life
• Only 30% said they lived a life worth living

The climax is: majority of these 70% did not say so because they wanted to achieve new highs in their chosen field. Rather, they thought they should have done something completely different … than what they had mastered (to feel worth of living).

The paper goes on to claim that ‘people have better sense of Time than sense of Direction’. Essentially once you are on some path / any path, good people will always find ways to run faster than the rest of the pack. Even the society encourages this and rewards a fast runner. E.g. If you are an automobile engineer, you will get better pay, better respect, and better social status if you know the art of auto making better than others. Once you have established yourself as a great auto engineer, it’s that much easier to run even faster and widen the gap between you and the next best auto engineer. The adrenalin rush from this is so great … that it will be 20~30 years before you even think if you really wanted to be an auto engineer. And when you do, you would have come so far on this path, that choosing anything else would be almost impossible.

So much for the theory, but then how do you really ‘know’ what you want in life? How do you know that all these successful people are not cribbing for nothing? These are very hard questions to answer. I too do not know.

I regularly coach and guide students exiting from 12^th into college and exiting from college into industry. And of late, lots of students have started asking me this question… how to find out what will make them happy? Should they become an engineer or a doctor or an architect or teacher? That very question led me to this blog; to share with you what I am planning on doing for these kids; to get your views on what else I can do.

There is no easy answer … but I have started taking this question very seriously. In addition to guiding students on various softer aspects of getting into new job / new college, we are proposing to do their personality type profiling and linking it to career preference … that may help us partly answer this question. E.g. If you are an empathetic person, try looking for a job closer to hospitality industry or if you are a people person, look for HR / training etc. Even when you link the practicality of campus placements to it, just the sheer knowledge of knowing one’s personality type and career preference would help students. If you are a ‘people person’ and have done great in computer engineering, by all means go ahead and join a great paying IT company; but then look at contributing actively to activities like training and recruitment within the company that will take you closer to your type (of being a people person).

In the end, I hope students find right direction before they catch speed on their chosen path.

You’d Better Be Running … the chase is on

Past few weeks, from mid March to now, have been especially exciting for Education enthusiasts of two nations: India and the US.  Both these nations have announced ambitious programs to reform their education sectors … programs that hold promise to transform not only education system but to make entire nation competitive and progressive.

Few months ago, Obama administration had announced an ambitious program called ‘Race to the Top’. The program is designed to encourage States to advance education reforms by promising discretionary and competitive grants. Phase 1 of this program was completed couple weeks back. Overall aim is:

1.     Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy.

2.     Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction.

3.     Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most.

4.     Turning around lowest-achieving schools.

India unfolded its own education reforms …  mainly in 2 areas: ‘Right To Education’ act and ‘Foreign Educational Institution Bill’. While RTE focuses on primary and secondary education, FEIB looks at making higher education effective and world-class. Both these programs are a big step in right direction. While there are skeptics, mainly doubting the implementation of these programs, I am very optimistic. Not because these programs are well thought out and have the right details embedded in them … which by the way they do … but mainly because of the enthusiasm shown by Minister of Human Resource Development Mr. Kapil Sibbal and Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh. In India political will can move mountains … and this indeed is a mountain.

Given the demographics of two nations and looking at the ambitions of both these nations to retain / get their share in world’s economic and political power; I think, programs unveiled by India are more far reaching and will have bigger impact if executed perfectly. At the same time, these are the very same programs which will be difficult to implement than the one by the US. Time will tell how true the US and India remain to their intent. But one thing is for sure, educational reforms are not just necessary but critical to survival of both these great nations.

To complicate it further, both these nations are mainly banking on ‘knowledge work’ and ‘brain power’ for capturing their fair share in world hierarchy. And better education is absolutely critical to grooming knowledge workers, innovators and entrepreneurs. In that sense the US and India is competing head-on. But for a change, both can win this race… crux is to run faster and faster on this path … others are watching and chasing.

I will close with an African proverb:

Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up

and it knows it must run faster than the fastest lion

or it will be killed.

Every morning a lion wakes up in Africa

and it knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle

or it will starve to death.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.

When the Sun comes up, you’d better be running.

Learning for Surviving … Learn to Survive

It’s a cliché and does not need retelling. Especially in IT services field, it is truer than true and certainly we all know it very well (at times a hard way). However determining how and which new skill to acquire is not easy.

But what triggered this blog, was a book I read couple days back (The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman). The book refreshed my memory about a term coined by Gartner in 2005 … Versatilist. I vaguely remembered reading Gartner press release back then and even discussing it with one of my friend on what it meant for us. (I and my friend were just moving from Project Management roles into wider general management roles in our career) So I searched the press release and re-read it.

What Gartner predicted in 2005 about IT services and outsourcing landscape and what it would mean for people working it IT, was amazingly accurate. Gartner had said “By 2010, landscape for IT professionals will change … enabled by competitive IT skills, knowledge bases, outsourcing … and will put many IT professionals in competition with their peers in other geographical markets”. The article further predicted: “IT departments in most companies will be 30% smaller (as compared to 2005 size) mainly due to automation in SDLC processes, advancement in IT tools and device convergence. All of this leading to employers demanding versatility from employees.” Almost all of this is true today.

If so, maybe we should consider Gartner suggestion … on ‘how and what to learn’ … to be Versatilist … as against specialist or generalist. By Gartner definition Specialist is someone with deep skills in a very focused area; Generalist has broader understanding but shallow skills; whereas Versatilist is the one who can apply depth of the acquired skills to a progressively widening scope of situations at the same time gaining new (deep) skills and assuming wider roles.

I cross checked this definition with my own skills … and realized that I have become more of a Generalist than a Versatilist. And that is alarming. Then I checked with my friend … and he too reached the same conclusion about himself. So maybe it’s true for quite a few ‘experienced’ people like me and my friend … that with career advances over last few years, we have acquired more skills and broader roles and senior positions in the companies, but the skills acquired are relatively shallow. If that is true, we are at odds with Gartner’s definition of ‘hot skills for 2010’.

What should I do? What should we all do?

I think I should go back to basics … and look at how we were ‘learning’ when we were new in this industry. E.g. I remember having to learn C, XVT Libraries, Tuxedo and Informix as part of my first job with Tata Unisys back in 1990. Tata Unisys gave us (bunch of new programmers) a formal training in C and we then had to read books on Informix and C to get further references. XVT and Tuxedo implementation on Unisys platform ware brand-new technologies, and there were hardly any books. We had to go through official manuals and then experiment with all these tools. We wrote lot of programs … surely some were awful … but then we worked with each other, collaborating and helping and reading and what not … finally creating very good working software. We all worked very hard … often more than 13~14 hrs daily … without anyone demanding that we sit late. We all were learning.

I for one did not learn my Solution Design or Project Management or Program Management or People Skills or Contract Management or other General Management Skills the same way. Somehow, while I learned all this and many more things, I did not go through the same rigor and zeal and entrepreneurial spirit. I do not know what and how and why etc.; but my learning process itself was ‘shallow’ and hence probably my skills also remained shallow.

I think I should concentrate more on those key words …

• Go for a formal training if available 
• Read lot of related material on the topic (books, manuals, papers; even attend seminars and join user groups and online groups etc)
• Experiment … test the results … and be willing to modify as needed 
• Peer groups are important forums where you can test and validate your skills and even take help in areas where you are stuck

Hopefully one day I will be more of a Versatilist than a Generalist. What else do you suggest I should do?

 

Please Sell Your Work.

My earnest request to all my colleagues … Please Sell Your Work … to your peers and your friends and colleagues in your organization and outside.

Ok, let me explain.

Last weekend, on a sunny Saturday morning, I gave a small speech on ‘Project Governance’ in PMI Pune chapter monthly seminar. I was surprised to see 60+ project managers there on the weekend, on their own time and dime, to participate in this event. My talk was well received; and there were quite a few who wanted to chat with me after the seminar.

The talks quickly gravitated from generic project governance to their own projects and their experiences. And I noticed that most talked very loosely about their work (to say the least). Many talked about ‘external factors’ as the main reason why their project is likely to head south. I nodded my head; made some general comments; shook hands … used the opportunity to network and left that place.

I then thought about this ‘after the seminar’ talk; and realized that this is not a one-off discussion. More often than not, we crib about the work we are doing. (And I am no exception … I too have talked many a times with my friends about ‘problems’ in the company that I worked for)

I am now connecting this to my earlier blog; ‘I need another job’. There, I had promised to write about ‘How to find a new job, and not just a new company’.

    While I do not have any mantra for it and the topic is vast, I thought of scribbling down my thoughts in multiple blogs, rather than write a one single longish (boring) blog. This one is the first …

    And, my view on this (negative talk about the projects) is simple: DON'T

1. You must like the work you are doing … to the level where you would appear to be ‘selling’ it to others even during the casual talks. 
2. If 1 is not true, still find out which part of the work you like the best and sell that (and if possible think how you can change the bits that you don’t like)
3. If 1 is not true and 2 is not possible (I won’t get into the reasons), look for right articulation of the issues. But avoid sounding negative. Sounding negative, does not help … not you for sure (I know … I am asking you to fake it).
4. If 1 is not true, 2 is not possible and 3 you have tried and are tired of it now … hang on for my next blog on this topic (you really need a change).

In a nutshell, when we talk negatively about our work, we inadvertently send a ‘message’ about ourselves. May be we are finger pointing … instead of looking in the mirror. If you are amongst the lucky ones (who love what they are doing and are passionate about it), that’s great. But even if you are not, think and talk and act positive … I am sure it will lead to a positive change.

So long …

I need another job.

No, no, no… I am NOT looking for another job. Rather I heard this statement from many of my friends and colleagues in last 3~4 weeks; hence I started thinking about it. Not only did they tell me that they wanted another job, they were also asking me how to go about it.

So … here are my 2 cents on these 2 topics (1 cent each) … a) what I feel about this ‘wanting another job’ and b) how to go about it … or rather how I went about it when I was looking for a job.

I am 41+ (yeah … college going kids call me uncle now). And for last 20 years I am working in IT services field; and most of my friends/colleagues are in similar age bracket (+/- 5 years) and in similar jobs. All these people expressed deep frustration about the job they were doing. They complained about ‘same old story’ / ‘lots of late working or even night-outs’ / ‘sr management expecting and demanding too much’ / ‘unreasonable customer’ / ‘(poor) quality of people surrounding them in the company’ / ‘just too much work pressure’ / ‘extreme micromanagement’ … and so on. In so many words, but all that they were telling me is : they are not enjoying the work they are doing.

These people were from various different IT companies, small as well as big, Indian as well as MNCs, product as well as services. So the situation is almost the same everywhere. We all are probably playing musical chair … we can change the company we work for, but not the ‘job’. And while my friends are looking for another job, chances are that they will settle for another company.

Having said so, can one really change the job? In my opinion, it’s possible. But I will save that thought for the next blog.

So if you are still looking for another company (or another job) … read on.

Since 2003, I have changed companies 3 times. All these 3 times, my new employer found me … rather than me searching the new job. Believe me, I am not one of the sharpest technical wizard around or the management guru or anything of that sort. I am like most other people working in the Indian IT industry. In 2003, I landed up with new job, purely because my prospective manager knew me from past association. Last 2 times my new employers (or headhunters working for them) found me on ‘Linked In’ through one of my connections. Ironically, all 3 times, I had updated my resume on Monster + Times Jobs + Naukari. But my ‘links’ helped me find the right job and not these portals.

So I think my friends did the right thing … telling me that they are looking for a change. They should also talk to other people they know. I am sure one such ‘coffee talk’ will open doors to new possibilities. Your peer network can do more than what you think is possible.

Should Students be evaluating Teachers?

Should Students be asked to evaluate Teachers? A simple question and not so new either, yet heavily debated. In just last one week, I got to hear two exact opposite views (including very passionate argument about why their opinion is the correct one). And this dilemma exists not only in Indian education environment, but equally in the West as well.


I will not go into all the details of those arguments; but one point caught my attention: Do students know what is best for them?


If students are allowed to evaluate professors, while they haven’t really matured yet, there is an inherent risk of students giving higher rating to ‘easy going’ professors and lower rating to the ones who challenge them the most. Especially in Indian Education system (which is often charged with producing ‘followers’ and not ‘leaders’), this may further dampen student creativity and innovation capabilities. Even teachers, in a fiercely competitive teaching job market, will be tempted to satisfy their ‘customers’; overlooking how to produce the bestest engineers / bestest mathematicians / bestest scientists. Who will be the ultimate looser … probably the student herself.


On the other hand, how will teachers effectively reach out to students if they don’t even know if students are listening to them? Assuming that teachers know all and that students do not know how to ‘receive’ education, is an equally wrong assumption. (Do students not know a good e-learning website from a bad one? If yes, what tells us that they will not know good teacher from a bad one?) Coupled with this is the new way of looking at student psychology and pressures they are faced with on a day to day basis. I am sure we all were forced to put our thinking hats (even for a moment) while watching 3 Idiots or reading news of student suicides. If only teachers could have listened to / heard students views, some of these unfortunate incidents could have been avoided.


But in the end, the question remains. Do Students know what is best for them? And I for one, tend to equate this to the corporate world … do our customers know what is best for them? And irrespective of anyone’s views on this, let me say in the same breath, that all corporates value customer satisfaction scores higher than most other business measurements.


Ok then! My two cents: we need to experiment with this idea … get students to evaluate teachers … and rather than arguing about the intent … we need to focus on creating a good evaluation questionnaire that can address the negativity surrounding this dilemma.


What say?

Can Education Institute Inspire Entrepreneurship?

Last week, I was invited to QMTI, one of the technical and management training institutes in Pune, India. Occasion was ‘The Annual Projects Event’ and I was the chief guest. QMTI works dedicatedly for rehabilitating disabled soldiers and their dependents. I was supposed to look at various projects done by these soldiers and say few words of encouragement. It was that simple.

And as expected, the whole thing was mostly uneventful. I went there, looked at all the projects and gave a small 10~12 min speech.

Most soldiers were only 10^th / 12^th pass and QMTI had given them some ITI equivalent training (basic electronics, soldering, welding, some computer hardware and software basics etc.). From that perspective, the projects were still quite good and reflective of what they had learned. But from the professional industry perspective, most projects were very simple, easy to do, and kind of non-challenging to our engineering minds.

So rather than project ideas, what I took home were two key observations and a very important learning.

Key Observations:

1. Most projects were ‘fully developed units / working models’ (not just diagrams, presentations or static models)
2. Jawans were immensely proud of their work and they were explaining their projects to me with all enthusiasm and energy

Key Learning:

After the ceremony, I was offered tea in QMTI director’s office. Couple of his colleagues joined us. And what I learned here made my whole visit worthwhile … about 12~14% students from each batch end-up starting their own shop / business. This number is far higher than entrepreneurial start-ups from most BA/BCom/BSc colleges in India, comparable to THE best professional colleges in India, and even higher than government setup entrepreneurial development organizations (like MCED in Maharashtra).

If these students, with only knowledge of welding and soldering, with some disability, in their 30s / even 40s in some cases, and with no financial support from friends/family, were able to take risk of entering own business, I wondered what makes students from established colleges think otherwise?

May be there is something to learn from the way QMTI ‘delivers training’.