Unique Skills

 Ok, managerial skills include organising, leading, communicating, starting up and so on. Some people I know who do this well, from my experience

Anshita Abhishek Shetty, whose birthday it is today, organised two parties with good attendance, for me when I asked her to. It's not an easy task, though she made it look easy.

T.K. Chatterjee, a colleague at IMT Nagpur, led the placement team successfully when I was Director. Before him, Harsh Halve was also successful at it. Both motivated a team of people too.

Narayani Ramachandran, a colleague at NMIMS Bangalore, had a way with students, pushing them to do things beyond their usual capabilities. 

Pritam Singh, my boss at IIM Lucknow long ago, had a way of recruiting faculty, convincing companies to do training programs, and so on. 

Startups- Shatakshi Tripathi started Confused Genius- a digital marketing company, and sold it too, successfully navigating the COVID years through remote working employees. Natasha Kothari, a friend I met recently, does this at Studio Ungap, which she started roughly 5 years ago, as a Digital Marketing outfit in Mumbai. Divya Singh also did this with a firm called Cyclitics, still running successfully at Gurgaon. And a couple of them, like Swati Sinha and Aditi Atre, sell stuff like handloom sarees, art etc. Aditi Gupta does the same abroad, through Abhivyakti.

Why Exams are Ballyhooed

 ..and why they shouldn't be, is the full title of this piece.

The major reason is that they don't give the full picture. It's a small part of what a student or applicant is. The other problem with exams are that they often become a game rather than a real test of knowledge, application or skill. The written exam as it is done in the education system is, more often than not, a test of how well you play the exam game-hence the undue importance of coaching classes. They can cook up the menu to order, and train you to crack any exam on earth, provided there's a pattern to the exam.

The purpose of an examination may not just be to test your regurgitation skills, but maybe also to test how you can think about a problem, or even state what is the problem. Too much emphasis on solving a given problem begs the question- is it the right problem, in the first place? A good example may be chasing GDP growth without looking at the Human Development Index, in national terms. You may achieve one at the cost of the other, so teaching tradeoffs or thinking about these in an exam may be important.

Life is multidimensional, and exams should also reflect that..a score alone cannot define a person, who may have talents that are not measured by it. Sometimes a narrow skill is required which an exam may test for a particular job, but in most cases, we need a broad set of thinking skills that can be applied in multiple ways. That, most exams fail to test. Maybe it's time to relook at it, pandemic or no pandemic...

Reinventing Yourself

 The only reason you can't do this every day is because it may need some preparation, or work. But periodically in life, it might be doable-if you think it's desirable. For example, careers can change- from small to large changes of direction. You can learn a new skill, a new musical instrument, or a sport, like I learnt Golf, to add to Badminton or Cricket that I played earlier. 

Why do it? It makes life interesting, for one. If you learn a new software as an academic, it may help you to get published, and that counts. If you learn how to write Cases, again, it can help you teach better in a class. You can use these cases too. Sometimes, you can also publish these.

Reinventing yourself may mean a change in direction, or a change of pace. Or just redefining your priorities, and doing more of something, and less of other things. Working of your health or fitness, maybe, as some of my friends seem to be doing. You don't have to go to the Himalayas to become a hermit, you can do lots of interesting things in the plains. 

Try it, if you think it's worthwhile. Life becomes more interesting, so you have nothing to lose.

We Are Multidimensional

Women more so than men I think, but we all are to some extent, multidimensional. I think the tendency to look at a human being as only one thing (or two) is extremely myopic.

We all function for about 60-70 years in ways that require many skills at work, and even more of them outside it. We might pursue a hobby (or many of these-photography and writing, in my case), maybe play a sport (I have played Golf, Badminton, Tennis and cricket at various points, apart from Table Tennis), travel alone or otherwise, interact with a variety of people from all walks of life (maids, drivers, assistants at work, bosses,...you get the picture), and some of these are not easy things to do.

We communicate, handle emotions of great variety, from anger, frustration, joy, hope, in ourselves and others too, and handle mundane tasks like cooking, cleaning, setting up a home, bringing up kids, buying a vehicle, and need various life skills to do that.

Did I mention academics? It is deliberately left to bring up the rear, because I want to make a point.

The End of the short lecture.

My Vital Stats

No, it's not what you think.. just a few stats that I remember or have cooked up. Half-truths?

Born 1960, citizen of undivided A.P. , India. Single and ready to mingle till 1988. No more.

Speaks (some) Telugu, Marathi, Hindi, Hyderabadi, English.

Paid Jobs- New Horizons (Ad agency), MBA (Marketing Research), Clemson Univ., Lander, XIMB, Vignana Jyoti, Kirloskar (Harihar, a beautiful place), IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode (learnt how to pronounce it!), PESIT, IFIM (both at Bangalore), IMT Nagpur, IMT Ghaziabad, IIM Indore. Unpaid-Husband, father, son, etc.

Countries Visited- Japan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, USA, Canada, The Bahamas, Holland, Dubai. Appreciated the need for Swachchata Abhiyaan after these. Learning-East or West, India is the best. All major colonial powers thought so too.

Skills- reading, writing, joking, cooking.

Hole-in-one: Twice, at the Kodaikanal and Wellington Golf Clubs. In 2014 and 2016.

Past students- a million. Those in touch- Half a million.

Member- Google mail, Yahoo mail, egroups, Facebook, Blogspot, A music group (Hindi), ELMAR

Interests- Anything interesting-meeting new people or old friends, drinking good whisky, micro-brewed beer, good wine, playing/teaching Golf, talking about it, shooting the breeze, staring into space, developing new courses, writing blogs, G.K., puns, films, film songs, travel, food-especially biryani and Irani chai.

Hate: You guessed it- shopping. Mosquitoes, except talking ones.

Skills You Need

I am all for building skills (This is not a serious post on the subject, in case you are wondering). So the only question is, which skills do we need for survival in today's rough-and-tumble world?

No. 1 would be the Selfie-taking skill

You don't exist unless you are on some social media. Your existence (in peoples'minds) is correlated with the number of selfies you post, preferably with a pout. If you post other pics, ten of them count as equal to one selfie. Get it? There are now phones with two cammeras on each side, so you have no excuses.

No. 2 would be Linguistic Skill.

Yo, bro. Have you met your bae recently? No go? etc...it's called being in tune with the times, and not besura.

No. 3 would be the Ability to Forward

We are not talking Hockey or Football here. Whether it's WhatsApp, facebook, or Insta, you are a nobody unless you can hit the forward button a few times in a day (or night, if you prefer). Again, it is mainly to let your friends know you are alive, and not watching GoT 24x7 when you actually are.

No. 4 would be your Ability to make a Mountain out of a Molehill

Ok, I will simplify this. Say, u are at a mall and getting bored. You have to only Check in, as if in a plane, or attach an unrelated GIF, or anything that sounds like fun, and post it online. It creates the impression that you are a fun guy/gal with no worries in the world.

Ditto for airports (the most boring places on earth?), bad movies (Yayy, I am watching the latest MSG film-what a handsome hunk!)..

No. 5 is your Ability to Craft a Consistent Image

Out of all this, you must be consistent. If it means you ahve to come across as being crazy (or permanently pouted), so be it. If it is to be a supersonic traveller (here today, on the moon tomorrow, again..so be it)

Finally, you need some sense of humour, to appreciate the above, Mr/Ms. reader..

What a Workplace Should Strive For

We all know what makes you successful, and what you as an employee should bring to the table (the job-you may have a table or not). This is about what the workplace should think about. And do, hopefully.

Dignity of labour is in my view, number one for a human in any job. He or she must be treated with dignity, and not as a robotic or mechanical cog in the wheel. The latter is beautifully demonstrated by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times.

Show him a reasonable future in terms of what he can do to progress to a level above his current one. This need not be in terms of just salary, but a good mix of work where he gets to use his skills best.

Anything that fosters an element of camaraderie among his team-mates will create an atmosphere where he wants to come back every day.

Autonomy to the extent possible, is crucial for many. In my view, this is what brings people into teaching, particularly to autonomous institutions which also provide autonomy to its faculty and staff. An empowered employee usually does far better work than a hyper-controlled one.

This is apart from practical solutions to his/her problems, such as transport, or a creche for young mothers to be able to work.

Presentation Skills

These are the most important set of skills a person may possess or acquire in life, in my humble view (just avoiding IMHO, the cliche). Why? It can change you from a hero to a zero, or vice-versa, in a jiffy. I have come to this wonderful conclusion about the human condition (might get nominated for a Nobel sometime), after sitting through a bunch of presentations at a conference where educated people, some faculty and some students, presented their research papers.

I have no quarrel with content that was presented, but I do have one with the way it was presented. Most speakers did not seem to have a clue as to how long they were taking. This was compounded by a laissez- faire chairperson, who allowed them to drift aimlessly from slide to slide (oh, what a slide it was, too).

Anyway, there were horrendous (egregious? maybe I still remember how to spell this, after all) errors of spelling, pronunciation, grammar, editing and the like on many of the slides and articulation of those. The central idea of the 10-15 minute presentation was not clear to the audience even at the end.

Is it so difficult to present a few ideas or thoughts or report on what you tried to do and achieved? I think not, but it needs you to think from the other's-the audience's-point of view. We are so full of ourselves that we as speakers neglect the audience. We have no idea of their needs, and make it so one-sided that it puts people off. Structuring a thought or two into a slide so that the audience gets a gist, should be the objective. Stringing the slides together for coherence should be the second objective. Editing it after it is done should be a matter of course.

Asking questions is another art that I will pontificate on some other time. The manner of doing it is just too rude in many conferences.