Skip to main content

The learning challenge in (some) organizations

I read this piece with some amusement. That Infosys is de-layering itself. The interesting part for me in that article was this:

As India's largest software firms have added tens of thousands of employees over the past decade, many layers of middle management have in the process also been under-utilised since they are not billable employees anymore as they are not directly involved in day-to-day software coding. 

"We've seen that people who are not getting billed, they also tend to get a ittle bit away from technology and so on. The best way to address that is o make them more active in project execution - that's  .. 

In a way this is the hands-on crisis in the Indian IT industry. Few years on, people lose their ability to work hands on - and that usually translates into lesser billing for the company. Unless of course, they have taken their abilities and become consultants - which can then be billed by the company. 

The fact is that unless you keep at it, once you become a manager, there is a very high chance that skills get rusted. And that is the learning challenge in some organizations. Regardless of which team you lead, how do you ensure that your skills  are upto date with the current realities? Why technology, in everything the world is moving ahead. 

I have heard similar stories in teaching, biotech and even other industries. Managers often tend to lose touch with the emerging trends in a field.

As  long as you are hands on - and in tune with the latest, as long as your are learning something new (almost every day), you are learning. Otherwise, you are rusting!

What can the organization do? Hire people who are hands on. Promote individual contributors. Have fewer and fewer administrator and 'people' managers. Celebrate knowledge. Celebrate sharing of knowledge...etc etc etc
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zero to One

Zero to One by Peter Thiel is a nice read. (Yes - if I sit down to write a book review - the book has to be worth it - and usually good - so most of my book reviews are about good books.You can stop here if that's the information you seek.) Where this book scores is in contrarian thoughts and contrarian questions that make you think. It starts with a four big lessons learned from the 90s dot-com crash that is, Make incremental advances, Stay lean and flexible, Improve on the competition and Focus on product, not sales. Just as you warm up to it, he says, the opposite rules are more correct - which are: It is better to risk boldness than triviality. A bad plan is better than no plan. Competitive markets destroy profits. Sales matters just as much as products. And finally leaves with a simple definition of contrarianism - it is not to oppose the crowd (or follow a smaller or newer or older crowd) but to think for yourself. "All happy companies are different"...
Post a Comment
Read more

Playing to win

This bright green book with a yellow title has always caught my attention, but I had never read it.  Imagine my surprise that when I finally picked it up as part of a preparation for a workshop that it was such a fantastic book. Playing to win by Alan Lafley and Roger Martin is one of those books that is up there when it comes to learning about how strategy can be crafted and implemented in real business. There is much in the book - and unlike other books - this book is really a leaf out of P&G, but with frameworks and models that can be applied anywhere. Image from here . It is these 5 questions played in a loop (well, iteratively) that are the juiciest part of the book and as simple and obvious as they are, it is this place where the strategy play happens. So, yes, simply put a great book to be read by anyone who is anywhere close to strategy...
Post a Comment
Read more