Those days are over when companies gave their employees regular promotions and hikes. Today, there is need for employees to skill themselves better so that they can apply them at work and move to the next level in management. This is especially true for the IT workforce, says Tapan Rayaguru
Gone are the days of regular promotions and annual compensation hikes of 25 per cent or more. More than ever, there is a need to skill this generation of Indian IT workforce with management fundamentals while they still have an opportunity to apply those skills at work and deserve to move into the next level in management. However, most in-house corporate training programmes have failed to get this exercise to scale to cover most of their employees. The onus then shifts to the employee to invest in himself to ensure the growth that they expect. There are several professional training schools that have dedicated themselves to this opportunity and provide a range of programmes. The relevance of business knowledge in a technology professional’s career is manifold.
For professionals in the software products business there is the issue of awareness of the needs of the target market, the need and importance of certain features over others, the way a feature needs to be implemented so that it is meaningful for a business user etc. There is also a need to understand the economics behind the product being developed.
For professionals that are helping clients in the implementation of packages, there is need to understand not only product features from a business usage perspective but also understand the fundamentals of the business process that the feature is trying to support. Instead of just being a passive recipient of client needs, a good grasp of business fundamentals could allow these professionals to proactively suggest alternate methods that could help the client meet their business objective.
For client engagement managers it is critical to understand the core business of the clients they support while not losing focus on the economics of their own business. A good knowledge of business fundamentals allow client managers to understand the business of their clients better leading to better quality conversations, more meaningful relationship and a long term partnership. A business education programme that aims to help mid-career professionals progress further must focus on the 5 Cs in the way they impart the education — Coverage, contextualise, complement, collaborate, coach and coverage
Coverage
For the business education programme to be meaningful there has to be sufficient coverage of different functional areas that a professional needs to work through. While finance seems to be a common inclusion in most curriculum, the less glamorous but perhaps more important areas like operations and people skills are often deprioritised. A good programme must cater to the functional knowledge needs of not only the next role but a few levels ahead as well. Some programmes tend to be over ambitious and be everything to everybody and probably end up not satisfying any of the populations. A programme which is intended for professional from the technology industry alone may be better placed to provide appropriate coverage.
Contextualise
Adults learn best when the concept is illustrated through a real life experience. A good standard in business education for working professionals must present real life problems from the technology industry and allow for the students to try and solve them without the benefit of theoretical concepts. Once the concepts are clarified, the students must be allowed to solve the same problem again using the concept to realise the elegance in the new solution.
Collaborate
No one really works alone in any professional field. Most professionals either succeed as a team or fail as a team. Consider a programme that allows in you to work in small groups of folks with similar backgrounds and similar future aspirations that you can work together, learn from and also make friends for life beyond the context of the course you are doing.
Complement
In order to complement the functional skills, professionals must be in the pursuit of skills that enable them to be successful.
Coach
In deference to the age and experience of the mid-career professional the need is more for ‘coaches’ rather than ‘teachers’. The coaching ability of senior management professionals must be preferred over the research/theory orientation of ‘professors’ in a typical management school. The hands-on experience of the ‘player coach’ helps them communicate in a language that is well understood by both parties and leads to the ‘coach’ empathise with the student community way better to facilitate real learning.
(The writer is executive director,Sunstone Business School)