Nassim Nicholas Taleb's best-selling business book The Black Swan makes a statement about the unique perspective of a practitioner. The book mentions Harvard University professor emeritus Robert Merton and Stanford University professor emeritus Myron Scholes, who together won a Nobel prize in 1997 for a formula used to value financial derivatives. Referencing that formula, Taleb writes, "Traders, bottom-up people, know its wrinkles better than academics by dint of spending their nights worrying about their risks." The statement encapsulates the idea that the nuances of some academic theories might be best understood by the people who put those theories into practice.
Business schools have come to value the practitioner's perspective, and they are increasingly making room for those viewpoints on their staffs. Bloomberg Businessweek identified 25 top executives who teach. The list includes names such as Oracle Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz, who lectures on M&A and accounting at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and the chairman and chief executive officer of Anadarko Petroleum (APC), James Hackett, who lectures at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business in Houston.
The list also includes recently retired executives who have a wealth of uncommon career experience. For example, former Deere & Co. (DE) Chief Executive Officer Bob Lane, who was part of a team that opened Deere's first plant in China, and he led the company as it increased revenue outside of North America to $7.96 billion, or about 35 percent of total revenue. Lane now teaches an executive education course at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business. His class makes stops in China and India, and his students are primarily executives at North American and European companies that are expanding into emerging markets for the first time.
Practitioners who teach have their failures as well as their successes on display for students. At the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Bradley Keywell are slated to teach a class this winter on building Internet startups, months after Groupon restated revenue and lost its second chief operating officer in six months. The two adjunct professors may not be able to discuss the details of those experiences in class for legal reasons, says Booth 2012 MBA candidate Daniel Shani, who took their same class earlier this year. But, he says, they are candid about prior missteps, and often use those moments as teaching examples.
"The one theme that they kept revisiting was the notion of failure," Shani says. "They were always very open and quick to admit to failures of past businesses and Groupon to date, and were willing to use them in discussion."
Practitioners also serve as a sounding board for students seeking practical career advice. Cie Nicholson is the chief marketing officer at Equinox, a privately held fitness company that owns clubs in New York City, Chicago, and Southern California. Nicholson lectures at her alma mater, Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. Before Equinox, she handled marketing for a Bay Area startup and prior to that worked in marketing at Pepsi Co. She routinely describes to students how she executed each career transition—from large public company, to startup, to private company. "I think that is something that is very tangible for them," she says, "and they get a lot out of it."
This is the blog of CA Suprio Ghatak. Chartered Accountant by profession. Trainer and writer by passion. Any suggestions and recommendations are always welcome. Please mail on casuprioghatak2018@gmail.com
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
With a view to improve quality of management education in India , should AICTE think in terms of prescribing that at least 40 % of faculty must have industrial experience of 10 years or more ?
This was part of a discussion in which I participated at a different place. But since what I learned from it is very relevant I would like to share it with my readers here.
The topic of discussion here is stated above. I am trying to add my two cents to what is being discussed by the other members participating.
50% would be good for a start. The other 50% would be for people with only academic experience. Plus minimum marks. 50% would be good from Class-X to PG. I give an example to explain this.
For Industry Recruits:
A person with 5-years corporate experience would be eligible to apply for the post of Lecturer in any b-school, recognized or unrecognized, affiliated or unaffiliated, recognized or unrecognized by AICTE, UGC, whatever.
A person with 10-years corporate experience for Assistant Professor.
A person with 15-years corporate experience for Associate Professor.
A person with 20-years corporate experience for Professor.
The above experiences are applicable to people who are applying after working in the industry for the minimum years referred to.
Otherwise, after a 5-year corporate stint and joining as Lecturer, the person gradually becomes a Professor if he or she remains in academics. For them research work and Ph.D. would be a must to be eligible to get promoted to the post of Associate Professor onward. Ph.D. will never be a must for industry recruits. Their years of experience which are much more for each post as shown above compensates for that.
Otherwise there will not be any improvement. You will see the same thing happening over and over again in any b-school. An Assistant Professor having less than 10-year experience, mostly academic, sitting beside a person having 20-years experience in the industry. He is also an Assistant Professor and both have the same salary. Poor chap is cursing himself why did he leave the industry.
Yes, I agree that a lot of motivation is required for people to leave the Industry with all its rewards and shift to teaching. People who have the passion to teach and contribute to institution-building are successful. But the point is monetarily they are always at a loss. Here I am referring to those who quit and come for full-time teaching, say in the age group of 35 to 45, and not after retirement at the age of 58 or above. If their experience is given adequate weightage they can contribute a lot to b-schools in particular. Doing PhD always remains an option with them but that should not negate what they bring to the institute. Yes most people do not leave industries and change their career path.
Yes, I agree that a lot of motivation is required for people to leave the Industry with all its rewards and shift to teaching. People who have the passion to teach and contribute to institution-building are successful. But the point is monetarily they are always at a loss. Here I am referring to those who quit and come for full-time teaching, say in the age group of 35 to 45, and not after retirement at the age of 58 or above. If their experience is given adequate weightage they can contribute a lot to b-schools in particular. Doing PhD always remains an option with them but that should not negate what they bring to the institute. Yes most people do not leave industries and change their career path.
The problem is private and even government Institutions do not recognize and reward them.
The quality of education imparted particularly in the MBA course depends on how well the faculty is able to correlate the concepts, whether it is finance, marketing, HR or operations, with industry applications. For a person who has never worked in an industry it becomes very difficult to do this. The students never learn much beyond what is given in the text book. And this has been the general complaint of MBA students.
But I agree with a member that it all depends on the nature of experience and the intellectual ability and capacity.
I agree with a member that the regulator whether it is UGC/AICTE/concerned university needs to define the experience and what it wants from the people who come from the industry. It has to be evaluated by certain established parameters.
A member has a good suggestion and I agree that the industry needs to welcome people from academics if they are able to deliver. They should reciprocate and welcome faculty members and count their experience. I would say people who have already worked before stand a better chance. For people who would work for the first time and who are above 40 it may be rather difficult.
To substantiate further, the following areas make such people the best to contribute positively in the growth of b-schools.
1. Industry interface: They can help immensely in the b-school's brand building. This is very much required in today's world of cut throat competition in education. They can assist the corporate resource cell. Whether it is the corporate connect program where they will be very useful in bringing the right people across verticals and domains who make the MBA students know right from Day-1 what is it that the company in particular and industry in general expect from them at the workplace. As a member has correctly said, employability is the thing that they look for.
2. Industry visits. Here also they can be better utilized with their experience.
3. Yes they are cut out for assisting in placements. This is an area of concern where even after having the resources things are not happening the way they should.
But all said and done they should have the passion to do these beyond teaching. Otherwise their experience will add little or no value to the students as well as to the b-school where they work.
People with industry experience are in a much better position to teach in b-schools is not an assumption. It is a fact. But having said that teaching is not cut out for everybody. If a person does not have the passion to teach the number of years of corporate experience will not take care of that problem ever. At the same time preparing question papers, assessment of the students, how to guide them are all things which people learn as they teach. People who cannot speak for even 30 minutes do not deserve to work. Teaching is a much more difficult thing to do.
In the earlier part of this discussion I have suggested what should be the minimum industry experience that makes a person eligible for teaching in different posts. I have been fortunate to have worked in the best b-schools with people who have added a lot of value from the industry.
Strategic Planning
In Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Henry Mintzberg, unmasks the press that has mesmerized so many organizations since 1965: strategic planning. He concludes that the term is an oxymoron -- that strategy cannot be planned because planning is about analysis and strategy is about synthesis. That is why, he asserts, the process has failed so often and so dramatically.
Mintzberg traces the origins and history of strategic planning through its prominence and subsequent fall. He argues that we must reconceive the process by which strategies are created -- by emphasizing informal learning and personal vision -- and the roles that can be played by planners. He proposes new and unusual definitions of planning and strategy, and examines in novel and insightful ways the various models of strategic planning and the evidence of why they failed.
Mintzberg shows how the process itself can destroy commitment, narrow a company's vision, discourage change, and breed an atmosphere of politics. He describes three basic fallacies of the process -- that discontinuities can be predicted, that strategists can be detached from the operations of the organization, and that the process of strategy-making itself can be formalized.
Mintzberg writes of the new role for planning, plans, and planners, not inside the strategy-making process, but in support of it, providing some of its inputs and sometimes programming its outputs as well as encouraging strategic thinking in general. Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning is required reading for anyone in an organization who is influenced by the planning or the strategy-making processes.
Strategy Execution
Strategy execution is how to plan and control the firm’s performance. It includes concepts like strategic planning, budgeting, resource allocation, performance measurement, evaluation and reward, responsibility centre allocation, transfer pricing, etc. It ensure strategies are carried out to attain organisation’s objectives. Management control, organisation structure, human resource management, culture are the tools. Strategic planning is the process of deciding on new strategies and how to implement them. How the strategic decision is to be implemented is the strategic plan.
Sheela Bhatt On Indian Media
Sheela Bhatt, who began reporting at the age of 19, writes mainly on the marginalised sections of Indian society onRediff.com and India Abroad where she is currently Senior Editorial Director, News.
She founded, edited and published the anti-establishment Gujarati weekly, Abhiyaan.
She also conceived and launched India Today's Gujarati edition, working as its senior editor for four years.
Later, as editor, Star TV, she supervised the content of Star News and produced several well-received weekly programmes.
Sheela Bhatt received the Chameli Devi Jain Award in 1993. She shared the award with Manimala and Alka Raghuvanshi.
Sheela Bhatt says, the Indian media has been a spectacular failure.The search for truth has an emotional context that technology cannot give. Corporate influence on the media is evident. Lip service is given to providing 'balanced news. No technology can substitute integrity and authenticity. Making News, Breaking News, Her Own Way, Edited by Latika Padgaonkar & Shubha Singh, Stories by Winners of the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediapersons.
'The Indian media has been a spectacular failure'
Eighty per cent of Indians earn less than Rs 10,000, and the more you talk to this segment, the more you realise what a spectacular failure the Indian media has been in understanding, reflecting and empathising with this 'other India,' says award-winning journalist, Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
I was with the print media in Delhi, with the Gujarati edition of India Today, when I received the Chameli Devi Jain Award in 1993.
But my world of yesterday seems a distant past. Before life became 'modern', I reported India differently.
Let me begin by relating the background to my story so that I can adequately convey the sense of loss within me.
I became a journalist in 1979, at a time when I did not know English. All I had was a burning desire to communicate.
Call it naivete or plain idiocy, but I blithely overlooked the fact that my window to the world was primarily through a badly produced Gujarati daily published in Mumbai.
Yet, the reporting of the disaster in the Chasnala coal mine in 1975 moved me intellectually and emotionally to become a journalist. Three hundred and seventy-five miners died due to the flooding of the mine. Those images have haunted me ever since.
'My life is driven by a tsunami of information'
In 2000, I switched to online journalism and it is from this perspective that I offer some thoughts.
My life is now driven by a tsunami of information and opinions that pour in 24x7 through digital technology.
Initially, it was a completely new experience to work through 'mailboxes'. Then I got used to it. Now, in my Gmail window, Jairam Ramesh is visible, Ahmed Patel is on BBM, Sushma Swaraj tweets warmly, Arun Jaitley is just an e-mail away and the people at the PMO reply instantly through SMS.
Yet, this is a false, technology-mediated sense of 'connectivity'.
When I tiptoed into the world of journalism, I could carry with me all the documents, reports or other materials I needed, nicely packed in just two bags.
>But, although I did not possess the many mailboxes I now do, and I lacked the means to 'connect' with political leaders in the real or cyber world, I was connected with what I consider the 'real India' round the clock.
Without intermediaries like e-mail or Facebook, I walked and walked for hundreds of miles to meet people. I did not select them -- like I do now. I was with them, all the time, on the streets, in the bazaars, in the courtrooms, in hospitals and police stations, and in the villages, whereas, now I find myself 'sms-ing' news all the time with two tired thumbs, through my mobile phone.
'Tweets can never take the place of human contact'
The struggle today is about keeping the balance between the input that comes through technology and real-world interactions.
In the past 10 years, an epochal change has occurred in the life and work-style of a reporter. The change is quintessentially about coming to terms with secondary sources of information.
Mailboxes and tweets bring me second¬hand information, which can never take the place of human contact. Nor can they transmit the pulsations of blood and heart or the human factor underlying all developments.
I know I am missing out on the real world. I seem to have capitulated to technology and moved further and further away from classical journalism, which depended upon live contact with people. I regret that loss.
I first began visiting police stations in 1979, asking why they were not handling law and order effectively; in 1985, I began to visit the income tax department to report on issues of black money among Gujarati and Marwari traders; in 1990 I reported on the saffron brigade's mass movement to send Ramshilas to build the temple at Ayodhya.
Those were times when all 24 hours of my day were spent in the real world 'truth-digging', or in search of answers, or in the sheer attempt to touch and comprehend life in the raw.
'The search for truth has an emotional context that technology cannot give'
It is an altogether different way of life today.
Time has become a constraint because I am engaged with the world through technology! This change is detrimental to my profession and me, and I keep wondering if an information overload is making me richer, emotionally or spiritually.
I think not. I do have more information available now, but I was much better informed then.
I am not against this explosion in the cyber world. But I am intensely aware that, regardless of the available multimedia, or perhaps because of it, the values and fundamentals of journalism should not be diluted, however boring and unfashionable this may sound.
It is clear now that the camera can manipulate; tweets or SMSes, by their very nature, cannot give any reference to the larger context or to the depth of the issue they deal with, and the knowledge and information in mailboxes is never enough to truly report an event.
The search for truth has an emotional context that technology cannot give.
Technology gives a second-hand, mediated, manipulated version of life. This becomes the predicament for every journalist and each one finds his or her own way of making peace with it.
This is the endeavour I find most challenging. It is more so in a poor country like India where digital inequality can prove to be nothing less than a disaster for any reporter.
'Are we making any real difference to core issues?'
To understand the rural and silently suffering India, you have to de-glamourise journalism from the glitz of technology.
The cyber world is not the only virtual world we journalists inhabit.
The world of television cameras and studio lights is another kind of virtual bubble. I find it absolutely baffling when I hear that the electronic media is very 'powerful', particularly the 24x7 news channels.
This is one illusion that must be demystified. Many of our editors and anchors are millionaires and enjoy celebrity status befitting rock stars. Many television journalists are considered more powerful than bureaucrats.
So what? Does it really matter? How does it make any difference to the Indian who is either not on television or lacks access to it? Is this media hype justified? Are we making any real difference to core issues?
The arrogance of some reporters and editors stumps me. A false sense of 'power' seems to drive many media organisations. The media, like politicians, are living in an ivory tower.
Their India is not reflected in the media we know in New Delhi'
I am writing this piece in Kottakkal, tucked away in Malabar (Kerala).
I have met some 30 women representing local organisations. Not one of them in this most literate state in India knows English. So, we in the media, who deal only with English-speaking audiences, are never going to be of any relevance to them -- and the chilling reality is that there are millions of such women in our country.
The high probability is that they form a majority in our country. How this simple and well-known fact gets forgotten so easily in New Delhi baffles me.
Put simply, the journalists writing in English touch only a minuscule minority. But their perceived sense of 'power' remains intact.
The women I met earn between Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000 per month.
The only celebrities they know are film actors Mohanlal and Mammootty.
Their life is untouched by television, radio or newspapers.
What matters for them is the cost of food, children's education and the price of gold, family harmony and their husbands' chronic alcoholism.
Their India is not reflected in the media we know in New Delhi.
'How does it contribute to making India a safer, functioning and stronger country?'
Last year, I attended the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar. I interacted with scores of people at leisure. Not one had a clue about the so-called mainstream media.
As soon as I step out of my urban comfort zone, I know that the media is not a priority in life, or in most cases, not even a part of life.
Many studies suggest that 80 per cent of Indians earn less than Rs 10,000, and the more you talk to this segment, the more you realise what a spectacular failure the Indian media has been in understanding, reflecting and empathising with this 'other India'.
Even for our urban people, what difference does the media make in terms of painting the 'big picture' of India? How does it contribute to making India a safer, functioning and stronger country?
The popular and political perceptions of India's national security are such that New Delhi has now emerged as the biggest buyer of weapons in the world to confront assumed threats from China and Pakistan. All this is happening at the cost of development.
Well-settled Indians in cities now live in gated communities guarded by security personnel. Multi-storied luxury apartments stand next to slums in Mumbai. The disparity in standards raises many questions.
The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India reported in 2010, that India had more than five million watchmen in the private security industry, which has a turnover of more than $4.5 billion. Indifference to the surrounding problems enables us to live happily.
Law and order is one of the most serious issues Indians face on a daily basis. G K Pillai, former home secretary, spoke toRediff.com before he retired, of the communication revolution taking place, with 600 million mobile phones that provide instant information to the ordinary citizen.
Match this with the rising aspirations of the youth and the forecast can only be 'turbulence' for the coming two decades. No one is willing to wait and there will be pressure to make a quick buck.
'Corporate influence on the media is evident'
Where do the media figure in this turbulent transformation of Indian society? The plain truth is: Nowhere.
Making loud noises is not journalism. There are over three million cases pending in India's 21 courts and 26.3 million cases in the lower courts and a quarter of a million undertrials in jails. Do we care?
Even our worldview is getting skewed as most English-language newspapers have tie-ups with Western media sources. They reprint the Western perspective on world events. Still we say that the Indian media is 'influential'!
Take the issue of dynastic politics or the maladies of Indian democracy. The Indian media has not been effective in generating public opinion against them. In fact, it has shamefully indulged in 'paid news'.
Many controversial members of Parliament are columnists and television panelists.
Corporate influence on the media is evident. On an average, newspapers give half a page of news coverage to parliamentary proceedings. In the name of reader interest much is omitted, while cricket, cinema and entertainment get prime attention.
'Lip service is given to providing 'balanced news'
Nothing endangers the survival of our country as much as the communal divide. Secularism is not the natural instinct of the media because the media also needs to cater to the so-called popular taste.
Lip service is given to providing 'balanced news'.
Casteism and communalism have followed us into the twenty-first century, with the media also becoming part of the action.
Take Kerala, which used to be one of the finest examples of communal harmony. It is changing slowly and becoming like much of the rest of India. In neighbouring Karnataka, the virus of communalism is spreading even faster.
Again, despite the reach of 'secular' English television channels in Gujarat, their coverage has failed to counter Narendra Modi's arguments.
In spite of the media's expose of Mayawati's corruption, she marches ahead. Her rise was not due to the media and the media will not be the reason for her downfall, either.
The Amitabh Bachchan legend was made without the media's help. More TRPs or circulation are meaningless for an India that is still waiting for a mirror that reflects its real image.
'No technology can substitute integrity and authenticity'
After more than a decade into the 'new media', I believe that it is people who are at the heart of good journalism, and no technology can offer a good enough substitute for the integrity and authenticity of live contact with them.
The 'new media' can perhaps be a starting point of journalism with integrity -- but cannot make the latter its captive.
There is a whole world that lies beyond it, which forms the raw material for a good journalist. And there is only one way to establish connectivity with that world -- just walk into it.
Do not let technology be the arbiter.
In fact, you do not need middlemen.
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