Is IIT/IIM Brand getting diluted?

As you all know, recently a planning has been done by Indian Government to execute a dozen more new IITs and IIMs in India.

Will this dilute the IIT/IIM brand? In my opinion, YES.

IIT/IIM in India stands for Top Quality Education – Great faculties, Great syllabus, Great students, Encourage Entrepreneurial and hard work.

There is still a huge scope for existing IITs/IIMs to perform well so that they get into Global ranks. Government should come up with solutions to help existing IITs/IIMs to reach higher ranks globally.

There are NITs in India. Some of the NITs are just good, not great.  Government can do lot of work to make NITs become successful institutes. We have BITs in India. And BITS Pilani is the most admired even today. There can be an encouragement here to scale and improve the quality.

India has thousands of Tier 2 and Tier 3 colleges. I feel some of these colleges are better than the Tier 1 colleges. A great help can be extended to create better Tier 2 colleges so that every rural and semi urban student gets a great opportunity to study and become a rock star engineer.

If IITs are required, let us add two or three and improve the quality first. Adding dozens will only lead to failure.  It should not be so easy for all students to get into IIT without any preparation. Then it becomes one more institute to explore. Today I see there is huge investment in Infrastructure and that’s it. Media & Advertisements today, focus only on selling Institute's on high end infrastructure. Nowhere have I seen an Ad or College confidently saying they have a real great team of faculties. Most faculties have just passed out from engineering colleges where they studied or got hired through some influence. India is a country which has lot of experienced Engineers. A great faculty team can be created from this engineering crowd for every institute.

Along with Indian Government, even Management Team from these Top institutes should play an equal and vital role is influencing the working Engineering crowd to come and teach students. I am sure there will be a step by step algorithm to execute this task.

It’s time for India to open the eyes wide and take rational and logical decisions. Investing is one part, scaling-maintaining-enhancing is a much larger and difficult task. We have capabilities to create Stanford and MITs with existing institutes in India certainly. 

I only pray that politics should not get into our education system evaluation.

I welcome comments and suggestions.

Art of Managing Team members

In my opinion, tasks like talking to customers, engaging with customers, giving presentations are slightly doable jobs if a right platform is given to learn and practise. Managing people is an uphill task. In the market there are plenty number of Sales and Project management professionals. But what about creative people managers? They are less in number. Hence there is a huge scope in creative team management.

This article attempts to present few tried and tested skills that can be accommodated by every Manager to manage their teams successfully.

1.       Know about your team members – you should study your team members thoroughly. Their attitude, their likes and dislikes, their passion, their life aspirations and goals, their working style, their personal and professional background, their mantras for leading better life, what they care, helping character etc. I would like to use the Hindi word “Kundli” meaning know your team members’ complete biodata/horoscope J and file a record for your reference.

2.       Talking, Talking, Talking – This is self-explanatory. But you should know how much to talk and what exactly to talk. Don’t overburden the person with information overloading. Next day he/she may not turn up to office. Have a modular approach and give time to learn and unlearn. Don’t react if they commit errors. Just stay tuned and build confidence in yourself and the team member. Important – do not pamper while mentoring.

3.       Micro Management – This is a great weapon but should be used effectively. Figure out ways where team member won’t come to know that you are micro managing. Do regular detailed reviews but you should end the reviews with solution approach. The moment you give a solution, please note they are learning from you. Learning results in excitement and builds professional relationship. Good to have reviews both formally and informally.

4.       Exposure – If you are in a Services organization, involve your team member in few engagement activities. If you are heading towards a client meeting take your team member along with you. If you are on a customer call involve them. Over a period of time allow your team members to ask questions to the client in your presence and in your absence. If they fair well, empower them to own up tasks. Ask your team members to give presentation on few relevant topics. Get them towards your table when you are convinced with their efforts.

5.       Working with your subordinates – This strategy will create a huge positive difference. How much time do you spend as Leader with your subordinates while at work? Once in a week? Twice in a month? Just not sufficient. You know the business cycle very well. You know the business challenges to achieve goals. So better you work with your subordinates continuously till they get their first success. When you work with them, you are influencing, helping, mentoring, demonstrating patience, ensuring seriousness at work, propelling speed in execution and may more great things which can become contagious. Usually many Managers miss this strategy and end up failing big time and in turn team members are blamed unnecessarily.

6.       Informal meetings – usually I see a mixed feeler when it comes to conducting informal meetings. But trust me guys, this a great deal. You can do wonders. In these informal meetings, you are slightly personal with your team member. Please note “slightly personal”, that’s it. Usually results are very good – mostly you will get a long term team member working with you. When you meet them informally, you are also give more space to your subordinates and it is a great Like for your subordinate. Tea, Coffee, Beer, Wine, Lunch, Breakfast, Dinner, and Smoke should suite well for these meetings.

7.       Decision making – take suggestions and inputs from your team members. Appreciate for a suggestion which is better and impactful. Implement workable suggestions quickly. Small or big doesn’t matter.  Ensure you are guiding your team member to become better than you always.

8.       Cross team interactions – allow your team members to interact and work with other Leaders in the organization. Working in such pattern enhances synergy. You will start thinking and inventing. You will learn best practices that can be put. This also show how benevolent type are you.

9.       CCA – This is a school word called Co-Curricular ActivitiesJ. Watch motivational movies, Go for an indoor and outdoor games, take your team members to a great resort, and pick up a great adventurous spot, go for long drives. In this way you help them to break monotony.

Hope you all enjoyed this read. Build great teams, they will help your organization to grow.

10 Mantras for Fast Career Growth

What calls for a fast career growth? – Top 10 mantras

Attitude – In my opinion, this defines everything in life. Whether you are a fresher or experienced, you are an individual. You have down to earth attitude. You don’t boss on others. You listen. You are honest. You exhibit humility at any given point of time. You are non-political in your thoughts.  You care and help always professionally and personally (to a lesser extent as and when required).

Open to Learn at any given point of time – You don’t have ego. You follow ABCDE – Always Be Cool Don’t have Ego. You give respect and take respect. After learning from others, you will go back and be happy about that learning instead of thinking “I knew it already” and feeling sad and assuming you procrastinated with that person from whom you learnt. Remove such thoughts from you mind.

Remain calm and patient during issues and disputes – Listen to the problem. You are not expected to be reactive in such situations. You can listen – be silent but commit to the other person that you will come back with your interpretations. Ensure you get a feeler from the other person that he/she feels that you are demonstrating patience on your face. This requires strong positive rigid mind.  The more your face becomes red, heated up, your eye ball starts rotating here and there, and your eyebrow and forehead show skin movement – trust me you are showing impatience.

Stop cribbing – Decide in your life that you will not crib with anybody. It might be sometimes difficult in the initial stage for some people but deciding not to crib should be on the top of your mind. You just adhere to such firm decisions in your mind. It will work. Try to solve unsolved problems in your company that is there within your capabilities areas. See how can make your boss, peers, junior happy always at their work place. Approach them with solutions. Please remember – your non cribbing nature can influence may people around you positively.

Taking ownership – Your goal is to grow rapidly in your career. Then, take initiatives. Own up things and execute.  Anticipate what are the needs for your organization to grow and scale. Go and tell your boss that you want to take up that task – give a presentation that is very specific to the point and excites yourself, your team and your boss. Develop a confidence where you should be 100% certain that your boss and rest of the employees will get excited before you actually go and present it to the crowd.

Speed of execution – you believe in Light velocity. You are fast in your thinking, execution and thought process. You are fast in providing alternative solutions. You want to launch a rocket which will penetrate the space in less than 24 hours. Some of these things are difficult to execute but is it important for us to dream. When you dream something that can ignite positively you will end up executing it faster.

Love your products OR services offerings passionately – Either you belong to one of this category. Enjoy your offerings. Meet customers. See how they react to your offerings. Hug your offering with lot of deep passion. Talk about your offerings to worldwide crowd. Create tools and techniques where you end up creating continuous high interest levels with the crowd so that they at least look at your offerings. Passionately sell yourself, your team and your organization. Be bold enough to tell what you can’t offer and your future plan in enhancing your offer.

Be creative – put continuous efforts to become a great mentor. Come up with new ideas. Conduct brain storming sessions.  I usually don’t advice multi tasking. But developing this quality is important. It helps sometime where the tasks are not more than 3, to be executed simultaneously.  Don’t entertain people who come to you defining problems always.

Being organized – use calendars, “to-do” tools. Integrate these tools with your gadgets. Plan your day. Ensure you clear all your emails on the same day before you leave office.  Attend meetings on time. Expect the same from others.  Balance your professional and personal time outs. Go for a vacation with your family. Plan your calendars for personal time outs too.

Health is wealth – So important. Be fit physically and mentally. Eat healthy food, exercise and diet. Get you health checkups done once in every three months without fail. Don’t assume about your fitness at any given point of time.

I hope these tips should help you to experience fast, organized and well rounded growth in your career.  All the best! 

"Avoid Negative Thinking"

Avoid negative thoughts – too costly for the organization and for yourself.

We know that not all 5 fingers are alike. In a similar way we can’t have all employees thinking in the same way we want. Each one has different ideas, different perceptions, different goals and objectives. But “negative thinking” is a common disease with many employees. This is also contagious. This is a viral disease. It can turn bacterial. Organization has to be very careful while dealing with this viral disease called “Negative thinking”.

Habit of assuming things and believing the same

This is inherent in many individuals. Someone says something about somebody – I go ahead and believe that information without knowing full information from both the parties. By doing this, one can go wrong in their decisions – professional relationships may come to an end. Solution is to know/gather information from both the parties and then believe the right story and decide.

“This will not work” before executing the task

You have been given a task from your Manager because he/she believes that you can execute it.  Now it’s your turn to at least give a shot on that assigned task.  Start thinking at least 5 solutions for the given problem.  You got to think positive. Don’t care what other would talk about you. It’s you...it’s just you.  Just think it’s possible. Believe your heart, will power, confidence. Then see, it would work.

Sharing Salary information to peers – feeling more prestigious!

This is one really mad disease. My question to such diseased employees would be – Can I know their family’s bank balance? Can I know how much gold they have? I am sure they won’t tell me. Why should they even tell me? It’s none of my business to know their personal assets right? So, your own salary is equal to bank balance and gold information. You earn it and you spend it. Hence don’t disclose this information to other. Please don’t disclose your salary to maintain your status quo with your peers. This is one of the most foolish acts.

Defining problems always anytime anywhere – but No solutions

I have come across people who keep defining problems. How much ever you educate them they are super problem definers. Such definers are actual problem creators too – because their word of mouth is a strong weapon. They are story tellers which becomes boring to hear after sometime. Listening to such stories is even problematic. Please ask yourself before approaching your boss if you are approaching him/her with a solution. If you are not, then please take a U turn and keep thinking for at least few solutions to present.

Comparison of capabilities

If you feel that you are good....celebrate it and keep improving. You can compare yourself with other to take positive inputs ONLY. Just because your friend has bagged great deal, please don’t present to your employer to get that similar deal because of your friend.

Talking non-sense about clients/customers

This is real non-sense. I have seen many doing this job in a very efficient way versus doing their actual daily work. Please remember, the moment you speak low about your client – you are making you way to lose your job. You are not valued after that. Having said this, you always have an opportunity to take call on your customers with right data points and right analysis.

Lying every now and then for the sake of positioning over others

I have seen people who have instant answers at any given point of time for any average to difficult questions that are asked. They feel that are so much skilled. Guys, I shall laugh at such folks. Because finally truth comes out in next few mins/hours/days.

Dependency issue – might make such people lethargic

“My boss is there to support me always – hence I am less worried”. This is a parasite character. One day your boss has not come to office you are fish out of water. Don’t know what to work what to plan. You can’t even think of other better alternative because of dependency parameter. You will start procrastinating. You will also ensure some of your other colleagues get influenced.  My suggestion – always have strong need/desire for yourself to work – if you are self driven you will not believe in spoon feeding.