Author: JJ

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Engineering education grounded in real-life

Engineering students gain very little experience with artifacts of daily life during their college days. They work on hypothetical problems on paper, or at best do some labs, without really understanding where it applies in the total setting of real-life outside the lab.

Engineering colleges should purchase discarded refigerators & ACs, TVs & radios, cars & motorcycles and all such stuff of daily life, and make them available to the students to rip apart, re-assemble, repair and experiment with. These discarded artifacts of daily life are like the dead bodies given to medical students for study of anatomy. Such practical education, which gives them an idea of “how stuff works” should become the ground for further inquiry. At present the theory first kills curiosity, and without curiosity there’s no education.

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Eleanor Roosevelt on education

People like Eleanor Roosevelt teach us what it means to live a full life.   Given below is an excerpt from her book “You Learn by Liv­ing: Eleven Keys for a More Ful­fill­ing Life.”

What I have learned from my own experience is that the most important in­gre­di­ents in a child’s education are curiosity, interest, imagination, and a sense of the ad­ven­ture of life. You will find no courses in which these are taught; and yet they are the qual­i­ties that make all learning reward­ing, that make all life zest­ful, that make us seek con­stant­ly for new ex­pe­ri­ence and deep­er un­der­stand­ing. They are also the qual­i­ties that en­able us to con­tin­ue to grow as human be­ings to the last day of our life, and to con­tin­ue to learn.

By learn­ing, of course, I mean a great deal more than so-called for­mal ed­u­ca­tion. No­body can learn all he needs to know. Ed­u­ca­tion pro­vides the nec­es­sary tools, equip­ment by which we learn how to learn. The ob­ject of all our ed­u­ca­tion and all the de­vel­op­ment which is a part of ed­u­ca­tion is to give every one of us an in­stru­ment which we can use to ac­quire in­for­ma­tion at any time we need it.

Such beautiful, powerful words they are: “… the most important in­gre­di­ents in a child’s education are curiosity, interest, imagination, and a sense of the ad­ven­ture of life.”

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Are schools useful?

A quote by Sugata Mitra: “It’s quite fashionable to say that the education system’s broken — it’s not broken, it’s wonderfully constructed. It’s just that we don’t need it anymore. It’s outdated.” http://www.ted.com/speakers/sugata_mitra.html

I tend to agree with the above observation (somewhat!).  Yes, the system is outdated, but we still need it, because between the class-hours there are breaks!

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On Leadership and Courage

There are many qualities required for being a leader — integrity, practical intelligence, self awareness, an intuitive understanding about people, vision, tenacity, creativity and the ability to connect the dots.  There is one more quality, which I would like to talk about in this article.  That is courage.

Courage is the number one prerequisite for being a leader.  All other qualities, important as they are, would come to naught without courage.

Courage is the resolve to go ahead and act in the face of uncertainty.  People with courage do not become immobilized by uncertainty; they take charge and move into the unknown.  They do not wait for the puzzle to be solved, and all questions to be answered before taking decisions.  They act based on trust, as much as out of the confidence coming from information.  Trust involves risk.  To trust is to be adventurous. This spirit of adventure strikes a chord in others who wish they could do the same; and they become followers.  This is the way leaders are made.  Leaders are not born; they are made.  They are made — invented by themselves through exploration, risk-taking and learning from their experience.

Leaders have the courage to speak their mind; when they know a hundred other voices could be different from theirs.  It takes courage to speak softly, but firmly, when there is shouting and cacophony all around.  It takes courage to communicate, when there is a real chance of being misunderstood or even ridiculed. Above all, it takes courage to be true to oneself.

Courage is a great virtue; second only to gratitude, which is the mother of all virtues, and the greatest of them all.  Gratitude gives you a heart that opens to the world, and everyone and everything that the world offers.  Courage makes you go ahead and embrace the world with such a heart–a heart that is open to the world and all its possibilities.

Courage is humble, not boastful.  There is no bravado.  If one dares to do something, it is because it appears to be the right thing to do, based on deep reflection, and evaluation of all available options. There is no pursuit of heroism, or the desire to stand out from the rest.  Courage is just an expression of one’s self, one’s integrity.

Courage enables a leader to be fair, when partisanship is the norm; and to act in the larger interest, when parochialism is the norm.  It takes courage, drawn from one’s deep spiritual reserves, to be humane and considerate, when the easier option would have been to move into combat mode.  It takes more courage to choose reconciliation over the strident calls for retribution.

Today we need more and more leaders, who embrace the world with courage, with hearts full of gratitude.  What we need today is not valour, but true courage.

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Book Review: “The Power of Pull”

Review of “The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion” by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison; Basic Books, 2010.

In the epilogue to the “Power of Pull” the authors write: “As we make our passion our profession, we begin to see that our potential is far greater than we previously believed.” This is a liberating message that runs as a leitmotif throughout the book.
In the Introduction, the authors write: “If we are going to succeed in this rapidly changing world, we face two challenges: making sense of the changes around us, and making progress in this increasingly unfamiliar world. …. This book takes on both challenges–it is our goal to help you make sense and to help you make progress.” The authors further clarify their purpose behind this book in the epilogue: “Our hope, though, is that by exploring the power of pull and providing a high-level road map for all of us as we seek to navigate the difficult journey from the world of push to the world of pull, we can enable our readers to overcome the fear by helping them to understand the real opportunities that lie ahead for those of us who master these techniques.” The book achieves its stated objectives. The book gives a high-level road map and deals with some techniques for moving from the world of push to the world of pull. It also tells us what opportunities lie ahead when we make this difficult, but necessary, transition.

According to the authors, Pull is about pursuing our passion; finding others who share our passion, but bring in different perspectives; and creating conditions, which increase our likelihood of meeting such people. Creating such conditions may be termed as “shaping serendipity”. This is an important insight gained from the book: “serendipity can be shaped, at least within limits.” We can shape serendipity by bringing paying attention to the three elements–environments, practices and preparedness. Being open to serendipitous encounters involves “deep listening” and relationship-building skills.

Another key message repeated throughout the book is about the importance of shifting our focus from “knowledge stocks” to “knowledge flows”. The authors have dealt with this idea in no uncertain terms: “In this second wave, the sources of economic value move from stocks of knowledge to flows of new knowledge. Tacit knowledge becomes more valuable than explicit knowledge as the edge transforms the core.”

To clarify what the authors mean by the second wave, let us look at the three waves they talk about. The first wave of the Big Shift was the development of powerful and affordable infrastructure for computing and communication. The second wave is what the authors call the shift from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows. The third wave is the transformation of institutions as a result of the first two. The impact of the first wave is apparent to all of us. What we need to really grasp now is the importance of shifting attention from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows.

Further on, the authors write: “Many analysts have noted the increasing importance of intangible assets in business, but people often think about these assets in static form–for example, stocks of knowledge, established brands, and existing relationships.” What is more important in the emerging paradigm is to continuously refresh these assets by collaborating with others, not only within organizations, but increasingly across organizational boundaries. That has important implications for the way think about knowledge management and information systems.

Some of my reflections on reading the book are summarized below:

1. What would be the functions of the institution in the emerging world order, particularly in the light of the Big Shift that the authors talk about? May be, organizations would transform themselves as platforms for individuals to connect and collaborate with others, amplifying individual efforts and helping them to pursue their passion. Would organizations leaders have the courage, conviction and humility to put the pursuit of individual passion at the center of the organization’s purpose? Would they, and particularly the investors, be able to tolerate the uncertainty that goes with such a radical change?

2. How should HR policies and practices be shaped in a world in which individual differences and being on the edge are valued? Would HR have the courage to question the assumptions behind current assessment and appraisal systems that are designed to compare employees with one another, and unwittingly encourage knowledge stocks rather than knowledge flows?

3. How will organizational quality initiatives and process models evolve as the emphasis shifts from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows? What would be role for standardization of processes in the service industry?

4. Knowledge management would become the art of facilitating connections and collaborations among people around relevant problems, rather than efforts to lock down knowledge in repositories. Information systems would build in greater capabilities for people to quickly access and collaborate with others over information available in near real-time through multiple channels including the mobile.

5. Training & Development systems, with annual TRA and training calendar is essentially based on a push paradigm. Even just-in-time learning through sophisticated e-learning systems is only an extension of the same paradigm. In the increasingly dynamic environment, such a “basket of programs” and “configurable packages with learning objects” can at best be a supplement to practices that facilitate faster and more relevant learning on the job. What would these new practices be?

Overall, the book has served the purpose of prodding me to explore further in the areas of management and leadership. I am sure you would gather your own insights and questions by reading this valuable book, and so I would recommend this book. But be prepared to spend some time going through it with patience. Greater attention to the editorial process and honest criticism from a few more of their collaborators could have helped the authors to improve on clarity and simplicity of expression, thereby making the central messages stand out more powerfully.

<< This review was originally posted on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/review/R1LL51FDR5SAIT/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm >>

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Review of “Common Purpose” – Important Lessons on Leadership by Joel Kurtzman

Excerpts from my review of Joel Kurtzman’s book, “Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary”

The byline for “Common Purpose” by Joel Kurtzman reads “How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary”. The book does justice to this claim. It tells us how great leaders get organizations comprising ordinary people to do extraordinary things and achieve excellence. The crux of it is captured in the title itself – they get people to share a common purpose, in which everyone can find meaning and joy.

The insights that the book gives are very valuable for leaders and aspiring leaders at all levels. It tells how the regime of command and control needs to be replaced with the culture of collaboration. Talking about ‘The New Rules of Employment’ in Chapter Two, Kurtzman says, “People have a need to be heard, to be respected, and to control their space. Great leaders–common purpose leaders–grant them their space, give them their trust, allow them responsibility, and present them with opportunities and resources to do their jobs. But great leaders also hold people accountable. In other words, great leaders treat the people they work with as adults, which the current employment compact supports.” I think this short paragraph itself is worth a thousand pages on leadership. What more is there about great leadership? Respecting people’s needs for space and freedom, trusting them as adults, ensuring that they have opportunities, resources and skills to do a great job, and holding them accountable for results.

Full review is available on http://www.amazon.com/review/RNBHBCS46N453/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm