The Hindu Business Line : The case for mid-career learning

Plenty to catch up on: Once they take up jobs, managers often fail to keep up with academic developments and are ignorant of contemporary management ideas.

R. Raghavendra Ravi

The traditional pattern of a person’s life is to study till he or she “finishes” his or her course and signs up for a job. After this, he/ she does not get into the “study” mode for life.

On-the-job training and company-sponsored training programmes enable managers to concentrate on specific issues. Such programmes usually focus on a specific skill or issue and do not build perspective.

As managers are promoted and they move up in the hierarchy, the demands on them change both qualitatively and quantitatively. On the quality dimension – the maturing manager is required to “elevate” the level of his contribution, take a broader view of the business and assume leadership roles as opposed to “managerial” roles. The work focus shifts gradually from efficiency and operations to leadership and strategy.

During his / her rise, the manager may have excelled at a function or a job and could cling on to that function/ job even after a significant elevation. This could spell danger for most organisations. But this is likely to happen since most managers do not get to understand other functions in business.

On the “quantity” dimension, the manager’s span of control increases, and he/she would have to deal with a larger number and type of people. Managers with promise also have to learn to engage with other constituencies such as the Government, interest groups, investors and collaborators.

What happens to those managers who do not progress in the same organisation? As the pyramid narrows towards the top, only a few are able to rise in the same organisation. Thus, most managers have to necessarily leave the organisation where they grew – as they fall off the side of the pyramid – and join other organisations for their own growth and development. Now, they have yet another challenge before them - to understand the new organisation and be accepted before they can contribute and grow.

The world outside

Even as all these events happen inside organisations – what is the scenario outside? The body of knowledge in any sphere grows and changes constantly. Newer ideas of management are absorbed by organisations. However, the busy manager, often, is not fully aware of this. Even well-educated “MBAs” are falling behind in this respect.

Quiz a few middle-managers and you will find that contemporary management ideas are not part of their DNA anymore. Most of them would have started priding themselves as “practical managers,” rubbishing emerging management thought as “theory” or “academic”.

Surely, younger and more contemporary managers are arriving on the scene. The gap now is perceptible. There are two kinds of gaps that we are looking at – the gap between current management thought and what the manager knows and the gap between what he/she knows and what he/she is expected to know in the new job.

How equipped are managers for this critical change in their careers? Some large and enlightened organisations have their own training infrastructure which tracks the managers along their growth path, providing them learning opportunities at appropriate intervals. What about mid-sized companies and the SMEs? What does a growing manager in a mid-sized company without such training infrastructure do?

It is not as if people are not aware of this. Consider the number of management development courses on offer at any number of universities (both Indian and overseas), B-schools and training institutes. Walk in to any book shop and you will see a number of management-related books. Such books are bought by rising managers who have instinctively understood that renewal is needed.

The case I am making is: managers in transition, from junior to middle management or from middle management to senior management need opportunities to learn again. This is true even for individuals who have the best management education.

The needs of the rising manager are rather unique. Airline pilots are trained as and when they have to operate newer aircraft. Software professionals are also trained on newer software platforms. But practising managers in most organisations do not have the opportunity for self-renewal.

HR departments are often busy tackling more urgent problems such as attrition, appraisals and recruitment. Also, HR departments are not well placed to create learning opportunities for senior managers. Business owners and outgoing/retiring CEOs feel the need for trained managers who can lead the company in the future. They look outside and try to bring in people at senior levels, running the risk of the new man not fitting in.

There is nothing wrong in bringing outsiders to man senior positions. But creating an internal pool of talent gives your business a cutting edge.

So, what then is the solution?

I feel that owners /CEOs of mid-sized businesses should get together and promote mid-career learning for their managers.

The way forward

How can they do it? Bring in a few professors and a few CEOs / senior managers and create a curriculum to update their managers with contemporary ideas, concepts and help them develop a world view. The last one is rather crucial – developing a world view. A programme of learning designed to be delivered over a period of time, say six months – one day a week - should be ideal. Crammed, three- or four-day programmes are not helpful since too much is delivered too soon and the manager goes back to work in a hurry. There is no time to think and digest the learning.

Delivered over a period of time, the programme would have the desired impact. It enables the manager to apply some of the learning and get back with questions. It also helps him or her think through and assimilate the material presented. If this can be delivered to a group of managers, a peer group is created. This promotes learning from each other. It is obvious that this kind of an agenda is beyond the ambit of most HR departments and hence has to be done by business owners and CEOs.

Mentoring and coaching are becoming popular these days. But they can only supplement the kind of learning I am talking of, but not substitute it.

Whenever I have tried to create such a programme, the refrain I have heard is – we cannot spare our managers so often! While organisations have felt the need for such programmes, they ask whether they can be done faster? The answer is easy – such programmes cannot be done faster!

Also, to borrow from Stephen Covey – you have to spend time sharpening the saw. You cut the wood faster after that. If you cannot release your managers for renewal, your business cannot grow!

(The author is a Chennai-based management consultant and can be contacted at technologyassociates@rediffmail.com)

More Stories on : Human Resources | Management

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
‘Passion, perseverance the key’

Networking across cultures

The case for mid-career learning

Customers – Finding, keeping and letting go!

Leaders should possess humility

PowerPoint rules

Synergise organisations and communities