Sunday Posts

Accounting, as a profession, is as iconic of the middle class as it could be. Its making had all the classical elements of emergence of a profession: Granting of a monopoly of a practise to a set of people competent in a standard of practise who forswore to adhere to a code of conduct. Becoming an Accountant was a task that demanded commitment and competence, and being one meant a prospect of lifelong employment, respectable income and a middling rank in the society. Alongside Medicine, Teaching, and Engineering, Accounting has been one of the pillars that held the Middle Class economy. However, its very strengths may be turning into disadvantages at this point of time in the 21st century. The high stakes assessment that qualified the Accountants, like all high stakes assessments, focused minds and skills on mastering the system, rather than serving the wider world. The standards of practise evolved into rules, something that a programmed machine could do, at least for the most p...

The conversation about Education Innovation should go beyond Education Technology, and try to address fundamental questions: Do we need schools? What should the teachers' role be? How do we make people think critically? What makes students creative and innovative? What credentials should one have?  My favourite one among these is about Professional Education: How should a '21st Century Professional' train? There are several reasons why I want to ask the question. I have seen professions transforming both from inside - as a Professionally trained Marketer - and outside - as someone working closely in technology and technology training. But, more importantly, I ask this because this is not a fashionable question to ask. That professions, defined as a sort of social monopoly in some service areas, are supposed to be well-regulated and well-defined, which makes them less susceptible to change, and as a result, near-blind to the possibility of change. But this immunity...

Adam Grant, in his excellent 'Give and Take', shows how Givers, those who seek to create value for others first, win at the modern workplace. His key point, that Giving, seeking to create value first, is a better professional strategy than Taking, seeking value for oneself, or even Matching, giving after norms of reciprocity have been clearly established.  He cites three reasons for the enhanced effectiveness of Giving. First, the essential difference between Giving and Taking may have been the focus on Long Term. Givers thought longer term, and they knew creating value always paid back over time. With accelarated pace of our lives, this long term has become shorter, thereby creating a more immediate payback for giving and making it a better professional approach. Second, the increased prevalence of collaborative work, and relative decline of independent working, has shone the spotlight on the Givers, making them more desired as colleagues. As a member of the team who foc...

The time to change Professional Training has come. Despite its prominence, Professional Training hardly features on the agenda of Education Innovators. This is because of its legacy - clearly defined professional bodies, enabled by charters, defining the standards and assessing the competence - and its clear linkages to jobs. In many ways, this is the least broken part of the modern, industrial age, education system. But this is perhaps not the picture one gets to see from inside. The professions, and the national monopolies that they implicitly draw upon, are indeed challenged by the same two forces that are transforming education - globalization and automation! Some professions are more exposed than others, and in some countries more than others, but there is an unmissable case for transformation.  To understand why it is so, one needs to look at the changing nature of professional knowledge. That there is self-service (or should we call it DIY?) in many areas from ...

What to do with Professional Education? While there is endless discussion about Vocational and Higher Education in the context of what we have come to call Knowledge Economy, no one seems to talk much about Professional Education. One reason for this is that we assume Professional Education to be the business of self-contained professional communities - Lawyers, Accountants, Surveyors etc - and those who pursue them to be self-selected aspirants who have chosen that profession for themselves. It is, however, a quaint view, because most people pursuing Professional Education are just students looking for jobs (or Mid-career employees looking to define a profession for themselves) and it should be as much a part of the conversation about building the knowledge economy as any other form of Education. But if general conversation about Professional Education is off the mark, professional bodies do not do much better themselves. They are caught between two roles - one as the gateke...

India has spent millions of dollars and half a decade now on Skills Training, but got very little to show for it. Apart from endemic corruption - this is the new source of money for politicians and bureaucrats - the whole enterprise was marred by lack of imagination: Because this became a business of government hand-outs distributed by people who knows nothing about training or education (worse, they actually believe that there is nothing to know about training and education), the various 'skills programmes' helped destroy the successful private initiatives that grew into India in the previous decades.  However, the need for skills training in India is urgent. There are demographic reasons for this: India will have 10 million working age people joining the non-farm workforce every year, and if they are not skilled in the trades, they are likely to join the swelling army of the disaffected. There are economic reasons - many Indian enterprises are crying for skilled workers...