Soft Skill Training with Functional Integration

Soft skill training and Functional training, are they complementary or competing to each other?  Mundane, but becomes Pertinent when it is about time for an MBA second year student to prepare for a job role in the industry. At this point of time the MBA is at a juncture where he is about to venture into something he always wanted to be – A JOB.

At this point apart from other things following 2 shall surely help:

• Training on Personal attributes that enhance an individual's interactions, social graces, communication, language, personal habits etc.
• Training on Skill sets and abilities to perform a certain type of task or activity.

Both the above constitute to form EMPLOYABILITY TRAINING which is less recognised in many universities today. Above, former being SOFT SKILLS TRAINING & latter being FUNCTIONAL TRAINING are hence complementary to each other and inter woven. Functional Soft skills are a valuable component and is a distinguishing factor impacting the probability of student success in the institution and the work. Just as college and career readiness initiatives span the academic spectrum, Functional soft skills development programs can be integrated into the MBA curriculum.

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to incorporating Functional soft skills, B- schools seem to find success when they embed the Functional soft skills materials in the curriculum and integrate those skills with academic coursework.

Now, let us look at the following 2 illustrations to understand it simply:

                                                                               

 

• Illustration 1 has the student trained on soft skills through conventional methods of teaching.
• Illustration 2 has the student to undergo functionally integrated soft skill training.

The above illustrations showcase two experiments with implementing Functional soft skills across disciplines and in a variety of contexts. Various B-schools in India adopt and have varied outcomes. The question here is whether we need to take a re-look at our scheme of things. Let us not jump on to determine the outcomes of these, but their experiences offer ideas for reaching students in a unique way to develop those soft skills integrated functionally deemed most vital to students’ college and career readiness.

MBA a Misnomer Qualification

  

Masters of Business Administration (MBA) is the most sought after qualification prevalent in India today. A student after doing practically any basic education at graduation level goes for an MBA degree. Arts, commerce, science, engineering and I've actually come across MBBS doctors doing their MBA. It seems that if one has not done his MBA is an outcast in professional life. Did I say professional life? Well just came across an advertisement in TV..... A perfect match is an MBA! Even our social set up suddenly has caught up with this "Misnomer Educational Qualification" of our times. With economic liberalisation Dr. Manmohan Singh the then Finance Minister of India in the year 1992 brought this qualification of MBA.

 

From 1992 to 2013 the economic landscape of India has travelled quite a bit. From administrative requirement in an economy of brick and mortar in 1992 today the economy of click and service require "Business Managers". But, unfortunately we still produce some 1.50 Lakhs of MBAs from some 3300 colleges across the country. No wonder out of these only 1500 or 1% actually land up jobs which require a higher educational qualification. Rest join the front line of any industry alongside a graduate.

 

A little play of the words has actually affected the mind-set of the education providers of the country. MBA - Masters of Business Administrator is a passé and what we today require is a Masters in Business Managing. Believe me a change in name should bring about a change in the course curriculum and we shall start getting more business managers.

 

Let us try and differentiate between a manager and an administrator in the way each may approach the business:

 

1. Administrator is maintenance person and gets uncomfortable with change, while a manager is trained to see change as the only constant. Today it is said that every minute there is an innovation in the world, which means constant disturbance of status quo. A manger is equipped to deal with these changes and change course accordingly. A new business gets integrated to the company and the individual’s role changes. A business manager will look at this as an opportunity to acquire new skills since now he has a new business to learn and excel. Now, in MBA can we integrate change management in its true sense so that the individual is accustomed or so say acclimatized to regular changes in the environment?

 

2. Administrator constantly sees out wards for growth while a manager sees both inwards and outwards for best practises. Growth for a manager is a frame of mind and not a mere tag or designation. One of my managers in my company whom I did not appreciate that point of time when he said "what additional skills did you acquire this year for me to give you a promotion". How true, as an MBA myself I demanded growth for maintaining status quo - in my case achieving the budgeted sales targets for the year. Today after 5 years of that appraisal discussion and spending 11 years working I realised that how important it is to acquire newer skills - looking inwards and outwards for growth. No business environment today is stale, its ever changing. Can we train MBA students to learn or teach them to seek and skill themselves continuously?

 

3. Administrators are always followers of set rules and patterns while managers become the business leaders and write new rules for the industry and the economy as a whole. Randomness is important for growth for both companies and individuals similarly, specially the newer ones. Why does one look at so much stability and hence stops thinking. I’m not for a moment hinting at being a rebel at work, but does one think even to do the job in hand in a different manner! At least try and seek new ways – better or not is in retrospection but at least thinking is important. So, can we train the MBA students to learn thinking & to think of innovation?

 

 

Above points are pertinent to both industry and educationist equally. As Indians our biggest strength always had been knowledge industry now it is time for us to imbibe skills as well. Industry today is starved today of managers – change managers, skill seeking managers & innovative managers. It becomes important hence for the educationists to provide a continuous stream of these Managers instead of Administrators.

 

 

 

 

Trainable Resource Vs. Skilled Resource

The biggest challenge all companies of all sizes and all industries face is of skilled manpower. It has sort of becoming a cliché in the industry that “will is there in a fresh graduate but skills are lacking”.

Need to first analyze and understand the root cause of the problem which is bi-pronged.

Today be it a simple graduation or a professional course like an MBA or an MCA, the curriculum is at least a decade old. Only thing that is changing is the version of the book referred in the course or at the most another book of new author.

·    So the biggest challenge is to effect a change in the curriculum.

Change in curriculum with increased emphasis on recent developments and changes in the context, live assignments and higher degree of behavioural training shall be helpful. High corporate engagements in the program shall ensure value addition to the regular curriculum of the institute. Engage and interact with the industry on a continuous basis like Guest Lectures and Case Study Discussions, Workshops and Projects, Mentoring and Coaching.

Also, studied but not internalized is a big big issue. Where does this crop from? Simple! I know what a Fixed Deposit is, a commerce graduate shall define it as an instrument to park ones savings in a safe manner. While an MBA finance may define it as an instrument used by the banks or financial institutions to raise a liability and lend it to other customers to earn net interest margin.

Great! What next? How do a Bank benefit from a candidate who knows what FD is? So the company then invests 3-6 months on a fresh hire to bring him to the expected level where he can advise or sell the Bank’s FD. Hence, all this while the recruit is either non productive or underproductive.

Three professional courses I know of where the fresh candidates are productive from day one – Medicine (MBBS, BDS etc.), Hotel Management, Chartered Accountancy.

The only reason I could understand was each of these courses have a very high degree of on field actual experience of the subject studied during the course. This makes them highly skilled in terms of execution of learned concepts.

·  So the next big challenge is trainable resource Vs. skilled resource

There is a need for collaboration and adequate coordination between educational institutions, companies (employer) and vocational training program in order to meet the market requirements. Having continuous interactions with the top companies on what exactly are the skills required by a post graduate to perform in job should be identified and implemented in the curriculum.