Recently I was speaking with a friend, who is a successful dot com entrepreneur. We both agreed that, to be successful today you need to be an entrepreneur and an innovator. After this initial agreement, I was startled to learn how profoundly different we were in our thinking in terms of what it means to be an entrepreneur or innovator?
My friend told me that he always admired the sorts of people who took the risk, by getting a second mortgage on his/her home, to fund their business. They were the risk takers and the true entrepreneurs”
I asked him, “How about all those people who take risks and move all the mountains to put a new material in the jet engine blades or new process that melts glass or holds beams together in a sky scraper or pushes a new product out in the market, even when the marketing says they have never heard about it in the field? Are they all not entrepreneurs and innovators?”
After some reflection, he agreed and said, “You are partially correct. Entrepreneur and innovator need not always be only the investors. True, they sow the seed and create the climate. But the many scientists, engineers and managers – the professionals – are also innovators and entrepreneurs. It is their collective efforts that make entrepreneurship and innovation successful”.
While we teach entrepreneurship and skills for innovation in colleges as they pertain to investors and as part of management education, we rarely teach the skills for technical professionals – the scientists and engineers. The ability of the professionals that combines their Science, Engineering and Management skills – as a system – together with innovation and entrepreneurship can be best described as Transformational Skills. Is it about time we offered formal education on System Thinking and Transformational skills?
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What is your “Professional Effectiveness – PE” Score?
Are you a professional? — An Engineer, Scientist, Manager, Consultant, Doctor, Lawyer, ………….. ?
You are busy more than ever, working literally on a 24 x 7 clock? Why is this? To help you assess your situation better, we offer you a simple test.
Everything you do, as part of your job or work can be divided into three distinct categories of work:
- A = Clearly identifiable contribution of your work, in terms of Product (which generates revenue), Process (to make or create the product) and Application/USE of the product of your department, team or company. This may sound a bit abstract at first. But, if you think carefully you will find, these are the only outcomes that ultimately determine your value or use to your team or the employer. This category of work requires active and deliberate use of your professional knowledge, your experience in creating and implementing New Solutions. It requires thinking, reflection, data analysis, inferences, conclusions, risk taking, …….. Only you can do this category of work. Try as best as you may, you can not simply delegate this category of work!
- B = Your effort in processing information (e-mail, phone calls, net browsing, voice mails – recording/receiving, paper work, keeping track of budgets, accounts, expense reports, budgets, booking travel tickets, etc.. With the increasing capability of IT Tools and their applications , each of us are increasingly drawn into this category of work. Gone are the days where administrative assistants and support staff could be used to carry out these tasks. It appears easier to do it all by yourself and apparently more efficient. Companies may see it as a cost reduction, when you do all this by yourself. But, it has every opportunity to distract and diminish your output under category A. You can delegate this category of work if you choose to. May be some one has already put this monkey – more of it – on your shoulders?
- C = Your effort in physical work, such as travelling, commuting, sit in meetings, typing, etc. When you over do this category of work, it leads to your lower back pain, Carpal tunnel syndrome, lack of sleep, jet lag, physical exhaustion, and all other ailments!
Your total effort = A + B + C
Your PE = A / (A + B + C )
In a recent informal survey of professionals, over half of them felt that their PE is less than 20% While individual professionals attempt to increase their contribution through “A”, most companies are reducing the “B” and “C” content through IT applications, outsourcing, globalization, etc. The combined effect of these is a steady increase in labor productivity, where fewer people are producing more perceived outcomes. But, unless the “A” category of work is deliberately increased the innovative outcomes – in terms of new Products, Processes and/or Applications/USE – will continue to slide down. All that is left will be cost reduction (like squeezing the last few drops of water from dry wood)!
Any one at any level of responsibility has to be worried about the PE score. Integrated across all the professionals in the company, PE score will be the true measure of innovation or lack there of, in the company.
Senior executives, HR managers, as well as individual professionals need to become aware of the PE score. Such awareness, has to be followed by next steps to increase the PE score, which in turn will require formal and structured education, training and practice of Transformational Skills
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The three legs of Work force skills development promoted by STIMS Institute, quoted in a recent article in Lexington Minuteman
Lexington Minuteman, a newspaper well known in the New England area recently carried an article on November 28, 2013 in their ECONOMY section titled, “Skills gap has a high cost” authored by Spencer Buell and Caitlyn Kelleher Lexington@wickedlocal.com
An abstract from this article is cited below:
Three-legged approach for high-tech
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In Lexington, K. “Subbu” Subramanian, a mechanical engineer and President of STIMS Institute Inc., said closing the skills gap to foster a more vibrant economy in the future is going to require building a triangle: Education and training are its two legs, with motivation to create and implement new solutions – the Transformational Skills serving as the base.
The STIMS Institute, according to Dr. Subramanian is focused on developing physical, science-based technology innovation and management solutions. “There is a need to combine academic education and training application educations with a passion to create new solutions, Subramanian said. “This
triangle has to be created no matter what level we are going to. We are not thinking of the triangle. Nobody wants to come together to create a triangle.” The triangle needs to include educational institutions and businesses, he said, adding academic schools should take a lesson from vocational schools and encourage internships.
This year, Subramanian wrote the book “Thriving in the 21st Century Economy: Transformational Skills for Technical Professionals,” which focuses on the changing economy and the need for a new model for workers because of an increasing demand for high-tech skills.
“The parents have to push because their kids need the Transformational skills,’ Subramanian said. “The schools have a need because they have a social obligation. They can’t say we have high scores and we are good with that. They need to give kids the Transformational skills to get a job.” Businesses are not hiring, he said, because they want people with practical experience and Transformational skills.
Indeed, a National Manufacturing Institute study estimates that failure to fill 600,00O jobs due to a lack of qualified workers would cost the economy $67.8 billion in exports, $47.4 billion in foreign investment and $8.5 billion in lost research and development investment. Add that to that the $17.6 billion in unemployment insurance claims, $17.6 billion in lost income taxes and $6.6 billion in lost corporate taxes.
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Dr. Subramanian, President, STIMS Institute presented the key note lecture at the international seminar on Innovation and Higher Education
Key note lecture BBDIT 10 26 13 (FINAL)(1)
The international seminar on Innovation and Higher Education held on Oct. 26th at BBDIT highlighted the following points. Every speaker seemed to converge on similar themes:
- Education must promote skills for thinking (i.e.) challenge the status quo and ask the question “Why?” relentlessly.
- Any education has to also promote an ability to apply the knowledge acquired to some useful end purpose.
- Education has to be linked to some target industry or user. This makes the students work force ready.
- Education has to be project oriented. Such project and their execution is a measure of the problem solving skills of the students.
The Key Note lecture also acknowledged the above points. In addition the following additional points were offered for Innovation and Higher Education.
- At this time – in the 21st century – we live in a Binary Economy: A high skills work force creating and exploiting a stream of New Solutions (Economy1) as a parallel and distinct from a low skills – low wage work force (in larger numbers) employed to carry out well defined tasks to Replicate known solutions (Economy 2).
https://stimsinstitute.com/2013/07/17/learn-to-swim-against-the-tide-of-binary-economy/
- All educational efforts to meet the work force needs of Economy 1, have to make the student (and later the engineer) more comprehensive in his/her outlook as a professional, who can identify, develop and deploy/implement a stream of New Solutions. This requires System Thinking and Transformational Skills.
- Such education on ST and TS has to be formal, structured and results oriented. Such formal education on ST and TS is a MUST, in order for all the academic education and industry oriented training to become effective and useful and achieve the end result of value to all: the students, the company and the industry.
- Such education for students with effectiveness will also be the differentiating advantage for the colleges (academic institutions) in the long run.
Every one of us needs a strong dose of “System Thinking”. Do you agree?
Every one of us needs a strong dose of “System Thinking”. This includes all of us – those in the Government, business, professionals, academics, fellow citizens, …. Do you agree?
Recently I posted the two comments in the LinkedIn as noted in this message. I wrote them as a response to two blog essays. These essays suggest a need for a strong dose of System Thinking – looking at the big picture, as a whole and not in bits and pieces.
One of the blog essays suggested that Government and political leaders must act like the way businesses are managed:
We agree with this need for a focus on long-term sustainability and not on the short term gains. We also need to recognize complexities of Democracy and each of us need to do our part.
If you hired 500 workers and about thirty among them said “we want to bring down the President of the company no matter what”, then what will you do? Suppose these thirty employees are also guaranteed that they cannot be fired from their job – thanks to “safe seats” – then what will you do? Suppose the “supervisor” – the speaker in this case, does not want to take any action and side line these 30 workers, then what will you do? You cannot fire the supervisor ad-hoc and you need a rigorous process – next election ? – Then what will you do? It is time the CEOs and journalists and those who fund these non-performing employees and their elections speak up and say “enough is enough” and call the spade a spade! The political correctness and being superficially equal to all sides can be very harmful. The poor who are affected by sequestration and the un-insured who are poor do not have any voice. The rest of us who are fortunate not to be poor or be already insured also need to speak up. Beyond that, ballot box is the loudest voice available. That is the price and privilege of democracy. Other than that, we can call upon the national pride and plead with those who are driven by ideology to think of the nation at large, her economic needs and avoid the deep self-inflicted wounds.
System thinking also requires attention to details and avoid pithy phrases and cliché. Commenting on the current crisis in Washington, one blogger wrote: “Don’t hate the players, hate the game”. What does it really mean? Drop the rules and principles of a democratic process (the game), because few politicians want to impose their will ad-hoc?
At the end of the day, any system or organization works only to the extent the people play by the rules. If required, rules can be changed again through a set of rules established for such change. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” means nothing when the game is not played by the rules! You can not play basketball with those who want to spill water on the court to deliberately injure some players! This will happen when people coming to the basketball court not to play ball but cause havoc to those who want to play. President Obama was elected twice and the ACA was passed by the congress, upheld by SCOTUS and was re-affirmed through a national election. Now 30+ congressman from districts where Obama was defeated by 20% or more, do not want to play ball. This is like a few players from a team who lost the game don’t want to leave the court, instead want to rip and tear the court. Sadly there is no security force that can be called upon for this unruly behavior! The only people who can fix this are those voters in these “safe districts” who need to talk sense into their elected representatives. Otherwise those fellow citizens will be the laughing stock of the nation. Are they listening?
