Business banking heavily on skills, leadership and innovative practices

By Dr B K Mukhopadhyay

“I hope I remember everything,” said Toni. “You           won’t,” said Trapp. “That’s how you learn.                    But after you make the same mistake one, or                 two, or five times, you’ll eventually get it. And then you’ll make new mistakes.” — Louis Sachar, The Card turner: A Novel about a King, a Queen, and a Joker

Is the Business Innovative?

Is it not a fact that we often think of innovation as creativity?  

Harvard professor Theodore Levitt points out, the difference between innovation and creativity is the difference between thinking about getting in the world, and getting things done. Creativity thinks up new things, but being innovative does new things.

Of course creativity leads the way in as much as the same speaks of a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts  or  new associations between existing ideas or concepts. It is better not forgotten that the product of creative thinking have both origility & appropriateness. The product of creative thinking have both origility & appropriateness.

A Good Going

The beginning has been good, innovative, practical / realistic and achievable.  On this core mention may be made of Intertiol collaborations initiated by NSDA [tiol Skill Development Authority] deserve special appreciation:

a)    Signing of Technical Assistance project with the Asian Development Bank (29th May, 2014) to enhance the capacity of NSDA and 6 State Skill Development Missions

b)    Signing of the India-EU Skill Development Project (9th June, 2014)- The NSDA is the nodal agency and the main counterpart of the European Commission for the project. 3 broad areas of interventions of the project-

c)    Enhanced capacity of the beneficiary institutions

d)    Implementation of the tiol Skills Qualifications Framework

e)    Labour Market Information System and alysis practices

Betterment of Skills : No Tinkering Around  Ongoing Practises

Tinkering around the long practiced process and policies cannot take the economy to the new heights. 21st Century business has been more complex, competitive and skill oriented where speed, stability and continuous innovations are there. Especially, the developing block has to compete with the biggies in the intertiol market where nobody spares the other. It has been the case of survival – keeping the head over water and swim across!

Yes, they are also doing the same, but in a different manner. The purpose, target, philosophy – all are good. And of course it is always better to be late than never. The first task is to locate what went wrong with previous programmes for which lots of money was spent with little result. The historical pull factor has not received due weightage. Even now, so far as MGNREGA has been conducted leaves much to be desired in as much as creating job by hook or by crook is not definitely the target. Since the payment is not a problem, the tural tendency is to grab the same even by utilizing the godfather’s influence! The result is – the person who was having the skill that has been earned over generations suddenly comes to a halt, leading to loss of a number of economic positives! Switching over to petty jobs leaving the age-old business- backed skill has to pay the price in future. Rather, it will be better to classify the skill-business levels and thereafter matching the jobs with that.

In these days of innovention [innovation plus invention] some value-additions are must so that the next level of activities will better the skill-level.

As the matter stands now - innovation focuses the business on its critical essentials - making things easier in the operation of the business – if not it is not innovation, but complication. Being innovative helps business identify itself and establish its individuality. This skill, once developed within the business and people, could positively lead to constantly asking how the same can be bettered!

Innovation calls for development of new values through solutions that meet new requirements, irticulate needs, or old customer and market needs in value adding new ways     in products, service or process. It relates to the very mindset - the art of finding profitable solutions to problems.

So, to what extent the declared policies bank upon innovative is a point to see at this juncture.

Learning by doing

Obvious enough: “Experiential learning is participative—for example, either making or doing,” rightly explained by Erin Driver-Linn, associate provost for institutiol research and HILT’s director [Harvard]. “What do we need to understand, as a learner, which is conceptual? And what do we need to understand by experiencing things in a different way?”

It will not be out of the context here if we quote William Faulkner [Press conference, University of Virginia, May 20, 1957] “At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don’t think the talent makes much difference, whether you’ve got that or not”.

But these, in turn, heavily depend on effective planning and implementation. The allocations that the Department of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship [that came into being formally on the 31st July 2014] call for proper implementation as otherwise that will repeat the experiences which we have so far in respect of a number of the plans formulated by the Government from time to time.

On this score the allocation of Business as done may be quickly glanced: co-ordition of skill development activities; mapping of existing skills and their certification; expansion of youth entrepreneurship education and capacity through forging strong partnership between educatiol institutions, business and other community organisations and set tiol standards for it; doing market research and devising training curriculum in important sectors; industry-institute linkage; bringing PPP [Public Private Partnership] element in this activity-partnership with the industry who need the skilled manpower; making broad policies for all other Ministries/Departments with regard to market requirements and skill development; to frame policies for soft skill; academic equivalence of skill sets

In lieu of conclusion

The mission has to be to add value to others through unique and innovative training opportunities, providing professiol development programs backed by continuous research so as to assist and encourage growth and develop leaders in the industry. This is a continuous and spontaneous process indeed.

The immediate need is there to bolster the skill level and that is not possible if we do not come out of the inefficient, primitive, change-laggard approach! Trainers are to be selected first in a very impartial manner.  In these days of globalization .many organizations work across tiol borders and cross-culture training has become a common occurrence. In addition, many employees working come from other countries; organizatiol success requires that all employees understand cultural and diversity issues.

Successful organizations need effective leaders. With the aging of the workforce and imminent retirement of the Baby Boomers, U.S. organizations are experiencing a shortage of skilled leaders and a significant need for leadership training. Skilled leadership affects the entire workforce; numerous studies indicate that one of the key reasons that employees leave jobs is because they are uncomfortable with the working environment created by their direct supervisor.

Successful organizations need effective leaders at this juncture.

 Leadership training could reduce turnover at all levels in an organization. It is better not forgotten that the basic aim of training and development programs is to help the organization to achieve its mission and goals by improving individual and, ultimately, organizatiol performance

By quoting Aristotle we may end up the present alysis - “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” [Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics]

(The Writer, a noted Magement Economist, an Intertiol Commentator on Business and Economic Affairs and Director, Netaji Subhas Institute of Business Magement, Jharkhand, India, can be reached at m.bibhas@gmail.com)