Five Secrets of a Top Grade faculty

Higher education in India has experienced mushroom growth in past two decades. It has entered the consolidation phase already. Although most of the expansion has come from privately run institutes but considerable growth has taken place in public sector also. Few corporate have also entered education domain but largely for the CSR reasons than motivated by the mission to create a world class institutions. You could judge the priority & importance the governments in India lay on the education sector by the very fact that the MHRD don’t have put up 2017 data on its website as on May 24, 2017. The website mentions “As of 2014, there are 677 universities, 37,204 colleges and 11443 stand-alone institutions in India”.

It’s universally accepted that the quality of faculty is the most critical factor for imparting top grade education. Curriculum, Infrastructure, network and technology comes after the basic need good quality faculty. Those who have the opportunity to study from high quality faculty possess expert level skills to contribute to the profession they undertake. Anyone can be a great faculty if she/he could acquire the expertise in the following 5 factors and demonstrate it frequently.

Subject Grasp: Everyone thinks her/his grasp over the subject/s is absolutely fine till s/he put it to test. Therefore it’s recommended that the faculty must test own domain knowledge at least once every three years by solving the examination paper given to the students. The institute and the government could also make it mandatory for teachers to take a test periodically.

Domain Knowledge: Education is multidisciplinary and each subject shares concepts, tools and principles with wide variety of other subjects. Therefore it’s imperative that the faculty must be encouraged to develop expertise in a gamut of subjects required for effective teaching. Many subjects particularly from science and professional arena can’t be understood properly if a faculty lacks the field experience. A doctor without practice in a hospital would make a lousy faculty of medicine. Similarly engineering and management also put same demands on the faculty.

Communication skill: Most often it’s recommended that a faculty must have excellent communications skills. Well it’s desired that the faculty must be able to speak fluently the language understandable by the students but more critical communication skill for a faculty are reading and writing than the speech. World class faculty should be able to read and understand complex papers, journals and also write in concise clear manner.

Empathy: Good faculty must empathies with students and be able to behave like the students in the classroom.  Knowledge can be transferred easily if the learner trusts the teacher. Moreover a faculty good or bad leave an impression on the audience and also influence the personality of students. Faculty could strive to understand the psyche and group behavior of the class one intends to handle. The faculty needs to win confidence of students for positive learning outcomes.

Grasp of Edutech: No faculty can claim to plough the lone furrow in internet dominated world of education. Therefore a great teacher must work hard continuously to catch up with the technical expertise of the students. I would recommend that every faculty must be a step ahead of the students on handling edutech so as to inspire the students.

Selling to Your Sales Team !

India is the land of Micro Small & medium enterprises [MSME] and such firms face unique functional challenges to succeed in the domestic & global market. Particularly the task of organizing a powerful sales & marketing team is tremendous. Although several SME players would insist that finding cheap credit & trained workforce are far more serious than getting new orders. Well entrepreneurship is a challenge in itself and majority of SMEs are generally young firms that don’t have long experience & critical knowledge of the market garnered through years of operations I the market. However some firms fail to scale up with time due to many factors despite their efforts and vision. And majority of the times such firms show a distinct common strand of not having a powerful Sales & Marketing team to propel it to grow faster than the competition & demand in the market.

Many SMEs that have regional & national sales operations are straddled with teams that were relevant 20 years ago. Majority of such sales & marketing teams are full of people who have no formal business education and also have not been trained regularly on the job. Such teams function in a bureaucratic manner and lack creativity essential for real success in the market. You would be surprised to know that many sales professionals lack knowledge about size of market, nature of competition & consumer profile despite years of reasonably satisfactory performance. Well in a rapidly growing market it possible to sell with little or no effort but mature markets can only be dominated by a strategic approach.  

Few years ago I was hired by an established SME to rejuvenate & reengineer their sales team. The said company has been led by a technocrat engaged in manufacturing of capital equipment for high speed packaging machines catering to the need of other firms. The capital equipment they make were generally sourced from abroad at a premium & only limited domestic competition was there for them to take on. Therefore there was a ready market of export substitution at an Indian cost to the entrepreneurs.

Their commission based sales & service team had national presence and it recently had become the major bottleneck in achieving higher sales numbers to help the firm acquire critical size in the market. The promoters also enjoyed close relationship at top level in customer organizations. Business selling is a team sport and the seller has to satisfy large team at the customer firm consisting of cost & finance guys to operators. Another company engaged in manufacture of faucets, showers & bath fittings had virtually no control over the sales agent responsible for half the market. In India majority of firms involved b2b segment lack direct control over distribution network or the customers.

Several SMEs are in awe of the power & hold of their sales people on the market. Many firms are held hostage by the Sales & Marketing teams which lead to negative impact on the top line & strategic growth of such firms. There is need to create & train the sales teams to face the challenges of the contemporary market scenario in India. SMEs need to audit their sales team periodically and organize them based on their objectives such as nature of the competition, product handled, type of market and demand structure in the market.

The top management must keep two paces ahead of their sales force to get the desired results. Technical sales team must have trained sales professionals so that quality cold calling result in communicating the brand of selling firm. Sales professionals, like leaders, are made not born and regular training & nurture keep them in fighting fit condition. Sales training must be factored in the plan and be taken as ongoing activity rather than periodic break from selling routine. Healthy sales & marketing team attract customers, credit and effective team mates for other functions too as they are the external & internal ambassadors of the firm. 

Political Giants & Media Monsters !

Media and the Political players are like married couple. Both understand each other’s temptations so readily forgive the flings unless it becomes damaging affair for either of the stakeholder.  They fight but make up soon for sake of continuation of the relationship with renewed vow to support each other every time.  Like most marriages this too is an unequal relationship wherein the political player can lose reputation and elections but the media firm can lose its existence. 

Politicians need media to put across their promotional communication to citizens at large and media need them for advertising money and sensational content. News Channels use no holds barred approach to find content that brings highest TRP to their business so that they could charge premium from advertisers. Therefore the so called Breaking News stories have not much to do with journalistic mission or nation building pronouncements for sake of audience benefit but a direct greedy tactic to get better TRP for raking in the moolah.

Let us also resolve the conundrum of politics for nation and people or politics for pure self aggrandizement.  In my considered opinion all Political players work for themselves only and some of them are more open to sharing the windfall gains with some number of people. There is no political party that has worked for all the people of a country. Show me one and I’ll show you people the victimized and marginalized in some clear manner.

Let’s get back to the issue of how political parties should handle media or leverage the communication opportunities presented to them. Firstly in pays to have own dedicated mass media machine that is run professionally. Most parties in democracies have ‘close’ linkages with media houses but since last decade in India many parties own pretty powerful media monsters of their own to unleash at the opponents. The serious weakness in all those strategic assets is lack of professionalism as toadies generally lack competence to get audience interest. Such dedicated media firms must be run by professionals with Editorial policy control with the party. Aligning with an outside media firm is more expensive & less effective.

Political players generally get carried away by the media attention and tend to speak endlessly on any topic under the sun. Have you ever heard a politician say on camera that they need some time to answer the question if the muck racking seems to be working to their advantage? When you target the opponent it’s better to go prepared for your best shot. You must always depend on written prepared communication for better results and always desist from off the cuff shibboleths.

Political parties must plan the media rendezvous and must not exceed a given limit. Please note that more communication may lead to more confusion so in order to have positive impression on masses keep all political communication around few specific points that a binds your politics with your target audience.  A political player must avoid expressing views on topics that strengthen the opponent camp as bad publicity is also welcome publicity in politics.

Finally political parties would benefit if the work of communication management be left to professionals than party managers because the insiders can’t have a 360 degree view of a communication situation. 

Education as a Ritual ?

Why do we Indians believe in ritual, without caring to respect the substantive. Our education is as bad as the other aspects of society. We are people who would happily be singing  'saraay jahaan say acha ..while peeing. spitting at public places randomly. We remorselessly burn kill in the name of religion, caste and other meaningless divides. We revere the Ganga but can't keep it clean? We have political parties named .......a, b, c,d...Sena, ain't our armed forces enough to protect the country? 

One visit to IITs & IIMs would get you real dismal picture of the standard of teaching there. Its easy to get rich & successful in India by stooping low and having your intelligent quotient less than the average. Just stand up for honesty, beauty & intelligence and you have hoards of marauders vying for your blood. Talent has no place here...otherwise  how could we loose battles to every johnny including a pvt ltd company from England? 

We are afraid to face positive criticism...why can't some social, religious or political organsiation convince Mr Narayanamurthy of Infosys to join them in building the country? Good people have no place in public life in India they are hounded out by half baked self proclaimed decadent leaders. India is my country and i am sad for it. Lets not shut our eyes to the people's movement for quality in governance forcing the rulers to show respect to the people.

our education system is as bad as other systems in India. A university topper [1986] could not get a lecturer's job in journalism department of Punjabi university patiala because the VC had decided to give it to his niece, sic.

Mr Kapil sibbal can not or does not want to do anything to improve the system. He has his own axe to grind. Why can't IITs/IIms employ industry professionals with years of achievements without the ceremony of PhD or Masters? How would you bring professional culture in classrooms without them? I have known a vast number of marketing professors who just pee on 4Ps without explaining the relationship with the shop floor. I had to leave a privately run management institute because the promoter/director of the institute was certain that sales is part of marketing function and when i told him an example that sales could be an independent function too and sometime more pervasive in a nascent market, his ego was hurt and my job..hahaa.

IITS/IIMs get PSU consulting projects only, even those projects they are unable to handle. Why can't they get projects from international corporates like the other institutes globally? UBS at PU Chandigarh has marketing teachers who can not tell names of advertising agencies, market research teachers who have n't heard of Nielsen? 

How many professors are there who can teach the subject of their own choosing? On a personal note, how many Marketing Management professors in India would know the profile of Indian consuming class? How could we have good MBAs then? IIMs are just names because they get best of India students, as for teachers they are like we get anywhere else. 

Kapil Sibbal can ask Nielsen or another research agency to seek opinion of students of IITs/IIMs & other national institutes on the academic standards & teaching quality. The rot is all pervasive..its not going to change unless the society changes..till then VCs & other leading academia would continue to be entrepreneurs & social engineers.

Online Free Marketing Management Lessons for MBA/PGDM India

Some of my students have been asking me to use the social media for study of Marketing Management for MBA students in India. Well let us begin today! But i would not not be posting any lessons unless asked particularly & also would write in brief only. But it goes without saying that you could ask me anything under the Sun on Marketing Management in India...and you would get an answer to the best of my abilities.

What would you gain from this interaction? Firstly, how many of your MM faculty has industry experience? Secondly how many of them share industry data in the class room? Do they ever go beyond Philip Kotler, wonder if most even understand that standard text book? Moreover how many are tech friendly? and have a blog? Enough said about they way i handle Marketing Management.

Firstly let me clarify that i do not agree with the general trend they way MBA students opt for specialization in Marketing Management in MBA course. You would agree that it has become a practice that students with higher grades go for Finance major whereas less bright go for Marketing. Marketing management has become the favorite course of the wimp, and thats the problem. In fact  Marketing management graduate need to know finance as well otherwise s/he would not be able to make profitable marketing moves.

How to select a proper specialization is a million dollar question for the students in the mid course. And the job is not over once you have opted for Marketing Management. Because you need to learn to appreciate that the application of Marketing would vary depending upon the product/service you wish to market. B2B marketing is whole lot different than B2C. Theory of Marketing Management may remain almost same but their would be several finer points that a student must understand. Marketing in a growing economy like India may not have an actual customer relationship focus as you would see in the mature markets. Even the way the business activity may be organised on different lines. Therefore when you select Marketing major please take the next step of gravitating your studies around your select area of work/career. Once you have decided, and you must decide, to pursue a career in consumer durables, FMCG or B2B then focus on the working of corporations in that field only. Begin with the local market and go on to the global scene.

Philip Kotler texts are very basic that you would need to supplement with regular visits to industry websites, cases, discussions and workshops. Go for Marketing so that a we could have iconic Indian brands, and home grown fmcg companies with effective distribution networks.

Higher Education & Global Education in India

We still await the government green signal to entry of global education organisations into India. Once they arrive it would sure change the domestic market dynamics as happened in other sectors like electronics & auto etc. Its time that local education organisations prepare for the battle ahead. Once global competition hits services sector in India the customers can look forward to mush better quality & availability of services.The professional education sector would be particularly hit hard initially unless they pull up their socks in right earnest.

Firstly the quality of the service has to be improved. That would involve putting together good faculty, content, pedagogy/andragogy, technology, & interactivity besides building and official approvals. Good quality faculty is certainly in short supply therefore this has to be managed strategically through guest or part time faculty route. First of all the promoters must allow the directors/principals some little role in the functioning of the institute. Current scenario in the privately run universities & institutes is very serious with as most,perhaps all, the directors/principals are appointed for AICTE/UGC purpose only. Its a pity that so called leading academicians accept such jobs with high flown pragmatism & prudence. Otherwise its sick.

Content & delivery in classroom needs to be looked at very closely. We have talk down one way  method of teaching with no interaction at all. The faculty must take prepared content into the class and allow free discussions. The content must be updated & must reflect the present technical/managerial status of the fields under study. Fundamentals of the disciplines must be introduced to the students. For example MBA students must be informed about the real macro industry profile of India so that they can appreciate the nature of work opportunities available. Same could be done for the global markets.

Most students seek professional education not because they have aptitude for it and they want to pursue study of that field, most students are forced to join professional education for the sole aim of finding a job. What an institute can do? In the short run, focus on developing the students' aptitude as far as possible in the current field of study and in the long run the institute could make aptitude test a compulsory requirement for admission.

Higher education organisations do not have to restrict themselves to proximity criteria for student enrollments, i would recommend that such firms must vigorously focus on complimentary markets for growth. This would require creating a central admissions team that takes care of all students enrollments in a strategic manner.

Marketing would have to be the cornerstone of success in any scenario. An education enterprise that works on its marketing would benefit hugely. A tailored marketing campaigned would be needed to weather the churning after mushroom growth. Different institutes would have to develop & adopt  a suitable strategy for attracting students & delivering value to the customers for success in the competitive market.