Breadth vs Depth of Knowledge: A Learning Dilemma for Young Professionals
Ms. Sabitha Rao – Director, Cerebrus Consultants
The Beyond Management Initiative session held on 07th November 2018 was privileged to have Ms. Sabita Rao, Director, Cerebrus Consultants as the speaker for the theme “Breadth VS Depth: A learning Dilemma” for Young Professionals. She spoke on how the skills gained from education will help us to make decisions in management and its relevance in the real world.
Narrating her personal experiences on three major agendas: Looking Back, Future of Work & Careers, she went on to describe the financial transformation witnessed so far to attain the current state of our economy where most of the development in manufacturing sector happened in India because of the FDI policies passed by the government on note of liberalization and also the global demand of solutions contributed by the IT Industry boosted the salaries of each person working in organisations. In the year 2008 when Lehman Brothers financial crisis disrupted the normal functioning of the banking system across the globe. We have learned the fact that steady growth in economy doesn’t necessarily guarantee the final outcome of larger developed economy where still unpredictable events happen, notably the current trade war between nations, rising price structure of commodities makes life of the younger generation even more difficult in satisfying their daily needs.
Changing workplace is the common scenario taking place in all industries where the nature of job environment will not be the same in the next 5 years. She emphasized on gig economy which could quickly be a trap for workers as employees may lose their enthusiasm due to its standard of job. She went on to talk about the entrepreneurial craze, the growing culture of person having their own venture will not be easy as it looks, the untold fight to establish the venture brand is critical. She advices all the young future managers to be skilled in coding and data analytics which builds their technical competency. Citing examples on the data deluge, a report says that people who work with data can become richer and she firmly believes in it. In Agile organizations, what really matters is your skills & talent and not age, experience, etc. Ms.Sabitha gave examples of Top billionaires who at later stages in life show a desire to invest much of their wealth for social causes because they fear if not taken care of it will indirectly affect their children and the next generation and so if not them, nobody will.
Speaking on the careers in organisations, human resources looks forward in hiring a T-Shaped employee who has deep knowledge and skills in a particular area of specialization. The horizontal bar of the T symbolizes a breadth of general knowledge and soft skills, while the vertical stem of the T symbolizes the depth of technical hard skills. Dividing into blocks from the transactional to the bottom feeder, she clearly explains the transactional people in organizations who fail to upgrade their skills could be easily replaced by the younger generation or by cheaper waged employees.
She concluded her talk by suggesting valuable tips to ingest in our day-to-day life. Be hungry & thirsty for knowledge. Travel and visit place to gain knowledge and make it a journey for deep learning. Try to spend time on innovations by triggering the elements of curiosity like the joy of exploration and recognizing failure as the new badge of success. Make bold conversation and have discussions with people where you need to cultivate diversified views on all subjects. Don’t make your conversation like a fast moving express train, try to be audible and accurate in delivering your ideas. At last, be humble enough to have an L-Board in front of you, means you are a Lifelong learner. This session motivated the students to prepare themselves for a better future.
Contributed by : Allen Daniel