Imagine this. You are a 20 or 30-something employee of an MNC, with over seven to eight years of work experience behind you. While the going has been good until now, you suddenly find yourself dealing with additional responsibilities and a larger team. Feeling a bit overwhelmed and out of your depth, you realize that you need re-skilling, to take you to the next rung of your career ladder. What do you do?
A number of professionals today are getting compelled to improve their skill sets to enhance their performance within the workplace and stay abreast of the trends, developments and technological changes defining their specialised markets. Besides fulfilling the existing requirements of their jobs, they also need to continuously build their domain-specific and managerial credentials to perform better at work and move up the growth curve.
Countries like India are facing significant challenges in the area of manpower development, particularly at the middle management and entry-levels. Besides a paucity of personnel with the relevant industry experience and knowledge to handle work at more senior positions, the country is also grappling with the problem of a large, yet "shallow" manpower pool.
Recent studies by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of business intelligence firm, McKinsey & Co. on the human resource strengths of India and China, show that despite the ever growing base of graduates and engineers, the quality versus quantity issue looms large in these geographies. While India and China are churning out the necessary numbers of generalised and specialised professionals, fewer than 10 per cent can be considered "employable," or job-ready and suitable for work in foreign companies.
The McKinsey Global Institute study has revealed that while India had an estimated 14 million young professionals-twice that of the US-and topped up this number by 2.5 million new graduates every year, only 10 to 20 per cent of these would ultimately get hired by MNCs.
In fact, only around 10 per cent of Indian students with generalist degrees in the arts and humanities was suitable for employment, compared with 25 per cent of all Indian engineering graduates. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, India also faced a shortage in certain management occupations and few older graduates or middle managers had the necessary international experience to switch to MNCs. India, therefore required graduates with degrees that employers wanted, like engineering, rather than generalist certifications.
Obviously, this is cause for concern. India simply has to sustain its manpower edge in order to attain leadership in the global markets.
The need for Executive Management programmes
In the early days, pursuing a classic management programme, (an MBA)-with its focus on economics, accounting, business strategy and management skills-to bolster a University degree, was the way to go. Today, however, senior managers and new entrants need to look at ways and means by which they can remain on the learning treadmill to progress in their careers. They have to go beyond the "MBA degree," and further augment such learning with "Executive Management Programmes," that are meant for managers who have already notched up a considerable amount of work experience.
They have to do this in order to make complex decisions quickly, optimally use the IT tools available to them, assess new business opportunities and deploy strategies to tap them. They also need such courses so that they can share their knowledge and discuss real-world challenges within the academic framework.
The Executive Management Programmes enable successful managers from a variety of backgrounds to combine relevant theories with the practice of conducting business in today's global economy. Students in the programme have a chance to step outside of their professional environments and gain a fresh perspective that allows them to bring new life to their work.
For executives with less time or looking for training in more specific areas, an increasing number of academic institutions and business schools are offering intensive short courses and tailored content for individual organizations, covering areas such as management principles, financial analysis, planning and management and strategic marketing. These programmes allow participants and their companies to choose material that is directly relevant to their industry sector and future business plans.
The top ranking B-Schools in India, including the IIMs, Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, XLRI, Jamshedpur, IIFT, Delhi, Symbiosis, Pune and Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai are now catering to the country's executive community by launching a variety of such courses.
The IIMs, for instance, have tied-up with NIIT-under the umbrella of a brand new initiative called Imperia-to set up virtual classrooms at various locations across the country. Senior and middle-level executives from different organisations can now attend Managerial Courses and attend "live" lectures by faculty from these prestigious institutes.
Satellite and Broadband Technology using high quality audio, video and data will enable these managers to interact freely with the faculty during each lecture. This "Synchronous Learning," will allow them to attend management programmes without taking time off from their jobs.
The concentrated nature of the courses, which will involve extensive evening and weekend participation, are likely to attract smart, dedicated and extremely motivated executives, keen on moving to the next stage of their careers.
The profile of an executive learner
People enrolling for such Executive Management Programmes will typically be Engineers, Managers, Accountants and Consultants in their late 20s or 30s, and belong to industry sectors such as finance, media, communications, healthcare, IT or manufacturing.
Comfortable with their careers and unlikely to take two years off to complete a traditional MBA course, these "students" will be willing to share their real-world experiences with peers and juggle full-time work with a heavy study load. They will also tend to be flexible and have the ability to juggle multiple tasks at any one time.
Executive Management Programmes will not only allow these learners to opt for a self-paced, quick upgradation of skills, they will also help them complete their academic studies and acquire knowledge that will be invaluable as they grow in their jobs.
Clearly, such methods of continuous learning are here to stay and we will hear much more about Executive Management education in the months ahead.
A number of professionals today are getting compelled to improve their skill sets to enhance their performance within the workplace and stay abreast of the trends, developments and technological changes defining their specialised markets. Besides fulfilling the existing requirements of their jobs, they also need to continuously build their domain-specific and managerial credentials to perform better at work and move up the growth curve.
Countries like India are facing significant challenges in the area of manpower development, particularly at the middle management and entry-levels. Besides a paucity of personnel with the relevant industry experience and knowledge to handle work at more senior positions, the country is also grappling with the problem of a large, yet "shallow" manpower pool.
Recent studies by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of business intelligence firm, McKinsey & Co. on the human resource strengths of India and China, show that despite the ever growing base of graduates and engineers, the quality versus quantity issue looms large in these geographies. While India and China are churning out the necessary numbers of generalised and specialised professionals, fewer than 10 per cent can be considered "employable," or job-ready and suitable for work in foreign companies.
The McKinsey Global Institute study has revealed that while India had an estimated 14 million young professionals-twice that of the US-and topped up this number by 2.5 million new graduates every year, only 10 to 20 per cent of these would ultimately get hired by MNCs.
In fact, only around 10 per cent of Indian students with generalist degrees in the arts and humanities was suitable for employment, compared with 25 per cent of all Indian engineering graduates. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, India also faced a shortage in certain management occupations and few older graduates or middle managers had the necessary international experience to switch to MNCs. India, therefore required graduates with degrees that employers wanted, like engineering, rather than generalist certifications.
Obviously, this is cause for concern. India simply has to sustain its manpower edge in order to attain leadership in the global markets.
The need for Executive Management programmes
In the early days, pursuing a classic management programme, (an MBA)-with its focus on economics, accounting, business strategy and management skills-to bolster a University degree, was the way to go. Today, however, senior managers and new entrants need to look at ways and means by which they can remain on the learning treadmill to progress in their careers. They have to go beyond the "MBA degree," and further augment such learning with "Executive Management Programmes," that are meant for managers who have already notched up a considerable amount of work experience.
They have to do this in order to make complex decisions quickly, optimally use the IT tools available to them, assess new business opportunities and deploy strategies to tap them. They also need such courses so that they can share their knowledge and discuss real-world challenges within the academic framework.
The Executive Management Programmes enable successful managers from a variety of backgrounds to combine relevant theories with the practice of conducting business in today's global economy. Students in the programme have a chance to step outside of their professional environments and gain a fresh perspective that allows them to bring new life to their work.
For executives with less time or looking for training in more specific areas, an increasing number of academic institutions and business schools are offering intensive short courses and tailored content for individual organizations, covering areas such as management principles, financial analysis, planning and management and strategic marketing. These programmes allow participants and their companies to choose material that is directly relevant to their industry sector and future business plans.
The top ranking B-Schools in India, including the IIMs, Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi, XLRI, Jamshedpur, IIFT, Delhi, Symbiosis, Pune and Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai are now catering to the country's executive community by launching a variety of such courses.
The IIMs, for instance, have tied-up with NIIT-under the umbrella of a brand new initiative called Imperia-to set up virtual classrooms at various locations across the country. Senior and middle-level executives from different organisations can now attend Managerial Courses and attend "live" lectures by faculty from these prestigious institutes.
Satellite and Broadband Technology using high quality audio, video and data will enable these managers to interact freely with the faculty during each lecture. This "Synchronous Learning," will allow them to attend management programmes without taking time off from their jobs.
The concentrated nature of the courses, which will involve extensive evening and weekend participation, are likely to attract smart, dedicated and extremely motivated executives, keen on moving to the next stage of their careers.
The profile of an executive learner
People enrolling for such Executive Management Programmes will typically be Engineers, Managers, Accountants and Consultants in their late 20s or 30s, and belong to industry sectors such as finance, media, communications, healthcare, IT or manufacturing.
Comfortable with their careers and unlikely to take two years off to complete a traditional MBA course, these "students" will be willing to share their real-world experiences with peers and juggle full-time work with a heavy study load. They will also tend to be flexible and have the ability to juggle multiple tasks at any one time.
Executive Management Programmes will not only allow these learners to opt for a self-paced, quick upgradation of skills, they will also help them complete their academic studies and acquire knowledge that will be invaluable as they grow in their jobs.
Clearly, such methods of continuous learning are here to stay and we will hear much more about Executive Management education in the months ahead.
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