Industry and Academia Interface

Industry and Academia Interface: What is missing?

Valedictory address by  T V Rao of the NHRDN Jaipur and Fortis on 8^th March, 2014

I thank Prof. Bapna, NHRDN Jaipur chapter  and Fortis Health care for inviting me to this conference. I have five points to make for your consideration. However t before I make them for your consideration I would like to say that the National HRD Network itself and its formation is an outcome of Academic-Industry Interface. The NHRDN was started by academics from IIMA and XLRI with support from industry. The very objective is to promote the HRD movement in the country which was conceptualised at IIMA and Larsen and Toubro found that it makes business sense and provided a platform to implement. The XLRI Centre for HRD, L&T and IIMA were instrumental in its foundation and the body was registered at IIMA with support from Industry leaders. In the initial years it was managed by academics from  IIMA, XLRI and IIHMR etc.  and subsequently HR leaders from industry. The NHRDN is itself an example of collaboration and interface. Academics are associated in getting papers and publishing them. The papers themselves are largely written by practitioners. In the last three conferences special attention has been paid to involve student community through special session and faculty by sponsored research. Academic Institutes collaborate in a big way in all these conferences. NHRDN has also started an academic wing called the Academy of HRD which is largely managed by Academics. The Academy used to conduct a distance education program for practitioners in HR to fill the gaps and subsequently started a Fellow program in collaboration with XLRI. The program has graduated around 25 Doctoral level fellows and they are all serving various institutions as well as industry as academics and practitioners.

There is always scope to do more.  I like to make five points for your consideration for enhancing the Industry academic interface taking HR profession as an example. These points are based on the assumption that there is always scope to do a lot more and are intended to help the same.

1.      In professional courses the curricula should be prepared jointly by academia and practitioners. It is true for all profession like Engineering and technology, management, social work, education, law. Medicine and all fields.

2.      All Institutions of higher education should undertake self renewal exercises preferably facilitated by practitioners with self renewal skills

3.      Practitioners should encourage internships summer, winter and project work etc. and fund them to the extent possible to ensure preparation of quality

4.      Universities and colleges should encourage and facilitate extension work or consultancy and research work collaboratively with the organizations.

5.      Practitioners should update themselves periodically by visiting Institutions of higher learning and learning the recent developments in theory and try to implement the same and share their implementation experiences.  

Point 1: Need for Practitioners’ involvement in curricula: Today standards of education are pathetic. My own experience of using fresh students indicates that they are nowhere near what we used to get prepared forty years ago. Unfortunately very one is working independently. The NHRDN, CII and XLRI are a case in point. Several years ago NHRDN held a number of seminars and conferences that generated competency list for HR. It is published in NHRDN books. The AHRD developed model curricula and passed it on to AIMA, XLRI, SCMHRD and a few other institutions. AHRD itself organised a few programs. Ten years alter the memory is lost as there have been changes in office bearers. They developed a competency model for HR professionals. It is good model but perhaps somewhat  ignored its own previous work and focussed more on HR competencies for IT professionals. However they consulted global knowledge forums. It is yet to find its way to academic institutions including XLRI itself and other institutions that collaborated with it from CII or NHRDN.  Today when I look for competent graduates in HRM the scene is disappointing. If I require 100 basic concepts sand 50 skills for handling HR function I hardly find 10% to 20 % of it in the best of the institutions. See appendix for the competencies of HR people and the academic preparation required. So it is high time that academic institutions involve practitioners in preparing academic curricula. This is true not only for HR but for all professions. The HR Compass of NHRDN or other models like the one evolved by us at TVRLS should find their way to academics institution. I use for example the model of HR competencies (see appendix) in the courses of Talent Management or Intellectual capital and HRD Score card at Institutions like IIMA.

Point 2: Here I like to draw my experiences from project IMPACT sponsored by the Department of Electronics, Govt. Of India, World Bank and the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation. Five years after they have given liberal grants for upgrading electronics and computer education in Colleges of Engineering and technology and polytechnics with the help of IISc, IIT Delhi and Mumbai they found not all institutions are similarly disposed to using of the innovations. TVRLS conducted a study which indicated that adoption of innovations in higher education depended on a number of factors and significant among them is the “Institutional Environment” including its leadership, vision, and faculty processes etc. A tool was developed to bench mark the practices. It is now available for all (see the working paper series of IIMA, 2014 by T. V. Rao and Siddhartha Saxena on Institutional Environment).  These tools can be used by Institutions in the same city or same management and bench mark and improve themselves. Bodies like NHRDN could facilitate such renewal exercises. For example I recommend all Institutions from and around Jaipur to form a  consortium and have small group that can modify this tool,  administer this tool on themselves, benchmark with each other and keep improving themselves. One of the parts of the tool deals with use of practitioners in academics. This effort can also be facilitated by Jaipur HRD Network. It will make a good beginning.

Point 3: BPCL changed its Performance appraisal system a few years. While they paid large sums of money to train about 30 change agents with expertise from the west, for bringing change in their appraisal system it was initiated with a summer trainee from one of the local Management schools. Many institutions have productively used management schools and summer trainees for getting their work done and also to provide learning ground for students and faculty. In XLRI around the time NHRD was conceived, we trained tens summer trainees and sent them out across the country to document the HR practices. It later became a bench marking study and most of the students are HR leaders to day. These experiences indicate a productive way the summer training and industry projects could be sued. Rather than spending enormous amounts of money and getting big and expensive consultants to do work a lot of it could be done n by local management schools.

Point 4: To do these we need competent faculty. It is here that Universities and institutions should have specific grants for faculty development and encourage faculty to offer consultancy and research services to practitioner organizations. They also should encourage outside faculty and practitioners to teach in the schools. The teaching by practitioners makes the education more relevant and also less expensive. Most practitioners are normally happy to teach and are content with small honoraria.

National Professors Scheme of NHRDN:

In order to strengthen the academic inputs and make them more relevant to industry needs and also make available Prominent Professors and HR leaders to teach and share their experiences the NHRDN has started a National Professors scheme. In this scheme the NHRDN identified prominent professors and thought leaders both from academia and industry. Professors like Keith D’Souza and G. P. Rao, Dr. PVR Murthy, Dr. Aquil Busrai, Dwarkanath are accomplished professionals and thought leaders and have both industry and academic experience. They have all around 15 of them have agreed to teach in management schools that are interested in strengthening their student preparation. All that they need is an invitation. The academic institution should prepare half credit courses of 15 sessions across three days or so and allocate their won faculty to teach a part of the course. NHRDN could even think of certification of the students in the course. Jaipur Network can make a consortium of Schools and organises such course for a large number of students so as to maximise the use of the time of such thought leaders.  The next point therefore I like to make is :

Point 5: The National Professors’ Scheme stated by NHRDN serves many of the above purposes if the Institution takes the same seriously and works out a collaborative relationship with NHRDN and the visiting practitioner faculty. Many practitioners take pride in being called a professor or Doctor. The doors of Universities should be opened up for practitioners to register for Ph Ds. NHRDN and ISTD offer some good examples of the same. Several of their members are not Ph. D.s and some are teaching in B schools after they retire.  On the other hand Academic Institutions should become more open and liberal in encouraging those who like to do their Ph. D.s/ a large number of professionals today from industry re interested in doing their Doctorates. We have excellent examples in NHRDN itself. Three of the former Presidents got their Ph. D.s at a later part of their work life.  The AHRD stated a Doctoral level fellow program of AHRD continues. When I was on the Planning Board of Indira Gandhi Open University in mid eighties I proposed to Dr. Ramie Reddy the need for starting a Doctoral Program for practitioners using a list of about 100 Management Professors across the country as guides.  I gave the x example of the doctoral candidates from IIMA who get access to data from industry with contacts of professors like Udai Pareek, S K Bhattacharya etc. I mentioned that Indian Managers are sitting on mountains of data and if they are given a research orientation and guidance they will be able to convert them into thesis and produce far greater contributions than their western counterparts. Dr. Reddy agreed but by the time the proposal reached the University bodies he left IGNOU and the subsequent Vice Chancellors had other priorities. The proposal got shelved but we picked it up in AHRD and demonstrated with the help of XLRI it is possible to have a nationwide doctoral program with guides all across. AHRD still continues this crusade though its sponsor XLRI withdrew to promote their own program. I recommend Universities to become more open to such programs. It is ironical that some Universities stop recognising P the same Professor as a Ph. D. Guide once he retires at the age of 60. It should be the other way. At 60 you have a lot of wisdom, time and experience. You probably can guide and mentor students better. Universities should open themselves to recognise any established professor after sixties a Professor of Eminence and use his or her talent.

Jaipur Network has distinction of having a lot of Economists HRD Network members. The relationship between Economic development and HRD are inseparable. I hope Jaipur Network s wills how the way to others.

My Best wishes.

Appendix Notes:

Preparing HRD managers professionally.

The Academy of Human Resources Development in 1992 itself has prescribed the following minimum standards to qualify as a sound HRD professional: The candidate should have studied and passed a minimum of the following ten courses:

1.   Introductory Course on Organisations: Structure and Dynamics

2.   Human Behaviour in Organisations

3.   Integrated HRD Systems: Introductory course in HRD

4.   Performance Planning, Analysis, Review, Appraisal and Development

5.   Career Planning, Dynamics and Development

6.   Potential Appraisal and Development

7.   Training and Development

8.   Organisation Development and OD Interventions

9.   HRD Strategies and Interventions for Workmen

10. Personal Growth Laboratory

In MBA programmes the first two courses are normally offered as compulsory courses and hence the additional eight courses are needed to be completed to get qualified as a trained HRD professional.

In order to be a qualified Human Resource (HR) professional the candidate needs to complete the following additional courses:

For industrial relations competencies

♦    Labour Laws

♦    Employee Welfare

♦    Collective Bargaining

♦    Trade Unions

♦    Work Redesign and other HR Interventions for Organisational Effectiveness

For personnel management

♦    Recruitment

♦    Manpower Planning

♦    Human Resources Information System

♦    Wage and Salary Administration and Reward Management

Separate standards are prescribed from time to time through diploma programme run by the National Institute of Personnel Management along these lines.

The two-year programmes offered by institutions like the XLRI Jamshedpur, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Symbiosis Institute, Pune, etc., offer comprehensive programmes on HR including HRD, IR and HRM. The specialisation in human resources management may or may not include a full HRD component depending on the institution offered.

Competencies of HRD Managers

Recently TVRLS has listed the following ten competencies required by HR Managers

1. Business Knowledge: Knowledge of business (products, services, customers, technology, competitors, developments, R&D) and all functions (Sales and marketing, Production and operations, Finance, systems, MIS, logistics, services etc.), Knowledge of Business capital (intellectual+++) and its constituents and methods of building Business capital

2. Functional Excellence: (i)  HR Knowledge, (ii) HR Delivery including culture sensitivity, empathy, coaching and facilitation

3.  Leadership and Change Management: (i) Communication, (ii) Initiative, and (iii) creativity and (iv) Change management

4.  Strategic Thinking: Analytical ability, cost and quality sensitivity, Ability to spot opportunities, anticipate and find alternate ways of solving problems

5.  Personal Credibility

6. Technology Savvy: including HR technology and Research Methods

7. Personnel Management and Administrative skill

8. Vision of the function and Entrepreneurship

9. Learning Attitude and Self Management: (i) self awareness and desire to learn (ii) Time management, (iii) Networking, (iv) Research and analytical skills

10. Execution Skills: (i) Planning and Monitoring skills, (ii) cultural sensitivity, (iii) persuasive skills, (iv) Behaviour modification techniques and  group dynamics, (v) ability to  craft interventions for implementation, (vi) cost and quality sensitivity

Source: Rao, T. V. HRD Score Card 2500, New Delhi, Sage India, Response Books, 2008.

ISRO an Institution of Excellence

Nurturing Excellence: Indian Space Research Organization

T. V. Rao

I went to take a session with ISRO Scientists and Engineers yesterday. It was a 3 hour session. The topic was “Nurturing Organizational Culture & Life Long Learning”. The program was on “Technology Management”.  There were 28 Scientists and Engineers who are also Group Heads from all over the Country. Pradip Khandwalla took a session the day before on Creative Organizations.

Before I began my session I made an observation that their three day program is filled  with all soft inputs like creativity, stress management, culture and the like and very little of Technology. They said that they know enough about technology but wanted to know more about how to manage.  

I began my session by asking them about what they are proud of about their own culture at ISRO. There was a near unanimous response from 28of them who are group Heads from all over the country. They said that “openness” where everyone is free to express their ideas, views and opinions characterises the culture of ISRO. In addition they said there is ample freedom to experiment; focussed working as everyone has clarity of what one is pursuing and highly goal directed; commitment to work and they all enjoy what they do as they are working for a larger cause.  They went on to say that ISRO culture is characterised by an extraordinary team work- everyone works for group goals and not individual goals. There is some differentiation in designations but if you are good and talented you can choose and make your own growth path. ISRO is as good as a hierarchy-less organization as promotion of one scientists does not depend on the promotion of another as there are no fixed posts and every one can pursue his own career as scientist or engineer, and every one of them has certain amount of autonomy and freedom to experiment, and there is no bureaucracy.etc though there are norms and strict rules. They also said they have their own culture of recruitment of competent people as they frame their own recruitment norms and policies. They said that have around 18,000 staff all over the country. It was amazing how such a large government organization can have such a culture of excellence.

It appeared almost like the culture at IIMA about which we are all so proud of. I shared with them my own experience at IIMA when I joined IIMA in 1973 how I found it was hierarchy less with every one being addressed by first name, every Professor having the same size room irrespective of their designation, and every one being addressed as Professor and no distinction between a Professor and an Assistant Professor which enabled faculty to focus on their work rather than get into politics of promotion and every one ahs freedom to chose the courses you want to develop, the research you like to pursue etc. I could see the stamp of Dr Vikram Sarabhai all over in the 30 minutes of their narration of the ISRO culture.

I remembered Ravi Matthai speaking all the time in his discourses with various educationists about how Dr. Sarabhai made sure that IIMA is kept away from an Act of Parliament to enable the Institute create a culture of excellence. He wanted IIMA to be a hierarchy less organization with no fixed number of posts of Lecturers and Readers and Professors like in the IITs, and how he wanted that everyone should have enough autonomy and freedom to pursue their own research and teaching interests in Management etc.  Though by nature these are two different types of organizations both being governed by their respective Ministries’ have Dr. Vikram Sarabhai stamp in their culture that continues to nurture excellence.

I don’t understand why the current Government wants to disturb this culture of excellence at IIMs by a Bill to give them Degree Granting status. They may be getting degree Granting status but it is likely to create Degree granting Institutions rather than Institutions of Excellence. I wish the bill gives only Degree granting status but without disturbing anything else or creating any new structures that kill excellence!.

IIMA Society

IIMA Society and its Presence on the Board of IIMA

T. V. Rao

IIMA is Registered Society under the Societies Registration Act (1860 Bombay Societies Registration Act). It has membership of over a hundred members. Most of them are from in and around Ahmedabad, a few PSUs, and Banks and a few from the Tatas, Murugappa Group, TVS, HUL, Bajaj, Mahindra, and the like. It is represented in the Board of IIMA by four of its members who are elected once in two years. Recently the Society’s memorandum got changed where the term has been extended from two to three years with a restriction that elected members could serve a maximum of three terms of three years each.

IIMA Society membership consists of Donors (corporate or individuals), any individual who donates Rs 15 lakhs and any corporate that donates Rs 50 Lakhs can become a member. Corporations are represented by the representatives they chose and individuals are registered as individuals. For former faculty and Alumni the individual Donation is 50% of the others (i.e. Rs 7.5 Lakhs). After I left IIMA in 1994 after getting my 20 years of service medal I always cherished the desire to be on the IIMA Society. At that time the membership fee was around Rs 25,000 if I recollect correct. However I went on delaying and finally joined about five years ago when they introduced the new category of membership. When I became a member it is just with the feeling that on the convocation day there should be enough Society Members present during the Convocation to say “Yes” on the stage when the Chair asks for approval of the Society for graduating the students. I used to feel bad to see hardly three or four members of the Society on the Convocation dais at that auspicious time.

Since the time I joined I used to feel bad about the thin attendance in the IIMA Society meetings. My feelings are due to the way we had run National HRD Network and the Academy of HRD where we used to make sure of a good attendance for the AGM and other auspicious occasions. It was not gelling with me that a place like IIMA should have such low attendance in its society meetings.

I also explained to the Director a couple of times that if we make effort and get 100 members from the Alumni we will have added to the corpus  5 crores (at that time the Donation was Rs 5 lakhs for Alumni and Rs 10 lakhs for others) and we get 500 it would be 25 crores. If we get corporations about 100 of them we would add about 50 crores to the corpus and 100 then 500 crores. It is not too difficult for the Institute to get about 500 to 1000 alumni and another 100 corporate if we make a sincere effort. However other priorities made the Institute and its Board not pay attention to this. They appointed a Committee which hardly added any members in the last two years.  

During last elections of its representatives on the Board Praful Anubhai a long term associate and Society member of the Institute encouraged me to volunteer to be on the Board. He proposed my name and Prof. S C Bhatnagar another Ex-faculty on the IIMA Society seconded my name. I was informed that it by convention IIMA Society presented unanimous choice. I decided to with draw if there are enough candidates who are likely to get unanimity. However I wanted to make sure any of them elected will do a good job on the Board. I wrote the following letter to all the members of IIMA Society.:

On February 23, 201.

Dear Fellow Member of the IIMA Society:

Sub: Seeking you active involvement in the IIMA Society

I am a new member of the IIMA Society, since last two years.

I have been associated with IIMA since 1973 as a full time Professor until 1994. I had the privilege of working with Ravi J Matthai very closely and along with Ravi I was one of those instrumental in starting the education systems group at IIMA and also worked on various Institution building issues. As some of you may know I have founded the National HRD Network which now has its presence in 40 cities and about 8000 members. I left IIMA in 1994 after completing 20 years and started the Academy of HRD and subsequently TVRLS. Both these are progressing well as Societies registered in Gujarat. In the last two years I found that very few members of the society take active role in the affairs of IIMA.  Their attendance at the meetings is rather poor. 
 

I am writing this to seek your active involvement in IIMA Society affairs. As you all know IIMA has always had the distinction of the top level Management Institute in India and got worldwide recognition. Over a dozen of their former/current faculty and alumni are Padma awardees including Padma Vibhushan. Top Management Guru’s like late Dr. C. K Prahalad, V Govindarajan and many others who are getting recognition are faculty/alumni of this institute. Recently IIMA was ranked as No. 11 by Financial Times globally and surpassed many other Management schools based in the USA and Europe. This is the Golden Jubilee year of IIMA.

Inspired by the success of Management schools like the IIMA, B, and C, and to cater to the need growing need for quality management education, the Ministry of HRD has decided to start a number of other IIMs in India. This is a welcome move.  However sometimes with good intentions and given the system as it is, the MOHRD may make the mistake of treating IIMA in same way as the other new IIMs. Understandably government would want to exercise more control on the new IIMs as largely Govt. funds them and may want to treat all IIMs equally, so as to be seen as equitable and not favouring any one. They may not always subscribe to the philosophy of management that “the best way to create inequality is by treating everyone equally”.  There is a move to down size the Boards and also down size the Society membership etc. While this may be applicable to other IIMs the character and origins of IIMA are different. IIMA Society is a Society of donors and it has 50 years of tradition and culture nurtured by people like Dr Vikram Sarabhai and Ravi J Matthai and various Chairmen like Dr. Prakash Tandon, Mr. Kirloskar, Keshub Mahindra, Dr. V Krishnamurthy, IG Patel, Narayana Murthy etc. 

We need strong people on the Board who can spare time and also when necessary work with the MOHRD and convince them and enable IIMA to retain its leadership position and autonomy.

There are seven candidates who expressed their interest to represent the society on the Board. I have written to each one of them requesting assurance from them to do the following:

1. Should commit sufficient time and at least eight days in a year (for about four Board meetings) for attending Board meetings and guiding the Institute.
2. Work with the Ministry of HRD and convince them to recognise the value of IIMA’s culture, and ensure autonomy and academic freedom for IIMA like in the past and support it.
3. Mobilise funds for IIMA to enable it to continue to have its financial independence.
4.  Be willing to link up periodically with the other society members, expand the society membership

5.  Be willing to interact with faculty and other stake holders and provide some amount of continuity and linkages between the Institute and the environment at the same time help the Institute to change to make it into the next orbit of success.

In response to my note six of the seven contestants have agreed. Though I have indicated my interest to also to represent the Society on the Board, since six out of the seven are established business leaders and have assured that they will play the above mentioned role, I have withdrawn my own candidature from contesting elections.

As this is an important decision I request all the Society members to participate actively in making the right choice of the candidate to represent us on the Board. I also request the Society members to take active part in the affairs of the IIMA Society and make it a vibrant Society in taking IIMA to new heights. I have requested the Director IIMA to identify one of the Board members to liaise with the other Society members and enable them to play an active role. The Director IIMA, Prof. Barua has already indicated his desire to have an annual or bi-annual Conference of the IIMA Society members.

I thank you for your time and hope we will have more involvement from your side.

Warm Regards

T. V. Rao,

Member, IIMA Society and Chairman TVRLS, Founder and First President National HRD Network and First Honorary Director, AHRD

E mail: tvrao@tvrao.com

Four members were elected on to the Board two from Ahmedabad (Sanjay Lalbhai, CMD Arvind and Chintan Parikh, CMD Ashima) and two from Mumbai (Hasit Joshipura, VP, JSK and Ashank Desai, Chairman Mastek). The two from Mumbai are alumni and business men or Professional managers from the Corporate Donor category and not individual alumni category. From the individuals there are only four of us- two former professors (‘PROF. S. C. Bhatnagar and T V Rao) and two alumni (Varun Arya and Pramod Agarwal). Three of them I am not sure when they have become Board members for the third time. In the mean time as per the Society’s new MOI those completing three terms may have been required not to seek election. However the Chairman got legal advice and clarified that they could contest as per the new MOI since they have not completed nine years or three years of three terms. However I personally felt that they should retire to make way for others. However it is their choice. They may be wanting to provide continuity on some of the things they were involved in the Board.

This time I again offered myself as I thought that not much has happened in terms of the assurances given by the elected members on the Board. I also felt the Board is constantly changing and needs thoughts and experience sharing on the Institute’s culture from senior faculty like me. I volunteered again. All the four members who were elected last time decided to seek re-election, the contest was inevitable.  I even wrote to all the four requesting them to think carefully about the extent to which they have been able to fulfil their commitment made during the last elections. They have made the assurance to me as an individual and not to the Board or to the Society, so they are not required to respond to any one. However I expected them to respond. To my disappointment they did not. I also appealed to the members to give chance for other Society members to serve the Institute. They did not respond. Hence I decided not to with draw this time. In the final contest there are Four Business men and Four Alumni (One ex-faculty, two professional Managers who are also IIMA Alumni, and Four Business one of whom is again IIMA alumnus). I started looking at the Society members and started contacting as many as possible explaining the reasons for my getting into the fray. I am happy that a few of the Society members on their own started calling me offering their support and good wishes.

I never contested any election in my entire life. I was one of the lucky ones to be either invited. I have at times when I started bodies like NHRDN even self declared President. It is not my nature to contest. However I started working for it. I have one important agenda: To get as many IIMA Society members as possible to attend the Convocation and the AGM and take active part and also to expand the base of the IIMA Society. I believe that a strong Society makes a stronger Institution. I also believe that IIMA Society should be different. It has some excellent members like Reliance, L&T, The Lalbhais, Sarabhais, Mafatlals, Jyoti, Escorts, and Murugappa group, TVS, M&M, PSU CMDS (EIL, BHEL, STC, LIC, New India, and MECON) and the like Waghbakri, GSFC, Citibank, HUL, Tata Group etc. It needs to activate and IIMA should expand its base. There should be as many as a hundred to five hindered alumni who will come during the convocation perhaps by turn and make it a great day. The convocation should become a great day of activity. They should participate in taking their Alma matter forward in nurturing excellence and make IIMA “THE BEST” in the world.

Irrespective of whether I win or not IIMA Society should become vibrant. MHRD should look at the IIMA Society with pride and say that MHRD continues to support its Institutions to strive for excellence and may even make a special provision in the Bill for Institutions like IIMA to have its own Societies to govern themselves.

Nurturing Excellence with Stability and Change at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad: IIMs: Director's Role is Complex

Nurturing Excellence with Stability and Change at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad: IIMs: Director's Role is Complex: Director’s Job is Complex T. V. Rao Directors of any educational Institution have a complex role to play. Some times when I think of ...

IIMs: Director's Role is Complex

Director’s Job is Complex

T. V. Rao

Directors of any educational Institution have a complex role to play. Some times when I think of it, it is even scaring. In modern times it requires a superhuman being to be able to play the role very successfully. No doubt there are a few good examples but most people end up as average or even below average Directors. Normally it a couple of years after the new Director is appointed the previous one starts looking better. Most Directors get to be known as biased, have their own coterie, insensitive to faculty and students' needs and even competing sometimes with faculty to be seen as popular among one constituent or the other (Students, or staff or the Board of Management or local leaders, parents, government etc.). It is not their fault. The role requires management of different constituents or stake holders.: The Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, Management Committee where there is one including the owners and investors who have invested their money and effort, Parents, Community around them, local government authorities (including municipal corporation, income tax, service tax, other civic service providers, local professional bodies and industry etc.), new donors or potential donors etc. The Director cannot do justice to all this and to do this he/she should be a good delegator and should know how to sue different constituents appropriately. He should be able to sue his administrative staff deal with and utilise the local government and community for the good of the Institution. The most critical among the roles of the Director in my view include vision and direction setting and inspiring all constituents with the same; effective administration of the Institution and mainly the support systems with the help of the staff; inspiring, developing and managing faculty; utilising and managing the Board or the Management Committee including the owners, donors,  and investors; and linkages with the authorities that manage the education systems in the local or central government (AICTE, Sate or Central Government authorities etc. for accreditation and other matters.). Over focussing on some of these roles and under focusing on the others may lead to issues and problems. For example setting HR policies for staff or faculty without sensitivity to their needs, preferences and priorities may result in unrest visible or invisible and may have disastrous consequences. Similarly inability to sue Alumni resources and Board resources may be missing the boat. When I was Honorary Director of the Academy of HRD I have taken the help of many Board members to support the AHRD financially and was able to manage a good degree of funds through membership and Chairs. However I failed to sue a highly resourceful person on the Board the Chairman himself who donated land to the Institute.   It is with regret I look back how I and subsequent Directors did not cultivate the Chairman and use his popularity as well as services. In the five years of its existence in the same city of Hyderabad the Chairman never visited the Institution. In the beginning I used to think that he did not have interest. It is only latter I started getting the insight that we could not create opportunities for him to visit. Every Chairman who donates his time, money and effort would like to get something in return. The least that they expect is a good name or a great acknowledgement of their contribution. There could have been many forms of doing this but by failing to do this we lost a great opportunity of using the richness of the Chairman of AHRD. It is mainly the Director who has to be held responsible for this missed opportunity which will never come again.

Similarly Alumni of well established Institutions are a great source of strength. They need to be cultivated. Quite unlike the West Indian Alumni don’t always donate liberally to enable the Institution to manage itself financially. There are exceptions. However, most Alumni are more than willing to give their time, guidance and effort in other forms to support their Institution. Appropriate strategies need to be made. The Director may not be able to do it alone but take the help of other Faculty. In the ultimate analysis the Alumni do expect the Director to be present and continuously be with them to encourage and acknowledge their contributions. This is an important role he has to play with the faculty.

The most critical role is with the faculty. They are all knowledge workers and hence like to be heard. They like a Director who listens to them, empathetic, transparent, communicates, honours commitments, and supports them without biases in their teaching, research, administration and dissemination work. His style plays a significant role in managing faculty. Faculty are very sensitive to the moods, statements and actions of the Director. He is watched all the time and judged also. It is a tight rope walk. Information gets shared among the faculty and sometimes selectively. No one reports all the conversation he had with the Director when he or she visits him for an approval or discussion of any grievance. IIMA Director Samuel Paul used to have a small saying displayed on his table: “There are three sides to every story: Yours, Mine and The Facts”.  This is so true what get known is one side always and not even the two sides. Thus Director has to be extremely sensitive in saying what he says as it could be presented differently and rumours started. If he is transparent and communicative the scope for such distortions gets reduced. Hence it is very important that the Director should be open and communicative.

In addition setting a personal example is always an important one.  Only yesterday I was told an interesting incident of one of the Chief Ministers of Gujarat. When he appointed a Deputy Chief Minister the Dy CM wanted that he should be given a red light car like the one the CM had. As there was no rule permitting the Dy CM to have such car, it needed the permission of the CM. A note was put up and the CM write on the note withdrawing his own red-light car and permitting any Minister interested in having a red light car to be free to have it. Apparently when the order was issued no other Minister asked for it.” One of the Directors of IIMA used to travel by his car from Residence to office which a few hundred yards of distance. As no other Faculty were doing this, he also started walking every day. This has got him to meet other faculty and feel one among them. To develop the feeling of one among the equals is a highly desirable quality. If the Director is coercive or critical to faculty or not available to faculty or staff it sets a whole lot of dynamics among them and vitiates the academic climate.

Normally I have observed how so ever good a Director may be his ratings with the faculty decline as the time passes. This is because every year there will a few added to his hate list- not those whom he hates but those who hate him or critical of him. One faculty or staff whose requests are not granted or who ahs been treated with slight neglect becomes a rival. Thus all Directors like the HRD Department in a corporation run the risk of creating enemies from within. Hence the competence of interpersonal sensitivity and tact become essential. Ravi Matthai used to be known for this. He used to use every evening to reflect on the transactions he had with every single faculty and other visitors, evaluate himself and take necessary steps make everyone involved and inspired. Even if he had to disagree he would give long enough explanation. Often the explanation was good enough to get the other party to retrieve. Like once I am told when the Senior faculty expressed their unhappiness over only Juniors being sent to Harvard to do their Doctorates, and a team of faculty went to meet him, he sent them back smiling without granting their wish. He apparently told them that as senior faculty they should go and teach at Harvard rather than go there as students.

This kind of interpersonal sensitivity is difficult to get. It plays a critical role in managing the most important constituent of the Institution.  A good way of ensuring these qualities and effective management of an Institution is by seeking 360 Degree Feedback once a year from all possible constituents. This needs a specially created tool for the same. However in my experience I am yet to see a Head of an Institution to seek such 360 Degree Feedback.

I have summarised in the enclosed appendix the Roles and qualities of the Director of an Institution particularly with reference to IIMA when the Search for the New Director was set in motion 2012.

Roles and Activities:

1.       Articulating or developing vision for the Institute along with Faculty and other stakeholders and driving the institute towards the same.

2.       Maintaining Excellence and improving on the standing of the institute locally, nationally, and globally in terms of education, research and innovative management theories and practices. This can be done through orchestrating various processes in the institute and working very closely with faculty. Identifying their talent, projecting their talent and creating opportunities of them to make an impact.

3.       Balancing traditions and at the same time initiating and managing change with stake holder involvement.

4.       Protecting the faculty autonomy and maintaining peer culture and ensuring technological, financial and administrative support available on a continuing basis for faculty to work.

5.       Mobilising and managing finances and financial autonomy of the Institute by liaising well with the Industry, Government, Global institutions, other business schools, Board, Society at large,

6.       Inspiring and developing faculty to do excellent work- ensuring balance of teaching, research and dissemination.

7.       Ensuring safe, and motivating environment in the campus- infrastructure, technological support,  facilities management etc

8.       Respecting faculty for their work and projecting them to the outside world and ensuring that the outside world uses faculty resources for mutual benefit.

9.       Seeking 360 Degree Feedback, sharing results and showing change.

10.   Faculty recruitment and Development- investing time and effort on the same.

Qualities:

1.       Communication skills- willingness to communicate and use communication to t=enthuse and motivate faculty, staff and visitors,, tact and articulation and presentation skills

2.       Respect for faculty and staff – ability to trust them and engage them to be accountable

3.       Respect for systems and processes

4.       Openness to ideas – including willingness to receive feedback and criticism and reflect on it

5.       Willingness to change impressions and not carrying biases about faculty and staff

6.       Networking skills- network with various agents and agencies and sue the same for the benefit of the Institute

7.       Resource mobilisation- funds, faculty and other resources

8.       Empowering attitude

9.       Transparency

10.   Time management (his term is only 1825 days and approximately 20,000 hours).

11.   Credibility, character and values are the most critical things. Credibility may be gained on a continuous basis by his own actions and exemplary conduct.

Directors Job is Complex. I have written this article also for everyone to reflect that it is difficult to get a person who is next to God to head an Institution. The Directors or Heads of Institutions should have or at least try to cultivate as many of these qualities as they can to manage the Institution. If for some reason some of them are lacking in the Director, the faculty and other constituents (the Board) may need to plan and work out mechanisms for creating the circumstances that take care of what is lacking rather than spending all the time of tenure of the Head criticizing and cribbing. I don’t know if this is a distant dream but can we make this happen by thinking about “How to manage your own Director?”

Boards of IIMs

Boards of IIMs: Roles and Responsibilities

T. V. Rao

The Board of IIMs are the Chief custodians of the Management of these Institutions. The vision, mission, goals and objectives of IIMs are well set.  It is the Faculty and staff that make sure that the Institution strives to achieve its vision, mission and goals under the leadership of its Director. The Chairman and Board are non-executive Governors of the Board. They don’t execute though they are termed as having the role of executive body. They enable the Director and his/her team to execute and carry out various activities.  They meet once a quarter and at best for a day each time. With four days on inputs in a year we don’t expect the Board to make the institute achieve its goals. They are not comparable to the Boards of Directors of companies. There is a lot of difference between the way corporate Boards function and the Boards of Educational Institutes function.  The Board provides  linkages between the Institute and the environment or the society at large, interprets the environmental needs and opportunities and provide direction for the Institute and its faculty to review, launch and re-launch their programs including teaching, research, dissemination or change management  activities. They also review the performance of the Institute and its Director from time to time and approve the budgets and balance sheets.

The Boards are normally thought fully constituted to represent the outside society or environment so that the IIM can have maximum impact and achieve the purposes for which they are set up.  The members of the Board normally include representatives of the Government, Industry, other stakeholders and the Society at large. For example there are normally one representative of the MHRD and one of the State Government and in addition one each nominated by the Centre and the State. In addition two eminent people to be nominated by the Board from Alumni and three to nominated by the Government to represent different sections of society (education, industry, government and or special groups that need attention). Two represent the faculty, and four members representing the Registered Society if the Institute is a registered Society under the Societies Registration Act like the one at IIMA.

The Board members have both an individual and collective role. Individually each member has a role to play to represent the interests of the group for which he/she has been nominated/appointed.

Individual Responsibility:

For example the Faculty members on the Board are the active voice of the Institute and ensure that the other members are informed about various activities and concerns of the Institute, its needs, accomplishments, challenges etc. and seek solutions or give policy inputs.

The members representing the Registered Society(under 1860 Societies Registration act)  has the responsibility to represent the society’ views to faculty, build bridges between the Institute and Society members, expand membership, collect views and inputs from the Society and present the same to the Board to be translated into policies and practices. For this they should be constantly in touch with the other members of the Society.

The MHRD or Central Government and State Government representatives have the role to play of informing the National and local priorities and guide the Institute to serve the National and local (State) level needs and interests.

The Alumni have the responsibility to represent the alumni interests and ensure that feedback is available to the Institute from alumni so that changes that help the institute move towards better curricula and better programs can be made available and also ensure that the alumni contribute to the financial health of the Institution.

The other members representing special interest groups like Industry including women, SC/ ST, or sectoral groups like Banking, petroleum, education etc. depending on the reasons for their appointment) should draw attention of the Board and Institute to National concerns of the groups as and when an opportunity arises.

Collective responsibility:

The Board should normally transcend their individual points of view and collectively work for the good of the Institution all the time. Sometimes there could be conflict and in resolving the conflicts they should be able to rise above the specific individual interests and work for the good of the Institution. Team work is the most essential part of the Board. If the Board’s divided view gets communicated to faculty, it affects the excellence and does not give right direction to faculty. It may leads to politicization of the issues. The Board is there to support faculty, lay down broad policies and guide the faculty to govern themselves well. The Board is not an Executive Board. It is also not an Advisory Board. It is a mixture of both and in Academic Institutions the Board should remember that they are helping a group of highly knowledgeable scholars who get disturbed and de-motivated if they are not given proper support for their teaching, research and other academic work. The Board therefore does not get into individual cases and does not also get into decision making as far as possible. The only time they get to play active role in decision making is when they appoint the Director to lead the Institute or establishment of new centres which require big funding and their interventions. Other times include some exceptional cases of termination of faculty services or some financial norms, incentives have to be fixed, or big funds are to be accepted   etc. They could direct the faculty to start certain type programs or step up certain types of activities or scale down others etc. so as to serve the purpose for which the Institute is set up.

By virtue of its constitution the Board members may have different points of view. It is the role of the Director to present the Institute views and interest and take the help of the Board. The Chairperson has a very significant role to play in harnessing the different points of view and driving the Board to consensus make intelligent decisions or formulate policies. He should ensure that no vested interests develop nor any one section by virtue of its roots or origins dominate and twist the discussions.

During Mr. Naryana Murthy’s time at IIMA he had to play a very significant role when some differences arose with the government and the Alumni representatives played even a significant role to sort out the matters.

Chairman, Board and the Director:

These three play a keep role and their chemistry decides a lot of how the Institute develops. Their interrelationship should be one of trust and mutual respect. Trust can be built through continuous communication. Such communications from the Chair should not be seen as interference on the part of the Director and the Chairman could set a positive and non-threatening agenda for such communications.

A very significant role gets played by the Board at the time of selecting the Director. Normally it is good for the Chairman to keep himself out of Search Committee as he always had a lot of say at any point. When the Search Committee is constituted consisting of eminent people, they are likely to be respected for their suggestions and also they do consult the Chairman.  Chairman taking active role in the Search creates some times gives wrong perceptions that he may be favouring some one or the other and leads to politicisation. Even if he/she is a part of the Search, if the Search Committee is constituted with people of stature, is above Board and does not have any interests or preferences for particular candidate, it creates a healthy atmosphere. They should have the single most important objective of finding a good leader of excellence who can help achieve the Objectives of the Institution and take it to newer heights.  

Director’s job is a bed of thorns. How so ever excellent he or she may be some negativism does get generated and academics are very expressive of their unhappiness. The Search Committee or the Board should be able to listen, decipher the reasons and guide the Director where necessary and provide healing touch where possible. I have recommended an annual 360 Degree feedback for IIM Directors initiated by themselves. I am yet to see any Institute implement this. Once when Mr. Narayana Murthy asked me about his role as Chairman of IIMA, I suggested that the most significant role he could play is that of guiding the leader through a 360 like he developed leaders at Infosys. A 360 feedback annually or at least once a while helps the Director to be sensitive to the impact he/she is making. A 360 taken in early years of tenure can save a lot of negative energies that get developed.

If the Board get into delays in decision making it leaves the faculty guessing and runs the risk of starting new politics of alignment and realignment. It disturbs the academic culture and diverts the attention to other issues. It happened once when one of the Director’s appointments was delayed. There were letters to MHRD and the Faculty got divided and ended up wasting their time. It also made the life of the Current as well as the newly appointed Director difficult. In my view it took a long time to heal the wounds generated by the delay. It made an excellent Director less effective as he had to spend his time undoing what has been done and in the process he ended up hurting many more people.

(The thoughts here are personal and based my own experiences and narrations by those like Ravi Matthai,  Udai Pareek and others from whom I learnt)

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