Education – Not for rebels!

For a middle class person in India, society has an important role in probably every decision we make through our life. Education being one of them!

I always toed the line which my parents wanted to. Went to the best Colleges and Universities and exposed myself to a world I had not dreamt of. And once you get something which you believe that was impossible for you, you don’t want to let it go.

I hung on to this desire feeding frenzy for almost a decade before even realizing what this Education had done to me. It had killed the rebel within me. It had doused the fire that burnt within my belly in the Secondary School. It killed my ability to dream big and aim for it. Education had made me a slave to the spiral of desires.

I was able to break out of it finally in 2014 but failed to sustain. The reason, my education again. 

I always believed that I deserve better for I am well educated. Why the heck should it be? Why am I not able to kill this awkward societal reasoning?

Its been because of the people around me! They are not letting me fail! 

They want me to play safe and want me to have cushions all around me. But it would not be right to blame them completely. I am equally responsible for the decisions I have taken under this societal pressure.

But today, am again at a critical juncture where the pressure is telling me to play safe because I have kids who need education, I have parents who need care and I will have a future if I plan well!

But what I have over and above all is a wife who keeps telling me…….Bloddy Hell with everything! Let us fail again! Let us try again! Let us keep trying! We will figure out everything soon!

And I tell her back…….Preeto, we just need to be successful once, so let us try once again!

I am what I am not because of Education, but ‘inspite of it’.

It's not every day you get a change to impact a Million Lives

Professionally, I have always enjoyed greenfield projects which eventually enticed me to take a plunge to start on my own. This new role I have been playing with LPU has been equally exciting.

LPU administration is unique for being a combination of being a large enterprise which is extremely unprofessional. But then I do remember that the same thing happened at the time I left Infosys. And what an experience it was!

My small tenure with LPU has helped me get a detailed insight into the improvement areas which LPU needs to work on priority to remain relevant in the future - 

1. The CEO coach - Culture of an organization is dependent upon the people who head the organization. Their attitude, behavior as well as approach defines how the whole organization behaves. I found myself copying my boss's sitting and walking postures in my previous assignments. LPU is driven by a single man and the whole credit of creating such a wonderful institution goes to him. Mr.Ashok Mittal, who is also the Chancellor of the University. he has many firsts to his name and in a way is an inspiration to many including me. But as with any human, he too has a few shortcomings which he seems to be completely unaware of. He is a man with an amazing vision but being continuously pulled down by his own weight. While it would be so convenient for me to blurt out what I feel is wrong, I would avoid it. Rather my suggestion is that Mr. Mittal is in an urgent need of a CEO coach. A good coach would not only help him iron out his future business objectives but would also help him understand ways of improving the University culture.
2. Missing Brains: The solution to every problem I faced in the University seems to rest with a single "Higher Authority". While in a factory environment, one would want this to be an ideal scenario where everyone is following the process without applying their mind.  A similar environment in an intellectual environment of a University seems to be quite strange and completely out of place. So the question I started asking myself was -  "Are people here not good enough?" And the little experience,  I have,  I was quick to make out that it's not the case. The real issue was that the roles have been created to have a lot of responsibility but all without Authority. Leading to such a severe determination that now a large number of Senior Management team is made of "Yes Men". No one wants to take logical decisions or apply their minds to a problem and are happy to announce that the solution can only be provided by "Higher Authorities" which to me seems like invoking God. 
3. 
   
   Penny wise pound foolish: A 250 crore organization, I worked with,  followed the process of budgeting diligently to the minutest detail. Every department created an annual budget while setting the target almost 3 to 5 months in advance of the next financial year. The whole organization would then gear up to that objective. Into the year, discussions were oriented towards the target achievements and analysis of the misses for course correction. Every penny spent was for a pre-defined through a well debated objective. Every recruitment was with a final goal written down in the plan. But this some odd 1000 crore company/University does not have a budgeting process. The budget here is on the discretion of the "Higher Authorities". Someone advised them to try budgeting and they hired their own audit department to do it. The method followed was astounding, Whatever one department has spent in the last year, needs to spend 10-20 percent less. A great process in which budgeting is no where linked to the business objective of the department and is not verified by the business team. When there is no logic to the process, a logical person stops fighting and just gives in by either accepting that there is no use arguing and just take in this absurdness or they just move out. There are just innumerable cases which I came across where this illogical process has made the University loose millions in opportunity cost.
4. 
   
   The Balancing Act: It is a challenge for any business to survive in the short run while fixing its eye on the long term. The LPU management has a clear mandate run a profitable business, the way they have run other businesses like sweet shop and automobile dealership. While this University has an excellent short term determination to be profitable every year, it clearly seems to lack vision. This lack of vision is clearly manifested in the working of individual department. If one asks the head of any department as to what is the long term objective they have set for their department, the answers were all over the place. When one has the ability to build a business employing 8000 people directly or indirectly, it is extremely baffling as to how can this be the case? 
5. In detail lies God: I am given to understand that Lovely Sweets mastered the process of making ladoos and were able to sell high quality ladoos at a very low cost through which the Lovely Empire came into being. Process is a very interesting thing. In a process wherever human interaction is involved, there is bound to be an error. So LPU management came with a novel way of removing the human interaction, "just automate everything". Because everything will be computer driven now, a false impression of process has been created. It is completely forgotten that the person entering data or initiating the process is a person and the people involved in the process are interacting with each other. The University/Company seems to clearly misunderstand the difference between a Mechanical Machine and a process. This has led to such a severe problem that even if one needs a stapler to be purchased for their department, there would be atleast 10-11 people involved int he whole process with approval being done by "Higher Authorities" for the consumption of a Rs 50 thing. This problem emanates from the incompetency of the people making the processes. Because Lovely Sweets could do it does not mean that every person in the world can make a user friendly process. If that had been the case, every company would have been equally efficient and there would have been no need of TQM, Kaizen and other such philosophies. The University/Company is in dire need of a process consultant to relieve it from the stress the processes have built within it.

This article is being written almost a year after I have moved on from the University. There had been no heart burn during the stint I had but I was not able to make the Impact I could have made. This made me analyze what stopped me in doing so and I listed down the top 5 reasons.

Even today, I am of a firm belief that resolving these 5 key issues can unleash the full potential of the University and the people working within. It is not everyday that one gets an opportunity to impact more than a million lives which Mr. Ashok Mittal is blessed to have. I just wish he does not squander it away.