Self Managed

I was in a meeting with industry think tanks - VCs. It was constantly stressed that new decade would look for self managed employees, fte (full time resources) more than mentoring folks ground up.

This made me think - what did they try to convey. I personally feel our education system does not teach how to catch fish, they offer fish and let the students eat. Surely, top B-schools do teach catching fish but how many are going through top b-schools to get employed would be a question to ask and think.

Concept of finishing schools are picking up and I think it would be good idea to prepare next generation work force to be self managed to value add from the start of the career.

Now, what is self managed? As a manager I expect an employee would be completely productive from the day one in other word self managed. I am ready to accept not having domain knowledge but I and rest of world would expect the person to be able to understand requirement of work, analyze, dissect, come up with questions, think about implementation, impact on the business, present well, come up with solutions and implement solutions to complete the job. Generally, these come with year of experience and grilling on the job. Basically, what we are expecting is a mini consultant from top 5 consulting firm at the bottom of work pyramid. Would this be possible, would this be easy to accomplish ? I feel yes it would be, if someone is mentored well from day one and if the framework of learning how to catch a fish available. I would advice all junior to mid level executives to think about this, at least in software field. There is a way how to do that and I will try to explain some other time...