In day to day work, I cannot stand people who dont wish to understand what is being conveyed. One category of people genuinely do not understand stuff, which I can agree. But, the other category of people stay by their ideals and do not bother to listen to what the other person has to say. As a caretaker of this free world, it became my moral responsibility to quantify such behaviours..:)
In a professional setup, I categorize people into two groups. One of them is the educated group and the other one is the trained group. Educated group comprises of people who can venture into any given problem and try to find a solution. Their abilities are often not bounded to a specific field. The educated group tries to understand new technology or new software and what not and reason out if it makes sense or not. They do not admit to stereotypical existence. The problem with the educated group is that they may not be greatly specialised in a specific area. On the other hand, the trained group contains people who are extremely specialised at their job function. However, they cannot open up to new technologies. They are very monotonous and if they have come across a technology that worked well for them, they just stick to it and even campaign that it is the best technology around. It is difficult to convince them to do things that dont fit their specialisation, not because the new tasks are different, but it is just that they wouldnt budge to trying out new things.
Personally, I think both of them are key components to running a team. But, the more the educated people get, it is better. This is something that resonates in me when I hear about offshoring. I always hear people saying that we can train people to do things. I completely agree. But, I believe, a trained work force cannot be an innovation incubator. For a growing company, the number of cross-links within the company for each new individual increases exponentially and implementing new methodologies are a necessity. I think, people should be trained to be in the educated group...what an oxymoron ? As individuals of unparalleled potentials and the highest calibre, I think this is something that deserves our attention...:)
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Spaced Office
Posted by Suresh Sankaralingam at 4:21 PM
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2 comments:
Innovators are people who are educated in one specialized area :)
But I don't see the association of the first paragraphy with the rest. Do you mean to say, trained people won't listen?
I meant to say that trained folks are not open for new ways of doing things. Sometimes, it manifests in the form of being rigid about their own ideals and not listening to others...
Calm & Serene: That was an interesting perspective... I thought of experts to be educated people if they can weigh the benefits of new technologies.. The interesting thing about this whole difference is that, one cannot distinguish these 2 sets of people at a higher level since both of them do similar work. Infact, the trained people may seem even more smarter in terms of completing their assignments...:)
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