Soft Skills

We learn by teaching

Prabodh Sirur expounds the concept of docendo discimus

15 June 2010: The CEO of a large IT company, was looking at the three envelopes spread on his table, with a sense of satisfaction. He felt he had more than repaid his debt to his teachers from his village school. The three envelopes carried letters of a very unusual nature. No IT CEO would have received these in the past. These letters were from the Governors of three different states, inviting him to receive the Best Teacher Award, on behalf of his company, on the Teachers’ Day on September 5. 

It was really a record of sorts, a company was nominated as the best teacher rather than a person. This was unheard of—three different states inviting one person to receive the awards on the same day! Very unusual. 

This scenario is clearly possible if companies act today. Times are changing; companies are finding it difficult, by the day, to have better quality people on their rolls. If we do not act now, it will be difficult for corporates to meet their people targets by 2010.  

Docendo discimus, a Latin term, it means—we learn when we teach. A person adds to his maturity when he teaches someone/grows someone. Industry-academia relationships are beginning to evolve but they need to move into a higher orbit. It has to be an industry-wide initiative and requires the commitment of not only management but the staff as well. The more people who go out there and teach, the better it is for education in the country as well as corporate growth.  

There is no doubt that docendo discimus will improve brand recall, staff satisfaction and staff retention, thereby resulting in improved margins. However, this campaign will not work if the teaching is restricted to a few. Corporates need to prepare key staff from all levels to go out and teach in colleges. In my opinion, people won’t mind doing all this and would even volunteer personal time, provided efforts are recognised and rewarded.  

So really what do corporates have to do to get the programme off the ground? Simple!

We get our stars and future leaders together and we give them world class training from a world class institute on how to train and how to teach. And then we ask them to choose the colleges and the topics and take a week’s teaching session once a year. 

There is no doubt that many will come forward to take this up. Some would actually choose their hometowns to go and teach and feel happy about what they did. To make a difference this needs to be taken up on a war footing across industries that complain of a talent crunch or the lack of good talent. Some pointers to keep in mind are: 

• Enhance staff satisfaction by offering them opportunity to grow outside of their work/to meet their social aspirations and to receive world class training to equip them to teach effectively
• Assign weightage during salary review for the contribution in this area n Recognise efforts by including this contribution in the staff database and by embossing one star for every year of teaching on their photo id card
• Take inputs from students/joiners who managed to benefit from the teaching, from staff members who went out and taught; create stories for all the PR campaigns, including mention in the annual reports.
• Cover those topics which are not part of the curriculum but are important to the business
• ‘Cub-sourcing’: It does not end with teaching. Create a mechanism where various pieces of work can be outsourced to students (cubs), giving them the chance to do ‘real work’.

There is no doubt that the IT industry has great potential to make a difference to the education system in the country. It has already put India on the map, now it has to make sure it does not fall off.

Docendo Discimus will be a great service to the organisation, to its people, the community and students.

Prabodh Sirur is Head, Staff Management, India Global Service Delivery Operations, LogicaCMG