NEXSTEP

Apropos my previous blog denouncing the MBA's view of the world. Re-reading it later, I found that there is a danger of being labelled as somebody who doesnt believe in diversification of skills, multi-tasking & most unfortunately, believing every human has but one kind of job.

I am completely against that phenomenon. I think everybody must have multiple skillsets in order to survive the ever-changing world. My earlier article reflects on the difference between one kind of profession & the other. An engineer might become a technical manager, but he may not do an MBA and change his profession.

Each profession provides such an immense variety of fields & specializations today (& that too, formally) that one can never go out of job even if one stream dries out!

I can speak for my profession. An architect, with additional learning & experience can become a graphic designer, product & industrial designer, animator, sculptor, artist, etc. In short one can try any spatial skill. But he or she can hardly try to re-articulate oneself for a future in administration or finance. I also believe in the same thought that an architect can never become a planner (policy based). Here, I am making a very crucial difference between a planner & an urban designer. An urban designer has spatial skills, while a planner has policy skills. Both use each other's skill set frequently, but will never be able to do each other's work, unless supported by experience.

If one takes an analogy of the above example, it will be very clear that both have millions of avenues available to them in their broad profession, but cannot intersect with another, completely different one. As humans, we take up many roles daily, being managers, workers, creative geniuses and even labourers. But that does not mean we can diversify our acquired knowledge & passions (if we are, in fact, passionate about our profession) into another one & claim that it is the next step in our life.

If i were to see an engineer in the next step, one could move from the field to the factory, to managing & installing a factory project, to research in advanced materials & future of engineering & finally to some invention itself. Ofcourse, this is just one of the many ways of advancement available, and all along it one will need to deal with many management, negotiation & financial skills. But if one loses sight of the ultimate goal & diversifies into others, i believe that the person has given up on the basic expertise at some level. 

Again, it all depends on the person. If one stops believeing that his or her current expertise is not intriguing enough, all the crap above does not matter!

My only advice for all those clamouring to get into one of those MBA institutes is to question oneself first. I am dying to be proved wrong, since i cannot understand how so many educated young people can fall for such a fallacy.

And the whole point of this article is:

As technologies increase exponentially, each field churns out many sub-fields & micro-fields. Our basic college education hardly causes ripples on the surface of this ocean. It is for us to delve deeper into it. There come many a trying moments: recession, lack of demand for a specific field, etc. But no basic field can ever be completely redundant. It will always have developed another facet, along with the changing world. We have been lucky enough to have obtained college education in a country where even basic education is not addressed. We should be very thoughtful of not just that boon, but also of the fact that we have already spent 4 years of our life in that field. 

Each field has immense potential which is only lying to be explored. There can be no end to invention, evolution & ingenuity. If we only allow ourselves to be fired by the passion of our professions, I don't think we can be stopped by any hindrance the world may offer us. In doing all this, at no point does money become less important. But that should not dictate our life. We should atleast put ourselves higher than animals who live to eat & eat to live.

In conclusion, the NEXSTEP is about acquiring newer & more complex skillsets within our profession, becoming unique persons without whose expertise our profession cannot advance. It scarcely lies, as Mufaazaa quoted " the blind craze for boardroom suzerainty"

The best lessons are learnt on the field & not in the cosy seat of the office!