PMP/IIT/IIM/Stanford may produce bad manager or engineer

PMP/IIT/IIM/Stanford may produce bad manager or engineer

If you are not driven by values or not courageous to do something great or not innovative or not helpful to the people or society; having degree is just like having one more paper in your hand.

How holding a certificate looks?

Let me tell you one small story which I realized and created after I started writing this blog…

There is big forest with different types of wild animals and few tigers are the leaders of the forest.

One day suddenly there was one announcement from the Parrot, announcement is like this: “This is tiger certification program announcement; people who haven't certified as tiger from the institute F-Tiger, may please apply for the certification and practice using the syllabus of the institution. Important note is; whoever gets certified will be treated as leaders of the forest”.

Hearing this news, real tigers started wondering – why do we need certification when we are born tigers?! Scared of losing the forest leadership; they decided not to ignore this certification.

So, they informed other tigers as well, all of them went to the certification center. There was so much crowd over there - many tigers, leopard, foxes, wolfs, cows and so on. All were standing in a queue to pay fee and collect the course materials.

Funniest thing was that, the certification center was headed by management who are all foxes!!!

So, these real tigers started working day and night for the exam. On the day of examination; the real tigers along with other animals appeared for the exam.

They had theory and practical exams, and went home. While returning, the real tiger group was not happy as they felt they didn't do well in the exam.

Finally result day came…!

Tiger Certification management (Group of Foxes) came out and announced, F-tiger certified candidates are: 3 Foxes, 1 Wolf and 1 Tiger.

So, guidelines were passed as- “from now on; only certified people will be the leaders of the forest”. The real tigers who failed in the exam felt bad and surrendered. Still they were wondering about the results.

The exam was more on Foxes and its activities, how come the Wolf and another Tiger cleared this exam? Reason was; that tiger and wolf went missing in the forest in childhood, and they grew up with the group of Foxes. So, they were habituated with all fox activities and life styles.

See this is how our current certification system instills fear, fakes and makes Foxes as Tigers and vice versa.

Our college education is sufficient to provide all aspects of the professional requirements. Those who are done with that, it's more than enough. Of course, there is a self-learning to enhance further.

Whereas this certification is like Fox groups creating fear and stealing money from masses. Pathetic thing is real tigers can't pass these stupid exams.

Sorry folks of PMP or ISTQB or CSTE or IIM or IIT or any, this is the truth and you too know about it.

Many of you are aware of this certification fever is going on in corporate sectors. As PMP gives good manager, ISTQB gives good quality engineer, IIT or Stanford give good Engineer, IIM/MBA gives good management administrator and so on.

If you think or believe that certification gives quality people? What about the below story

One of my friend scored 100% in ISTQB, it doesn't mean, he is a greatest QE on the earth. He was fortunate enough to get questions from the sample question paper he referred. Similarly, PMP or Stanford or IIT or IIM or ISTQB or Any…

Since I'm software quality engineer (QE), let me take my own field of certification: For one person to become a good quality engineer, he or she must be very creative, should have test to break attitude, should have logical thinking and investigative nature, should have burning desire in finding bugs and give quality, also capable to see one thing in different dimensions that results in many test scenarios. And he/she should never feel that testing is completed, that means; they should always think and act in different ways to break the application.

Similarly, PMP/IIM will never provide a great manager. If they really do that? then, my classmate who is a topper in college, he will score 100% in PMP/IIM. Whereas he is very weak in people management, communication and so on. If you consider only PMP/IIM gives? Give him a manager post! If you see only certificates, you are hiring one BOOK.

Let me give one real time example of the real manager or leader I witnessed.

I was constructing a farm building, and decided to hire the same person who constructed our home.

His name is Obanna, not Obama, it's OBANNA, he stays next to my village involved in building construction. He is a Mestri (Mestri in Kannada means lead in English) has around 4 to 5 teams working for him, each team varied in size: 10, 15, 20 so on. Construction happens in different geographical locations (villages or towns nearby). He manages all the teams through phone call (virtual management) and he will be physically present at one location. Workers under him are not stable, not professional, uncontrollable, uneducated, and have NO Loan/EMI’s 😊 but Obanna has a great skill in dealing with them, all the things happen as expected and as planned. How?

Reasons I have seen in him are:

1. He is aware of kinds of works and his estimations are clear on the teams.

2. He is aware of who is doing what or who can do what and how to get connected with them.

3. He knows - when to speak and when to act and when to be silent.

4. He is humorous and challenging too.

5. He had worked in many projects before he took leadership (not by certificates)

6. He maintains the balance between house owners/constructor’s and his team members.

7. Without big education (studied till 4^th standard in Kannada medium), he knew about; what is estimation, planning, team building, team outing, talent recognition, work and life balance, planning and so on.

I told him you are the real great manager I have ever seen, as you don’t even know what are workshops, management course, self-help guide and so on.  Obanna just laughed at me for my words.

What I observed in OBANNA is shown in the below image; i.e. he is a leader not a boss.

Have you ever noticed that trees and flowers growing in bushes and wild are more beautiful and stronger than the garden grown? Same is here, some of the certified people just look like cropped garden plants, they look like robots. You know how robots function; they can’t think, they can’t be creative, they can’t be dynamic, they are just work based on algorithms and its instructions.

Life is dynamic, it's like a running river, every second it changes, that is its nature. No certification will help you in corporate to grow company to the higher level. Start identifying people who are creative, skilled and talented from the masses.

Real leaders or experts come from masses, their creativity is not certified by institutions. Of course, institutions try copying them and produce content (copies/slave) in later stages. Example: IIM Ahmedabad doing case study on Bollywood blockbuster 'Baahubali' movie which was directed by S. S. Rajamouli, what is S.S Rajamouli’s education and which certifications he has…

Take few examples:

A. R. Rahman in music, Raja Ravi Varma in Arts/Painting, Lata Mangeshkar in playback singing, Sachin Tendulkar in Cricket, Diego Maradona in Football, Rabindranath Tagore in Literature, what is their academic score in related subjects/skills, did they pursue any certification before they become popular in that field?

Let's see these people’s qualification:

Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Indira Gandhi, Narendra Modi, what is the score of these people in political science subject. Do you think that certification helped them to achieve success? Never. If someone thinks so, I don't know what to say to them.

Many corporate employees, out of fear, are running behind PMP, ISTQB, CSTE and many more certifications. These certification companies encash this fear. If certification is the measurement then CEO or business owners should have 100’s of certificates. But most of the successful leaders are college dropouts!!!

List of entrepreneurs who dropped out of college:

· Michael Dell, Dell founder, dropped out at 19

· Steve Jobs, Apple founder, dropped out at 19

· Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, dropped out at 19

· Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, dropped out at 20

· Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder, dropped out at 20

· Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, dropped out at 20

· Larry Ellison, Oracle founder, dropped out at 20

· Jan Koum, WhatsApp founder, dropped out at 21

· Travis Kalanick, Uber founder, dropped out at 21

· John Mackey, Whole Foods founder, dropped out at 22

Source: https://blog.adioma.com/entrepreneurs-who-dropped-out-infographic/

To hire real tiger or real creative or real leader. As per many CEO’s and great leader suggestion; “don’t look for institutions or certifications, look only for skills”.

If someone is looking into Caste/State/Language/Education/Certificates while hiring, soon or later that organization will vanish.

Employers – here is your choice:

1. Which chef food is good, to run your restaurant successfully? hire the real cook instead of certified chef.

2. Improve the manger hiring process, like for employees you ask manager reference, get team members reference for the manager from previously managed companies, conduct some checks on how he or she was managing. Later take a call on hiring them. If you hire based on certification then better hire one book or robot, it may be equivalent to it.

3. Don’t make everyone as Tech head or Manager, just because they have worked for many years in the organization. In that case you need to give preference to the walls and doors of the office, they too stay longer with office.

4. Remember, while hiring – watch CEO’s type of behaviors in hiring employees, ownership attitude, and commitment. They are the only possibility to take company to the next level, Learn from Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

a.For Identifying leaders watch: Leadership (must watch !!!) - TD Jakes - Complete

b.For unbiased hiring of Google watch: Google’s 4 rules and How We Hire

c. The Most Successful People Explain Why a College Degree is USELESS

5. Is manager real or not? You should identify them by the employee survey (who got highest rating). Not by the PMP/IIM MBA.

6. Is engineer real or not? You should identify them by their innovation which will generate revenue (not a non-sense innovations). Not by degrees of Sanford or IIT or any. That is the reason I say Sanford, PMP, IIM, and IIT may produce bad manager or engineer.

7. Please don’t give leadership positions in corporate; just because they returned from America or they have American citizenship. If donkey stays 10 years in America it may also get citizenship. What is the use? Its having all its core nature. That’s why Benjamin Franklin said as: “Some People Die At 25 And Aren't Buried Until 75”

From which school or which certification these people have - Albert Einstein, Aryabhata, Archimedes, Thomas Alva Edison, Isaac Newton. School or college can produce disciplinary or machine type of people, creativity is born outside of the school. Height of stupidity is to find creativity in school or college or certifications.

Tell me what you will do, with the below people:
1. PMP/IIM certified manager receives least rating in employee survey.
2. Java/Python certified person not able to fix a bug or understand the code or logic.
3. ISTQB/CSTE certified person not able to find the bugs in application or a product.
4. Sales/Marketing certified person not able to sell or market the products.

5. Certified musician or art person not able give good art or music to the world.

6. Certified chef not able to cook a real delicious food.

Creativity comes not by certification, many institutions have tried and failed. Reason is the certifications will teach mainly on earlier successful scenarios. Life is dynamic, it changes its routes, ways and dimensions in every single minute. Only creative people get along with it and get success. Not certified people.

If you guide someone to take one route, and if s/he gets blocked in that route, s/he will ask for help, whereas creative person find the alternative routes and reach the destination.

Author: GCV (Vishnuvardhana GC)

• Kannada Blogger

Kereya neeranu Kerege chelli

Author Disclaimer:

I’m not a robot to be constant, consistent and complete, I’m a normal human and my blog will be contradictory like director give multiple movies have different opinions on the same subject or different subjects. I flow like a river, I really don’t look for sand, rock, trees, house, and so on. Intention is helping as many as possible before reaching the ocean. I strongly recommend to consult expert’s advice to follow and adopt any methods. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. 

A manager can project a fox as a tiger

A manager can project a fox as a tiger

You all know, tigers are born with the qualities, if someone project or make a Fox as a Tiger, it looks like an 8th wonder. Where as in IT or corporate, some of our great managers achieved this 8th wonder!

Why what is the need?

Unfortunately, in corporate; it is started recognizing foxes as tigers, reason in superior position some other foxes are already occupied, they know that one fox can align with other fox. If tiger allowed to grow it may eat the fox and its group too.

That is the reason other than startup companies or path changing companies, all other headed by pure management (here I’m saying pure management means; they are not either involved in innovation or development of that sector work) not making good business.

Here I’m saying path changing is a company driven by the real tiger or headed by an innovator/developer. If company given to pure management, you can find many foxes. Reason; pure management always struggle to keep the business and safe running. They never attempt any new things, and they have only followers. Followers are a kind of fox and sheep’s community.

Here are some differences between Tiger and Fox driven companies:

1. Real innovator or a tiger, do always adventures, they conquer the market.

2. Fear Mgmt or a Fox always try securing their jobs and they bargain in market.

3. Real innovator or a Tiger look ahead of the future demands and requirements.

4. Fear Mgmt or Fox look for quarterly benefits, cost cuttings, reasons for failures.

5. Real innovator or a Tiger make the customers come and beg for products.

6. Fear Mgmt or Fox makes the corporate go and beg for the customers to stay back.

This cost cutting in corporate looks like this way. Assume vegetables and grocery prices gone high, do you fire your family members or eat grass? No, in general you find the way to increase the income or adjust. See this is the reason fox driven companies always look like family members firing companies. You can get more info on this context by watching TED talk on: Why good leaders make you feel safe

If you put tiger skin on fox it will never become a tiger, it may look like a tiger, but act exactly like a fox.

Tiger get identify by birth as they are, if you make a fox or wolf as a Tiger, you are creating or attempting to create funny things, you must be a magician or a mad.

 Many superiors identify some foxes in the team they make them as Tigers, reason; they fear for the real Tigers, those may dominate and attack on them, because manager himself/herself is a fox. So, making a fox as a tiger is safest decision, and the same superiors don’t forget to project a tiger as a fox so that, real tigers will leave the office with insults, and managers will be escape from the future questions as well.

Let’s see how manager project a Fox as a Tiger:

1. Talking in the meeting about foxes and their work too much and too often.

2. Raising questions that a fox only can answer.

3. Display foxes work as ultimate and nobody can do that.

4. Very often manager says as fox have done great job in emails and team meetings.

5. Giving some work to the foxes that work can’t be traceable in count or giving some easy work counting that in numbers to project high, also giving foxes a high attentions wordings work, in fact no customers are using those work or no value creation to the organization.

6. For the new forest animals and leaders, they introduce a Fox as a Tiger.

Let’s see how manger project a Tiger as a Fox:

1. Treating Tiger’s greatest contribution as nothing or very simple or not important.

2. Giving no option to raise a question to the Tigers, even if its relevant or required.

3. Displaying Tigers small mistake is a great business lose or insult to the organization.

4. Very often they find and show some mistakes of Tigers.

5. Giving some real brainstorming work to the tigers, taking count by giving complex work. These tigers given work, creates values to the organization, whereas manager shows that’s nothing.

6. For the new forest animals and leaders, they introduce Tigers as they are foxes.

Some other strategies or behaviors of bad managers:

• Manager treating Partying subordinates in soft corner. Being hard for No partying subordinates. Some do this in opposite way.
•  Giving more and more work to the working folks by treating them like a donkey. Not questioning or giving work to the slackers
• If someone question about slacker’s work, suddenly applying all world’s policies and rules on the honest employees to trap them.
• Giving good rating to their pets and 3rd grade rating to the honestly working employees, if they question manager, manager give reasons; those reasons look like asking a fish to climb a tree on land.
• Using office rewards and resignation to feed their friends and pets, some managers give rewards and get party from employees in return.

Why do they do this?

This is driven by fear, they are very sure that fox/wolf/dogs can’t harm them and they can suppress at any point of time. They also know that they can’t suppress real tiger’s roaring, they fear of losing their jobs. So, safer side is making fox/wolf/dog as Tiger/Lion! Biggest blunder is some of the mangers grow from manager to senior manager, senior manager to group manager, group manager to director, still they have not identified any assistant manager or mangers in their team?!!! These nonsenses happen only in corporate. (To the outside world corporate is more structured or organized than Govt) Whereas in Govt if taluk officer promoted to district commissioner, immediately Govt hire other person to the taluk officer. And for commissioner Govt gives commissioners work, not the taluk officer work.

These bad managers usually don't work, because most of their time and effort they invest on destroying honest employees.

HR's or Corporate:

Introduce a system: if any manager who ask daily status of the employee? He/she must provide their daily status back to the employee by copying his supervisor. (Reason for superior is, manager can't lie) Managers status should include: how many hours they have meetings, how many hours they spend on the task assignment (what are those tasks...) and how many hours they spend on team management. What about remaining hours? Are those hours manger is putting on office work or personal doings? Reason many managers and director’s positions are redundant in Corporate. By cleaning this stuff, you give some justice to the investors’ money.

Sometimes I feel: Uneducated, uncivilized worker heads or leaders are look much better when compared with worst corporate managers. Politics is more in corporate than the real politics. If corporate office politics is exposed? that looks uglier than the 2G, 3G scams, or any other scams. Politicians are good! At least they do something good to the society. Example: They work and provide roads, water, electricity, hospitals, so on. These corporate politicians are so self-centered and selfish.

There are many I heard and witnessed transitions of Tiger as a Fox:

1. A manager can project a manual test engineer an automation engineer.

2. A manager can project an automatable engineer as a manual test engineer.

3. A manager can project a real marketing person as an office assistant and an office assistant as a marketing person.

4. A manager can project conductor as a bus driver and a bus driver as a bus conductor.

5. A manager can project a real architect as a mundane worker and a mundane worker as an architect.

6. A manager can project managerial person as an independent contributor, and an independent contributor as a managerial person.

7. A manager can project 10% important work of his Fox work as 100% important, same manger can also project Tigers 100% important work as nothing.

8. A manager can make a core developer as a bug fixer and bug fixer as a core developer in a software company.

9. A manager can project stone as a diamond and real diamond as a stone.

10. A manager can rate dumb as an extraordinary/exceptional and an extraordinary as a dumb.

In between some actors also get benefits of growth in corporate. Reason: these actors don’t work, they act very nicely they overtake even Oscar best actors. The reason they are not harmful, that is their strength! Main strength of showoff people is Acting and Buttering. In India/Karnataka this buttering is also termed as holding bucket, some exceptional cases this also called as holding swimming pool.

If someone (working person or real tiger) complaint about their manager with his superiors, it goes this way; you are complaining on bitter gourd (your manager) as it is bitter with neem seed (his superior). What neem seed will do? It convinces you as, bitter gourd is sweet and I’m also sweet.

If someone serious and not totally agree on above facts, it looks this way, there’s a proverb in Kannada, When I call there is a pumpkin theft, other person suddenly touching his shoulder.

I'm using word manager in the title to create curiosity in the reader, if I don't use, this blog will be ignored or may not reach as intended. When word manager comes in… for few it stimulates nerve system and neurons in the body. Of course, content is also focusing on manager too, my idea here is to build or helping to build the good and honesty in corporate culture. I'm aware that this blog contains utter negativity on negative things which are happening in today’s corporate.

Writing is not great, one must know to take it to the public. If one writing and not trying in take it to the public, it's just a waste of his time. And writing must be true and close to the truth, if writing is not true? again it's a kind of projecting fox as a tiger.

"new bies" of corporate please go with the values, no matter you have job or no job. Let the life ends today, let it end. Die like a lion. Never entertain and support fraudulent things and people.

Please don't make next generations life as hell, you are building today's corporate, your kids and grand kids will face the same in tomorrow. Be conscious, be aware, be careful, build the beautiful corporate and world.

Author: GCV (Vishnuvardhana GC)

• Kannada Blogger

Kereya neeranu Kerege chelli

Author Disclaimer:

I’m not a robot to be constant, consistent and complete, I’m a normal human and my blog will be contradictory like director give multiple movies have different opinions on the same subject or different subjects. I flow like a river, I really don’t look for sand, rock, trees, house, and so on. Intention is helping as many as possible before reaching the ocean. I strongly recommend to consult expert’s advice to follow and adopt any methods. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being.