HR learning: 13 Nov, 2017

1.                    

The MBA Degree Needs a Makeover

About 50 percent of the S&P 500 will be replaced over the next 10 years. Already yesterdays aspirational employers like US Steel, Dell, and the New York Times have been replaced by Facebook, Under Armor and Netflix.

The MBA degree was created for a different world. It was the mid-sixties when having an MBA first began to catch the imagination of the middle-class aspirants. It was the guarantee of a good life. But that was also when the average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 was 33 years. By 1990, organization’s lifespans had shrunk to 20 years. By 2026 the lifespan of a company would be down to 14 years.  About 50 percent of the S&P 500 will be replaced over the next 10 years. Already yesterday’s aspirational employers like US Steel, Dell, and the New York Times have been replaced by Facebook, Under Armor and Netflix.  Meanwhile in the Business Schools… The employers have to rely on shortcuts to decide which degree best prepares someone for a career in business. The MBA program was the perfect answer. XLRI – India's oldest business management school was founded in 1949. IIM Calcutta was the first of the IIMs to be set up in 1961. 

2.

Humanizing leadership in the AI world

Adding the human element is essential to navigate the future of business, by playing to strengths, aiming for absorption, taking responsibility for health, building relationships, and finding purpose.

Organizations have changed tremendously over the past few decades. Reflecting back 20-30 years reminds us of structured, clear definitions, and a predictable and stable business world. That world is gone now because of technological advancements, regulations, and globalization, today we have a strikingly different organization with new assets. Having the right people is amongst the greatest assets. If you have an organization full of on-fire people, then you have leadership organization for today. The changing world of work thus, has immense implications on leadership, especially in a scenario when we are transitioning to Artificial Intelligence. 

How Leadership Expectations are Changing

The modern-day organization needs people who are empowered, trusted, collaborative, authentic, people who have found their Mojo, purpose, self-regulated, smart, risk-taking…a whole different set of attributes are needed. At the core, what is required is an attitudinal shift to navigate a world systematically driving through change. We need to shift our thinking from “leaders of change” to “leaders in change”. There is a huge difference, the latter places the centre of gravity back on the individual. It raises questions of not, “what are you driving”, but questions of “how are you operating”. We must realize that this shift is a part of a larger transition.

SpringPeople expands corporate training in AI, UX, Robotics

The company launches over 50 digital technology courses in 6 new focus domains to address demand in digital technologies.

With digital services experiencing stronger growth than traditional IT services, there is an increasing demand for digitally skilled talent. By 2025, digital services are expected to grow from the current 14% to 38% of the total on IT services spends. In an effort to assist corporates leverage the exponential growth in the market, SpringPeople, a global corporate training provider, announced the strengthening of its corporate training portfolio. The expansion will add six new focus domains to its wide array of training programs, with more than 50 courses introduced in the domains of User Experience, Machine Learning & AI, Microservices, Robotic Process Automation, Cloud & DevOps and Big Data & Analytics.

The new courses will help professionals and enterprises take advantage of the growing opportunities in the digital technology arena including government initiatives like Digital India. In fact, Artificial intelligence (AI) alone will create 2.3 million jobs globally by 2020.

The new focus domains have been chosen based on the enterprise demand for these training as the industry moves away from traditional IT technologies like Java and Selenium to modern cloud-based applications & frameworks that offer scalability and inter-operability.