What is your Identity?
(some reflections from my life and career: dedicated to late V S Vyas,
Udai Pareek, Ravi Matthai and Samuel Paul)
Some time in late seventies Prof. V S Vyas suggested to me
that I should focus my work to a few areas rather than being everywhere. Samuel
Paul allowed me to diffuse myself into various though I was recruited to work
with Ravi on Education Systems. It was a well-intended and good suggestion. I
kept thinking more after that encounter with Vijay to justify and continue to
do what I wanted to do and whatever I enjoyed. I joined IIMA to work in
Education Systems and simultaneously in Organizational Behavior Area. Since I
worked earlier in National Institute of Health Administration & Education
Prof. Satia invited me to join the India Population Project. We conceptualized
and started the first Human Resources Function and called it HRD department. I
worked with David McClelland for a few months had a joint project with him on
psychosocial maturity of Indian students and managers. I was teaching course on
entrepreneurship and even argued unsuccessfully in CFD for a center for
Entrepreneurship to be set up. I became a member of the newly set up Public Systems
Group and as a part of Education work the Jawaja project gained some prominence.
I was also doing some work for the
Indian Society for Applied Behavioral sciences ISABS. I also taught a course on
consumer behavior along with Sasi Misra and wrote a research piece on impact of
sales styles on buyer behavior. Very understandably Prof. Vyas thought that I
can’t be everywhere- Education, Entrepreneurship, Health, Public Systems, Consumer
Behavior, OB and HRD. Around the same time Udai Pareek said that I should spend
more of time in OB rather than on HRD. Though we started the HR function in
L&T and SBI, it was not yet prominent and Udai felt OB is broader than HRD.
Looking back frankly none of these got me to think of focusing on any area. I continued
to do whatever came along and I n enjoyed every piece of work I was involved. I
worked in each one of these areas- perhaps in the minds of some without focus. I
am sure there was an unconscious meaning to all and an internal faith that
these are interrelated.
As far as I am concerned life unfolded itself in very interesting
way in the subsequent forty and an odd year. I continued to work in education and
produced books including Handbook of training for education managers; and
helped in self-renewal of many educational institutions. On entrepreneurship
both Udai and I worked with many groups in Malaysia and trained them to be
facilitators of entrepreneurship and had even brought out a couple of books. My
latest in entrepreneurship in the last decade is the book I joined with Kuratko
on entrepreneurship. In recent times I promote developing entrepreneurial qualities
as a mission of HRD facilitators. HRD emerged as a profession and I became a
strong promoter of HRD as a function, philosophy, HRD values, systems and
processes and wrote many books on HRD starting with HRD missionary, HRD Audit,
Future of HRD etc. I took a totally different view of HRD when I was invited as
a consultant of the Commonwealth Secretariat, London and brought out a report “Foundations
for Future: led by Sam Pitroda and circulated
at the CHOGM meet and published a book of HRD at National level with several
country experiences. I established the National HRD Network and the Academy of HRD to promote HRD philosophy,
concepts, and research in HRD and perhaps added a new dimension to my work on
Institution Building. While I was at XLRI I started the center for HRD and went
on pursuing with XLRI thereafter not to kill the center. Inspired by the repeated
suggestions during my instrumented feedback session in OB, when participants repeatedly
sought feedback on their personality patterns from their coworkers, I stumbled
on a methodology and offered a program on top management styles and organizational
effectiveness which alter on named as 360 Degree Feedback. I unsuccessfully
promoted assessment centers in mid seventies as a part of my work with entrepreneurship
Development programs being some by GIIC, GIDC and GSFC under the leadership of
Dr. V G Patel. I tried in small way to introduce assessment centers in 1975
when Manohar Nadkarni introduced me to this concept bud it did not work beyond
Parishram. Post liberalization we picked up Assessment centers and promoted
them left and right with NTPC, ONGC, LIC, ESCORTS, SAIL and such big corporations.
If you ask me today what my focus has been, all these 40 years I have no
answer. My work is as diffused as it was in late seventies. I am into HR, OB, Health,
Education, Institution Building, Entrepreneurship, HR audit, Psychometric
testing, climate surveys, HRD audit, 360 Feedback, Performance Management, Self-renewal
of NGOs, and what not? I have no real identity and perhaps I would still have
the same answer to Prof. V S Vyas. It looked that Vijay appreciated my diffusion
into every area which he may have called earlier a lack of focus. I never
discussed with him this issue. But his warmth and appreciation spoke a lot than
his advice in late seventies. Udai never approached this issue again after 1981
and he supported every single activity I was involved in. I think this diffusion and lack of focus may
have fitted with Ravi’s concept of a Faculty member at IIMA. Ravi used to say
that every faculty member is a professor on mission and there is not one way of
fulfilling your mission but many. Once when I asked him to join PSG as a member,
he said “sure but don’t bind me with the identity of any one area or a center
or a group. Everyone is free to use my work”. I suppose that broadly sums up my
lack of focus.
If I must live a life all over again I will still be focus-less
and diffused. I proudly start always introducing myself as a student of
science, then moved into education and ended up as a Psychologist and remained behavioral
scientist all through the rest of my life. My core discipline if you like is scientific
temper and behavior focus and all the others are application areas. Life itself
is an application area and it does not matter if you keep shifting your focus. Rolling
stones may not gather mass but do stop at times and leave their mark wherever
they pass through if they’re heavy enough.
My suggestion for Faculty is enjoy your work and do what you
feel involved and take it to the full end whatever you do. It does not matter the
number of things you do if you see meaning in them.
If you don’t like what I have written please do not bother.
Have your way and do it your way!
T. V. Rao
