Indore: As a part of faculty development programme, IIM Indore organised a guest talk by Professor Abhinandan K Jain, faculty, IIM Ahmedabad. He spoke on the topic — “Becoming a Management Academic”. Jain discussed about what the participants feel about the term “management academic”. The participants, while enthusiastically taking part in the discussion shared their views on the definition of management and academic and noted that managing a place, person or an event can be called management—which is mostly context driven.
Jain agreed to this and said that even the context has been changing drastically, and remaining upgraded and updated to that particular context requires management. “We need to prepare ourselves in the changing context in a manner which enables our students to prepare themselves for the future in a better way,” he said. He advised the participants to understand that the key to becoming a good learner is to know what the things are, how the things are working and what is the purpose of a particular thing and event which is taking place.
“Remember the concept and the context of a thing, understand it, develop ideas to apply, analyse and evaluate it. These tools will help you become a better learner—making you understand how to learn—to learn,” he added. Discussing about the dramatically changing technology, Jain said that the teachers today need to figure out a way to help the students learn the technique to become future ready and employable. “We ourselves need to learn, unlearn and relearn in order to remain updated with the changes taking place and help our fellows become receptive to new things, adapt the new things and become competent,” he said.
He also noted that advancement in teaching doesn’t just come from technology or digitalisation but also by connecting academic learning with workplace learning, ie learning about one’s own discipline, learning from inter-disciplines, learning from fellows and groups which involve both teachers and fellows from various disciplines. “The research projects which are cross cultural, involve both the faculty and students from multiple disciplines help in managing the gap between the upgrading context and in reflecting not only individually, but also altogether as a group — by understanding other’s perspectives,” he said.
Sharing his personal life examples, Jain advised the participants to learn from others how to become a better human being, learn from the mistakes of others and learn new things by observing others and that learning of judgement is the most important thing in life. “Always widen your knowledge and learn how to enhance and spread the knowledge around — this will help you become a better person and even contribute to the society,” he concluded.
