knowyourenemywithin-bridging knowledge and practice of management

Disconnect between knowledge and performance or degree and delivery has been a subject of debate for long. Conclusive evidence on relevance of education for success in life and the correlation between individual professional growth and academic performance in universities are still elusive. Undisputed, however are instances of achievers in business and profession who dropped out of college or been only mediocre in academic performance.

Complementary individual factors (skills, capabilities, attitudes, traits, mind-sets, need for achievement, tolerance for risk and ambiguity, preconceived notions, legacy factors, cultural context and so on) play a great role in determining the level of achievement in whatever one pursues.

Our educational system fails to address critical elements essential to effectively put into practice the knowledge from an undergraduate /graduate program. Students of formal programs are handicapped by having no one to ask, not knowing what to ask, even feeling diffident to ask for fear of ridicule.

Real-life situations are visualised only when one is confronted with or when they are presented in a no-holds-barred manner; not presented as gift-wrapped knowledge in classrooms. When people try to apply knowledge from formal education innocently, gaps between the tool and its effective application surface, as surprises.

Such gaps are generally filled in by a mentor or a coach, on the job, during apprenticeship, who interprets situations for the intern in the context of the theory and extends comfort / confidence to carve a judicious just-in-time amalgam of concepts, apply them, interpret the outcome and continuously tweak to arrive at desired results.