"Managing By Jokes" Prof Dinesh Kumar, IAP

I liked @Capt Anil Sharma’s linkedin article “Juggling Laptops, Coffee, and Goals: A Hilarious Guide to Climbing the Corporate Ladder!” He depicted multiple uses of ‘Drefus Model’ and guided young managers to become from novice to expert that everyone wants to be.

Capt Anil does it by keeping the journey full of ‘fun’ that’s when I related my own way of how I came from where I was; from lesser learned; a seeker to near the expertise (or so as I claim!).

And as a management thinker and ‘thought leader’ during 46 years of corporate career; having applied most management principles in work life, ?from a base manager to the top of the decision making. By the way, I belong to those one of the first batches of MBAs (then it were a reckonening class) from Madras University (Chennai) of 1983.

I had evolved a unique term ‘MBJ’ (corollary to most famous concept of management MBO). MBJ concept was named by me as parallel of MBO which stood for ‘Management by Jokes’. The intent was to make learning while one still has fun. Or Fun learning.

It may sound un-jargonic, in the management world, full of jargons but do you know, jargons take people away from those who are prone to these as tools of management learning or tools of developing managers. On the contrary you still remember, what your funny teacher taught you in school that MD’s, HR or HRD experts couldn’t!

Humour is the key stone, it makes you relate with an anecdote, situation, a hilarious way of expressing what the management wished that ‘stupid’ to learn and that too without pressuring to unlearn what little he knew.

Very important, computing-computer skills, you have to do master yourself lest you would be a misfit in today’s AI (a jargon). Jokes make a mentor acceptable and to cling to object, and there the point goes in mind in a non-tense atmosphere. You have seen how serious are the HRD conversations, tight lipped and tightly glued to seats. It doesn’t work.

MBJ is loved and so is the mentor? It gets people lining up behind you, with their fullest support, with what ever they have up their brains. Same funny teacher example in school, the mentor – who does not tickle your follies, he lets these turn into useful traits and puts you on rails. Dreyfus Model as I understood can equate to something like MBJ of mine.

SMART Goals is ok, if it was the only thing, setting is as difficult as it is impossible to achieve them amid multiple variables. It needs fun and push, fun and push and get there enjoying the journey, rather sitting in corner cabins and expecting that the smart goals will be done by smartly dressed corporate guys or today’s tee-shirt Pichais.

The grow model is all pervasive, you always are a learner, including how to go to your own grave - haha. Its stretched a bit more isn’t it?

“So keep learning and keep growing is the mantra.”

(the author is a thought leader, management thinker, ICAO-ACI International Airport Professional; ICAO Expert; former Executive Director, AAI and Founder Director, Indian Aviation Academy)

#CorporateLadder #CareerGrowth #SkillDevelopment #DreyfusModel #Mentorship #SMARTGoals #FeedbackLoops #LearningJourney #HumorousGrowth