I attended today a conference in Gent, “Ondernemen in Vlaanderen”
Earlier today I twittered: “In Dutch now, but why the talks about talent come always to the same diagnosis?”.
This short article (800 words) is to share some considerations from few conferences that I followed today.
It is quite interesting, how things converge.
Today, I was going to publish an article for the AGB2009 series, on generating a creative workplace; just the other day I had received from a contact from Mexico (thanks, Cynthia) an issue of their local magazine, containing that I could summarize (improperly) as “the epistemology of talent/genius”.
As part of my training in Dutch, and understanding what and where to do next, after checking some information on the French side, I decided to have a look at the Dutch side.
I attended just four conferences: one on GoogleAdWord (better than some training that I received!), another one on the “ecosystem of entrepreneurship”, one on the nurturing of innovation, and a fourth one on marketing studies, to better understand the local market.
As I twittered before: many languages, many countries- but I keep hearing the same stories across all of Europe. From late 1980s.
A constant decoupling between the different parties involved on helping to build new business initiatives and to create/nurture the capacity to create new initiatives (talent).
The interesting part is the diagnosis: the usual culprit is the educational system, or the lack of understanding of the realities of financial markets (including business angels).
It might be true. But, considering the apparent and blatant interest that is expressed by research centres, companies, institutions: why don’t they become proactive, as in a free market should be, by offering “packages” of training to be inserted within the curriculum of schools, and change the way resources are selected, trained, and coached?
In early 1990s, when I was working mainly for a single customer to help introduce a cultural change (methodology, processes, organization), historically the company was working on mainframe computers, and the “new” PC and Windows technology was challenging established rules.
Moreover, the motivational approaches used by managers did not work well in established companies- if you want, the same issues discussed by a recent book “the starfish and the spider”.
On the educational side, through a route that I do not remember, I received a contact from US, as somebody was preparing a Ph.D. on comparative educational systems, and I offered to help on the Italian side, but, as I had access to the information, on other European countries as well.
In the end, I prepared a small comparative study of the educational systems of all the European countries.
Interesting differences, from the vocational system in Germany, to the “Grands Ecoles” in France.
Then as today, it all boils down to a simple catch-22: the ones with the knowledge and ability to help foster change are business organizations, faster to react to and foresee the market needs.
The educational institutions are still focused more on the delivery what was agreed, than on being an influencer on how the businesses should integrate people.
But, having a business aim, they try to shift the cost as a “social investment”- on the government and other educational institutions.
Who, of course, are undecided between seeing this as something that supports business, and should be paid by business, and something with a longer term social value.
In the end, often the educational institutions take over the role- but, they themselves, start doing the activity as a business, focusing on the usual performance indicators: number of students/diplomas, increased salary of their graduates pre- and post- the additional training, and so on.
And, maybe, adding direct and indirect business activities (consulting, etc).
And, being increasingly business-oriented, they kept adding what could be sold now, not what could generate long-term value.
As an example: I remember an University in Italy churning out an hybrid between accounting and engineering that was “light” on both sides, and another producing graduates in direct marketing.
Both interesting subjects, covering a market need- but as a dynamic endeavour, not as a static degree.
I ended up building a “cultural migration schema”- all the costs stayed with the customer, as they anyway assumed that the risk of training the employees for somebody else was lower than the certainty of not having the right people. And, anyway, they “leveraged” on the working environment to reduce the turnover.
The purpose? Accept the reality: skills evolve and might lose market, but it is the ability to learn new skills that is worth delivering inside an educational system as a “forma mentis”.
Otherwise- you risk to prepare today the perfect employee for yesterday’s company.
It could be interesting to try building a new parallel educational system that is not simply a “training school” for companies.
Tags: educational, financing, flanders, human, innovation, ondernemen, resources, startup, system, talent, vlaanderen
This entry was posted
on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 18:00 and is filed under commentary, everything, publications.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
"Ondernemen in Vlaanderen" and educational systems
I attended today a conference in Gent, “Ondernemen in Vlaanderen”
Earlier today I twittered: “In Dutch now, but why the talks about talent come always to the same diagnosis?”.
This short article (800 words) is to share some considerations from few conferences that I followed today.
It is quite interesting, how things converge.
Today, I was going to publish an article for the AGB2009 series, on generating a creative workplace; just the other day I had received from a contact from Mexico (thanks, Cynthia) an issue of their local magazine, containing that I could summarize (improperly) as “the epistemology of talent/genius”.
As part of my training in Dutch, and understanding what and where to do next, after checking some information on the French side, I decided to have a look at the Dutch side.
I attended just four conferences: one on GoogleAdWord (better than some training that I received!), another one on the “ecosystem of entrepreneurship”, one on the nurturing of innovation, and a fourth one on marketing studies, to better understand the local market.
As I twittered before: many languages, many countries- but I keep hearing the same stories across all of Europe. From late 1980s.
A constant decoupling between the different parties involved on helping to build new business initiatives and to create/nurture the capacity to create new initiatives (talent).
The interesting part is the diagnosis: the usual culprit is the educational system, or the lack of understanding of the realities of financial markets (including business angels).
It might be true. But, considering the apparent and blatant interest that is expressed by research centres, companies, institutions: why don’t they become proactive, as in a free market should be, by offering “packages” of training to be inserted within the curriculum of schools, and change the way resources are selected, trained, and coached?
In early 1990s, when I was working mainly for a single customer to help introduce a cultural change (methodology, processes, organization), historically the company was working on mainframe computers, and the “new” PC and Windows technology was challenging established rules.
Moreover, the motivational approaches used by managers did not work well in established companies- if you want, the same issues discussed by a recent book “the starfish and the spider”.
On the educational side, through a route that I do not remember, I received a contact from US, as somebody was preparing a Ph.D. on comparative educational systems, and I offered to help on the Italian side, but, as I had access to the information, on other European countries as well.
In the end, I prepared a small comparative study of the educational systems of all the European countries.
Interesting differences, from the vocational system in Germany, to the “Grands Ecoles” in France.
Then as today, it all boils down to a simple catch-22: the ones with the knowledge and ability to help foster change are business organizations, faster to react to and foresee the market needs.
The educational institutions are still focused more on the delivery what was agreed, than on being an influencer on how the businesses should integrate people.
But, having a business aim, they try to shift the cost as a “social investment”- on the government and other educational institutions.
Who, of course, are undecided between seeing this as something that supports business, and should be paid by business, and something with a longer term social value.
In the end, often the educational institutions take over the role- but, they themselves, start doing the activity as a business, focusing on the usual performance indicators: number of students/diplomas, increased salary of their graduates pre- and post- the additional training, and so on.
And, maybe, adding direct and indirect business activities (consulting, etc).
And, being increasingly business-oriented, they kept adding what could be sold now, not what could generate long-term value.
As an example: I remember an University in Italy churning out an hybrid between accounting and engineering that was “light” on both sides, and another producing graduates in direct marketing.
Both interesting subjects, covering a market need- but as a dynamic endeavour, not as a static degree.
I ended up building a “cultural migration schema”- all the costs stayed with the customer, as they anyway assumed that the risk of training the employees for somebody else was lower than the certainty of not having the right people. And, anyway, they “leveraged” on the working environment to reduce the turnover.
The purpose? Accept the reality: skills evolve and might lose market, but it is the ability to learn new skills that is worth delivering inside an educational system as a “forma mentis”.
Otherwise- you risk to prepare today the perfect employee for yesterday’s company.
It could be interesting to try building a new parallel educational system that is not simply a “training school” for companies.
Tags: educational, financing, flanders, human, innovation, ondernemen, resources, startup, system, talent, vlaanderen
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 18:00 and is filed under commentary, everything, publications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.