Painful, but there's a sweetener at the end

Teaching a techie to be a manager is like teaching fish to ride a bicycle. In the fast-growing IT industry in Bangalore, technology people and their stereotypes are multiplying and soft skills like communication and the ability to work in teams seem lacking. But since the transition has to be made for both the industry and careers to progress, how best to do it?

This was the subject of a discussion organised by Tasmac and Business Standard as part of the Business Standard Club Discussion Forum in Bangalore.

Industry leaders who have made the transition such as Bob Hoekstra, CEO, Philips Software India, Kalyan Kumar Banerjee, co-founder & VP (R&D Services), MindTree, C Mahalingam, VP (HR Sales & Distribution), IBM and Praveen Kumar, National Program Manager (Managed IT Services), Wipro Infotech cautioned that some people are best left to drive technology. It is the best of the rest who should be groomed by corporations to make the transition.

Hoekstra in his own inimitable style said: "I think we can all point to a few people in the office who should never make it to management. I bet some of you are pointing at your own manager and thinking, 'this guy knows nothing about technology, what is he doing managing the division?' But it takes more than a superb knowledge of all things IT to be a manager."

Mahalingam of IBM is clear that, "A tech manager is a different breed and if a techie wants to become a manager he will have to be able to dumb down the IT problems to the person he is relaying the information to. One has to let go of one's tech prowess and delegate work to one's team and basically grow out of being a techie. When you know you can do a job better, it is hard to let go. This invariably has to be done and one should have the vision to groom an upcoming techie to learn."

Said Banerjee of MindTree who is one of the best examples of a hard core techie turned entrepreneur: "These days, as the company grows and the industry changes, one's role too changes. We work with clients on their strategy, ensuring that it is aligned with their needs. We have to identify needs and objectives from a business point of view "" there is still a fair bit of high-level technical work there but the real trick is in creating the alignment. To make that transition from technical skills and focus on tasks to more of a focus on outcomes and interpersonal skills is very hard and one has to grow into it."

To Praveen Kumar of Wipro, the transition means being able to extricate from the technical side and start viewing the work as a whole, and seeing where it fits in the company strategy. "One set of skills is implementation focused and the other is a lot more ambiguous and requires a great deal more of interpretation."