The most misunderstood brand - The IIT

It surprises me as globally the IIT brand is picking up faster and faster, how less we understand it in our own country. The typical industry considers IITs as a supply of brains that can be given any technical challenge and they can solve it. May be one of the reasons in the software companies there are ample opportunities to IITians as such. But then I find many managers complaining IITians hard to manage, never stick longer and many a times demotivated. I agree to many of these facts. In fact to a great extent it's all true. After all I give a lot of respect to our management for identifying the metrics, but I feel they miss the true problem identification.

Belonging to the instant heroics of an IITian gang is a big cultural shock. It may not be as shocking as being a part of a MENSA club but quite similar I would say. Being local heroes in their respective localities they suddenly realize they are a bunch of mediocres in a group of geniuses around them. There is a bit of show down that goes in the initial days but soon everyone realizes all their smarts are purely situational and not quite relevant in a complete scale. The true cultural development happens within the walls of the IITs. People excel in various fields but they all know that the guy next to him is equally good in some field he chooses for himself. A meritocratic society where leadership of any individual is purely situational. Everyone in an IIT has been part of some leadership activity of her own. Being a residential campus and apolitical atmosphere makes many people highly creative in their own ways.

The next comes to many IITians is when they leave the environment and come to the real world of the job market. The first realization of a system that is not necessarily a meritocratic culture is a sheer shock to many IITians. The appreciation of credible achievement is again another factor that adds to these. A typical IITian is exposed to quite a large facts of research in the field quite early in life. Although not many of them have publications to their names the understanding and appreciation of published literature is quite high among these people. Appreciating the obvious undermine the nature of many IITians. For many IITians even awards of kinds may not even matter. Hence their expectation from award winning performance is very high. If you look at the companies the awards are fairly high in number, recognition systems are subjective and many a times driven by appeasing an employee than truely recognizing credible performance.

The second part is about difficulty or depth of the problem area. Surface level stories are considered a sheer time waste in most IITs (called as gyaan and phatta - means gas). This again means many organizational events for moral boosting may seem to many IITians pure placeholder for inactivity. The discussion levels at many IITs have high decibels strong sentiments and full of facts from various relevant literature. Many a times the thoughts are quite deep and through. In industry for most part the discussions are mere checkboxes for MBO activity not a means to justify meritocracy.

The third part is the challenge of work. Mere understanding and repeating the same activity is not meant for high performers. I guess that is where most IITians have a view called Kachda Kaam (meaning junk work). The exposure to a larger parts of the happenings in the world make them regular stuff quite boring. I had to manage quite a few IITians. The thing that has worked best for me is to call them in one-to-one and straight away confess that the work is mundane yet someone has to do this and she is the available person right now. If there is work that interest them I will consider their names for a later project. But selling the obvious as a packaged solution never goes with many IITians.

The fourth issue is of authority. IITians are averse to authority of any kind. The process of elections in IITs are fairly apolitical. IITians never have a single leadership they worship. The president of the student union has very little exercisable power over the students. Rowdism is just not their in the culture for most part. Excercising authority to justify your claims over any IITian is just going to back fire. For most part even the presence of the greatest leaders of the society may not attract any crowd in an IIT. The collective mass acceptance is fairly weak. Leadership by example or absolute delegation are the only methods I have understood to have worked with IITians.

The people who complain about IITians not being patient have to probably understand the fundamental definition of patience. An average IITian must have spent days if not weeks in solving some of the trickiest problems many times in life before giving up on it or soliciting help from the surroundings. I guess if you ask any IITian persistence will come out as one of the greatest assets in solving a JEE paper. I guess it's all about the problem definition. I feel many IITians may get bored quickly in times of inactivity but not necessarily impatient.

This being said I feel the industry needs to identify some basic structural changes if they feel they will need to accommodate these high potential people. Mere statement of status quo and exceptations of mediocrity and group sentiments will definitely have managers complain all the time. I guess if we really need them we may need to make amends in the organization systems to provision for the relevant emotions.

Note: This article is true for most high potential employees not necessarily IITians. However I have got into discussions on IITians in specific many a times. Hence I have presented here as a specific case for the IITians.