Non - Existent Training in ISRO

Non – Existent Training in ISRO

ISAC as well as ISRO was poor in training. Newcomers were thrown in at the deep end .   They had no idea of the role of immediate group , no idea about organisation, no idea of ISRO. Not that people who were in already knew any better.  

For instance,

When did Indian Space program begin ? What were the goals ?

What is the broad structure of ISRO ? What is Space commission ?

How many centres are there ? What do they do ?

What are the broad challenges we face ?

How do we get financial support ?

What are the current programmes ?

What has been the story so far ?

What is the organisation structure of ISAC ?

What does our group do ?

What are the interfaces with others ?    ….

A simple booklet could have helped.

Even a 4 week orientation course for all new comers with questions and answers would have made a great difference. One could add many other things like processes, career growth , culture of organisation etc

For people already inside broad contours of what other groups did would have been great.

Going further ,  people were pushed to take on responsibilities with no training whatsoever . A technical head was ignorant of technology management, handling people, finance, time management, schedules, coordination skills, communication skills and so on.

So was a project Director or a program manager. For instance a project , say IRS , was sanctioned. The program team including Project managers, Coordinators etc had no clue about the scope, size or challenges. There was a project report but no one to ask or clarify doubts .It would have made a world of difference if all were trained for a week. I remember getting exposed to Remote Sensing and its applications in a cursory way. I was greatly annoyed when I did not understand well enough how the raw images are processed and then used by other agencies. I started afresh reading primers on Remote sensing , sensors, data acquisition and image processing. I must have spent several days reading and not understanding and after some trials reading and understanding. It was such a pleasure that I would have given a series oftalks ( I did but to a limited set of immediate colleagues forced to attend perhaps ) but there was no opportunity to try it on a larger scale.

Later in TCS and Infosys I realised how far ahead they were compared to ISRO. In TCS ,  I remember attending a communication workshop of two days conducted by some private agency. One of the participants was an young girl, twenty years my junior, from a lens selling firm. We would make short speeches and a video of that would be played back to analyse our strengths and weaknesses. Fortunately , I have a thick skin and  no ego in such matters and I could laugh at myself and learn. ( A funny thing happened. We were allowed to choose whatever topic that came to our mind. I had some  difficulty in reaching that place and so I chose how terrible Mumbai was. Some people objected to the content ! ) . The workshop was truly humbling and a very enjoyable experience. What I feel sad is that ISRO with so many distinguished technologists ( remember ISRO was a choice destination when I joined in ‘72 ) did not address training all.

I was also exposed to the ignorance in ourselves when I attended many mock viva voce for my colleagues. I was invited often as there was a rumour that it would help the potential candidates to do well as if I had a secret line to interviewers.  I would ask questions and I knew the answers but often the quality of those answers dissatisfied me . This made me feel inadequate, slightly ashamed and I read a lot about various things. As I loved reading it was not difficult and my hurt ego egged me on.

I should have done a sort of Dipstick survey ( "dipstick" by definition means "a measuring rod that is dipped into a container to indicate the depth of liquid in it" and an exploratory research is also conducted to measure the scope or depth of a problem.

 ‘ Depth of liquid ‘ should be changed to  ‘ depth of ignorance ‘  in our case ) . And I should have added some spice like sample size and  probability etc and made a proposal to ISAC if not ISRO. Of course it had to pass through Head Structures, Group Head and then Director. But it would have been worth a try .

How I wish there was an opportunity to create a training centre covering all aspects. I would have loved that job !

In Infosys a centre for learning was started in great earnest and fanfare. An eminent person Dr Jayaram was inducted to head it. A beautiful building in Mysore was earmarked . The participants were senior executives of Infosys. It was based on GE model and speakers were founders and others. Founders and a couple of others had a lot of ego ( they knew everything ) and their experience and background was valuable to start with but got exhausted soon. Many times I suggested that we should get people with diverse background particularly because we were teaching management. For example we could invite an Army commander. He could be asked to talk on how army recruits people with diverse background ( language, culture , values and background ) and then moulds them to its needs. After all we were recruiting Engineers ( freshers ) just like that. Someone said they ( Army ) would be rigid . I said that he was not to run the institution but give a lecture. In fact we were rigid in not opening ourselves to new ideas . But it did not find favour. Anyway after a while the centre fell apart though it might still exist in some form.

Do I share the blame ? Yes , Yes , a hundred times Yes.