As final exams of the Third Trimester came closer to an end, I turned in my last paper and looked ahead to my next project: Summer internship with Metis ERC Pvt. Ltd. in Bangalore. Some people may not recognize the name Metis as it’s a startup in the consulting industry. It is a small company with an extra level of personal touch and charm and is in the business of B2B consulting. It provides customized solutions to businesses facing issues and focuses on executing the main goal. Well after all in Bangalore, working with a start-up is the entire craze that there is among the youth.
The first week “on the job” passed with the whirlwind of understanding about the different areas of consulting in the company, Brainstorming on the projects and objective given to us. I had the project of identifying and building contextual capabilities. The field of capability building is developing very fast and every sector of the industry is realising its importance in the smooth functioning of the organisation. Several surveys are conducted to find out the effectiveness of capability building programs and a lot of research has been done on bridging the gap between learning and implementing capability building. Innovative techniques are being developed so that the employees are satisfied and work with utmost efficiencies.Contextual capabilities is the concept of identifying capabilities individually and then working on them to bridge the gap between learning and implementing the capabilities into practices.
My Mentor, Rajesh Sir, is a post graduate in management and has over two decades of expertise in the field of strategic advisory. His interventions have helped many organizations across industries and sizes, gain clarity on their mission, vision, goals and go-forward strategies. He is renowned for his objective advice stemming from the specialist skills he brings to the table that is always focused on creation of value, maximization of growth and improving business outcomes. As a successful entrepreneur himself who has founded and built several organizations, he brings to each engagement the invaluable perspective of an entrepreneur and the applicability of each functional best practice in terms of the positive impact it has over business.
The objective of this project was to develop a comprehensive tool to identify and build contextual capabilities of individuals and business leaders to optimally execute a goal. In this study, The target audience was leaders/managers/team leads with 4 or more years of experience who have an organizational/personal goal to execute. The research was conducted in 2 stages. The primary research, direct in depth interviews with the target segment to see the effectiveness of the framework. The secondary research involved reference to existing scholarly articles for creating a suitable framework for identifying contextual capability.
The tool was based on self assessment, which can be used to find out the contextual capabilities requirements of the individual. Identifying contextual capabilities is an continuous process and can be used for achieving both personal and professional goals. After the completion of the tool, prioritized capability gaps was provided, upon which the candidate can improve the lags in his contextual capabilities.
I not only built the tool, but got to experience the nitigrities of consulting world. All in all, it was a rewarding two months.