Subject Matter Expert (SME) - An enriching and lucrative career option
By Manishankar Chakraborty
The unexplored option
Career options often remain unexplored as the immediate stakeholders who would
want to leverage the options are either groping in the dark or know things in a
piece meal fashion. Emerging economies like India and China have waken up to
the tremendous potential they possess in terms of quality and economical
manpower, but the problem of reaching out to the masses and not the classes
still remains to be resolved. The reason for this lack of information
penetration lies equally with the professional experts, companies, sectors and
media in not highlighting such novel, challenging, enriching and fulfilling
professions.
Career option as Subject Matter Expert (SME) is one such unexplored option for
many teaching professionals. The common notion about academic luminaries is
that one is restricted to teaching, research and at the most to training and
consultancy, however they never realize the amount of contribution they can
make to the overall knowledge generation and dissemination platform.
Subject Matter Experts or SME as they are commonly referred to as in the
industry parlance are professionals who are post graduates, doctorates having
first hand experience in teaching, training, research, both in academic
institutes and corporate with a very good understanding and application of the
subject. The role of SME has increased manifold after the cross border
alliances and collaborative understandings has started to gain momentum. Dr.
Ma’en Al Qatamin , Global President of Dubai Headquartered Management Training
and Consultancy firm, Knowledge Horizon, corroborates the development when he
opines that SME are the essential requisites in any knowledge sectors, be it
Information Technology (IT), Information Technology enabled Services (ITeS),
Training and Consultancy, E-learning. A doctorate from the prestigious Warwick
Business School of UK, Dr. Ma’en was vocal in saying that many teaching
professionals are unable to explore those terrain as they are myopic in
understanding the horizons their expertise can offer. SME play a very pivotal
role in most of the new generation knowledge sector companies, primarily
because their role have an end to end approach which initiates before the
actual product development starts and continues even after actual delivery to
the clientele.
The scope for an SME
The scope for an SME is huge, but for that to be gauzed a potential aspirant has
to think beyond the conventional mindset. Santosh Ranjan, Director of India
operations of Knowledge Horizon adds up saying that the actual scope of an SME
is indefinite and he can drag it to monumental heights. An alumnus from the
prestigious IIM-Bangalore, Santosh in spite of being the director of India
spends considerable time with the SME, as the role has tremendous scope and the
opportunity to research and formulate novel approaches are unlimited. SME play
a very active role in ideating, developing novel frameworks for imparting
knowledge in the needed form and shape to the client, which in turn calls for
out of the box thinking. SME Siddarth Naik adds, “We work 24X7X365 in the mind,
which culminates into devising novel models of training and development, in the
overall interest of the knowledge related stakeholders”. The thinking cap for
an SME is absolute must as he has to redefine the existing ways of pedagogy.
The scope therefore for an SME is a never ending process, provided one has the
flair and passion for the same.
The Role of an SME
Rajeev Kumar an SME feels that they perform the core role as they are the ones
forming the bridge with the actual production and marketing team finally
leading to customer satisfaction. The customer here one is referring to is not
the petty customer, but the tribe who is well informed so the SME has to play a
proactive role in providing them tangible value additions at every point in
time. Staring from researching about contents, making mind maps, using the
scanner and finally making the approach document, an SME plays a very crucial
role in an organizations setup. The production process might not be akin to an
SME, but his presence ensures that the deviation is bare minimum and therefore
rightly pointed by an SME, Ranjan, that he need to understand the nuances of
even the production process, which calls for stretching ones latent
capabilities. Importantly an SME often play a cross functional role and
therefore has to have very good coordinating roles with other domain experts
like graphic designers, instructional designers, programmers in the overall
interest of the project. It requires an open mindset and therefore prospective
SME has to ensure they are team players, as it’s not about sermonizing as is
typical of a teacher. The role of an SME calls for very good counseling and
mentoring roles as quite often they have to groom trainees not only from their
own sphere, but also from other domains. Jitesh, an SME in Finance feels that
the actual role of an SME is always undefined as they should have the ability
to welcome change at every point of time, which in turn calls for lot of
flexibility on the part of SME. Being a part of cross functional teams, the
role of an SME is even more challenging vis-à-vis that of a teacher or a
trainer as there he deals mainly with people in the same platform, but over
here he has to drive home the point about his subject to a cross sectional
audience and more importantly ensure that the audience has understood the same
and also thought of a sequence of approaching the subject, in order to add
value. Girish was vocal in saying that he had never thought about the novel
approaches in quantitative aptitude and operations while teaching, as it never
called for so much innovating as is evident now in his new role. The role of an
SME in a nutshell is an evergreen one as they form a key component of the
process, aver Anil Sawant, Project Coordinator with Indian operations of
Knowledge Horizon.
Profile of an SME
The ideal profile of an SME is one who has had hands on experience in training
or content development with the right attitude as flexibility is one of the
anchor for a successful SME. Rupa an SME in economics domain feels that the
actual academic credentials of an SME play only a supporting role as the
necessary prerequisite of any SME is to have the right mix of attitude,
aptitude, flexibility and lateral thinking. Basic understanding of the domain
areas are something all SME possess, but what is perennially required is to
understand the same from diverse set of audience which at times might create
confusion in the mind of an SME. Manish an SME for IT provides a solution to
this saying a clutter free approach while segregating the correct ones from the
incorrect ones goes a long way in transmitting the right knowledge in the right
form at the tight time to the right person. At the end of the day, an SME
should be able to bring in that change which was absent till now. Rewards,
Challenges and fun for SME are head and shoulders above from his peers in
teaching and other disciplines.
(Author is Senior Subject Matter Expert with Dubai Headquartered Knowledge
Horizon, based in the India Office at Pune. He can be reached at
maniisonline@gmail.com )
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