Billion Dollar EdTech Idea 1: Upskilling managers for the new world of work

Having worked with the learning & development teams of over 200 enterprises worldwide, I can tell you that companies are struggling to retain their employees. 

As part of the great resignation, companies and teams are seeing their people leave because employees have stopped seeing opportunities for growth in their careers. The single biggest variable that determines the growth path for any employee is their direct reporting manager. Employees are voting with their feet as they don’t feel ‘seen’ or ‘heard’ by their managers. 

Now think about the last time you managed people in this world or any other world of work. Were you ever formally trained for this job? The most likely answer is a resounding NO. In all likelihood, you were a great individual contributor (a great designer, software engineer or salesperson) and were therefore promoted to manage a team. But being a good manager has less to do with technical skills and more to do with the mastery of softer and more nuanced skills like reading the room, building trust, giving feedback, setting goals and growing others. 

As per the ILO, the world employs about 1.2 billion white collar professionals. If you consider a 1:10 ratio of individual contributors to managers, we are talking about 100Mn managers across different levels in the world. That’s like a Mexico or Germany full of managers!

In this new world of uncertainty and constantly changing expectations, managers are struggling to do more with less without having the adequate knowledge or skills for their job. The billion dollar challenge and opportunity for EdTech is to create a high quality offering that’s affordable, accessible and actionable for managers to upskill on the job, while engaging with their teams everyday.