Hello, this is a blog about the well known Khan academy and how the principles of management can be applied to this organization. The name has almost become a synonym for self study in the modern world. But before I begin, a small introduction about the Khan academy.
The Khan Academy is a not for profit educational organization, created in 2006 by Salman Khan, a graduate from MIT and Harvard Business school. Salman khan was a hedge fund analyst at Connective Capital management in 2009 he took up Khan Academy.
For a hedge fund analyst to have such a social vision does come as a surprise! So let’s just see what propelled Mr. Khan to start up this venture. It is an important aspect of any entrepreneurship venture to identify and make note of opportunities. It started when Salman Khan started putting videos on random topics on youtube. This was just out of interest. But little would he have known, what was in store! The response he got from one of his cousins after reading the video was that the video was much better than Salman personally. At first, the comment might seem a bit out of place but a mind like Salman's seldom misses out on the key details and the opportunities. He realised that videos had their own advantage. Students can connect to them and learn from them at their own pace. Also, they can avoid the embarrassment of asking the same thing again and again, because just a simple rewind and you have the concept again without any effort from the other side! This is exactly what Salman Khan recognized and decided to work on it.
But to set a vision and mission statement is the first and foremost thing before starting and indulging into any venture. It is important to know beforehand, that what is it that you exactly want to achieve. And Sal Khan definitely knew that (HBS degree does help :)). So he started working on Khan Academy with a vision statement as "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere". Now if we analyze there are several aspects to this vision.
Let's focus on the keywords here:
1. High Quality, a good manager never compromises on quality and to add that to a vision statement is an assurance of that.
2. To Anyone - The objective is to make it at a level that anyone can understand the content of the videos. It's quite a challenge but has been undertaken with a vision in mind.
3. Anywhere - It has to be accessible for all so that it benefits the society at large. To combine such powerful ideologies in the vision statement itself is quite ingenious.
Khan Academy was set up with a vision of providing a global virtual education systems to the millions of students across the world. This is a herculean challenge in itself but a creative and innovative approach adopted by Sal Khan has helped him overcome all the challenges. He made it free for everyone, tried interacting with teachers, came up with schemes such as coaching and personal mentor on Khan academy. It’s incredible to think that a boy in Calcutta could be a mentor to a boy in San Francisco! With teachers, it has become a tool to track their students, to devote more of quality time to the student now that the students understand the concepts on their own through videos. The novel concept in this approach is that Khan Academy focuses on excellence which is an integral part of management. The students can't clear a topic until they get 10 question right in a row. This ensures that they master the topic completely and that there are no loopholes left in the learning which is contrary to the conventional schooling methodology.
Another thing we learn from this venture is the amount of hardwork and dedication you need to put in to succeed in a venture. Hats off to Sal khan for actually working on so many videos.
Overall the study of Khan academy can be a great learning experience for the sheer number of managerial virtues you learn from this venture. I really respect Sal Khan for the work he is doing and I wish him all the luck in this venture for a social cause. Signing off now... Will return with another blog soon...
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