Moral of the IIP story: Playing works, but working………!!!

When I reflect on my International Immersion Project, this will be the one image that will stay with me for a long, long time. After all which other company will take care of their interns so well? Yes, it is true that we are arguably from one of the best business schools in Asia and all. But, providing a ‘limited edition Corvette’ for our local transportation needs. Now that is definitely going overboard. They didn’t have to do this, right? But hey, what the heck? Winners shouldn’t complain, right?

Now you might ask, what about the accommodation? What can I say other than typing up this link which comes up every time I try to access Internet from here?
http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/dallp-courtyard-dallas-plano-in-legacy-park/
Life’s been good, my dear friends…

Now last but not the least, it’s high time that I talked a little bit about my actual internship project, and this where it gets even more interesting. One of the first things that we did as part of our project here is to sign an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement); which means that we are not allowed to talk about our project. Period. Nope, not even in a private forum like my Blog which is read only by me and my brother. Yes, this is serious stuff, big fella. Going over and above this, they even made IIMA sign an NDA, to make sure that IIMA doesn’t arm-twist us into divulging our top secret project details. This, let me tell you, is going to be worth its weight in gold, once we reach campus and the debriefing sessions start. The whole of 10 minutes that has been allocated to our team, will be used for reading the NDA out loud, and we will be more than happy to take any questions that anyone might have.

Within all these constraints of the NDA and stuff, I am still tempted to talk about one of the major activities that we undertook as part of our project over here. This happens to be in the area of Finance, our favorite subject, and is tightly interlinked with the intricacies of Forex Market. I like to call this pet project of mine “Converting Dollars to Pounds”. Here is how it works – You get all your stipend in Dollars and then you use that to fund all sorts of eating and drinking and the next thing you know, you have gained Pounds like a Sumo wrestler on a championship diet. Left unattended, this condition can even turn fatal; because you almost run the risk of showing up back in India naked, because the clothes that you were carrying are all one size too small and you can’t even afford new clothes because all of your money, has already been converted into err…pounds.

But all said and done, in a way, I have to admit that this project has prepped me up, to take up senior management responsibilities in my future companies. I already had the grey hair and the red shot eyes, thanks to IIMA rigor. Now that I have the potbelly too, to go with it, I should be all set, once the campus placements start, to really go all out, for positions VP and above. No problems there.

Before I go, I do owe my reader an apology. Sorry bro, that I took you for a ride in that Corvette, but unfortunately that is not for the interns. Rather, it is for some stupid Golf player who wins the local PGA tournament, which is sponsored by our company. And the only way they cared for the interns, was in allowing us to take that picture, before the golf players started trickling in to work on their project. Whoever taught me that working is more rewarding than playing, was definitely kidding with my future. That is the kind of vibes that I am getting, off late and I am not too happy about it either…

PGPX enters Columbia!!!

We went, we immersed and we got reported on. Check this out…
http://www.mbauniverse.com/innerPage.php?id=ne&pageId=715

The following are some of the faculty who taught us and interacted with us.
http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/whoswho/bio.cfm?id=55663
https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/whoswho/bio.cfm?UNI=gvj1
http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/whoswho/bio.cfm?ID=97
http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/whoswho/bio.cfm?ID=56269

Prof.Wadhwa’s lecture was the most fascinating and he hit one very close to home when he said – “Neurons that fire together, get wired together.” Harsh Thakkar…, we are going global buddy... MCC (Managing and Creating Creativity) and neurophysiology are going mainstream, all across the globe. Ohm……

Me and Sumantra, also did some research on behalf of some of our class mates, on the downside of not taking Advanced MCC in the 5th term, and this is what we came up with – “Morons that wire together get fired together…”. Don’t tell us that we didn’t warn you.

The role-plays in the negotiations class by Elke Weber, as we have come to expect from the PGPX batch, set the stage for some really tough negotiations, involving all sorts of action packed stuff like posturing, walk outs, hard balling tactics like good cop-bad cop etc. And the fact that some of these were practiced even without reading the case, paved the way for some really interesting arguments. Here is a sample – “I am the Vice president of this company. Why should I read the case?”

The marketing sessions by Gita Johar had cases about launching the Mini
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/viewFileNavBean.jhtml

and about selecting an advertising campaign for Mountain Dew from a given set of story boards.
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/free/product/503038/html_bundle/index.html

Both of these being multimedia cases, the case preparation involved watching advertisements and promotional materials, making it painfully close to watching TV, except that there was no break in-between for watching actual programs. When it came to class discussions, the biggest launch of the season was that of Uma as an ACP (Advertising CP) stalwart. She did so well here that there was even some carry-over effect that spilled into our Federal Reserve visit and Fixed Income classes. The rest of us also pitched in with some ACP (Arbit CP) of our own. All in all, to cut a short case even shorter, we did the Dew, thereby reserving exclusive rights to say – “Been there, done that” whenever we want, for the rest of our PGPX lives.

The “Fixed Income Markets” class by Suresh Sundaresan also went very well, especially considering the fact that most of us had only a ‘passing’ knowledge in finance. But the Prof through his unique pedagogy was able to involve each and every one of us in class discussions, in spite of our ‘sub-prime exposure’ to finance thereby boosting our nominal ‘interests’ and ended up delivering some solid ROI, within the short term ‘duration’ of the class.

The final event of the week was the memento presentation, which was done by yours truly as the representative of the batch, to Joshua Safier the director of Chazen Institute of International Business, who was the sponsor for our program.

Non-academic events also happened at full flow, dominated by the ‘Dhiraj Bakaya Reality tour’, led by Dhiraj himself, that took us through the nook and corners of downtown New York and Wall Street. As part of this tour, we saw the statue of Liberty from the back, Merrill Lynch bull from the front, Ground Zero from the side, New York Stock Exchange from down and Donald Trump and his daughter from front, back and side. Sorry, down would have been too risky. We got so close to Donald to even elicit a ‘You’re fired’, from him, but that was also because we tried to hand over the PGPX brochure to him and he was not in a terribly recruiting mood.

The guys n gals of our batch also showed some strange tendency to run over to the Times square, whenever they got some free ‘Times’, averaging almost close to two visits per day. In fact going around in Circles in Times Square turned out to be our favorite pastime and in hindsight all that added up to the good ‘Times’ that we had in NY. Deepavali was celebrated with candle lit beers, at Dhiraj’s sister’s place which again turned out to be not too far from the Times Square.

We also took some time off, to do some clubbing and partying which involved some surprise… surprise… more eating and drinking. This period of the ‘Big Apple Era’ was signified by the emergence of the Kabab brothers, the tall thin stick figures of PGPX - Ashish and Shafeeq. Their ardent desire to keep eating Middle Eastern cuisine over and over again got so out of control that we had to coin the names, ‘SHISH Kabab’ and ‘Sheeq Habeeb’ for them. Sorry guys, for being ‘Kabab mein Haddi’

And then there was all the salsa dancing that we did, and here the pictures do speak louder than words.

All in all, a pretty fun week that proved beyond any doubt that if you are looking to get internationally immersed, you can’t go wrong with the US. But then again nothing new here, as even Columbus knew this when he set out sail long back, all the while telling others that he is going to India….

PGPX take aways this far!!!

The good news is that I am leaving day after tomorrow, for the International Immersion segment of my program. But along comes the bad news that I have to vacate my abode for the last 6 months- IMDC #4207 IIMA. Now that leads me to the worst news that I have received in quite a while.

I will have to literally 'take away', this huge mountain of text books and study materials that was bestowed upon me by PGPX. No mean task this, I tell you. Makes the actual studying of this, look like child's play.

Anyways, now the play time is over and it's 'brokeback mountain' time. If what they say: 'Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger', is true, I hope to be a strong strong man in the very near future. But that again; only if this thing doesn't fall on top of me. Amen...

Men in Blue deliver big blues to PGPX!!!

When world champion cricketers come to town, we cannot but bunk classes (with Prof’s prior permission of course) and show up bright and early. We had ‘Managing Negotiations’ on schedule, but our master negotiator Nishant, exploiting the early moisture and some over cast conditions, swung into action with his astute negotiation skills, so that we could ‘square-cut’ the classes, ‘well-left’ the assignments and get on our ‘straight-drive’ to Baroda.

And boy, were we happy, for we got to see was some really futuristic cricketing action. If we had any doubts about Twenty20 being the wave of the future, our team quelled all those by presenting some really strong evidence of how badly they can suck in other forms of cricket. Underscoring their newfound liking for T20 and proving that their world cup victory was no fluke, India, batting first, posted a pretty decent score. One, that could have challenged even the formidable Aussie batting line up, if they hadn’t realized, this was not a T20 match. But alas, that was not to be and that is when all our ‘men went into blues’. The scene was so bad that some of them even tried to haul bottles and stuff, but still couldn’t get Ponting or Gilchirst out.

Earlier in the day, the action was so 'riveting' that I decided to move to one of the back seats so that I could catch up on my sleep, as I am wont to do, during that time of the day, when I am in my classes. But unfortunately, my friendly neighbor kept waking me up at regular intervals, to make sure that I didn’t miss any of the Indian wickets falling and thereby escape the pain that I deserved, for the mistake I had committed. I slowly started hating him, but he was acting as if he was being very helpful and all and I was too sleepy to threaten him in any meaningful manner.

Towards the end, he really upped the ante by pulling a fast one, which scared the bejesus out of me. During one of the forced wakeful moments he told me that they had shown me on TV. In all my years of watching TV, wherein I might have seen several different ways of fans registering their displeasure at their team’s performance, never had I watched anything close to something like this. The simple thought that I could end up making history by becoming the first one, was enough for me to keep my chin up for the rest of the brain-dead match.

In my attempt to keep myself awake, I tried to pretend as our ‘harsha bhogling’ expert commentator from IIMA and tried to make some sense out of whatever little that was going on. Then it suddenly dawned on me as to what the Indian team was trying to do. Their logic slowly became apparent. Think about it. Given a choice between playing 50 overs under the sun and 20 overs in the evening, even amateur cricketers like me, with no cricketing brains what so ever, would look for other things to do during the day. Now with the kind of cricketing geniuses that we have studded our line up with, it is only obvious that even they are also hinting that they know what their right choices are. And what better way to promote T20 than by playing every match as if it’s a T20?

To me, the situation is very similar to asking a consultant, who is used to working half-days and ‘netting’ away the rest of the time, to take up the job of a program manager, with round the clock conference calls and stakeholders looking to get a chokehold on his neck. Thanks, but no thanks. Even the Indian team knows better.

And the real killer is how our boys are still assured of whatever they have gotten used to getting - the money share of the corporates, mind share of the fans and lion’s share of the pride, fame and glory of being heroes in a star-starved India. Sweet…No? To this I say, Chak de India to all the players and Cheque de India to all the sponsors.

Now that I could really see what was going on, I was tempted to put my consultant cap on and dig deeper, may be apply some frameworks and stuff to look far ahead into the future. And then I saw cricket being taken over by Pareto and his famed 80-20 rule. He observed thus on the future economics of Indian cricket: “80% of the money will be in Twenty20 and the rest will be taken home by Dhoni endorsing 80 different products”.

Future was here guys and we were lucky to be a part of it. That is my match analysis and I am sticking to it…

Big MAC in Gujju land. I'm lovin it!!!

Valery Niewland & her son Ryan Immanuel

Valery Niewland is no stranger to hardships. But, hardships from a stranger? This may have been her very first time. And that too for something as silly as a project report. What can I say? Managing Across Cultures (MAC) is no walk in the park and I am glad that I could teach that to her the hard way.

I am a 34 year old middle aged guy going through a midlife crisis working on a stupid project, titled ‘Walk awhile with someone having a different worldview’, that forms part of my MAC course.

She is a 28 year old, Belgian citizen, born in the central African country of Congo, where her father, Nieuland, a man of Caucasian descent, was working as a manager in a textile factory and fell in love with Mayama, a lady of African descent.

Ours was a match made in the IIMA gym, which is no heaven, despite some strong evidence presented by angels who have been spotted working out there.

In this project I had to “identify someone who is most different from me and establish a relationship with that person so as to spend a few hours getting into that person’s world.” I couldn’t resist this opportunity and decided to barge into her world with a huge thud.

My pitch was pretty weak and involved uttering meaningless phrases like deadline, cross-cultural, worldview etc., with a generous dose of anxiety prone stammering thrown into the mix. But being a management student herself, (at the Solvary School of Business at ULB, Belguim), and more importantly on exchange at IIMA PGPII, she could identify with the kind of stiff odds that I was up against and agreed to help me out. So the date was set.

What she went through on D-day would have brought an all knowing smile to the face of Guantanamo bay prisoners undergoing torturous interrogation by FBI. The following are some of the insights I gleaned by chipping away at the block. Boring details have been restricted to the project report, already placed in my recycle bin for further reference, if required.

Valery spent the first 5 years of her life in Congo, before entering Belguim, when her father moved back home, after working for close to two decades in Africa. Her first language is French, but speaks, reads and writes two other languages - Dutch, and Swahili, in addition to English.

Her son, Ryan, is currently staying with her in IIMA. This means that in addition to being a full time student, she also has to play the dual role of a teacher, to her son, who gets his study material couriered from his school in Belgium. This offshoring idea helped me invent a new business model on-the-spot, which I am naming KPO – Kid Process Outsourcing.

As I understand it, parents all across the western world are growing increasingly fed up of their kids’ messed up processes that are jumping all over the control chart. Once they hit the ‘enough is enough’ status and realize that they badly need a break, all they will have to do from now on, is to send the kids over to us and follow it up by couriering their books every once in a while. We will educate them right here and keep them all set and ready to take up their hi-tech jobs right here, as and when those get outsourced too. This could be the next big wave of end-to-end outsourcing, the patent filing for which has already been outsourced.

Valery also talked about her experience watching the Bollywood movie, Kuch Kuch hota hai with French Sub titles and how it was a huge hit with all the members of her family, friends and relatives. She was all praises for Sharukh khan who, according to her has done a real swell of a job. After hearing this, there was some kuch kuch that was hota hai in my mind also, mostly driven by Khan Envy usually found in able bodied Indian men of all shapes and sizes.

Valery is currently specializing in Finance and wants to get into a banking career with an intention to grow into a managerial role in a year or two. Her long term ambition is to become a social entrepreneur and set up a Not-For-Profit venture, for the underprivileged children of Congo. I know this might sound like a ‘Miss-World’ speech but having met her and seen her inner beauty I left with a readiness to take this to the bank. I wish her all the very best.

And last but not the least, the ‘funniest guy of the project’ award goes to her son Ryan, who proved beyond doubt that comedy can be delivered even in as classical a language as French. He knew only French, and in my temptation to exploit the ‘economies of scale’ in the nascent project that I had set up, I asked Valery to be the interpreter and ask her son to share some of his experiences of being in India.

After some cajoling, our man, Ryan started sharing his profound wisdom and I was left clueless when she started laughing out loud, with her son still keeping a serious face. I was curious as hell and wanted to know what was going on, to which Valery, after a couple of minutes of serious laughing, responded thus. “He is complaining about the cows walking around the streets in India”.

I was dumbfounded by his abstruse analysis. Even small kids @ IIMA are turning culturally sensitive. I earnestly wanted to know more. So I continued. Why does he think so? To which the reply came prompt.

He is saying that when he sees them, he gets reminded of his favourite food back home, eaten with French fries and his mouth starts watering. Talk about cultural sensitivity and the ‘holier than cow’ attitude. Proves beyond doubt that even in the middle of a MAC attack, kids still say the darnest things and it doesn’t matter whether they are from Belgium or Belgaum. In the process, I got my message too…Dubaarah Math Poochna…

Balanced score card at half time!!!

Now that the first half of my ‘program’ is over and gone, and I see myself turning into a bulk processor of cases and reading materials, I couldn't help but look outside the window. No, this was not a knee-jerk reaction to something titillating going on outside, but a thoughtful response from a Harvard educated management practitioner. For all of you skeptics out there, yes, my loving attorney (my wife) has OKed the use of the H-word on record, as most of my so called management education has been through Harvard cases.

Now let me tell you that the one big takeaway from all these cases has been this ‘look-outside-the-window’ approach - the one and only surefire way to enrapture the readers with the dichotomy that you are facing. And if you can start to ramble more about your company, things look even better. For me, even though I have been blessed with good company off late, there is enough reason to get started off on my own case, at least to fill up all the time that I have freed up in this term, using some innovative elective selections. So here I go…

I am choosing to call mine, the ‘grand mother of all dichotomies’, one that confronts management students all over the world, past present and future. And here it is.

Is the premise of management education as something that can be imparted to a class of willing, well founded? And more importantly, can managers be created using formal schooling or is this all part of a self-fulfilling system, a system, leftover from the yesteryears of ‘too many’ competing for ‘too few’ opportunities and MBA being used as an artificial entry barrier for acceptance into coveted management positions? Hasn’t decades of entrepreneurship, innovation and ubiquitous information made such a system obsolete?

I am not discounting the fact that there is always knowledge that can be assimilated or skills that can be acquired that can improve one’s effectiveness as a manger or an entrepreneur. In fact even in my own case, there have been some indisputable ‘program learnings’, which is the subject of a whole different post that is already in the works. But that aside, my basic question is on the approach of dedicating one or two years of time, money and effort, all in an attempt to learn management, full time, in a class room setting?

There cannot be any doubt in our mind that we want our doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants etc. to be well schooled and on top of the happenings in their field. Something as common as a common-cold may not send me scurrying for a doctor, but the moment something uncommon starts happening, I go looking for a certified physician. And these days it is a straight drive to ‘specialization’ on precisely the very organ that is troubling you, without even a glance towards the generalist.

Now, how about if, what you are having is an uncommon idea? Something which you think has an economic value because of it addressing an unserviced market space or an unrepresented product space? Do you run to the nearest IIM to get some fresh ‘managerial’ talent or is it a ‘DIY’ (Do it yourself) task that we have at hand?

To me it appears that if you,

1. can truly understand your potential customers and what economic value means to them
2. are clear on the big-picture of how your idea provides this value and how to make it work financially
3. can spot talent and build teams, be it to design/build/market/do accounting
4. can pick up rudimentary management ‘gyaan’ on the fly

have enough emotional acumen to connect with your team and elicit high performance from them

you don’t need anything more than a song on your lips and a smile on your face to build great businesses, to become great entrepreneurs.

Then there are great general managers who build tremendous shareholder wealth, not only by scaling their businesses but also by perfecting its internals and ensuring its profitability, predictability and sustainability. Now are these folks created in the crucible of their own real world experiences and in spite of what they have studied or were ‘taught’ or are they executing a recipe which is being bottled and marketed by B-schools around the world?

Brealey & Meyers even went to the extent of documenting the 4th unsolved problem in Corporate Finance as – Is management an Off-Balance-sheet liability? For example, the stock of closed end funds often sells for substantially less than the value of the fund’s portfolio. Real estate stocks appear to sell for less than the market value of the firms’ net assets. Many of the oil companies tend to have market values less than the market value of their oil reserves. All this can only happen if the value added by the firm’s management is less than the cost of the management.

Now that leads the layman in me to ask the same question in a slightly different way - Isn’t management just common sense clothed in good presentation skills? With the obvious corollary of – Aren’t B-schools all over the world, just over-hyped institutions that select for common sense and convert the selects into good workers by giving them enough and more to work on?

One of the trends that gives this away is the popularity of articles which tout the concept of ‘What they don’t teach you at B-schools’. Now if a lawyer or a doctor starts practicing what they were not taught in their respective schools, I am pretty sure that they will soon run out of opportunities to experiment. Now how is this different from business education and why is this contrast not unsettling?

Like all good cases, mine also ends with no right or wrong answers. Even worse, I don’t even think that I have any answers to offer. But sometimes as they say, it is more important to have all the questions than the answers. Looking forward to that day when I will start getting paid for my questions….till then, there is so much to be managed and so few people to do it.

And to that I say - I shall do it. I have substantial experience to boot…not to mention the innumerable Harvard cases that I have cracked…

At PGPX, Creativity is going to be a do or die!!!

It is one thing that I took this elective mostly to get away from all the other alternatives that were offered, which would have involved case readings, number crunching, Excel-ing, quizzes and all sorts of other stuff that Profs make us do to earn their living.

But as my ill luck would have it, unknowingly I may have walked into a lion’s den, when I signed up for ‘Managing and Creating Creativity’, an elective taught by Krishnesh Mehta, a visiting faculty from our neighboring, National Institute of Design (NID) Ahmedabad.

http://www.nid.edu/people_faculties_m.htm

From whatever he has told us till now, this could turn out to be the course that might make everything else that I have undergone till now in IIMA, look like child’s play. For starters let me remind you, that till now, no professor in my life has threatened me yet with bodily harm. Yeah, the occasional, “I will push your thick head against the wall, if you do arbit CP without reading the case”, might have happened. But I have always had the knack to see through such empty threats for what they really are – a rhetoric used to discourage divergent opinions - and get on with my life.

But here this Prof was looking to do an open mind surgery on us. And he was kind enough to forewarn us that it is going to hurt as hell. So before we began, he started out by making us write up and sign our name on a disclaimer which started out in a mild fashion as follows:

“I Biju Nair take full responsibility of whatever happens to me physically, mentally, emotionally etc. during this course, because of my own doing or doings of anyone participating in this course or any other stranger or any animal, insect, reptiles, or any other creature natural or artificial that will be used for the conduct of this course.”

“I agree to perform anything or everything that I might be asked to, as part of this course, whether I like it or not and whether I agree to it or not”

“I am agreeing to all of the above out of the choice of my own free will and am doing this with full consciousness and awareness without being under the influence of any kind of drugs, force or influence.”

And then the rest of the disclaimer went even more hay wire and eventually put us summarily responsible for anything and everything that may or may not go wrong under or above the sun. But strange as it may sound, I was more than happy to sign up, having fresh memories of my recent brushes with the IIMA rigor and its ‘grade factor’.

Now even without any such disclaimers, the kind of stuff that the professors over here have been able to make me do over the last 6 months or so, can make my hair stand up, even when I am just thinking about it wearing my favorite Nike cap. And now this quasi-legal agreement to top it all off… Needless to say, I started to get worried.

So we quizzed him on what were all the different things that he had already planned out for us, to warrant such an air tight agreement. To be honest, he was not very forthcoming, (with the kind of blanket agreement that he had already gotten from us, he didn’t need to be) other than telling us something about taking 200 steps through thick jungles in the middle of the night and sharing drinks with ferocious wild animals and some such stuff like that. He also mentioned something about having a near death experience and all. But I think I may have had my first one right there just hearing about all this, so this may not be applicable to me any more.

Another interesting pre-course ritual was the baselining of the Field Resonant Images (FRI) of our brains, to be compared with the ‘after‘ pictures to be taken at the end of our 8 week, course. Our Prof has promised us some really colorful results, if we follow his instructions properly. Yeah, right…Disturbing sleeping wild animals in the middle of the night is definitely going to kick-start my creativity for sure.

Now that I think of it, there seems to be only two ways this course is going to end for me. Either I will prove to be creative enough to come up with a good excuse that will convince the Prof to allow me to drop this course. Or I will be snacked on by wild animals in the jungles of Gujarat…

Talk about the pressures of having no other option but to be creative. Move over pass or fail courses…this one is going to be a do or die, from the way I see it...

Updated on 25th June 2010:

I do feel victimized, by the way Times of India reporters have gone out of their way to extract bits and pieces from this post, all in the name of investigative journalism, to malign one of my very beloved professors. As can be figured out from my responses to the comments that I received for my original post, my experience with this professor, as well as his course and teaching methods has been extremely positive. I do firmly believe that all the teaching methods that were used for this course were relevant and beneficial to the objectives of this course as experienced through my personal realisation. I totally agree with my fellow PGPXer's post given below and I myself couldn't have presented the case in a better way.

http://iima-pgpx4-impressions.blogspot.com/2010/06/nid-professor-is-clean.html

Thanks bro for this excellent post..You have said everything that needs to be said and that too after pertinent analysis of context and content...Wish our brethren getting paid for their journalistic efforts could even be half as effective, instead of pursuing unethical means to sensationalize matters and in the process only helping to obscure truth and obturate justice.

PGPX in remission!!!

After 5 months and two terms of mindless rigor the first break finally arrived, giving me a chance to transport myself from Gandhi’s own country to God’s own country. And let me tell you folks. It is right what they say. God is great indeed. And then there was light!!!

As can be figured from the picture, there were certain new bottlenecks that I could introduce to form part of my solution to overcome my persistent dryness problems. Soon things started working out so smoothly that I almost ended up becoming part of the problem, because of the overuse of the solution. All this happened in the famed Poovar Island resort where the Neyyar River meets the Arabian Sea and more importantly the pool side bar and dedicated servers allows C2H5OH to meet with you, while you are swimming in a pool of H2O.
http://www.poovarislandresort.com/
This can make you feel larger than life. Almost god-like as can be seen from the next picture…

As I was busy vacationing away, one of our professors did try to throw a spanner in my works by mailing us our grades for one of the exams that had just gotten over. It was no coincidence that this professor taught us ‘Setting and Delivering Service Levels’. But for no apparent reason other than as a cruel joke, he conveniently took a very bad occasion to practice what he preached, ignoring the most sanctimonious rule regarding service levels – “Never give customers what they don’t need…especially during vacations…and that too in GOC”.

But luckily he threw us a bone, by naming the email subject appropriately with words like ‘SDSL’, ‘Course Grade’ etc, and I was more than happy to read and interpret these as what our Nitin would refer to as ‘NNTO: No need to open.’ and treated it like mails which have abhorrent and repulsive subject lines like “Nude pictures of Kournikova”. Believe me such mails mostly end up crashing your faith in electronic mail, not to mention the software powering your hardware.

All in all it was a very relaxing and invigorating vacation indeed; something which I am sure will prep me up for rejoining the rigor scheme of things come Monday; a surreal experience that sent a nerve tingling jolt of excitement right through my spine. But as my worst luck would have it, I got a little over enthusiastic and ended up opening a mail from the PGPX office titled, titled Term III schedule.

I guess I will never learn the art of being responsible with my mail. Currently eagerly looking forward to my next break…

T-Nite draws to a close: With Salsa Caliente!!!

Before the flags went down on T-nite 2007, I got just enough time to slide in one more performance. This time it was some Suave (smooth) Salsa!!!

Un momento caliente en mi experiencia de PGPX!!!

Overall, the event ended in bit of an anticlimax for us. Even though we went into the final day with a sizable lead, a bad day at the office together with some unexpected glitches with the music system during our performance, made it a narrow loss for us, pushing us to the second spot behind PGP section C, who delivered a rocking performance to snatch a sweet come-from-behind victory.

There was a lot of soul searching done and innumerable lessons learnt, to be passed on to PGPX-III. But nothing could drown the sorrow of being so close yet so far from winning it all. The perils of performing in a perennially dry state!!!

IIMA Talent-Nite: Swing is in the air!!!

Couple of snaps from my swing dance performance in T-nite!!!

The PGP II junta was right there to pronounce the verdict:

And yes, the writing was on the board!!!

We currently have a sizeable lead over our PGP brethren in the overall standing, with two more days of competition remaining!!!

Bracing ourselves for that final onslaught!!!

PGPX delivering some breaking news!!!

If you thought that this is me and my homies going for news paper delivery in the morning, then you have been had my friend. On the contrary, it happens to be a snapshot of the PGPX-brigade that is out to deliver the bad news to all sections PGP…C, B, D, A.. Whatever!!! Things ain’t going to be that easy anymore my dear fellows!!! Because PGPX is here and if you watch closely you can read the newsprint in our hands. Yes it is breaking news indeed!!! Breaking all PGP hopes of winning anything that is worthwhile, over the coming T-nite week-end!!!

The tide was turned in the opening event itself, the PUBRUN, which marked the beginning of the annual Talent-nite 2007, at IIMA. To say that we beat the crap out of the PGP sections, decades younger than us, is just an understatement. We ended up wining the bellwether event with more than a clear 20% points lead. Our captain Rajeev did such a phenomenal job that most of the bed sheets in IMDC, has ended up, stuck up on the mess walls, as placeholders for PGPX posters, with the result that most of us are currently sleeping sheetless!!! But I say it is only a small price to pay for scaring the SHEET out of our esteemed PGP competition.

Now let me disclose some trade secrets to engage my impressionable readers. We have been getting queries from our younger PGP brethren as to the secret behind our spectacular runway success in this event, and I think it’s about time that I spilled the beans on this one. To be honest, it had all to do with the dryness of our current state. In fact, some of our guys were so incredibly thirsty, that the mental picture of a cold one, painted using the fake-o-nym PUBRUN, was enough to send their pulses racing and they ran. With everything that they could gather; newspapers, pillows, bed sheets, coke bottles, glue sticks, whatever….And the rest as they say is history…

But now it turns out that, this whole PUBRUN stands for some sort of ‘publicity run’ and needless to say, our runners are pissed…, and that too way beyond pacification. The last time I heard, they are getting their tiger war faces painted on… with the intent of revisiting the mess and sending shivers up the spines of all the fresh ones that we recently admitted to the hallowed portals of WMIWI. Hold on to your SHEETS guys, because it might all be coming off pretty soon…

Don’t say that we didn’t warn you!!! And not that it’s going to help, but anyways….

PGPX 0708 FM, this one rocks!!!

Yesterday, we had our last FM (Financial Markets) class and for that one last time, we had our Prof SM asking us, whether we had any Questions, Comments or Concerns!!! We had several but nothing that would make her stick around after the coming Monday. After all, all good things have to come to an end.

Interestingly enough, our course had started off with the whole class getting together to celebrate her birthday. But whoever thought that that was odd, found what was to follow even…stranger than fiction that is. She, in spite of being only a visiting faculty, and that too on a really short one from the land of maple leaves, had all of us, eating right out of her hands – whether it was being the gladiator woman cutting down on NCP (Negative CP) in class, explaining complex finance fundaes lucidly, conducting office hours to solve FM (Financial Markets) cases and problems, allowing spouses into the class for a day, to take the PGPXian domestic respect index to the stratosphere, celebrating birthdays together, putting her ‘consultant’ cap on and reviewing our placement profiles to give us invaluable feedback, inviting her parents to campus and introducing each and every one of us to them by name...the list just keeps going on and on. And the fact that she happens to be an IIMA alumni only increased the strength of our bonding. Who needs glue or liquor for bonding when there are fascinating subjects like OB to be discussed?

And funnily enough, our course came to a close with our very own PGPX official mimicry artist Suresh, under explicit exhortations from SM, doing an SM impression. And needless to say, what followed was lapped up with roars of laughter by all and sundry, not to mention SM herself.

That kinda, sorta motivated me to come up with my own snap shot of a ‘writer’s impression’ of her inimitable class style. What follows has to be read in a very distinct ‘Angrezi’ accent, for the bazooka effect.

SM: Good morning people, before we begin, are there any ICC?

Sri Sri: But Madam we fall under the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India), not ICC (International Cricket Council) and we have Mr. SC backbencher as our president. He also happens to be a sleeping partner in several of our proceedings.

SM: Sir, can you please not call me madam. You can call me by my Madan name, sorry maiden name. And by the way, ICC stands for Issues, Comments, Concerns…

Sri Sri: Just like you don’t like being called Madam, I don’t like being called Sir.

SM: Good. Is everybody in the class able to see that? What Sri Sri is saying here is that he wants to do a complex option trading with me so that he can keep hiding his age.

SM: By the way, people…tomorrow will be the ‘bring your pets to the class’ day.

BN: But I don’t have any pets. Can I bring in some of ‘men’s original friends’ roaming around in the IIMA campus?

SM: Sure thing. That is truly a great idea. I would like them also to see that inside class, your life is not much different from theirs…except of course the air conditioning and the soft cushioned seats and all.

SM: Ok, let’s start. So, how many of you have not brought your calculators?

Hands popping up all over the place…

SM: Ok, don’t worry. I will be giving you a calculator each for your exam, along with the formula sheet, the annuity table, the normal distribution table, the multiplication table and any other table that you might need….

SM: Also, if any of you have any questions during the exam, like how many zeroes are there in this entire universe, let me know and I will be writing that down for you on the board. Also, I don’t mind giving one of them to you if your exemplary exam performance warrants that.

Obviously there are some sporadic protests, especially from the grade non-disclosure sections of the crowd…

SM: I know…I know it is not fair. But life rarely is.

MS: Prof, you talked about the put option and the call option? But how about the third option? Why are we not discussing that? That is kinda sorta my favorite option…

SM: Yes, thanks for reminding me. Let me exercise my third and final option, of not answering such questions…

SM: People, if you have any more questions, my office hours start immediately after the class and will continue till the start of our next class tomorrow, especially with the kind of traffic that I have been getting lately…

SM: Are we kind of, sort of OK, this far? Please tell yes…, because we have to move on….

MY: Prof, Can you please repeat your intuitive reasoning of the BS formula?

SM: What do you mean BS formula? This Black Scholes is a complex formula involving differential equations, people. I am just trying to break it down, so that you mathematically challenged guys don’t get freaked out and start sending me hate mails.

AC: Prof, Can you please go over this valuation problem once more?

SM: Sure. Step 1 - Read the question. Step 2 - Write down the variables. Step 3 - Draw the timeline Step 4 - Meet me at office hours so that I can walk you through the remaining steps.

SM: And remember, people…FM is always, always, always… of the people, by the people, for the people…

The winding down thus of this ultimate democratization of the Financial Markets was received by the masses with a standing ovation….

Thanks very much SM for all that you have given us…

One day we hope to make big bucks out of all this knowledge that we have gained from you and you will definitely hear from us. In the mean time, please don’t forget to push us out the door with at least a ‘B-’ to go, in the fast approaching end term…

CEOs come calling!!!

Last Sunday was the Most Valuable Day of our evolving PGPX experience, when we were treated to a rare buffet of corporate wisdom by a star studded line up of IIMA alumni, many of who are entrepreneurs spanning wide ranging industries like options trading to company research to retail. Here is a sample of the all star line-up that we had:

1. Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Naukri.com)
2. R. Subramanian (Subhiksha)
3. Rahul Bhasin (Barrings Private Equity)
4. Sachit Jain (Vardhman Threads)

Here is what Basab wrote in his blog about this event.
http://6ampacific.com/2007/07/04/trip-to-iim-ahmedabad/#more-123

We also got good coverage from the media.
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=243775

http://www.business-standard.com/strategist/storypage.php?leftnm=6&subLeft=8&chklogin=N&autono=289696&tab=r

The morning session was driven by Basab where he participated with the class in a role play that involved two of my class mates getting ‘mock interviewed’ by Basab as part of our management communications session. This was all about giving us pointers in getting hired at senior management roles and Basab used this opportunity to distill his decades of corporate experience to hand us pearls of wisdom as takeaways.

As this session was going on, we had a ‘walk-in’ by some of the other CEOs, who popped in a little early for our after noon sessions. And surprisingly they sat along with us in the class and were also magnanimous enough to give tough competition to our own ‘class- participation’ masters, in the ensuing discussions. I am sure it must have brought back a lot of their own IIMA memories for them. And needless to say we also had a lot of learnings from them.

In the afternoon there was a panel discussion where each of the CEOs shared their experience in building their ‘own companies’, the whys, the whats and the hows. What was readily apparent was that each one of them had their own inimitable personal style, but what was unmistaken was the amount of passion they put into their act. It was clear that this was the same source of unbridled energy that shaped their entrepreneurial careers as well and made them so phenomenally successful.

The capstone of the evening was a guest lecture by Rahul Bhasin, who took us through one of his real life private equity experiences of taking over and turning around a struggling software company. It was exciting to say the least and he took extra care to compartmentalize the discussions into various concepts and also make the discussions objective and interactive in nature.

When the evening drew to a close we left with the feeling that it is events like these that compliment the class learnings in the right proportions, so that once we become alumni ourselves, we are armed with the right mix of talent, skills and experience, to keep up our learning curve steep and climbing...

What Ram C wants you to know!!!

Our ITOP (Information Technology for Organizational Performance) Prof, in one of his recent classes talked to us about Ram Charan and his latest book: “What the CEO wants you to know”

http://www.amazon.com/What-CEO-Wants-You-Know/dp/0609608398

This brought back memories of my good fortune to hear Ram C speak when he had visited the Offshore Development Centre of my ex-employer in Trivandrum last year. And believe me, it was a packed house with people literally climbing over the walls and occupying each and every inch of floor space that was available.

Ram Charan’s is an inspiring story from his humble beginnings in India to Harvard, from where he went on to attain business super stardom as the personal coach of phenomenally successful CEOs like Jack Welch.

His schedule as extracted from a Fortune article introduces him the best, even though it might make your head spin.

I should tell you where I've been the last few weeks," he began in heavily accented English. "I go to India on the Friday of the week before Thanksgiving. I am Sunday morning in Bombay. Monday morning I am in Delhi. Wednesday I'm in Bombay. Thursday I'm in Bangalore. Saturday I'm in Trivandrum. Wednesday I'm in Johannesburg. Friday morning, at seven, I am in New York. I have a two-hour meeting with a CEO who has flown in to see me. I have two more meetings and I fly out that night to Dubai. I am in Dubai on Sunday and Monday, then I come back here. On Thursday night I fly out to Jubail, Saudi Arabia. Then I come back here. Tuesday morning I have a whole-day schedule in New York. Tuesday night I go to Milwaukee. I came from Milwaukee last night. They diverted my plane so I had to stay in Pittsburgh. I had a meeting this morning in Philadelphia. I had three meetings here in the afternoon. And I'm here tomorrow, with GE. Then an hour-and-a-half phone call. Then I'm going out tomorrow night to West Palm Beach. Monday morning I have a breakfast meeting in New York. And then I'm flying out to Perth, Australia."

The most striking aspect of his personality as per the author and the one which instantly appealed to me was that, he never had any goals. He never set out to become a globetrotting consultant, any more than he dreamed of attending Harvard Business School, or becoming a professor, or even so much as one day earning a living beyond the small city in India where he was born.

Now, that is a goal worth shooting for.

Here is the link to the original article.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/30/8405482/index.htm

He has also been covered as a Man of Mystery by Fastcompany.com

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/79/ram.html

The real beauty of his approach is how he makes an Indian outlook work in a global career spread all across the globe.

In “What the CEO wants you to know” he teaches you what he calls Business Acumen and how to use it to navigate the high seas of global businesses. To him, your neighborhood street vendor and the global CEOs think and talk very much alike using this universal language of Business Acumen.

He draws parallels between how they run their businesses in much the same way using sales forecast, inventory, merchandising, advertising, competitive strategy, customer focus, product mix, profit margin and last but not the least cash flow. And when it comes to measuring their success, they have their eyes firmly on Cash generation, Growth and Return on Investment.

For measuring returns he establishes an intuitive formula R=Margin * Velocity, where Margin is a measure of the profit that can be made in one transaction and Velocity, the number of such transactions that you can possibly make. For eg:- Even though Dell works with wafer thin margins of 3 to 4% on a transaction, it manages whopping returns close to 250% on it’s invested capital, only because it turns over its inventories with velocities close to 50 a year.

So, as a leader, where can you put all this to use? You can begin by studying your company’s business inside-out, almost as well as your CEO. Daunting? No…Here is all that you need to know:

1. What were your company’s sales during last year?
2. Is the company growing? Is the growth rate growing, flat or declining?
3. What is your company’s profit margin? Is it growing, declining or flat?
4. How does your margin compare with your competitors? How does it compare with other industries?
5. What is your company’s inventory velocity? What is its asset velocity?
6. What is your company’s return on assets?
7. Is your company’s cash generation increasing or decreasing? Why is it going one way or the other?
8. Is your company loosing or gaining against its competition?

These tell you all about your company and its challenges and with these answers at your fingertips, you are armed and ready to make a difference.

The rest is all about putting the right people in the right jobs, which might involve a lot of incremental changes and dealing with mismatches as we go along and also coaching people, not just on the business side but also on behavior. And your edge in execution comes from synchronizing their efforts and releasing and channeling their energy toward the right set of business priorities.

Reading this book, as I am going through the rigor of business education brought out the simplicity of it even more. If all you need to know about running successful businesses can be told in a little over 125 pages, then it can’t be all that bad, right? Yeah…right….

Dhamaal!!!

Dhamaal, the first cultural event organized by PGPX 2, arrived just in time, when the stress levels at PGPX-2 were about to hit the roof, with all the end-term exams and assignments and what not. Christened so, by our very own cultural secretary Nitin, and touted as the ultimate get together for students and all of their family, Dhamaal was planned and executed meticulously to perfection by our team of volunteers, consisting of Sumantra, Shwetab and Venki. The event was compeered by Nitin himself, who did a splendid job by keeping the audience on their toes right through the event and some of his one liners literally had the audience in splits.

The event took off to a slow start with the crowd slowly building up toward the latter part of the evening. The initial limelight was stolen by our very own crooners taking the stage bright and early and hitting the right notes. The notable performances came from Manav, Anuj and Vinay, with the others not left too far behind. A scintillating dance performance by one of the PGPX spouses, set the tone for the remainder of the events. Snacks and drinks were served on the house, to keep the energy levels afloat.

The main attraction of the event was the skits and the mimicry performances written and directed by, the supreme all rounder of PGPX, Venky. He and his team created waves of laughter with their imitations of whatever that went inside the closed doors of PGPX Term-1. The notable acting performances came from Sumantra, Ganesh, Suresh S, Pramod, Manju, Vikas M and Ram P. The PGPX kids, never to be away from the center stage, also played their roles with panache, especially the son of Pramod, with his mock one liners, delivered with kiddish exuberance. The audience also joined in with great energy, with the participation made memorable through cat calls, repeat requests and what not.

The skits were followed by a fancy dress show by the PGPX kids who were present in all pomp and glory. Soon characters from mythology, comic books and real life, all walked right out on stage. The first prize in this event was won by Manish’s daughter who came in dressed as a Flower Girl. The marketing pitch that she did about the variety of flowers she had in stock and the features of each and every one of them, had our budding marketers in the audience, wonder struck, making her an automatic choice for the top honours.

The pick of the day as far as the kids were concerned was the magic show by S. Kumar’s and sons. And to be honest some of his numbers even had the adults in the audience spell bound. And once the magician and his troop disappeared, there was Vinay and party arriving with their Antakshari competition planned out. This event had the PGPX folks and their spouses pitted against each other with the audience members also forming a crack team, to pitch in whenever the opportunity was ripe for a tune to be let out.

The evening came to a close with an open dance floor for all and sundry to let their hair loose. And let loose they most definitely did. The energy was infectious and the dancing and the fun and frolic went on till well past 2’ o clock in the night. Needless to say, an event for the ages, Dhamaal unlimited left each and every one of us, as we took leave, looking forward to the next episode.

These cases are making me thirsty…

In one of my earlier posts I had described my PGPX plight as it would be done in a Harvard case.

http://biju-blog.blogspot.com/2007/05/continuous-wasting-time-at-pgpx.html

But to be honest, I was shocked by the lukewarm response that I got from my classmates for that one. Guys who were waiting to take out that champagne to celebrate my blossoming as a writer, wrote to me with feeble –

“Very Good Sir! Although the element of humor is not very high, you have presented it like a genuine HBS case, and the subtle satire on every important aspect has come out very well”.

Holy cow!!! Where did that come from? And what the hell did I do to deserve that one? This writing thing is sure hard. I am not making this up. (Thanks Srinath for being very polite with your words and still managing to tell me that it sucked big time. Please accept my apologies and your appointment as my CXO – Quality Control. Your paycheck is in the mail!!! )

And then I decided to go deep. How could this happen? Where did I go wrong? Am I loosing my nascent blog-o-share already? Is there anything more than what meets the eye? Slowly I could see some parallels emerging between the case at hand and the kind of case discussions (Exhibit 1) that we were having in class these days. And then it hit me. Yes, friends. I happened to stumble upon the million dollar answer, and it ain’t pretty.

Our guys are not even reading the cases anymore!!!

Yes, now it all makes sense. But I didn’t stop there and went a little further along with my hypothesis and voila, I came out with the mother of all case analysis recommendations.

Case studies are a huge waste of time!!!

I know this revelation of mine is more of a “king is naked” kind of a situation. May be it’s me, but I am just not able to see any clothes on this beast. Forget a Panchantra Lungi or a Benetton T-shirt, even a bare minimum Lotus thread is becoming hard to find.

For starters, most of them cases start with the following disclaimer – “This case is not intended to serve as endorsement, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. “ What??? Did I read that right? Then why am I even wasting my time on these?”

The sad part is that, this is only the beginning of a very slippery slope. There are much more disturbing disclaimers that have been left unwritten. Here is my not-so-short laundry list that should be displayed prominently in all cases, to warn the uninitiated:

• Extra care has been taken to obscure information within irrelevant details.
• Information presented may be more useless than you think.
• Questions asked may not have any connection to the subject matter.
• Solutions appearing in your mind, especially the Eureka ones during late at night, are wronger than you imagine.
• Exhibitionism may reach mind numbing levels, loaded with contradicting information.
• Managers may act as zombies: All clueless, with who am I? Which company is this? How did I end up here? Why am I having all these problems? What should I do? All I know is my name, age and my joining date. Not to mention all the looking out the window and listening to the rain falling outside and the leaves rattling and all that creepy stuff.
• WOW cases – Too long winded, with no problems to begin or end with; mostly involving Japanese companies; designed to create envy and frustration in equal proportions.
• BS Cases: Seat belt and helmet mandatory for the serious reader; a pillow and a sheet will do just fine for the slackers.

I have to admit that I saw all these coming. And that too way back…

http://biju-blog.blogspot.com/2007/04/looks-like-mine-is-gone-case.html

Exhibit 1 – Case discussions in class

Prof: So what do you think Mr. X, of the PGPX corporation should do?

CP1: Sir, I think that is a tough one to answer.

Prof: Obviously. Why do you think we are here discussing this?

CP2: Good Question sir. Can I answer that?

CP1: No, what I meant was that there are so many different options that X has to consider. And “if you read the case very carefully” you can see that there are no right or wrong answers.

Prof: That is because you haven’t read the case carefully.

CP3: Sir, I had a very Eureka moment last night. X should close down his European operations.

Prof: But his company doesn’t even have European operations.

CP3: Nevertheless, close only but also. How about we acquire one and then close it down? A strategic acquisition, if you may…

CP4: Yeah… In Infosys…

CP5: Sir, if you listen to Jack Belch’s ‘Straight from the gut’, you can hear a very clear, Emmmm… Excuse me.

Prof: What do you think is the role of a General Manager?

CP5: Mostly comedy, sir. With some melodrama thrown in during appraisals…

CP6: Sir, there should be a third option…

Prof: Most definitely, but how about the first and the second?

CP6: Sorry, Sir. I am the Third Option Expert. Jumped in a little too soon.

CP7: Sir, I think X should take a well balanced approach by consulting all the stake holders and then on the basis of a detailed analysis of all the relevant, differential and critical considerations, should push for a win-win solution in the best interests of the share holders and employees, keeping the internal and external customers of the company in mind.

Prof: Excellent…that would mean…

Sorry, to burst the bubble sir…but that just means that we haven’t read the case yet…

The Kerala model keeps you in high spirits!!!

I remember an old Wipro recruitment ad, which told me how unfortunate I was to have not learnt driving from Michael Schumacher or batting from Sachin Tendulkar. But when it comes to Macro Economics I don’t think PGPX has left me with any room to complain. Our professor on this subject happens to be very much on top of things and incidentally, in addition to his day job of teaching duds, err.. dudes like me, he also finds time to sit in the sixth central pay commission. So needless to say, our whole class is excited to hear his experiences and views in setting our macroeconomic policies straight.

Today during class discussions, I got an opportunity to talk to the out-and-out capitalist in him about a contrarian view, the one that is presented by the famed Kerala macroeconomic model. I was not surprised that he was quick to dismiss that as a failed one.

So I got back to my drawing board and here is all that I could find in my attempt to pull it together.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_model

If you think that materialism, fuelled by consumption led economic growth as practiced in the west is the only way to prosperity, then you should read this article by Bill Mckibben.

What is True Development? The Kerala Model
http://www.ashanet.org/library/articles/kerala.199803.html
Some excerpts:

• Demographically, Kerala mirrors the United States on about one-seventieth the cash. It has problems, of course: There is chronic unemployment, a stagnant economy that may have trouble coping with world markets, and a budget deficit that is often described as out of control. But these are the kinds of problems you find in France. Kerala utterly lacks the squalid drama of the Third World--the beggars reaching through the car window, the children with distended bellies, the baby girls left to die.
• Kerala undercuts maxims about the world we consider almost intuitive: Rich people are healthier, rich people live longer, rich people have more opportunity for education, rich people have fewer children. We know all these things to be true--and yet here is a counter case, a demographic Himalaya suddenly rising on our mental atlas. It's as if someone demonstrated in a lab that flame didn't necessarily need oxygen, or that water could freeze at 60 degrees. It demands a new chemistry to explain it, a whole new science.
• In Kerala the birth rate is 40 percent below that of India as a whole and almost 60 percent below the rate for poor countries in general. In fact, a 1992 survey found that the birth rate had fallen to replacement level. That is to say, Kerala has solved one-third of the equation that drives environmental destruction the world over. And, defying conventional wisdom, it has done so without rapid economic growth--has done so without becoming a huge consumer of resources and thus destroying the environment in other ways.
• One-seventieth the income means one-seventieth the damage to the planet. So, on balance, if Kerala and the United States manage to achieve the same physical quality of life, Kerala is the vastly more successful society. Which is not to say that we could ever live on as little as they do--or, indeed, that they should. The right point is clearly somewhere in between.

Here are some additional resources:

Is There a Kerala Model?
http://chss.montclair.edu/anthro/julypap.html

Kerala: A Lesson In Light Living:
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC26/AtKisson.htm

Kerala State: A Social Justice Model
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/mm0795.08.html

Female-Supported Households: A Continuing Agenda for the Kerala Model?
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/anthro/febconf.html

The Relevance of the Kerala Model in the Emerging World Order
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/anthro/augpap.html

Is the Kerala Model Sustainable? Lessons from the Past
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/anthro/decconf.html

For all those guys out there who are still not convinced, let me take out my brahmastra. No statistical discourse on Kerala is complete without highlighting our per-capita-alcoholic consumption, which happens to be the highest in the country. If that doesn’t convince you that God’s Own Country is the happiest and the happening place around here, then no amount of Macro Economic mushrooming will. I rest my case…

PGPX Survival strategies!!!

With the term 1 and a 20% MBA under my belt, I think it is time that I documented for posterity, some of the PGPX survival strategies that I have learned so far. Without further ado let me get straight into it.

Deemphasizing grades: The PGPX game doesn’t even start unless you have this strategy firmly in place. And if you are one of those souls, who have trouble doing this, then I have only one advice for you. Please log off and start hitting the books right away, because it is never too early with Term 2 classes starting tomorrow.

Social Loafing (SL): Now that you are still with me, let me share with you the most powerful tool that is available to PGPX-ians, in acing their course and graduating with flying colors. If not for this strategy, PGPX would not have been an option for lesser mortals like me. For the uninitiated, SL is where you ride off on the effort of people of your syndicate group, who are more motivated, hungry and thirsty than you are. Yes, knowledge is what I am talking about and if these dear friends of yours happened to exit at my point above, then your case looks all the more promising.

Skimming: Now SL may work sweetly for group activities. But, how about all those long winding Harvard cases and tones of other reading material that you have to pre-process, to even get to a point where you can confidently attend your classes? This is where I prescribe skimming, to all those folks out there, who value their time enough to not spend it on reading things, which you are most likely to forget anyway, even before you hit the next page.

Skimming is an extreme art form, where you read the first and last line of a paragraph and anything else that might be written in bold to make sense of what the hell the author is talking about. And if you are the kind who believes in marginal utility, you can also pay attention to whatever that might be written in the margin or whereabouts as bonus material. But please make sure that you move on fast, completely ignoring any tables, figures, graphs or any other attention grabbing devices that the author might have put in to block your progress. Any slip up here and you will soon get trapped and will be forced to read each and every line in that page, chapter and sometimes even the whole book, and still end up as an utterly and thoroughly confused soul, with all your earlier productivity gains thrown out the window. I am telling you, the god isn’t in the details on this one and it ain’t worth the effort.

Class Participation: Now that you have done enough SL and ‘assimilated’ all the reading material and everything, it’s time to take your game to the center stage, the class and earn brownie points or what we call in technical terms as the class participation points. But remember, here you have to take things a little easy as it is a hotly contested field as I explained in one of my earlier posts.
http://biju-blog.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-party-cpiim-launched-with-much.html
Some of the profs are also very aggressive and a small misstep here can get your whole ass’imilation’ exposed.

The trick here is to hold it in for the initial 5-10 minutes and try to be a good listener. If you find this difficult, imagine as if you are the speaker and others are there just to hear you speak. Before you get started, the initial 5-10 minutes is for the rest of the folks to tell you what they would like you to speak about. Once you get a hang of this you can come out swinging. And it doesn’t matter whether you have anything to say or not. The most important thing is to stake your claim to fame by raising your hand or whatever else that catches the prof’s fancy and gets you the air time. And if you can work big-sounding but hollow words like apriori or dual slack into your talk, then you will be cooking with gas in more ways than one.

In the unfortunate event of your mind drawing a total blank at the inopportune moment that you are picked, there are always ways to score through unconventional ways, by opening with Sir, I have a question and proceeding to use any of the following tried and tested methods:

Can you explain that last sentence again? - This classical ploy draws its effectiveness from the inherent assumption that you have understood everything except the last sentence and you have also very effectively relinquished the mike and bought yourself some more time to play yourself back into the game.

Can’t there be a third option? - This is surprisingly strong because of the general rule that most of the time debates happen when there are two plausible options. But you got to be careful with this one because it can boomerang on you and you could end up working on the nonexistent third option yourself, right there, at a very short notice.

To be Continued…

Jest in Time @ PGPX!!!

It is that time of the term when you are just running from one exam to another with little reprieve in between. So, yes, the good news is that my first term as a back-to-school student is nearing its climax. But the anticlimax that has made this already harrowing end-term experience even more difficult is our institute’s philosophy of examination rigor, which can be summed up in as little words as this: “A system designed to fail, fails if it fails to fail”. If you think this hardly makes any sense, it can mean only one thing. You are not in touch with the most recent advancements in Operations Management and Just in time (JIT) concepts. But don’t worry. Help is very much at hand. My dear friend Raju has got you covered.

http://exploretime.blogspot.com/

Currently I am very busy chalking my poor performances against this POOR (Philosophy Of Over Rigor) pedagogy. And needless to say, this whole system has put the most of us in Deep JIT and we can’t wait for this ordeal (err… Sorry, I meant to say the rewarding learning experience) to get over. But to be fair, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Once this term gets over, we will have one full day’s worth of scheduled break before the next term starts. But that is also because it happens to be a Sunday. So all in all, things are looking pretty smooth for the next round of onslaught (read ‘term’) to start. With the next term, our first module of Building Blocks will come to an end. It is a totally tangential matter that I myself, have been more focused on Building Blogs; but for everyone their own.

From the way the IIMA machinery is quietly working in the background, I can already feel the sequential pull that is being exerted on the Academic Materials Supply Chain Management (AM SCM) system, all across the world, to bring in the thickest of books and the longest of cases for our next term. And to play my part in this AM SCM and counter balance this pull, I am already planning on exerting some push technology to get my old books and study materials out the door onto the streets so as to free up some valuable shelf space. And more importantly, we are also planning to apply some similar space freeing strategies to our mind by engaging in some spiritual pursuits, all as part of our knowledge management best practices. After all, unless you get rid of your old knowledge how will you acquire new knowledge? And by looking at our course outline, it is quite clear that there is a lot more that remains to be acquired. So the least we can do is to say cheers to that…

Continuous Wasting (time) at PGPX Corporation!!!

In May 2007, Biju Kappmeyer, one of the newly minted executives of PGPX Corporation, paused, hand over keyboard, while giving final shape to yet another one of his humungous blogs, even as he was getting ready for the third month of his already overloaded course schedule. Kappemeyer’s hesitation was not a sign of timidness about the massive stress that he was undertaking these days. In fact he had already signed up to spent upwards of 1 million Rupees last year to modernize his faculties, thereby committing to write off one full of year his life to obtain management education at one of the region’s premier management institutes. Rather, Kappmeyer paused only because he knew that PGPX was probably going to be the one last such opportunity of his life, to perform such no holds barred continuous wasting of time. Once PGPX was over, debt clearing economics would force Kappmeyer to do some heavy lifting in the corporate world for several years, before he will be able to roam free again. Given the relatively rapid pace in which time was flying these days, Kappmeyer wanted to convince himself one more time that his stone-bold continuous time wasting commitment at PGPX corporation would in fact assure him of a strong sense of accomplishment in the hotly contested education market for flat, steam rolled management graduates.

BK-ground
Born somewhere in the middle of nowhere during the tumultuous 1970s, Kappameyer or BK as he wanted his friends to call him, spent his early adulthood days building technological solutions for various North American corporations. But upon entering his middle ages, he was lured back into his home town by a flat world, only to be flattened further by a serious swell in the business development of outsourced IT projects that forced him into ‘management’ responsibilities of getting irrelevant work done using clueless people, not to mention at menial salaries. BK responded to this quagmire by coming up with a disruptive strategy of going back to school, hoping to rejoin the rat race later on, as a stud. Little did he know what the D in Disruptive stood for. And now he knows the D-key.

As he was grappling with the current dry state that he was finding himself in, BK realized that some of the recent developments that were happening in the market place were indeed much more disruptive than he ever dreamt of. Things were starting to get topsy-turvy as the hours spent sleeping in the room was reducing and that in the class room was increasing exponentially. With each passing day, the number of pages that had to be read in preparation for the classes was skyrocketing and his market share in the total knowledge space that was up for grabs was dwindling.

Feeling powerless at the onslaught, BK started pondering over the various alternative strategies that were available at his disposal. Should he spend more time with his syndicate group, so that he can free-ride and smooch off their knowledge? Are the relevant costs in procuring black books greater than the money value of time saved, amortized over the period of one year? Should he cut down on all the pushing, pulling and pressing activities that he was currently undertaking and consider wrestling with 200 pound books as the only work out that he needs? Is there an alternative technology available to deliver intravenous caffeine drips to keep oneself awake when classes were going on? Confused as he was, he knew there had to be a better way, other than the highway to ‘busy’ness excellence that he was currently on.

Despite all his concerns and the various alternative approaches that were staring at him in the face, BK also felt that what he really decided to do will have only very less impact on the eventual results that he would end up with. He reflected, “I am here only for the learning and nothing else is important. One can only do so much reading in so little time and for the last half hour I have been strategizing my brains out. Let me unwind by playing some TT on my way to the gym.”

While BK was pondering over his sorry plight and proceeding with his continuous wasting strategies, the glorious uncertainties of business education was plotting his imminent downfall. In a remote corner, not far away from where he was sitting, surprise quizzes were being prepared to test the very learning that BK was claiming that he was here for. And needless to say, they were strong enough to render him insensible, before sending a heart-stopping current through his torso to knock him out cold; with the slicing and dicing not very far behind.

Zach!!! What the hell is wrong with you bloody?? Sorry buddy…

This was one hell of a week, with all the windmill erection problems in our operations management case study, and the ill-fitted cockpit problems in the Boeing assembly line and all that. Believe me, people at our age should not be facing such vexing problems. As our Strategic Human Resources Management Prof is wont to say, we have more than 600 years of combined experience in our class and most of us have done similar things before, without any problems whatsoever and that too, on countless number of occasions. But still, when it mattered the most we were just not able to stand up and be counted. What can I say? Performance anxiety may be.

We went long and deep looking for causes, but things didn’t become clearer till we got our Management Communication assignment graded. And it was no coincidence that most of us scored much lower than what we expected. The writing was on the wall. We all desperately needed to get some hands-on training to improve our abilities in the area of management communications.

I had earlier itself earmarked this as a very important focus area for my life as a future senior manager and I decided to put some serious remedial work into this over the week-end. As I could see, the only way to lift up my sagging spirits was to rewrite my assignment all over again. To put things in context, here is what I had to do:

http://www.businesscommunication.org/publications/bcq/cases/Rocky_Mountain.pdf

And here is how I am going to prove my business communication and persuasion skills to persuade Zach on blog, about the benefits of exercising so that he won’t close the company fitness center down.

Even if you are a little weak in the heart, you are advised to skip this sample of pure unadulterated persuasion power at work. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you. Anyways, here it is:

Hey Zach,

What’s shaking big guy?

I am shooting this mail as I just couldn’t believe my ears when I heard all the hare-brain ideas that you are throwing up these days. What the hell is wrong with you buddy? Have you gone bonkers??? Out of your mind??? Then??? I know you may be VP, operations and all that, but looks to me like you are just mucking things up over there.

People may think that you are all likeable, smart, creative, and all that, but closing down a fitness center in the name of profits? That is just plain ridiculous dude, not to mention downright menial and petty. Have you ever heard of the WOW best practice of Operations Management– “Don’t fix it, if it ain’t broken; just say your WOWs and move on.” Come on, think about it. How hard can that be?

What do you mean, you find exercise a bore and a waste of time? I think you are just plain lazy to get off your over-sized posterior (technical language used to preserve official memo flavor) and trying to pass it off as routine 18-hour work days. You need to get a life my friend and I am telling you, you ain’t getting any slimmer either. When was the last time you stood up on a weighing machine? I mean, without using any props?

Before you get all worked up and shoot the messenger, let me tell you that you are getting me all wrong here. Now if you let me, I do have some persuasive arguments that will convince you of the kind of dubious brain waves that you are trying to sell off here as operational improvement initiatives. I know you have a fetish for numbers and stuff and that is precisely why I thought I will hit you up with some good ones. Here, take a load of this!!!

In a controlled study conducted by me personally, I could find that the 10 percent of our employees who used our company gym three times a week or more were exercising at least 50% more than the 25 percent of those who used the gym only twice a week. See…, are you happy now? Do you see what I am talking about? Seriously man, I am not making all this up. Why would I even do something like that? Let me tell you, the statistical evidence on this case is pretty compelling.

And I haven’t even started yet. There are numerous scientific research references published on the web, that I want to run by you; like this surgeon general’s warning about the risks of not getting enough exercise.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28382

What do you make of that, big fellow? Aren’t things starting to get a little clearer?

And don’t even get me started on absenteeism and sick days and stuff like that. For starters, will you believe me if I said that among the employees who visit our fitness center regularly, the number of sick days has dropped by 5 percent and absenteeism by more than 50% percent. Sweeeet, don’t you think? But to be fair, this is also because, some of our ‘sick’ guys, who earlier used to shirk work regularly, have now started showing up at the gym regularly, to do some old fashioned ogling, if you know what I mean. But then again how can you blame them? Have you checked out the gym lately?

Anyways, let me rest my case by re-iterating that I don’t want to hear any of your silly arguments anymore. I say, get your sorry ‘posterior’ over to the gym at the earliest and I will show you what I am talking about.

Adios,
Joe Mirola.

Lost graduate in dizziness management!!!

One month into my journey, I am already finding myself as a Lost Graduate in Dizziness Management. I am also clearly seeing that the famed IIMA rigor has steam rolled almost every one of us - except Roopam, who ‘can’t feel the pressure’ as per his own admission. Since the time that I have been here, there are very less things that I haven’t studied. But ironically, there are even fewer things that I have learned. Still, being the trooper that I am, I thought I will share my learnings for the benefit of my friends who all are looking at end term exams pretty soon. My learnings have been categorized under individual subject names for easy and quick reference.

Management Communication – Our management communications course taught us that communication is like sex. The analogy was taken even further, by noting that one doesn’t need any training to engage in either one of them. But in the same breath we were reminded that in order to fully enjoy both and get the results that you want, you are better off getting yourself proper training. What better way to ensconce the importance of communications training in the life of a manager. I immediately came on board.

BS (Biju Script) –On a side note, my heart goes out to all my single friends who have been dealt a rough hand, in their attempt to improve their communication skills. Also now it all makes sense why Bill Clinton used to insist that oral communication is no communication at all.

Modeling for Decisions – When you are not able to make much progress in modeling, here is a tip that is sure to work wonders - pull down the lungi and lift up the shirting. Believe me, it really works like a charm.

BS – This learning applies mainly to the Linear programming case study on optimizing the production levels of Lungis and shirting of Panchathantra Corporation, so as to maximize its profits. We are more than a month into our course but not even a single day has passed without discussing the nitty-gritty of Lungi production. As a regular user of Lungi, I can’t even begin to tell you the kind of pressure this is putting on me, as I am slowly acquiring the sub-brand of a Lungi man among my class mates.

Coming back to the lungi-shirting production improvement suggestion, I will have to tell you that once we implemented it, we could really see the company’s earnings shoot up. A lot of Malluwood models have also reported a similar surge in their earnings, using this very same approach, making this a definite one for the ages.

Financial Reporting & Analysis – When it comes to accounting, putting two and two together will no longer restrict you to just four. Instead you will be able to get, whatever it is that you want to get. Sadly, this is not applicable when you are doing accounting quizzes, where you wake up to the painful realization that numbers do start with zero and other numbers in the vicinity are much farther than they appear.

Strategic Cost Management – There is a cost that you will have to pay for accumulated self-deprecation. You will never be able to write it off fully as an expense and it will continue to haunt you as an ongoing liability. Newbie bloggers, please take note. And people with the name Ramesh, better think twice before applying to IIMA, because there is a costing case called ‘Ramesh and You’, which is so out there that you will have to hear even close friends swearing at your name, within no time.

Analysis of Data – Data can be mostly classified into three main categories: Lies, damn lies and statistics. And the last category can help you create even better sounding lies using mathematical techniques like regression, correlation, abnormal distribution, hypothesis testing etc. All in all a fun subject that will leave you with some mean tendencies to reevaluate your existence on this planet.

Assessing and Creating Customer Value – Customers rarely know what they want. So as good marketers it is our responsibility to make sure that you make them pay for their ignorance, with money that they may not have, to buy things that they will not need. And to help you do that, please feel free to feign friendliness and talk to them to get to know them better. Just watch out for oncoming cows, that is all.
http://biju-blog.blogspot.com/2007/04/marketing-survey-and-holy-cow.html

Firms and Markets – If some of your privately held assets are not showing the kind of growth that you would like them to, immediately start looking out for a limited liability partnership that can help you explore inherent economies of scale. Ok, if you think that this is a patently risky approach to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, you haven’t heard about a gentleman by the name Nash and the games that he has played, all in the name of attaining equilibrium.

Organizational Behavior – Enough said.
http://biju-blog.blogspot.com/2007/04/this-ob-is-making-me-stink.html

Designing Operations to Meet Demand – Japanese guys may never be fully satisfied with their productivity, even when they are assembling laptops at a rate faster than MS windows can boot up. That is when you as a self-righteous Indian have to step up to the plate and deliver the bad news that they have to lay off work and get a life. In operations management parlance, the technical approach for doing this consists of looking in their general direction and saying ‘Wow’. This is surprsingly effective in shocking them into embarrassment, even to the extent of causing them to quickly abandon their workstations and run for a much needed bathroom break. But your do-good satisfaction will be short lived when you get the Kaizen shock of your life on seeing some of them return with laptops that they managed to assemble on their laps, while they were just sitting there, engaged in an otherwise unproductive pursuit.

Obviously, these are all way too much learning within a short span of a month. No wonder I am getting all dizzy in a tizzy....