This OB is making me stink!!!

For those who are thinking that there is a typo in the title and I meant BO, I assure you that this post is going to be a revelation. Let me start by sharing with you my growing realization that even OB (Organizational Behavior) can stink you up real bad. And the risk is even higher in my case when I combine my organizational misbehavior with non-existent case knowledge, all due to my ‘busi’ness to even skim through the reading material. Here are some of my recent PGPPX escapades which, if nothing else, have definitely enhanced the humor quotient of my classmates.

Our marketing professor, who also hails from Kerala, was the first to sling mud at brand ‘Biju’. He started out pretty peacefully by praising Kerala as ‘God’s Own Country’ and all that. But sadly, he refused to stop there and went further on to praise Malayalees as Devil’s own people and completed his brand positioning exercise by putting the spotlight on Kerala as a geriatric state. For my new found PGPX friends, all this news couldn’t have come any sooner. Finally they could put two and two together to discover the big TWO amongst them. (For the uninitiated, let me clarify that ‘Biju’ in Gujarathi seems to have a meaning of TWO. To all those locals who educated me on this little Gujarathi, Mein Angrezi mein Kahthi hoon Ki ‘I love you’. Because finally I can stop trying to be No. 1 and enjoy just being ‘Biju’)

By the way, being Biju is just getting tougher by the day over here. Like our ‘Firms and Markets’, professor who wants to explain every little economics concept by positioning me as an Orange farmer. I fail to see any connection here but that could also be because of my cluelessness when it comes to all those marginal and elastic concepts that he keeps discussing in the class. Like the other day when he was asking me for an example of a perfectly elastic product that I buy. I had innerwear in my mind and an embarrassed look on my face and lo and behold an Orange farmer was born. The prof went on to humor me by informing that the Orange market is perfectly elastic and asked me how much Orange I would produce so as to maximize my profits. I tried to minimize my losses by generating some random numbers but soon he pronounced the obvious verdict that I am exploiting my labor and my competition is eating into my oranges. I wish I could exclaim, ‘Now, you are telling me…’ and squeeze some orange peels into my eyes to hide all the tears of joy, but life ain’t that easy these days. In fact the situation is getting so bad that our professor doesn’t even start his classes anymore unless I firmly assume the sitting duck position in my chair to play the role of a perfectly elastic Orange farmer.

To top it all off, brand ‘Biju’ was taken to the cleaners after one of our OB role-plays which had me negotiating for melons, the juice of which I was supposed to use in some medical research to cure the world off some mysterious disease. But instead, I ended up getting the juice of my brain sucked dry by my friendly neighbor and tough negotiator, Sumantra Naik. Very early into the negotiation itself, I learnt to my unpleasant surprise that like the Nairs, Mr. Naik also packs in a mean negotiator within his puny frame. I think ‘Nai’ seems to be the key word here, which in Malayalam means DOG and true to name, the Nai R and the Nai K ended up fighting like true dogs of the highest pedigree. And the fact that we were looking for different portions of the melon, he the peel and me the juice, were also conveniently ignored by us, in our focused attempt to punch the living day lights out of each other. Being the true negotiator that he is, he also kept all his cards close to his chest. But I am proud to come clean and say that even though I was desperately looking for melons, being the true gentleman that I am, I refused to let my eyes stray. As they say, nice guys finish last and all I have now is the pride of not having caved in under extreme temptation; when there were melons to be had and lives to be saved.

On a side note, some of my classmates also think that I am behaving very much like a baby in the class; dozing off now and then and clamoring for attention when I am awake; by asking inane questions and dishing out half baked analyses.

Where is that lifebuoy plus when I desperately need it????

70 Angry Men, 2 of them knocked down!!!

If you are one of those guys who have always tried to get out of jury duty by giving the weirdest of excuses, you ought to watch this movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_angry_men

It will instantly make you realize the kind of smart decisions that you have always made and you will immediately want to pat yourself on the back, how much ever inflexible you may be.

But for us, the conscientious PGPX citizens, there was no backing out of this movie duty, which formed a mandatory part of our Organizational Behavior (OB) course module. The fact that the screening was scheduled in the afternoon, after we had taken our first official quiz - on accounting and one which had such toe crushing yorkers, that almost 10% of the class failed to open their accounts - made matters even worse.

A quick word on how the movie was positioned by its marketers. The following were the tag lines displayed on the movie poster in Wikipedia – “Life is in their hands, death is in their minds”, “It explodes like 12 sticks of dynamite”. Talk about creating customer value out of thin air. Dude, this stuff is gonna rock….

And rock it did. From our chairs that is. The first one to hit the floor was our ‘pregnant Shaayar’ Nitin, who appeared to have fallen asleep on the wheel. It is only ironic that inspite of him being our cultural rep, and an ardent movie buff, he was found wanting in his endurance to soak in the jury deliberations and stay awake at the same time. The whole class was very eager to make sure that he was OK, and once he stood up from the floor and looked around in a half-sleepy, confused manner not knowing where he was or what exactly was happening, we were more than happy to give him a grand round of applause to express our solidarity behind his decision to get back in the ring and continue the fight.

On a side note, he thoroughly deserves the applause and the support he got as he also happens to be our OB (Official Birthday) guy, who sacrifices his sleep and goes around in the middle of the night with a cake in hand to wake people up and lead them in a procession to attack fellow PGPX-ians on their birthdays, so as to give them a friendly dose of Birthday bums and amateur Shaayari. This I have to say, is a bitter sweet experience indeed, as known to more than half a dozen people who have already experienced this firsthand and to scores of others loosing sleep over the impending OB treatment they are going to get from Nitin on their birthdays. Me, I am already seeing Nitin in my nightmares and have postponed my birthday indefinitely and am currently undergoing SD (Shaayar-Detoxification) therapy. But in case, there are guys out there who can’t wait to kick me in the a#$, for all the stuff that I write up, please feel free to see me in person and I will try to honor your request.

Back to the movie which dragged on and on and one could easily see the emotional turmoil that my dear classmates were undergoing, not knowing, whether the verdict will be guilty or not guilty - if the teaching assistants caught them dozing off. Some people did nod off here and there, but somehow they were all successful in hanging onto their chairs and avoiding more untoward incidents.

But once the movie drew to a happy ending with the teaching-assistant-jury getting ready to pronounce a unanimous not-guilty verdict, things took another ugly turn. This time it was one of our key international participants and International Immersion rep Dhiraj, who had assumed a precarious balancing position with both feet off the ground to watch 'angry men', lost it and went down with a huge thud. What to say? He learnt the valuable OB lesson of taking a balanced position while watching such emotionally charged movies. But thank goodness, he also survived the fall, and recovered in time to submit the Joint Learning Paper about his ordeal.

Based on this movie experience, I am working on a new OB game which will be rolled out to PGPX-3, under the brand name – Desert Survival- Part II. This game will ask its participants to list their order of preference of things that they would like to take in order to survive the twin onslaught of somnolence and academic rigor that is in store for them as part of their curriculum. Here is a sample discussion that I have in mind:

Participant 1: "I am taking helmet as my first item as I don’t want to bang my head on the floor like Dhiraj Bhai."

Participant 2: "That is why I want you to pick the seat belt first, so that we can survive such edge-of-the-seat thrillers without falling off. "

Participant 3: "I agree. And I think we need that sun glasses too, so that we that we don’t get caught and loose out on our class participation grades. "

Participant 4: "And I will pack in that parachute so that I can jump off the building, just in case Nitin comes looking for me on my birthday… "

And they all slept happily ever after…..

Marketing Survey and the Holy cow!!!

Just finished my first marketing survey!!! And let me tell you the results don’t look too promising at all. It all began when our marketing professor challenged us to get into the mind of the ‘great Indian Customer’ and we (I and Indraneel) thought we were ready. Little did we realize that the minds that we were looking to get into have already been pawned off to ‘Big Box retailers’.

Dressed in our PGPX T-shirts and armed with nothing more than a disarming smile and the PGPX notepad, we hit the neighborhood retail stores early last week-end. But no sooner than we had approached our first customer, with our tell-tale ‘marketing survey signals’, the friendly staff came over to break the unfriendly news that they don’t allow customer surveys. Not inside the stores, not in their premises, and as we realized towards the end of our gig, not even on the streets in front of the stores.

Some stores were pretty straight forward in their refusal to allow us anywhere near their customers. But some others were even crueler. They decided to give us a whole tour of their facility, and a peek into their messed up organization structures all in the name of getting a formal permission to do customer interviews. To cut a long story short, we ran from pillar to post and then from post to pillar, ultimately deciding to give up on the formal permission and take our game to the streets. Now what happened on the streets? That is the suspense of the whole story, but before I go into that, let me jot down some of our key retail domain findings.

If you ever have to work on an assignment that involves getting competitive intelligence on how big retailers run their shop, all you need to do is to show up at one of their stores and pretend as if you want to interview their customers. You can start your retail expedition right at the cash and bag counter and if things go as per plan like it did for us, you will soon be talking to the CEO of the company at his head quarters.

And he won’t mind answering any of your questions or spend any amount of time with you, provided you don’t ask him permission to talk to his customers. (After all, customer is the King and you can’t talk to the King that easily…) He may even ask you to talk to his Board of directors, before he can let you talk to his customers, but by the time you would have already gotten your money’s worth and would be in a forgiving mood, even to the extent to think that he is being cute with his reasoning.

Inside the stores we found many of our fellow PGPX-ians also in the same state - blacklisted as marketing surveyors and reduced to just being customers. They had already decided to hide their surveying frustrations by buying anything and everything that they could see around, so as to fit into the customer crowd and not stand out as surveyors. So we thought we will try and get into their minds even though it was very clear to us as to what had triggered their purchasing decisions.

Me: Hey Vikram, you seem to have bought a lot of stuff, can I talk to you for a minute.

Vikram: No problem. But before that would you like to buy a pillow from me?

Me: (Puzzled by how my luck was not getting any better) But, why would you want to walk around selling pillows in a retail store? (I was wondering whether he had hit upon some strange business model by applying the market segmenting fundaas we had learnt at PGPX)

Vikram: (Kind of expecting my question) I was also here for the survey, but was stopped short of connecting with any customers. So I was just walking around and then I saw this ‘buy one get one free’ pillow deal. One thing led to another and now it looks like I have one too many pillows than I need.

Me: Tell me something which I don’t know (to which Vikram responded in his trade mark style)

Vikram: You are very handsome….

Out on the streets, we were a little luckier and were able to hit up with a customer who was able to empathize with our plight as he himself was an MBA and would have completed umpteen such surveys of the third degree in order to lay hands on his degree. He was very articulate and gave us all straight forward answers to our not-so-straight forward questions, like:

Me: Can you please tell us who usually plays the initiator, influencer, decider, buyer and user roles in your typical buying process?

MBA man: (Oozing with self deprecating humility) It’s all me, man. (He is also palpably excited about the fact that his wife is not around to let the cat out of his shopping bag.)

The ‘marketing survey – street style’, was about to wind up and we were getting ready to split when out-of-nowhere the ‘COW’ entered the scene. And mind you, this was more of a bull than a cow and there was nothing holy about it. For a minute I had given up all hopes of escape and just froze in my surveying position. The MBA man immediately got into his car and drove away and we were cowed down by the latest beast entering our market surveying escapade.

Now, luckily for us, Vikram was exiting the store right at that moment and the cow got distracted by the ‘big pillows’ that he was carrying and we could press the ‘escape’ button from the scene to save our lives. Thanks Vikram.

Now, on to more learnings. I was reasonably sure that this COW is on the Star Bazaar pay rolls, with the sole responsibility to discourage PGPX-ians from conducting market surveys on the streets in front of the store. (We later confirmed this best practice from their CEO, while we were meeting up with him to ask his permission). And this cow, I have to say, has done a tremendous job in executing its responsibility. I for one, would definitely not dare to go anywhere near Star Bazaar with anything even closely resembling a notepad. No sir, I don’t want to get my life, err.. hands dirty.

Not with the kind of ‘Black Cow’ protection that retailers are offering their customers from Market Surveyors of the PGPX kind.

A new party, CPII(M) launched with much fanfare!!!

Reporting from PGPX II @ IIMA, I am happy to announce that within a week of reaching the campus, the esteemed members of my batch have launched a new political party, the CPII(M), better known as the CPinIIM. And ladies and gentlemen, as one of the founding members and executive leaders of the Class Participation Party, I present to you our symbol, the “raised hand”.

Our party has been founded on the seemingly bullet-proof premise, that the best way to make oneself the darling of the professors and thereby enhance one’s learning experience is to interrupt them while they are trying to do their job. Our manifesto envisions a total “go-slow” on our famed academic rigor and we intend to accomplish this through our designated CIOs (Chief Interruption Officers) who are deployed strategically all around the class room. Some of these leaders are so good in what they can do that they even lend a “raised hand” to interrupt professors who have already been obstructed to more than half an hour behind schedule, struggling to rush through the material, all the while the next professor is waiting outside, and breathing down their neck.

We may have a million (=10L) reasons not to, but that doesn’t stop us from going up in arms at the slightest of behests, whether to ask the silliest of questions or to share with the professors a lesson or two from our vast knowledgebase of age old experience. I am sure that our adcom is definitely ruing the process by which they looked for substantial experience to enable class participation, because what we have bargained for ourselves seems to be more of the substandard kind.

These hand raising “andolons” together with the dog fighting that keeps happening whenever study groups get together to discuss cases have virtually ensured that the only thing that we are in the risk of taking away from campus at the end of the year will be the pounds that we are gaining from our structured interactions with the IMDC mess. Everything else has been brought to a grinding halt by the total strike that has been enforced by CPII(M) and its fearless leaders. Talk about a class struggle... And our demand: nothing short of world peace, liberty and equality for all, and last but not the least, an A+ in CP for every party hard worker of our rank and file.

The only downside that we are seeing to all these party action of ours is that some of our mates are already giving our party the “raised hand”, with most of their fingers pointing downwards except the middle one. They seem to think that we are interfering with their learning. Anyways we were too busy ‘class participating’ instead of participating in the management communications class, where non-verbal signals were discussed.

So going full steam ahead with our manifesto, I request one and all, to please do Vote for the “raised hand” the next time, whether you know the answer or the question or neither. After all, we have nothing to loose other than what we have already lost - the million.

Looks like mine is a 'Gone Case'

Our level of activity last week was so slow that except for eating and sleeping, the only other thing that we had on our “plate” was to take care of our physical and mental faculties and make sure that we were in tip-top shape to handle the famed IIMA rigor. And thankfully we were able to accomplish this by engaging in some co-curricular activities that the institute had arranged for us, like weightlifting (carrying all the study material from PGPX office to the room), aerobic exercises (washing clothes) and puzzle solving (configuring our network connections) etc. We were also blessed with “unlimited talk time” on our new mobile connections, when our inter-group talks to finalize our mobile connection plans continued “unlimited” with no end in sight. What can I say? Whoever said paradise lost hasn’t been on the IIMA new campus in the last week of March where camaraderie elevates to such giddy heights that junta even starts hitting up on random strangers in neighborhood grocery stores, to make sure that they don’t loose an opportunity to “get-to-know” a fellow PGPX participant.

But unexpectedly, the April fool’s day arrived as a rude shock and threw all that camaraderie right out the window. All it took for the faculty to do us in was to toss some biscuits in our general direction and I could see with my naked eyes how my esteemed fellow participants with substantial experience were transformed into canines fighting tooth and nail over how biscuit companies should be run. The IIMA world class infrastructure made sure that these big fights were arranged in air conditioned syndicate rooms where the participants could come out swinging on the “biscuit case study”.

I personally couldn’t contribute a lot to these fights as my own individual preparation had taken some unexpectedly tragic downturns the previous night. It was late at night when I finally picked up the case and as my ill-luck would have it, this case study had some extremely graphic and unwanted details about how biscuits are baked from flour, vanaspathi, sugar etc. To cut a long story short, with each reading attempt, I started raiding my fridge and ended up finishing my whole month’s supply of biscuits, not to mention anything else that was around with sugar or flour in it. The realization that some of the questions at the end of the case were googlies like “What would they like to give their sons when they grew up?” also didn’t make matters any easier. How about giving some biscuits.., maybe? I don’t know. I for one, don’t even know what I would like to give my children when they grow up, forget Alok and Co. It didn’t take long to realize that it was a “gone case” and I hit the sack with vengeance, leaving Alok gupta and his little brothers to wrestle with their biscuit case on their own.

Anyways, I am rest assured that biscuit-king Alok Kumar Gupta will be all right because if not for me there will be hundreds of aspiring consultants ready to look out for him and his troubled biscuit empire. Good for him. But I am not so sure about my case though. Especially when I think about the eventualities that might arise, if God forbid, one of my future cases to analyze happens to be on ‘Kingfisher’ airlines or something. I may end up running to get my “case” in the middle of the night. Considering the current dry state that I am in, I understand the preparation that may needed to tackle this “case method”, and hence I have decided to start working on it right away before it is too late.

And this case I need delivered @ my doorstep. :)

PGPX II takes relationship building to the next level!!!

This just in: the PGPX guys are getting along famously well and all of us are really getting overwhelmed in our excitement to build long lasting relationships. Believe me, in this effort of our’s, we are leaving no stone unturned. For example the following is a true story which chronicles the trials and tribulations that our friend Ram had to undergo in bonding with PGPX guys popping up left, right and centre in the greater Ahmedabad region.

The three musketeers (me, Anuj and Ram) were out shopping at the network neighborhood Star Bazzaar and we were delighted to find that the PGPX factor among the customer crowd was a little on the higher side. So much so that every other guy in the store was a PGPX guy, outnumbering even the store employees. And needless to say we were having a ball of a time shopping it up and building active friendships.

That is when Ram spotted a typical PGPX candidate (middle aged, good looking, well dressed, with a pleasing demeanor) and was quick to pounce on the bonding opportunity.

Ram (offering a firm but polite handshake): Hi, I am Ram

Stranger (with a very bewildered but friendly smile on his face): Hi, I am Mahesh

Ram (All excited with the progress he is making): So when did you reach Ahmedabad?

Stranger (puzzled by the lack of direction, this interaction was taking): I have always been in Ahmedabad

Ram (Piling on the questions with no let up in the horizon): PGPX right?

Stranger (dumbfounded by how his vocabulary was being challenged by a new word, but managed to do some quick thinking on the feet and kind of guessed that this might be a new educational qualification being thrown at him. He obviously didn’t like how his qualifications were being questioned, openly in a grocery store and that too by strangers who have just met him up. He was also clearly apologetic on his face with the growing realization that the weaknesses in his current educational background might be exposed any time): No, I am an ICWA.

Ram (still not ready to let up): That is great. Finance guys are the best of our batch.

Meanwhile, the witnesses (me and Anuj) were totally getting jealous by how Ram was able to pick PGPX participants up randomly from among strangers and bond with them in real time, all the while with a “guys don’t try this at home” look. We were making mental notes and also getting ready to give Ram a hero’s ovation once he will be back amongst us after his bonding escapades.

But the stranger was loosing the plot rapidly and he stopped short of taking the conversation further and that is when Ram finally decided to have a semblance of doubt that this poor chap could also be a “Not PGPX, just shopping” participant. Some more cross questionings later Ram’s worst fears were proven true and we all had to beat a hasty retreat from the store in a hurry.

Morals of the Story:

Relationship building best practice:

If he looks like, walks like, talks like and shops like PGPX material, it still gives us no right to cross question strangers on their educational qualifications, especially when they are trying to get their weekly groceries done.

Retail domain tip for the day:

Commitment fees: 2L
Course fees : 8L
Caution deposit : 25, 000
Dumbfounding grocery shoppers using “PGPX”: Priceless

Some things, they don’t teach you at Harvard; there is only the PGPX....