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….