The dilemma in humor which is not so funny!!!

Humor, when it involves people, almost always ends up hurting, one person or the other, some way or the other. This hurt may be up to varying degrees, starting from a fleeting desire in the subject to get right back, all the way up to a seething feeling of being wronged against, that motivates the subject to keep looking for the next available opportunity to take revenge.

The person creating the humor is also exposed to two direct reactions to his/her creation:

1. First one, which is positive, which happens when the humor is well received and consists of appreciations from the audience, and sometimes from the subject itself, who truly enjoyed the act of humor and commends the creator on his/her ingenuity and wit. This is the aspect of humor which motivates the humorist to try his trick for one more time, ever more.
2. Second, which is negative, comes from the subject, who has suffered a loss of face, because of what he/she just went through and that too publicly. This is especially so because, humor creates laughter largely because of an inherent element of exaggeration in it, mostly of the subject’s apparent shortcomings, usually in the areas of intelligence, character, appearance etc., all of which are very near and dear to every human being’s heart.

Most of the time, the above two opposing reactions counterbalance each other, and the group finds itself in a better state of dynamics, than it started out with, mainly because of the explicit value created by humor. But in some cases, especially when there is too much exaggeration and that too at a really personal level or because of the specificities of the emotional make up or mood of the subject, the negative reaction can overwhelm the positive reaction and end up spoiling the group dynamics. And unfortunately, the creator of the humor will not be able to judge beforehand, how each situation will play out because of the inherent complexity of the underlying dynamics.

This gives rise to the ethical dilemma that confronts every humorist, every time something funny pops up in his head, whether it is a funny remark or a hilarious idea about a person whom he/she cares about.

Should he/she attempt to humor the group, by going ahead with his/her creativity in a public forum, at the risk of hurting sentiments and fostering negativity, in the subject and may be the group at large? Or should he/she err on the side of caution and keep his/her thoughts to himself?

In addition to this, there is also a very personal dilemma, which confronts the creator, at a really selfish level. Is there a high probability of backlash from this attempted humor, especially if it bombs, that can boomerang onto the face of the creator itself thereby making him/her loose ground as a ‘good-natured‘ group member? If so, should the creator allow this to suppress his/her motivation itself to be funny?

Now, these are really tough questions to ponder and to me, there are no easy answers.

But there is always the easy way out, of reducing one’s exposure to the downside of humor by attempting to stay anonymous. But, in spite of this being a very tempting option, it almost always ends up creating a suboptimal equilibrium in the group, one that replaces an opportunity for harmless humor and camaraderie with harmful murmur and resentment.

On the other hand, isn’t it better to err on the side of humor and ask for forgiveness, if things don’t pan out as you expected? After all, you have shown the courage and character to own up your creation and there is no better way to start building relationships, than from a failed but genuine attempt at humor.

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…