Back to Campus, Back to Friends!

Devi, Shivani and I @ CR11, our Class Room!

Over the course of my unnecessarily elaborate life, currently cruising along the wrong side of fifties, I have been fortunate enough to attend very, many Weekend Parties, many, many Alma Mater Reunions, and not a small number of New Year Celebrations as well!

But never have I gotten together with a bunch of friends and family, to do all three of the above, all at one go!😎

Yes, last weekend was when we, the PGPX2, got together and killed those three Big Birds, in one stone; a uniquely magical feat that we could pull off, only because this stone, which was even bigger than a Capstone, was thrown by some of our very best: Our dashingly debonair Cultural Rep Nitin Beohar and his even better half, Prakarti!

Quite obviously, I cannot think of writing about our event before I thank this Power Duo for their immense contributions towards making all this happen, but at the same time, I am also not going into praising them here for their impressive talent, immeasurable energies, immaculate execution and all, only because I’m afraid I’ll soon start running out of words, meandering into blah blah blah… which is never really a pretty sight.

So here I am, starting and stopping with a simple: Thank you Nitin and Prakrati for everything!!!🙏

Now the best thing about our reunion in pretty elementary, straightforward terms is that whatever we had done during our One year in campus, Fifteen years ago; we managed to REDO all of them, all over again, in just two days straight and that too with an even bigger gusto!

Yes, we Sang, we Danced, we Played Cricket, Football, Badminton, Tennis, we Swam in the pool, we met in Syndicate rooms to finish off ‘bottlenecks’, and then we went looking for late night Tea Leaves, mostly because we were uninterested in sleeping outside of our classroom hours, only to top it all off, by cracking open a business case the very next day and using it to argue with our professor, just for old times’ sake!

Might be a surprise to many of you, but if I was asked to pick just one ‘event’ as the best of the entire lot, I would have to keep it Saral. Yes, Saral Sir took such an engaging and ‘enlightening’ session on the ‘Magic Pin’ case that I had a real epiphany about what IIMA means to me and how I will never ever grow tired of wanting to come back here time and time again.

Now don’t get me wrong, reading those 26 pages of the case, full of random numbers, fancy words, confusing charts and distracting pictures, was a lot of Pain indeed, which I will easily call the ‘Magic Pain’, and several times I found myself looking out the window, just to jump off and end it all, but the thrill of doing ‘CP’ without understanding the case, having read only bits and pieces here and there, was too good to pass up and that kept me going against all odds. As they say, quitters never win and winners never quit, but those who never quit and never win ends up scoring some big time CP credits!😉

As you all know, in our past life we had plenty of motivational speakers addressing us in class and this time around that role was played to the hilt by none other than our very own Penguin published author Amit Agarwal!

So down-to-earth and humble was he in how he shared his ‘Small is Big’ Story and so articulate was he in passing on his learnings to us that we soon started losing the ability to see any small, small things around. Everything started to appear really Big; a perspective that was worth its weight in gold, when we ran up against some unexpected supply demand mismatch with our Syndicate Room fuel supply, wherein we had to endure some really unfortunate but strictly enforced dosage control limits.

Yes, after a point, Smalls were the only ones we had, to pass it around, and the situation got so bad that we were about to write up our tear-jerking experiences into a new Case Study under the title / subtitle: ‘Tragic Pin: Small is not Bad. But Large is better’!

Luckily, that’s when Amit’s ‘Small is Large’ perspective came to our rescue and with that kind of an attitude, our altitude was only going to go ‘higher and higher’ as we kept on living it Large! Thank you, Amit Bhai!😍

Last but not the least is when I try to capture our in-house Steve Jobs, Lalit’s spectacular session!😇

Now, I couldn’t make heads or tails of all the Decimal points he made, but one thing I can tell you is that he can easily introduce himself like James Bond, saying “I am Jobs, Lalit jobs”, with the way he was handing out job offers left, right and center to PGPX folks.

Now don’t call me a conspiracy theorist and all, but I have an eerie feeling that this guy is slowly planning to recruit our entire batch into his company, which is more of a conglomerate now.

He also seems to be quite unperturbed by the fact that the last time someone tried to do such mass recruiting tactics with PGPX2, it didn’t end well, and finally one of the richest brothers in the world, Mukesh Bhai had to come forward with hundreds of crores to bail that gentleman out!

But then again, anyone who has ever interacted with Lalit will know that he believes in doing the impossible things first, even if it takes a tad bit longer. And honestly, I wouldn’t bet against him, no way, with a presentation that was so well made and so perfectly delivered that even a happily retired guy like me wanted to go work for him!

Yes, what got my hopes high up was when he kept on saying that his company is in the business of creating ‘Low Code / No Code’ platforms. With ‘Coding’ being the only ‘Work’ that I know, I quickly understood what it really meant: ‘Low Work / No Work’, and that’s what got the employee in me all fired up and raring to go!😂

All in all, our extended family was gelling so well together, even to the point of Mrs. Mishti Amitabh mooting the idea of building a whole PGPX residential community itself to accommodate the grand plans that we were starting to make for each other!

Yes, this is being currently envisioned as a fantastic fantasy land, where the husbands will be kept busy solving worthless cases day and night, so that the women folks are free to spend their time chitchatting, shopping, partying and all the other mission critical stuff that they are so good at!

Kind of like how it was when we were in Campus!

Now, how can anyone ever say NO to that!

Beats me!💙

Those who have read till this far have some further torment up their alley in the form of this bonus clip of some of our dance numbers from among all the festivities!!!😁

This one just got over!!!

Ok. Someone just told me that I have successfully met all the requirements of IIMA, so as to be graduated on their 43rd convocation day. I was easily overjoyed; especially considering the fact that I couldn’t say for sure that I knew what those requirements were. But coming in, I knew that, these days the requirements of anything and everything keep changing all over the place. So, I thought I would do a Shewag - took my eye off the requirements, chilled out and did my own thing. And Boom!!! The year is gone, it’s all over and they want me out of here - with a convocation thrown in and a certificate to boot. Phew!!! Party Time!!!

And then I got robed. No, I am not talking about the trebling of the IIMA fee which has MBA wannabes all over India trembling. What I am talking about is another type of robbing which happens as part of the pre-convocation ritual. See sample attached.

Yes, those blood shot eyes do tell the real story - the hard work, the dedication and the commitment that has gone behind making a picture perfect shot like this. The pitchers that were taken in during the overnight ‘spirit’ual session have also helped in giving that special ‘robbed-in-broad-daylight’ look.

And then there was the procession to LKP (Louis Khan Plaza), in which each of us were to participate with a color coded gown, so that we don’t get lost in the crowd, fail to find our way back to our dear friends and start crying. The actual ceremony was grand. It was uplifting at times, but most of the time we were able to sit our ass down and enjoy the grandeur of the proceedings.

I would close with this picture, given below.

I am mighty proud that I was able to take this picture, without even a camera. Yes, I took it from the Orkut profile of one of my friends. But he doesn’t mind, as he is more than happy with the free publicity that his photo is going to get among all my other friends. (Yeah, I do have a couple of them) He is 9th from the right, on the 23rd row. Keep smiling bro….You look good…It’s friendships like these that will be cherished for years to come….

Unbalanced score card at full time!!!

Now that the program is over and the dust has settled, it’s time that we took a real hard look at our score card. But sadly, we still don’t have enough information to predict who will finally walk away from here with the PGPX-II gold medal. And even if we knew, I couldn’t tell you because of our air tight grade non-disclosure policy. No kidding…, this is serious stuff….

But at the same time it would be unfair to wind up such an involved program like this without publishing any results of some sort. That is where our own PXCL league has come to my rescue, and I think I will do very well for posterity by publishing our score card there. Personally also it makes me feel mighty proud to publish this score card which talks volumes about the kind of all-round effort that I have put into this program, day-in, night-out.

After some fiercely fought round of battles, spread out over our last academic week here, the results are finally out and it gives me special pleasure to announce… drum rolls please… that IEPE Flashers under the able captaincy of Ganesh have ran away with the honors. The following is a brief round up of the PXCL unbalanced score card:

Best fielder: Ganesh
Best bowler: Nitin (7 wickets)
Best Batsman: Venky (59 runs)

Player of the tournament: Biju (49 runs, 5 wickets)

Runners up: CE Gods (Captain: Neeraj K, Manager: Shewtabh)
Champions: IEPE Flashers (Captain: Ganesh, Manager: Pramod)

Here is a collector’s edition photograph of all the team jerseys lined up for the final presentation ceremony.


Special thanks to Vinay and Venky for organizing such an amazing event at short notice and three cheers to all the energetic participants and the enthusiastic spectators. It was a fitting finale for a grand year that was PGPX-II, full of fun, frolic and entertainment, not to mention the camaraderie.

Here is myself with my hard-fought but cheap trophy for the player-of-the-tournament and my super-man-of-the-year Venky.

Apna Sapna Money Money!!!

Full credit to my dear friend Sumantra for capturing the mood of our class in his academics award winning Photoshop Classic, ApnaSapna MoneyMoney. Fellow actors appearing with the both of us in this cheap flick are (from left to right) Aravind, Vikram, Shwetabh and Sudipto, all accomplished actors in their own right. All this was done to commemorate the launching of the PGPX Cricket league (PCL), our answer to IPL and the likes. With all the recruiters having left the campus after the real bidding process and the multimillion Rupee offers and all that, isn’t it our responsibility to keep the tempo up with biddings of our own? And what better way to make it happen than to start a cricket league as is the fashion these days. After all we have a lot of overexcited and underemployed cricketers like yours truly who wouldn’t mind having some fun of our own. And then there are people like Venky who are always eager to direct one show or the other.

The idea was well received by all and sundry in the class, and the formal activities started with the bidding process that was played out in a marathon session yesterday just after the last scheduled lecture of our course was over. We do have a Business Simulation Game to play over the next week, as a capstone project to codify and crystallize all of our learnings over the past year. But why simulate when we can keep it real, is the fun-damental PGPX outlook and going by that it was hardly surprising that PCL seemed to be the thing on everyone’s mind as we set out to bid for our cricketers with fake money and real enthusiasm.

6 teams had already been formed with a captain and a manager for each, which gave employment opportunities to 12 souls who badly wanted to be a part of all the action but couldn’t have made it on their own because of what we call in MBA parlance “High Entry barriers”. Now suddenly they found themselves in the thick of action, with a purse of 1000 Kuwaiti Dinars, (With the rapidly eroding US green back, we have decided to use the strongest currency in the world to transact all our business with) and more than 40 able and disable bodied cricketers to choose from. And choose they did.

The bidding started with the bowlers and quite contrary to popular belief that bowlers are always underrated and undervalued, right off the auction block their valuations really went through the roof. But this was not surprising to the discerning, because we as corporate bidders know that purchases that save cash outflows are equally if not more important in creating shareholder wealth than the ones that just maximize inflows. See I told you, we will be crystallizing our learnings. Only three bowlers crossed the psychological barrier of 400 KDs with Venky topping it all with an astronomical valuation of 550 KDs, leaving his team, really scrambling for pennies in the later stages of the bidding.

Now when it came to the batsmen, only Srinath got his projected future run flows valued with no discounting whatsoever, the final bid going easily above 400. And then came the real fun scene involving the reverse bidding for all the ‘stars’ who did not find any takers for the initial bid of 100 KDs. And the fact that there were stars, who were picked up even for as less as 5 KDs proves that PGPXians do look towards value for money when they are out scouting for talent. Or that they are just a bunch of real cheapskates. Only time will tell. For the time being though it is all play and no work at PGPX, for that one final burst of excitement.

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…

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.