Xmas ----- Exams

Well it is a sight to behold management grads being led from one festival to another within the shrouds of exams; completely unaware of the dates and days that their current hobby involves betting on which day it currently is based upon the MESS menu (which also unfortunately revolves something like - Orange color curry = Monday while a White colored = Wednesday and definitely the Yellow colored liquidish thing = Tuesday (reason ==> Orange + white = Yellow; and in between Monday and wednesday we only have tuesday))

Leave it to an MBA to really befuddle you with his own round-about logistics and on top of it making you pay him all of your dough for the process improvements which he had forseen in his mental crane but unfortunately implementation had totally mis-aligned the goals.

Nyways, coming back to our agenda for cribbing - Exams that too on a merry christmas day; while cherubic santa would have been singing christmas carols and howering over chimney's belching out HOHOHOs and loads of gifts, here were a bunch of kids who weren't even affected by the spirit of joy nor the Holy Ghost....

Praying for Phantom (cause he is the ghost who walks) at least to come save us from this definite recipe of disaster called Exams


To the only SANTA that did visit our Campus ;)

Confessions of a graduating MBA student

If you always wondered how much should an MBA student should be paid for an ability to prepare Power-point slides... well this article clearly resounds very similar feelings ;)

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/dec/26mba.htm

The best part was the discussion of the case study in the end of the article, enclosing this for a quick read

"For one of my final electives we read together the tale of a new MBA graduate who runs into trouble when hired to establish a local mobile phone franchise. We were full of advice for his bosses, including the inevitable demand for more training and mentoring, but strangely short on tips for dealing with the nitty gritty of rolling out a phone mast network or placating local politicians.

Our hero works hard but makes bad decisions, misses deadlines and is sacked. The shock in class was palpable. He can't fail, can he? His strategy seemed sound. He had an MBA from a good school (not as good as ours, but never mind). Surely he can't just fail? No one ever mentioned that while recruiting"

I believe this article would definitely make more sense to an MBA pass-out who realizes the exact value-add on-the-job

Another lenghty but pleasant read is Bill waterson's commencement speech at keyton college :

http://bridgerack.com/index.php/Brain_Rain/bill_wattersons_philosophy.html

Both the reads are courtesy my seniors ...

Shortlist for SPJIMR Batch 2010 PGDM course Announced

With Moments of Deja-Vu, as i check across the first short-list for Admissions Interview for the 2 year PGDM course for 2010

RESULTS

First shortlist for Admission Interview for 2 year PGDM Program for the year 2008-10

Shortlisted candidates need to fill in and email to us the Profile sheet by 5th January 2008 The profile sheet can be downloaded from the website.

The interview will be conducted at Mumbai starting from 14th Janaury onwards. The shortlisted candidates can select their own slot of date and time on the link that will be provided at the website from 27th December 2007. The slots booking will be on first come first serve basis.

There will be a second round of interview for candidates selected from the first round. The second round will be held on same day and place.

NIPPLE-ing effect

Brief in-between one of those soporific operations class (in-fact most of the first lectures of the day have been degenerated to HBL (Heads behind Laptops) periods); as all of us were amidst completing the much-required 4 hours of sleep/day; and i was doing the usual nodding position (Eyes half closed and brains already drifted into sleep) and then suddenly everyone awakes as the prof says :

"NIPPLES"

Naturally, for all of us sex-educated (read perverted) minds; this was like a caffine implant and right it shot all of us out of our stupor.... and then all of the sudden, the prof says, "let me draw a picture of the Nipple for all non-engineers"
Suddenly Operations became such a awe-inspiring subject; everyone closed their laptops and for the first time in their lives drawed their eyes upon the Black-board avowing their renewed interest for SCM.

More about NIPPLES ;)

Rocked Konflux'07 : Global Forum organized by IBS, Mumbai

Yet another show-stealer, myself and Jagnoor singh had gone across to Reliance Business School, Mumbai as the finalists for Konflux'07, the global forum organized by IBS, Mumbai.


The theme this year was BRIC, and each of the finalists had to represent one country among Brazil, India, China, Russia, US & South Africa perform a detailed analysis on the country and present it before an eminent panelists of economists showcasing the merits and strategy growth-plan for each of our country; and then there was a intense debate session among all the finalists.
Unfortunate for us, we were the first team to present and had a really intense gruelling Q&A session with almost everyone of the audience brimming with questions about Brazillian economy and stuff; but the applause from them also thundered as we kept on answering all of the questions brilliantly. I distinctly remember one of the questions from the judges which quizzed us about Brazil having a declining sugar export trend for the past two years; and suddenly something quizzed in my mind and i somehow related it to the ETHANOL manufacturing of Brazil and how this affected the production of Sugar; and immediately the entire crowd went brimming with applause.
We also had a brilliant stance during the debate session thanks to jagnoor's resounding voice and clairvoyant thoughts .
Overall, this was a day we made great friends and also great prizes.

The Top Two winners of the event

Winners of the NASSCOM IT Case Study, FMS Delhi

Freezing in the delhi cold blast, chugging along in a cycle-rickshaw with hardly any break-fast little did i know that this would be one of those days which i would remember for long.
It was as finalists of NASSCOM's IT case study on "IT enablement in the Auto Ancillary Sector" that made myself and Anindya Gupta knock on the doors of FMS, delhi. Reaching there a day earlier, we enjoyed the hospitality of a single bed-room and amazing night-canteen food (all thanks to Arvind, my childhood mate there); we almost finished our PPT during the entire night, and myself had to brush through my presentation just 4 hours before the final presentation in front of the judges.
The CASE study given to us can be accessed in this link
Briefly speaking, the case highlighted the need for IT enablement in the Auto Ancillary sector (or as u might add almost every other sector in India) with elaborate Charts and Graphs of the current scenario. And then we were asked to prepare a IT budget for the Auto Ancillary Clusters and forecast how this should be implemented.

We took an altogether different path in our Presentation, and instead of presenting the boring IT budgeting we went ahead with detailed analysis of the Auto Ancillary sector, their actual requirements (and not as formulated in the PPT) seeing if there was any ROE for these IT enablement and then predicting the formulation of a perfect IT spending across the Auto ancillary sector, separately for LARGE and later for Medium size companies.

And Glad that i must mention it paid off, and we won first prize in the competition; surpassing IIMs, XLRI, FMS and IMT-ghaziabad.

Later on, in another on-the-spot event we once again rocked the show and won the first prize..
I must add, "LIFE is HAPPENING"
Couple more of our chauvinistic pics

Nick of Time

It doesn’t happen every morning that you wake up directly into the class-room, finding yourself facing the entire 160 odd people who are still into their phase of REM sleep and a professor who is determined to make you sweat it out; but that was exactly what happened today.

4.30 AM – managed to finish the PPT slides for DAS (which stands for Decision Analysis Simulation) which were supposed to be presented the same day.

After finishing the formalities of morning ablutions, reclined back into oblivion or sleep as few of the MBA folk experience for 3-4 hours in a day.

8.30 AM – Get a call from my team-mate whispering “WTF are u ? presentation has started and your slide is coming up next *&^#$*&^#@$*@#&^$” along with a equally exciting sms in-case I hadn’t listened to his obscenities appropriately.

8.31 AM – Jolted from Xanadu back into reality, jump from the bed and rush across (luckily managed to put along the right combination of Shirt and Pants)

Reached across the Presentation room with six-sigma efficiency level as far as punctuality is concerned, exactly as my slide arrived upon the team’s presentation. (IF only it was a operations lecture, I am sure that the prof. would have given me full marks for utilizing JIT (Just-in-time) Toyota methodology to practical demonstration)

Unfortunately it was our Fin. Prof and his temperament and attention to details were as sharp as Rajinikanth’s punch lines.

Somehow, my over-efficient team mates sensing my punctual past has foreseen that I would have given the presentation a miss and had relegated my slides to the end of the presentation and with only 1 minute of time left, they reasoned they could put across general GYAN across them.

Unfortunately, for me and equally so for them I reached across…. Thankfully, just as I got on stage from my entry through the door; our prof. mentioned the lacunae of time; condescendingly (rather thanking god) I descended and our PPT just ended.

That was quite a quick entry from the Door to the Stage and back to our seats ;)

Thankfully, the Q&A session provided the much required grace, and sure I would get something above “D” grade.

p.s : Reclining on my thinking chair later on, I suddenly get a brain-storm of how a “REMINDER service” would be an excellent B-plan targeted towards B-Schoolers and also to over-efficient CxOs .

Couple of my Debate Topics

Was trying to clean up my virtual room (i meant my lappie's Desktop) and then suddenly came across a few points i had noted as a preparation for my debate....

Topic One : Branding , "Branding is Dead... Long live Branding" - we were asked to speak against the topic.

Topic Two : Compensation, "An Employee chooses a company only for its compensation" - for the topic.

Storing them here, for historic reasons ;)

How to write that Winning Case Study presentation...

4 months, 8 case study competitions, 4 finals and one win.

And my key learning “Facts and figures in an MBA life are much akin to Shahrukh doing the Lux commercial, great Face value but not exactly what you came for; all that really matters is an idea that borders on ingenuity and simplicity and truck-loads of hardwork”. I shall explain this final thesis of mine, with an elaborate hypothesis on what exactly is the fundamentals behind a case-study competition, why should you waste your time upon it and the most important of them all how can u actually write a winning case-study.

Fact No 1: If someone as Dumb(Dumb enough to share this secret with everyone) can do it ….. why can’t the guy/gal sitting next to me ?

Fact No 2: Case studies are nothing more than extra assignments ( I know you must be smiling after reading this fact; as if I am not over-burdened with enough). But consider this tiny case illustration :
During my past 4 months I have tried to analyze the average time spent on doing an assignment and believe me or not it doesn’t exceed half hour/day; and the rest of the day we end up procrastinating about the load upon our tiny shoulders (Wish I had a dilbert illustration to prove my point)
(Click to enlarge)
Fact No 3 : Case Studies are excellent pedagogy to learn, have fun, network and at the end also make some extra money.

Fact No 4 : The most obvious CV point (or) as most of us would refer it to a SPIKE in your resume.
Now if I have somehow instigated the curious nerve amongst you.. read on further

So what is the exact funda behind a case-study competition:-
Mr.Nikhil, managing director of CSS corp (a typical MBA) is luxuriating under the shade of his money-tree when suddenly, the occurs a serious administration issue and unfortunate for him he did not do ADMAP in India’s top ten B-schools and hence is at a fix to find a practical solution to his current scenario.
Immediately a light bulb shines and he plans to release this current problem of his as a live case-study to those hundreds of MBA students who are immersed in RIP-VAN-WINKLE case-studies. And just to prove his MBA degree he shall showcase this brain-storm to his boss as the “3B Approach“
Brains(getting access to virgin MBA student’s ideas)
Brand(increase the brand-image of CSS corp) and
Bucks (instead of spending a million dollars hiring a consultant they could do away with a few lakhs on sponsorship money)

So, we come to the next agenda of our discussion … how would you approach a case-study

First on the agenda, find someone who would do the case study for you (LOL .. jus kidding) but one of the really great things about case-studies is that you can really work with the brainiacs sitting next to you, rather than upon mundane assignments.

Next, approach an appropriate Staff and make sure you carry a hard-copy print-out of the case study ( of course, given the fact that paper could have been put to better uses such as the ubiquitous toilet paper). I have seriously, found amazing insights from my profs whenever I have begun working upon a case-study and this essentially provides you with the much needed focus plan. Professors, have the inherent advantage of having practical exposure and also a sharpened edge of exposing the true issue beneath the truck-loads of data and text in any case-study model.

Then comes the exciting work of brain-storming… typically, this is a true simulation of a corporate scenario albeit sans the conference rooms or free coffee. One piece of advice is to indulge in a bit of free-wheeling before you actually discuss core-aspects of the case study. For example, during a case study to develop a marketing model for Hindi Layout Keyboards, the entire case focused on needs of a Rural segment but during our free-wheeling exercise we were prompted to believe in a higher potential among Urban customers such as DTP, Government offices & Institutions, et all; you either come up with ground-breaking revolutions or that single-edged evolution.

Presentation, the next and the most important phase of your initial case study analysis. Naturally, this is also the most-time-consuming exercise, wherein you have to express your analysis within the boundaries of the guidelines. One real way to nailing your way to the finals is to understand the person who is going to evaluate your solution; he shall definitely be hard-pressed for time and would hardly have 5 mins to read a 10 page report for which you have spent around 4 hours. Be inspired by Comic Strips, keep them short, colorful, informative, picture-oriented and make sure you have a great Tagline.

Then keep your fingers crossed until the D-day announcement comes and you get selected with a Sleeper Class re-imbursement fare to present your concept at the Finals

Now here comes to tricky part, first thing that I learnt after the case study presentation for BMC’s Sanitation and Slum participation was that the judges are the essential Mr.Nikhil who have come to identify their much-sought-after solutions and unless you provide with a practically viable plan .. BEEP(wrong answer)
Here is how you can really showcase your solution:
1) Primary market survey : During our final presentation at IIT-Bombay for our paper presentation for IT for SMEs we actually got a SME and got a proper field report (Within a span of 2 days).
2) Understand the true Question : This was an essential learning we had in IIM-Bangalore when we were presenting our final presentation for John Deere (The Tractor company) and we found that though we had presented the judges with the three customer segments (or) product portfolios John Deere should target, we hadn’t covered much on the Marketing proposition, which was exactly what the judges were looking for. This is not as easy as it sounds, since the case study only mentioned the product portfolio.
3)Presentation skills matter : Get a couple of Hard-copies Xeroxed and put them in front of the judges (esp. if u have any diagrammatic representations or hard-core technical graphs) and as the old-thumb rule presentability would be the most important factor for marking.

Last but not the least, go with my metrics …. 8:4:1 ( I am sure you can definely beat that)

Barcamp 2 : Un-conferance Un-limited

Where would you find :
* A 22 year old who has 5 startups to his credit...
* Truck-loads of Start-ups such as Aggregatorz.com,Novix,realAcres.com
* CXOs of companies such as iXiGO.com, Creative Commons
* Have a cup of coffee with the Business Heads of SUN and IBM
* Angel-Funder's such as Mahesh Murthy giving an introduction on what they look in a company before investing
* Junta talking about their crazy ideas and how they won an Apple IPOD cause of it.
* Sessions on Jumpstarting your startup.

everything in only one place ... the Mumbai Barcamp2 recently held at IIT-Bombay.

If you are those kinds who say "what the hell is BARCAMP" ... refer to the site Barcamp before you read ahead

Myself and my friend had gone over there to research for our topic upon ISVs and the SME sector (in the IT industry of course) and i must say that we were as surprised as Ali-baba after he mumbled "open sesame".

Not only did we get to have a lively discussion with Mr Bakshish Dutta,the marketing manager for SUN's start-up essential program(the event sponsorers too) how they could forge across newer contacts with startups and ISV(Independent Software Vendors) who would later on decide on a required collaboration with SUN; but also came across many IT employees who were looking forward for such conferances to get a feel of the latest technologies and in the end also decide if they want to join any of the startups.

So how is everything in this un-conferance as it is named ORGANIZED ??

The moment you enter into the halls (there are 4 concurrent sessions happening) and you shall be greeted with this Board, riddled with Stick-ons announcing the speaker and his topic...

if you like it you go ahead and involve yourself in the brain-storming else you simply go ahead to the adjoining parralel session.


Also, this open format means that if you have an idea and want to thrash it out.. then go ahead take out a Stick-on and write your name and idea and utilize one of those free spaces(if any)
For those who believe in out-doors we also have a coffee table, wherin people just hang around (in a circular fashion) each holding a cup of coffee and a brilliant idea in their brain and voila you have a great conversation.

A few things i really loved : The totally informal methodology of brain-storming, there is absolutely no issue of patents or information rights which are discussed. Everyone comes with an open problem or idea and others simply add on their suggestions and opinions.

A few things i think can be improved : The entire conferance was essentially IT based; given the fact that most of the start-ups are web-related and the entire show was over-whelmed by 200 IT junkies looking for the next happening thing.. there wasn't even a glimpse of other fields.

So the next time, some one says "BARCAMP" do not raise your glasses and says cheers but rather put on your thinking hats and hop on to this discovery channel.

Other links :
http://startupcentral.wordpress.com/2007/10/13/barcamp-mumbai-2/
http://www.livemint.com/2007/10/15234644/More-on-entrepreneurship-less.html
http://barcamp.org/BarCampMumbai2

WHY GO TO B-School

Came across this interesting read after being forwarded by a friend.

WHY B-SCHOOL

This is more of those initial questions which arise across the minds of every potential MBAs, or people (as in the case of the author himself) who are currently fed up with their current profile and need a booster in terms of Learning curve.

12 Angry MEN

         Among the varied incentives of being in a peer group is that you shall be exposed to different experiences, different outlooks, different ideologies and the most importantly a varied set of movies. Vague, but true… when you are battled down 24x7 with assignments and hardly find any time or space to go out and enjoy your life, and the Laptop being your sole companion who accompanies you for almost every thought process. You figure out the entire way to exercise your emotional self would be to get exposed to artifacts in the form of news articles, documentaries, novels and abundant resource of movies that shall be available thanks to a few benevolent souls who cram it right up to their external HDD with a collection that boasts of almost all titles in the IMDB repository.

        Unlike my fellow MBAers, I would rather be on the left-end of the median curve as far as the numerical representation of the movie count.. when others boast of an average 2-5 movies in a day, I can hardly mutter out 5 titles which have been seen till the end for the past 3 months, and seriously this is a deficit I really need to work upon.

        A deficit that can only best illustrated best by the movie “12 Angry men” which had been sitting complacently upon my drive for almost 10 days. This movie has also been the chief inspiration for another hindi classic, “Ek rukha hua Faisla” starring pankaj kapoor.

        The entire movie, as the title suggests revolves around a single room, wherein 12 members of the Jury sit to decide the fate of a 18 yr old kid who has been accused of killing his father cold-bloodily. Despite this physical limitation of the room, the movie infact soars beyond within the limitless rationales of the mind.I must say, that this was the first movie that has made cringe every set of emotions without being overly made in any sense.

        When many of the movie reviews type-cast it as a typical “Achilles against Troy” syndrome, wherein one jury member who must try to persuade the other 11 members to acquit the suspect on trial on the basis of reasonable doubt.True that they may be on their definition, they however cannot illustrate the beauty of the movie by this single claim, and neither do I suppose I can also do entire justice to the beauty of this movie.

        Jury duty may or may not remain… but the relevance of this movie “12 Angry Men” shall definitely echo the many portals of corporate life across thy hallowed portals or board-rooms. The entire movie is a beautiful case-illustration of negotiations, influences and a perfect mixture of all the components that go along in a high-profile board-room meeting of today. More than how one Jury member convinces the others, it is a matter of how rational thinking can overcome personal prejudices.

        One of the quote that still reverberates in my mind after watching the movie is the one that Henry Fonda makes after he shows how the other Jury are making decisions on blind emotions rather than actual facts,

        “It is always diff to keep personal prejudices out of it
        Wherever u run from it; prejudice always obscures the truth”

        The movie has been used in management seminars as a case study in team building and leadership. The resolution-of-conflict techniques presented in 12 Angry Men have been analyzed and applied to employee efforts to collaborate among themselves to handle issues. The goal is to minimize or eliminate the inefficient micromanagement by company executives in areas in which they are unskilled and/or unknowledgable. This use is most widely seen in the Total Quality Management system used by the U.S. government as well as numerous private sector corporations.
        In a May 26, 1999 piece in the New York Times titled "Importance of Being Persuasive; Daimler-Chrysler Merger Made an Art of Making a Case" by Youssef M. Ibrahim, Jurgen E. Schrempp the ex-CEO of DaimlerChrysler who oversaw the merger of the two companies stated about the movie: 'It helps me put my arguments into words, focus on people'.

Need I say more ?

-Deepak

INDO-PAK finals @ SPJIMR

This is what happens at SPJIMR ...



It is sure BETTER Watch a cricket match than do mundane Assignments and prepare for Surprise Quizzes.
It is definitely GREAT to watch a cricket Finals between India and Pakistan than any other match
It is almost AWESOME-O to watch the same with the entire college junta with the sound effects within the AUDI itself ....

Personal Selling workshop - Selling DimDIMA (Actual sales)

In response to the last exercise , all the students were organized into groups of 3 to sell a children magazine called DimDima, published by Bhavan's (Which also apparently under whose purview SPJIMR runs) .
The magazine as such, is definitely a hot seller in terms of content, marketing segment choice (Kids within the age group of 6-10 yrs) and also in terms of presentation. All that was left of this magic ingredients were us, a bunch of Marketeers.

Our Location : VileParle (East) - Near Railway Station
Our Target : 5 subscription copies worth 240/- each.
Our Strategy : Formally dressed, we shall get over to all the schools in those areas around 4-6 pm and sell it directly to the mom's waiting for their child.
Implementation :
We reached Vile-parle around 6 pm, much behind our schedule and dressed in half-formals .. There was much more than a disaster awaiting us. With the schools already closed, we first went on a round asking in the surrounding shops about the prospective customers in the area.

One of the Shop-keepers was kind enough to let us on the truth,"Here we have all Gujjus and Jains, you shall hardly find a single customer" and seriously he was right to the word.
We went across Apartments, and under each of them we were scootered off with strangest comments, "We have kids, he is studying in the 6th Std but he cannot read" so on and so forth.

One of the practises that helped us was, whenever we went to any apartment we approached the watchmen and asked him to direct us to the secretary and then explained our proposition to him directly. Most of the building secretaries were more than glad to help us and even gave us the exact details of the houses with children; but failed to mention that they were also run by tight-fisted moms :) Overall we had major fun, marketing to all those kids and moms and ultimately when we did sell of a couple of the issues all our frowns were turned into smiles. And not to forget the shopping we did after the episode and those endless Pani-puris :)

Lesson's learnt :
1) Know the market you are going to sell to (Here, Gujjus and jains are not great prospects)
2) Stick to your game-plan (Schools would have been a great sell)
3) Display complexity (one of our batchmates, went with their open laptop and utilized it as a show-piece attracting more customers)
4) Know the U.S.Ps
5) And last but not the least... You are not "Selling" a product but rather taking a market survey and in case the person wants to, he can buy the product as well
6)Take risks. We gave a couple of Sample issues to a few children as a freebie and most of them turned out potential customers

Monotonous Ramblings of the MBA head - PART I

        As the sliver of light enters through the flickering eyelids, the beam transports from the iris to the synaptic nerve creating a symphonic reverberation with another whisper of an mobile alarm; this cosmic serendipity acts as a cheap substitute of a shock wave awakening the senses of urgency, bedlam and chaos.

        As he slumbers across and tries to find out more about the hazy bearded picture staring across him with similar disdain in the mirror, he feels vanquished as if being captive of an sci-fi Asimov novel, struck between the parallel planets of yesterday and tomorrow within the confines of today with his brains fried clean of any other memories which he tries desperately to weave together but in the end the same questions float around him like jetsam. His only console is the adjoining zombie standing next to him trying to figure out the same as his other counterparts who have been queuing outside the hostel bathrooms.

        But he doesn’t get much time to figure out the answers to his global questions as the entire cosmos reverberates with the rhyme:

FE-FI-FO-FUM
         If you don’t want to come late better RUN
FE-FI-FO-FUM
        Either down-grade or follow the rules of the COC* Kingdom.

         Leaving everything to the same disorder within which it earlier existed, he grabs his essential items including the Laptop and the LAN cord he runs the last leg of marathon between 8.25 till 8.30 pm almost killing himself twice he launches himself as the doors shut down-BINGO he says, and then it hits him “What am I supposed to do today?”

         The healthy body it is said needs a minimum 3 Alpha stages of REM sleep cycles per day; the first of them during midnight 12 till 8 AM and the remaining two can be apportioned between 8.30 AM till 6 PM, depending on the GAS** quotient being liberated at any of the lectures.

         As he exercises his left brain, to synthesize a practical demonstration of the case study at hand he does an inventory check of his glasses and laptop, and later deciding on the exact opportunity cost decides to utilize the open frame of the laptop as the barrack behind which he could snooze off. ZzzzzzZZZZ !!!

         Within his dreams he once again goes into the land of oblivion; it has almost been 2 months of his existence in this similar state. Almost degenerated into a mechanical monster, his entire life revolves around pre-reads, quizzes, assignments and presentations; Quality seems to have lost the battle to quantity. Everyday he fights a lost battle against endless assignments armed with only the power of “Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V”

        His sporadic attempts to understand the pulse of the lecturer only ends up with strengthening his belief in the theory of parallel thought process “Two Parallel thoughts never intersect” and as these same thoughts from the profs whiz past him he can only claim ignorance.

        Even the concept of pre-reads does not come to his rescue, as with all other protagonists he lacks any time-machine to get back into the past to finish them on-time.
        Frustrated, flabbergasted and constipated his only recourse is to drown himself into the barrage of IPs, Road-Rash, FIFA and those endless GBs of movies.

         Rewinding past almost 3 months earlier, here was the same person who would read almost 2 newspapers a day and then smack off his knowledge gain with another magazine and then reel across figures of GDP and GNP. Fast forward to the current situation he can only count one figure GGP (GROSS GAS PRODUCT)

         Here dozing before you amidst the din-dain of a class is a perfect example of an MBA grad down 2 months into the production line of India’s TOP-TEN B-School.

To be continued....

        p.s: This is a part-I of my series jotting a different perspective into the much coveted MBA life. It should not be mistaken as a direct demonizing of this life; but rather to retrospect about our givings and takings and the quest to utilize every opportunity to the maximum and perhaps find out where are we going wrong in this entire rat-race.

COC* : This is a direct reference to the Code of Conduct committee which regulates the draconian rules of attendance and delay .
GAS** : This is special vocabulary that signifies the very essence of MBA ( It can only be felt, neither explained nor understood)
+ No Animals were hurt in the making of this article, but the same cannot be guaranteed with the sentiments of the MBA junta

SP's Alumni Magazines

Check out on our illustrious Alumni, through "SPANDAN" SP's Alumni Magazine

http://www.spjimr.org/alumni/emag.asp

Mr. Arun Agrawal (Country Head - Financial Institutions and International Banking at Yes Bank) will be interacting with us on Sunday(Sept 23) evening 4 pm, on ...

So many assignments, group works, presentations, quizzes and no time...
Are we missing out on learning and doing important things that really matter when we enter the corporate world?
Are we focusing too much on short term activities and losing our long term focus?

What should we be doing now to succeed in the corporations we are going to take up in a couple of years?
What should we really learn in a B School for our success in life?
What the corporate needs from a management graduate?


Just exactly what we need :)

A Relevant Management Adage... of monkeys and *&%#

Personal Selling workshop - Selling DimDIMA

Dear Class,
Dimdima is a children's magazine targetted at a certain age group. Please look up their website for more details on the magazine.This is what you are rquired to do:

• All have been divided and areas allotted, so stay with your area lest you approach the same customer.


• Please visit the allotted area between today and the 24th of September and sell subscriptions on Dimdima (target - 5 subscriptions each). Each group will be given a set of the Magazines.


• For each sale made, you are required to write out a receipt (serially numbered receipt books will be given to you), to hand over to the customer and one copy remains with you Utmost care has to be taken care of the receipt books. Each and every single receipt in the receipt book has to be accounted for. All the receipt books have to be returned, whether used, unused or partly used. There are two copies of each receipt. A carbon paper has to be used for preparing the receipt. The first copy has to be given to the customer while the second copy has to be preserved in the receipt book itself. In no case, the second
  copy of the receipt is to be detached from the receipt book Each and every subscriber has to fill up the subscription form in legible handwriting and to be given the receipt. The receipt no. issued to the subscriber has to be entered in the subscription form in the box
  provided for office use only. That way we will have the record of the receipt issued to the subscriber. For the convenience of the subscriber, (s)he has to be told to refer to
  the receipt no. in all future communications with DIMDIMA.


• Cheques have to be collected in favour of "Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan", payable at Mumbai.


• The subscription forms do not provide rates for international subscriptions. However, the same form can be used for collecting international subscriptions. The rates are Rs.1000/- for 1 year anywhere in the world.


• All subscription rates (Domestic and International) are inclusive of ordinary posting charges.


• An excel sheet (attached) needs to be filled and submitted with the unused receipts.

Finally each of you has to fill in the attached Word Doc, your experience
and let me know how it went. Please restrict your writing to the format and 2
pages or maximum 3 pages.

Initial review : This is a very good example of having a winner product, but only marketing is in the quandry. The magazine DimDima is targetted towards kids in the age group 6-16 yrs and in fact for all it's worth (20 bucks per issue) is in fact loaded with inspirational and knowledge oriented material; as i would say, "Toned down version of Tinkle" .

Getting into the market and selling this on a direct selling basis would be fun..Luckily i have got myself into a gang of localites and should not have any problems.. esp. when backed with a self-selling product.
As they say about selling ciggarrettes " It is cool, it is happening and it is addictive; what more do you need?"

MusiGally : A Musical initiative by SP Junta

Once upon a time, there was a group of four overworked B-Schoolers...
They heard Floyd, Mohd. Rafi, L. Subramaniam, Jay Z, A R Rahman, Jim Morrison, Lennon and even a bit of Reshammiya.
And as melody took over their bodies and rhythm filled their veins, one of them said, "Let there be MusIG!"
Presenting

THE Music Interest Group @ SP
here to promote anything Musical!
From the Veena to the Violin
From quizzes to RJs
From workshops to performances
From updates to shows in SP to concerts in & around Bombay
From discussions online (MusIG.blogspot.com) to discussions in the Bistro (first left after gent's loo)
And of course our own Crescendo!
We promise to bring more music to our campus than ever before! Check out www.musig.blogspot.com for futher updates

SPJIMR HRM Conclave - 8th September

Advocacy Vs. Dialogue

        It definitely has been quite a while since my fingers had singed being a GRE frentic;or rather Engliophile (Trying to bring out various nuances between very similar sounding words)as a few might clarify. After all which girl would have been interested going out with some walking-talking thesaraus who would rather confabulate rather than plain talk, perambulate more so than walk, fornicate if not f*&*k; it rather did lead to a lot of estrangement.

        So, when i suddenly came across one of our Profs explaining the differances between Advocacy and Dialogue... i was simply astonished, awestruck, fascinated, flabbergasted and marvelled.

here's quoting our Prof.
I read in the book a chapter 'From advocacy to dialogue and find following table

a. In advocacy the concept of decision making is a contest whereas in dialogue it is collaborative problem solving.
b. In advocacy the purpose of discussion is persuasion and lobbying whereas in dialogue it is testing and evaluation.
c. In advocacy the participants role is of spokespeople whereas in dialogue it is of critical thinkers
d. In advocacy the pattern of behavior is to persuade others, defend your position and downplay weaknesses. Whereas in dialogue it is balanced arguments, open to alternative and accept constructive criticism.
e. In advocacy the minority views are discouraged or dismissed whereas in dialogue they are cultivated and valued.
f. In advocacy the outcome is of winners and losers whereas in dialogue the outcome is of collective ownership.

        I am sure, that the above dialogues might not strike a chord with many of the readers, but i really urge everyone to give it some time to sink in.

        It has been observed that in general life, we come more across people who feel themselves deemed superior to be involved in Advocacy; but these exact arguments showcase how a dialogue is the right platform to be used if we have to propogate as a group.

        Maybe that's why we utilize these terms, "Diplomatic Dialogue and Political Advocacy".

        Leaving everyone with some thoughts for their own.

-Deepak

Another event, Another Day.. but the same old Blazer

Once again i have found another day for my Blazer to be used for, after all when this heirloom of mine was passed across generations atlast from my uncle unto me; we swore upon this piece of FABRIC that it shall be used by each of it's besotted personalities the same number of times as much as it's cost then. So here is one more down crossed down, and a lil over thousand days left to go.

Been selected among the finalists for TISS's Anvesham, resembles the Best Manager event which happens across many culturals.

It has definitely been quite a hectic week here at college, all of our assignments are getting post-poned due to the existing load, and exams are but only adding on to our burden. It definitely becomes close to sychophancy when we end up studying from 8.30 Am till 6.30 Pm in the class-rooms and then till 11 pm just doing group-works.

And the worst to get affected are my entries for the various inter-college events; the last two to go down the drain were NITIE's Markfest(Paper on Indian Bank's Marketing strategy) and UDGOSH (Business Plan competition). It also didn't help that i had earlier taken time out of my academic schedule to finish the preliminary papers. Things are definitely Hotting up this Trim-1 and only time shall show, about the after-effects if any.

Till then, Life is merrier than Robin Hood's Band.

Anvesham (Event Details) , Preliminary Questionnaire.

-Deepak

ConsultCOM : Lecture series by Mr. Apurva Mehta, KPMG

Consulting Committee presents a Guest Lecture by Mr. Apurva Mehta, Associate Director, KPMG.

An MBA from JBIMS, Mumbai University and a Masters in International Finance from Thunderbird, The Gavin School of Management, Arizona, USA, Mr. Mehta has over 12 years of experience in Investment Banking and the Financial Services Industry. He has earlier worked with Morgan Stanley and ICICI Bank in Singapore and the U.K.

The topic of the Guest Lecture is: "Consulting World: A Practitioner's View"

Mr. Mehta will be sharing his experiences as a Consultant in the industry. He will also be talking about the skills required and profiles available in the field of Consulting.

Please visit www.kpmg.com and www.in.kpmg.com for more information on KPMG.

The lecture will be of 45 minutes' duration, followed by 15-20 minutes of Q&A.

Request you to be seated in the auditorium by 3:40pm.

Regards

Consulting Committee

Speech Review :

Mehta's Profile

His speech was structured into providing the following insights :-

• Emerging Consultancy Opportunities
  
• Approach & Methodologies
• Industry Trends
• Career Opportunity
  

Overall, though the presentations were a bit over-crowed with details it was a very nice lecture, esp. when it came to career opportunities in the Consultancy world.

EntreZine-August’07 – Newsletter presented by EntreCom

Dear All,
Greetings from EntreCom'07 on the eve of India's 60th Independence Day.
We are pleased to launch the first issue of our newsletter EntreZine for this season.

Also check out the Quiz section and win exciting prizes.

We expect your continued support to help spread the free spirit of Entrepreneurship.

If you wish to share any feedback or suggestions, kindly mail us at entrecom07(at)spjimr.org

Regards,
Deepak Bhaskaran
On Behalf of EntreCom'07

AdvancEdge B-School tour - Demystyfying SP JAIN

Advanc’edge MBA, the monthly magazine from the IMS Learning Centre, is organizing ‘The Advanc’edge B-school Tour’ across 8 cities in the country.

B-School Tour Schedule LINK
Pune- 19th Aug
Hyderabad-26th Aug
Delhi-02nd Sep
Ahamedabad-09th Sep
Kolkata-23rd Sep
Bangalore-07th Oct
Chennai-14th Oct
Mumbai-04th Nov

SPJIMR has also launched its "Demystifying the MYTH- SPJIMR way" which shall be showcased across these tour locations. So in case you are in any of these Locations, you would know where to get to get all your doubts clarified, you sure know where to head across... and pretty sure you shall be guided by these able minds (all of my colleagues here at SPJIMR)
Additional LINKS : AdvancEdge

Celebrating Birthdays @ SPJIMR

Every place has their own social protocols, you might end up on the wrong side if you gift your guest a Book in China or commit a major gaffe if you have any food left on your plate in India while vice-versa in Vietnam.

Similarly even SPJIMR, has it's own protocol when it comes to Birthdays and celebrations.

In the beginning there shall be one enthusiastic guy/gal collecting the Bday lists from everyone. And the rest of us little realizing about the consequences later on, just go ahead with the flow (i.e after those endless rounds of filling profile sheets, quizzes, so on and so forth) and later when someone reaches out any document, you just sign it with flamboyance.

Just as soon as the D-Day approaches, people get all jittery with excitement or with the pain that awaits them. Usually, it is the latter which often takes precedence!!

On the eve of the Bday night, the excited goat get prepared for the ultimate sacrifice.

BEFORE :-

AFTER :-
Now here is the actual Show & Tell. Every one of the participants are put through the following systematic torture process just as much as a Concentration camp.

First just as you feed the goat, you entice it with food (a.k.a Cake) and even after that his/her spidey sense does not start tingling with any premonition about the future you can proceed with the next stage.

WHAM !! BHAM !! C#@$*^@#KE everything goes directly into the face of both the Bday boy and also his roomie (which could range from 2-3 persons) and then starts the battle of BH (Boy's hostel) with everyone armed with one piece of cake, eggs, tomato, potato and sometimes even Jack-fruits start hurling it. Unfortunately these projectiles are not high-tech
heat-seeking and end up directly upon people who land up in wrong places at the exact wrong time.

After taking care of the entire Icicing from the Cake, then they go for the next layer behind any person... that's right "Bday Bums" .

Bday bums are technically the only exercise that any of are subjected to and hence it becomes the top priority of any of the students to utilize all these rotinue exercises to the maximum, and i am sure that from the Pic, this does seem so very obvious.

Now, that the person is smelling either from burnt rubber on his A*&^ or from those dozen rotten eggs; we all end up doing a favor transferring truck-loads of Water directly from a floor above.

And then comes the pyschological torture, the participants have to recite by heart all the top gals in his hit-list (even married or engaged junta are not excused) and then do a POLE-dancing around his roomies as poles (Thank god, no one took this photo ;)) and then give a Thank-you speech and later during the next day provide a treat for the best night of his life.

Love you guys.. and thanks a lot for that special night forever.

Pics from the fun .

Article on E.T about Case studies methodology by SP junta

Look beyond this headline
7 Aug, 2006
Enter a typical business school class and more often than not, you would find a lively discussion being carried out over a case study. Over the years, case studies have become a popular mode of imparting the nuances of business to MBA students.
Tracking the course of action followed by a company or an industry at a particular time in certain key areas helps students learn by example. However, learning by example is not just restricted to case studies as I found out on being exposed to a new methodology adopted in my class.
The new methodology is based on a more innovative approach. Popularly known as the ET sessions, these are a series of special sessions designed and included within the pedagogy to help students apply the knowledge gained during regular course lectures to current issues.
.....
To read on check out LINK

Leadership series - Laura Parkin (NEN)

Dear All ,

As a part of our "Friday Leadership Series", Ms. Laura Parkin(Exec Director National Entrepreneurship Network) will be visiting our campus . We will have an interactive session with her where she wil be sharing her experiences about Leadership in Entrepreneurial ventures.

Regards

Leadcomm 07

About Laura Parkin :
Laura has founded and funded organizations in both social and private sectors. As a VP at Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, an organization supporting social entrepreneurs, she headed the fund-raising program. In the past, Laura has founded a women’s healthcare company; been an Associate at the venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners; and helped establish a merchant bank in Moscow. Laura holds a BA in Biology from Harvard University.

Proceedings of the Guest lecture :
Laura began with a Bang with the recital of "SAM-I-AM" an ingenuous approach to make us realize that to accomplish anything in life, the foremost important thing is to never-give-up, to the degree of constant nagging. The lecture was more on how an entrepreneur should evolve, and not much on leadership capabilities. But nevertheless, we were entertained to a lively show by Laura, and there were definitely a few points worth noting from her lecture.

External Links :
NEN , Laura's article

SP-inners to eating out ...

As Future managers, we are taught that change is the only thing that is important in life, and it is how best you can adapt to the change (relative to the person next to you) that you shall be rewarded.

But somehow, this logic fails in the case of the Hostel MESS food... though sustaining in nature, the menu of the mess changes as frequently as India launches it's GSLV rockets, or as frequently as George Bush says something intelligent.

Hence, as a inward defense mechanism to keep our taste buds alive... we have a frequent bid to get out every wednesday nights (another apparent reason being that the MESS is closed then) and see the mumbai life (which seems like a parallel world which runs along just fine, as we keep on slogging between the college campus and our Hostel) .

Now, the BIBLE that always helps us out ...

Eat out.. HAVE FUN

SPJIMR & IBM Integrated Services Supply Chain Mgmt

Dear Friends,

You will be delighted to know that IBM and SPJIMR are conducting a Workshop on "Integrated Services Supply Chain Management" on 07 August 2007 from 10:30 am to 4:00 pm at SPJIMR Auditorium.

The workshop will be conducted by two eminent IBM speakers:
Mark A. Henderson, Program Director, IBM Integrated Supply Chain Management, New York.
Priyadarshan Deshmukh, Sourcing Manager – Technology, IBM Integrated Supply Chain Management, Hong Kong.

We are inviting corporate professionals and faculty from various B-schools in and around Mumbai. The agenda of the workshop can be known from the brochure.

We invite you to attend the workshop which we feel will be professionally and intellectually satisfying.

Thanking you,
Coordination Team
SPJIMR-IBM Workshop
PGPM 306

How to catch/kill a Lion SP ishtyle ...

         Now you guys must have read/spammed this joke a zillion number of times, but then once again adding a bit of flavor (chat-pata masala) to this cliched one.. SP ishtyle !!

How to Catch/Kill a Lion

Newton's Method: Let, the lion catch you. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Implies you caught lion.
Einstein Method: Run in the direction opposite to that of the lion. Due to higher relative velocity, the lion will also run faster and will get tired soon. Now you can trap it easily.
Software Engineer Method: Catch a cat and claim that your testing has proven that its a Lion. If anyone comes back with issues tell that you will upgrade it to Lion.
Indian Police Method: Catch any animal and interrogate it & torture it to accept that its a lion .
Rajnikanth Method : Keep warning the lion that u may come and attack anytime. The lion will live in fear and die soon in fear itself.
Manirathnam Method (director): Make sure the lion does not get sun light and put the lion in a dark room with a single candle lighted. Keep murmuring something in its ears. The lion will be highly irritated and commit suicide.
Karan Johar Method (director): Send a lioness into the forest. Our lion and lioness fall in love with each other. Send another lioness in to the forest, followed by another lion. First lion loves the first lioness and the second lion loves the 2nd lioness. ut 2nd lioness loves both lions. Now send another lioness (third) into the forest. You don't understand right... ok....read it after 15 yrs, then also u wont!
Yash Chopra method (director): Take the lion to Australia or US.. and kill it in a good scenic location.
Govinda method: Continuously dance before the lion for 5 or 6 days.
Menaka Gandhi method: Save the lion from a danger and feed him with some vegetables continuously.
George bush method: Link the lion with Osama bin laden and shoot him!


Finally .. the spice version
SP Style : Get the lion to watch a movie video and ask him to write a pre-read, then the 200 page summary, then form groups and write a detailed report and later again form another group and then write under a different topic on the same movie and then once again form a different group to present a PPT; and to make it really lively link each of these works with credits worth a dime.

p.s: The above entry was purely a sarcastic comment, the germ of which was after we were asked to watch the brilliant piece of a movie called "WallStreet" and later we have to sit throughout the night forming teams and discussing about the PPT.

GlaxoSmithKline garners student market....

"Just when you need that extra mile of energy and boost ... check out GSK's products " Shouts the headline.. and then as the camera zooms in you can see truckloads of SP's students gathered around the drinks dispenser having their fill along with Sachin Tendulkar saying .. "BOOST is the secret of OUR energy"

And then we got back to studies.....

p.s: GSK had come over to campus for their pre-placement talks and as a result we had free DRINKS(read as Horlicks & Boost). I guess next on the line should be Pizza Hut or maybe MTR... what say Placement Committee ;)

p.p.s: Did u know that Horlicks which is sold in India as a energy giving drink is actually sold in UK as a sleep-inducing drink ?!!!
WHOW .. definitely something is AMISS

Team Power

As a part of our Organizational Behavior course, i was going through a video on "Teams & Organizational change"; a Harvard Business School Management productions based on J. R. Katzenbach, Douglas K. Smith 's philosophy on teams- creation, maintenance and performance.

Background : J. R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith are very well known in the O.B area and their views are almost kotlerish when it comes to this field of management.

According to their views, for any team to be successful it has to follow certain ideal scenarios :-

1. The team has a common purpose
2. The Team has a specific set of goals
3. The team is small enough, to work as a team
4. The team has a commonly agreed upon working approach
5. The team has all the skills in place to meet the goals.
6. The teams are holding themselves mutually accountable for the outcome or results.

Going through this hit-list i found that almost all except points 3 & 6 sounded steeped in common sense; and didn't have any sort of deepening impact on the left side of my brain.

Points 3 & 6 made me felt like hansel and grethel at last finding the bread-crumbs. These exact thoughts though now make perfect sense to me, would not have given the same level of nirvana if someone told me earlier that to have an effective team you needed to be both small and blame each other ;) .

This is the malady of all Indian IT companies. Just cause teams are the flavor of the season many of the Indian based IT companies, have been lapping it up without any proper implementation.

Point 3 : The team is small enough, to work as a team

Haven't we all seen or experienced organizations having a huge number of teams, each having their tasks pre-defined, and usually involved in some burecratic non-sense.
This actually reduces the flexibility of being in a Team. The whole purpose to organize members across teams is to give everyone cross-functional capabilities; rather than creating teams around problems we tend to create problems around teams.
Further most of these teams are quite large to manage, resulting in fragmentation and dialysis of the team goals.
Personally, I have always found creativity, empowerment & authority being developed faster across members in a smaller group than across mammoth pay-loads of team members, smaller teams ensure that decisions are being made faster, min. ego-clashes and large area of influence across each of the other members in the same team.

6th point : The teams are holding themselves mutually accountable for the outcome or results

This is the vital ingredient (Formula X) in the formulation of Teams.
Sometimes we often find that people within a team become so closely bonded that they place the individuals over the team priorities; this can easily be observed across archaic teams (classic Ex:Government of India).
The maxim "The Team is served by the weakest link" should be exemplified across all the team members, urging them to strive forward, challenge and commend each other.(Ex: Private sector)
We must ensure that we do not mis-read the point though. Holding each other mutual does not imply in finding the negative of each other... this shall only lead to utter chaos. The 6th point rather amplifies on the point that we must not safe-guard any people within the team and motivate everyone to contribute to the outcome.

Whatever i mentioned, is after all the summit of the moutain, cause the understanding and implementation of these maxims are those which would signify scaling of mountains.

Mr. Sanjay Sinha, CEx Mahindra Logistics On Operations and Supply chain management

Dear SPJIMR Family,
The details of the guest lecture are as follows –

Guest : Mr. Baru Rao, Chief Executive Officer, Capgemini India
Date : Tuesday 30th July, 2007
Time : 7:15 pm to 8:45 pm
Topic : “Operations and Supply chain management”
Venue: EMBA1 roomMr.Sanjay was very candid in his speech, when quizzed whether Mahindra logistics had planned to adopt any best practices or bench-markings like toyota's J.I.T (Just in Time).. he replied quite nonchalantly, "Mahindra is not into developing the latest state-of-art Supply chain Mgmt systems but rather in a business model development" and then went on explaining how RFID and other technology have created a mis-conception that without these business cannot proceed.. while they are merely additional costs and not delivering on much of benefits as required in a SCM systems... but the same cannot be said about retail or other sectors...

Of course, we shall be having further sessions from Mr.Sanjay to enlighten us on SCM and it's illusions.

FAS with Sandeep Gokhale...

        In general... any speech filled with Jargon, management fundae and illogically sounding twisted oxymorons are referred in MBA style as GAS(Garbage Analysis Systems). The word GAS can be used either as a noun or also as a verb for example ...
        "Let us all GAS together at the paper.. after all Relative grading shall definitely GAS us across."
        Somehow something which has emerged as a totally opposite subject is FAS (Financial Accounting Standards).. Oh yeah...i know you must be wondering after my previous totally diabolical stand on anything concerned with Financial subjects, what could have done me in ??
        The answer my dear friends... was Sandeep Gokhale..
        A brief introduction ...Mr.Sandeep Gokhale, Senior V.P of Vedanta Resources (known earlier as Sterlite group) prior to this was the Business Development Mgr for Jindal Steel. Currently he also takes classes to students across various insti. on subjects related to Finance; and is currently taking the subject FAS for us :)
        Here was a person who took us 4 Straight hours of class with only a 15 mins break.. on a sunday morning ... he took a abysmally low point in our day to the zeniths of F.A understandings ....
        Suddenly as if there was a magic charm I have started adoring P&L statements, Cash flows and all other financial instruments...
        The really wonderful aspect was that S.G started with the theoretical part, and then took a tangential practical example (mostly from his Work-exp) and then went to the next tangent and then so on and so forth.. ultimately forming a perfectly round shape bringing us back to the initial understanding !!
        He gave us amazing insights into Taxation, depreciation and everything connected with them..
        Did u know that the company has to file a min depreciation if in case they have to declare dividends ?
        And I really adored the practical example he gave of how the share prices of Tisco did a See-Saw, though the core competency of the group increased substantial..

        All hail S.G :)

        p.s: SPJIMR does have it's own share of experienced Full time faculty, whose CV if i have to list, would have occupied this entire page.... but it is just I haven't been exposed to their classes... and after the first experience with a thorough industry experienced faculty... raring for more

All i missed was a thursday :(

        Unlike in all other institutes, SPJIMR has this philosphy of having thursdays as the official week-end; every other day including Saturday and Sunday are considered are full working days and are usual days for guest-lectures.
        According to SP routine, we all take off on wednesday nights end up with some resturant and spending time out of the campus (more so cause the Campus MESS is closed on wednesday nights) and then use thursday to catch up on all lost sleep during the week; in most cases we end up just snoozing our alarm clocks throughout the entire thursday DAY.
        And so, i decided to give my home-town a visit due to personal reasons ruminating on the fact that thursdays would after all be chill-out day.

        But only after i arrived here back into campus on Friday morning i realized what i missed :-
        1) CEO talk by Mr. Baru Rao, Capgemini India
        2) Deadline for submitting one of my papers
        3) Group-assignment work
        4) 3 pre-reads for the next day

        Well... I must write this down in my DIARY "THURSDAYS are still not a HOLIDAY"

Mr. Baru Rao, CEO, Capgemini on Strategy of MNCs in Offshoring / Rightshoring

Dear SPJIMR Family,
The details of the guest lecture are as follows –

Guest : Mr. Baru Rao, Chief Executive Officer, Capgemini India
Date : Thursday July 26, 2007
Time : 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
Topic : “Strategy of MNCs in Offshoring / Rightshoring^TM”
Venue: SPJIMR Auditorium

P.G Labs....... Re-inventing yourself !!!

       Personal Growth LABS, as christened in SPJIMR.... these are a culmination of theory and practical exposure to Team dynamics, self realization and conflict resolvability.
       After the entire onslaught of our foundation exams, it was a more than welcome break to head off as an entire group towards lonavala on a 4 day team-building exercise, involving Ice-breaker events, trekking, assault course, event management and a helluva lot more.
       Apart from these various physical activities, what really made sense to me was when we discussed about various OB related theories and how exactly we had applied these without our own intrinsic knowledge, few of the idealogies were simply mind-blowing....
       And of course, as the Adage goes... "Better experienced than informed" i personally feel that P.G labs is one of the finest experiences of my life-time which cannot be expressed in mere mortalish words.
       We went as 164 distinct indivuals but returns back as a single entity... and i guess, it really reflects on the success of the P.G Labs


       The Theory behind P.G labs which is being formulated can be expressed as succintly in the following diagram :

End of foundation ... beginning of ??

        I still quite vividly remember the day, 21st of June and in midst of a team meeting at Hewlett Packard i got a call with my excited sister on the other end... yelling "You got your foundation books..... there are three of them, each with the width of Harry potter's Goblet of fire and length full-scape"

        Strange as that may sound... that was the ultimate truth.... these were monstrosities in the name of management books and we had to finish reading them for the pre-foundation tests (failing these means rolling back on the baggage and the fees)

        Of course.. the above parah.. was hardly anything remotely associated with reality.

        Pre-foundation exams were cleared by all of us holding on to a minuscule manuscript called the "DOCKET" which was sent along with these books summarizing only key concepts required (more so like the "made easy series" in engineering)

        And then came the Foundation...
        These goliaths in the name of books were but sugar-candy as we started reading them... fluffy and sweet.

        The course content for our Foundation can be outlined as follows :-
        a)Financial Accounting (Author:Stice & Stice)
        b)Micro Economics (Author: Manikw)
        c)Quant. mgmt (Author: Ken black)
        d)Managerial Communication
        e)Intro to Case methodology
        f)What management is ? (book review of the same : Joan Magretta,Nan Stone )

        Being engineers, we did what we do best... "LAST MIN studying" and ironically, i was suddenly enamored by the beauty of each of these books and currently after our foundation exams have finished I have taken up re-reading of these for beyond academic purpose (how un-engineer can i get ;) ??)

        Talking about being un-engineerish, we finished all our assignments on our own (without Paulo Alto's help... in case u are wondering this phrase of mine... paulo alto is the research center for XEROX), and group-works were finished within the specified time-frame.

        Overall memories of the foundation course flood me as a premier training grounds for the un-initiated of us into the world of Ledgers & accounts, Marginal utility & oligopoly, sample case study initiatives and better communication (oral & written)

        Of we go unto P.G LABS .... a 4 day outing after slogging continuously the past entire week for the foundation exams; unwinding SP STYLE

And you have been "AD-MAPPED"...

ADMAP - STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE
Assessment & Development of Managerial & Administrative Potential,or as the Junta at SP refer it with it's cute & sweet abb. "ADMAP"; is not just a course but rather the way of life in SPJAIN....

        ADMAP is a home-grown program of SPJIMR that has continuously evolved to its present form over the last several years. Fostered under the guidance of our HON. DEAN Dr. Shrikant, M. L. (one of my personal inspirations as i joined SP), this program is more like having a practical approach towards administration by involving the students into the working architecture of SPJAIN as such; students shall be assigned to various committees (either randomly or based on their preferences) and then together with the faculty in-charge they shall forge across an entire year trying to innovate and implement their ideologies.

         Agreed, that the concept is not novel.. but what really caught my eyes were the range of committees that have been created, the diversity not-withstanding the work profile and opportunities that each offer is truly bombastic (if i am permitted to use such a word)
         We have committees ranging from PRCom(public relationship) to Infra COM(Infrastructure), each of the specs (i.e finance, marketing, IM) have their own individual spec. SBUs(Strategic Business Units).

         Numerically speaking this year, we have around 23 core-committees along with a few more special interest groups such as LIFE (environment forum), Media, et all which are not mandatory to join.

         The activities that each and every committee has to be involved during the entire academic year are not exactly pre-defined and usually depends on the energy levels of each committee, but nevertheless both the scope and the budget being alloted for each of the committee is not bound.
         Usually every Com. would have it's own specific Event, e.x: each of the SBUs have their own flagship event, in the case of Info. Mgmt. they have Bhavitva, which involves a industry panel discussion and various events which are out to resolve the current issues plaguing the IT field so on and so forth.

         Now it would definitely be inappropriate if i stop with the workings of ADMAP with only the practical level discussions... behind ADMAP has evolved a really massive theory, bordering closely on OB(Organizational behaviour) & BP (Business Practices) and further on we also have nine modalities (modules) to be finished by the end of our first year in ADMAP;it would be worthwhile to note that the best of the brains of the institute are working behind making this course-work really path-breaking... and believe me... it really shows.

        p.s: I got into Entre COM (Entrepreneurship Committee), which was my second choice after CIG (Consultancy Interest Group) ... lets see as the flagship unfolds.

Mr.S.Padmanabhan - TCS HR head lecture on CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Dear SPJIMR Family,
We, Team SamvaaD, would like to invite you to attend a guest lecture as a part of SamvaaD guest lecture series.
The aim of SamvaaD is to enhance industry – academia interaction.
The details of guest lecture are as follows –
Name of the guest : Mr. S. Padmanabhan
Designation :Executive Vice President and Head of Global Human Resources, Tata Consultancy Services
Topic :“Change Management”
Date : Friday, July 20, 2007
Time : 4:45 pm to 6:30 pm

        After not sleeping the entire night and really psyched after writing two tests back to back, i still managed to draw across enough enthusiasm to get over to Paddy's visit.
        Very frankly I would never-ever argue with the sanity of this decision of mine to stay behind at college for attending the guest lecture.
        Mr.S.Padmanabhan was a erudite speaker, on the topic of change management he started off thus , "All that I know about change management is during TCS, as that has been my life's job and it would be better if i talk about TCS"
        A complete jargon free, simplistic chat was what we got with a strong message of building up our own repute for change management. He was absolutely brilliant(almost a living inspiration), in the message he was trying to deliver, the method how he delivered and especially the Q & A session. What was really unique was his blending of humour into his narrative, for ex:
One of my friends asked him during the Q & A,
"What would be the qualities to be developed for becoming Global leaders ?"
"Well", he replied "Among the first things that come to my mind would be to never say NO, personally i always followed that principle... the first gal i met;i said YES"