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.