Executive Management

How relevant is executive management?

2010-05-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

How relevant is execMBA for people like us? Who are "us" by the way? 6-8 years experience? 9-12 years at middle level? or 13 years plus guys at senior level? Who is the beneficiary? How can industry gain from it? How should institutes take it up? Whats the role of administration? Of alumni? What should be the expectations from institute? from students? How to derive maximum benefit out of executive management courses? Lots of questions. To be answered soon!

Strategy Resides in Heart

2009-10-03T09:36:00.001-07:00

Strategy resides in heart. We calculate, analyse and organize from mind. Unknowingly, we assume the role of an analyst assuming as if we are great strategist. We produce figures on excel. We run data on packages to see the regression. We project huge figures on the board to silent our would-be critics. Does that make us a great leader? Definitely not.

Leaders are driven from their heart and use mind just as a tool to provide assistance. Leaders are strategists. Leaders are individuals, great individuals, not a collection of multiple thoughts but a single intense ray of mission. Leaders feel.

Let us start feeling the things now. Let us be the leaders and bring required changes to the society.

Flaws in Management Education

2009-08-31T00:24:00.000-07:00

So many!

1. Is normal management aligned to the needs of the industry? No. If at all, it takes long time to adjust.

2. Is it aligned to the needs of students? PGP dont care much. But executives do. Are the management courses (one year full time) aligned to the needs ot executives? No. Not so far.

3. Whom does the course serve more? Students - only from job point of view. What does that mean? In a competitive environment, industries would approach the best intstitutions in any country based upon competitive advantage - cost vs. values. Thats how it serves students.

4. Does it serve industry? Neither industry in India nor the faculty is bothered really. Industry dont have either the success stories to create models for study or they dont share at all. So industry so far has not exerted the required demand or pressure.

5. Does is serve the academicians? Yes to a certain extent at least in institutes of premium level where research on models is the only way to survive. But do their research valuable for India? Good question! Then why dont we have ourr own models? Please ask the faculty of our good institutions including all IIMs. What has been the Indian faculty's contribution to management education so far?

6. Is faculty involved in some other activities? Consultancy? Does that dilute the attention?

7. Final question - has management education been reduced to mere science? Where is the practical learning? Where is the required slack to absorb? Why so much stress in management education?

There is hardly any justice to the way

1. Management education system is structured

2. Programs are created and organized

3. Knowledge tools are created

4. Knowledge is shared

A lot is deserved here to be done by multiple agencies - students, industry and faculty - all.

Capitalism and Socialism must merge and coexist as single force

2009-08-15T03:18:00.000-07:00

So many boundaries have been created in our world. We can forget some of them as outcome of less intellectual world. But the most appaling one is the demarcation between so called two different worlds - Capitalism and Socialism. Once it is defined, we create two different types of owners - consumerists and socialists. The whole world of intellectuals gets divided and stay against each other in their own world reinforcing their own theories and ideas.

Both theories are same as they essentially divide the world without taking the positives of other one taking into consideration.

Time has come to say good bye to those who select one and oppose other. The world is one and it needs one theory, one principle, one pragmatic way of life which encompasses every aspect of life.

The easiest way of moving in that direction is to merge the two theories and come up with one driving vision - create capital for the society, create society on top of the capital.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Erickson Theory

2009-05-14T06:08:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the extra ordinary gull in the novel by Richard Bach, has strong resemblence with the lives of Jesus Christ and Gautam Budhha. Jonathan does not want to just eat but fly the way no one else has done before. And doing so, he becomes an outcast as the society disowns him for breaking the tradition of gulls who never fly too hard. Jonathan lives alone practicing flying basics and learns that its nothing but boredom, anger and fear that cause us not to learn and live a short life full of dissatisfaction.
Later, he is taken to heaven where he achieves perfection in flying. He is trained by angels there. After learning the skills, he wishes to share them with his fellow beings on earth and he comes back as the teacher. This is quite similar to ressurection of Jesus Christ. After creating a few self driven leaders, Jonathan disappears.
This is Jonathan in short.
When we look at the story closely, Jonathan grows acquiring virtues in following sequence -
1. Hope (when he is young and hopeful that one day he'll be a great flier)
2. Will (When he practices and achieves first level of success)
3. Purpose (When his will becomes his purpose of life)
4. Competence (When he is above the rest)
5. Fidelity (When he is dedicated to his society)
6. Love (When he feels he should give back to his society what he has learnt)
7. Care (When he comes back and imparts teachings)
8. Wisdom (When he delivers his final message on self-leadership)
And this is exactly according to the growth suggested by Erickson in his theory, if the being moves on entirely positive path.
For more details on Erickson thoery, refer to wikipedia.

Bringing IT and OB together

2009-05-10T04:41:00.000-07:00

We have tried to find the exact reasons behind the success and driving factors of open source movement.
Cognitive evaluation theory states that intrinsic rewards drive individuals to perform better and achieve their goals more than extrinsic rewards can. Microsoft is driven by extrinsic rewards where as open source community is energised through intrinsic satisfaction.
Thats how recent development in IT opensource are linked with OB theories!

Life is a presentation

2009-05-09T07:35:00.000-07:00

What else is it?
There are introductions everywhere.
The content of life is highlighted as and when required through projected titles.
The content comes in sequence.
The lessons are shared.
So many formats, everyone prefers his own way.
The audience is rarely interested in listening our story.
We create our presentations, we listen to them, we close them and we also dump them.
We are creaters of our presentations, thats the whole truth.

Parrot to determine statistics

2009-05-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

Major suggested this yesterday.
As there is always an error margin with the model we adopt, we can as well take help from parrots and arrive at randomly distributed model with a certain error % which can be assumed to be stable over a period of time!
Two parrots for two variables, 3 for three, 4 for four and so on.
Thus stands resolved the entire problems of probability and statistics!
:-)

Demand and Supply Curves near Amul Shop

2009-04-28T20:19:00.000-07:00

When I looked around the Amul shop near NTB, I found a tree whose branches looked perfectly like two disjoint set of demand and supply curves, on the right side - supply curve and on the left side demand. And the main stem looked like perfect inelastic demand / supply which it should be.

The stem of a tree should be perfectly inelastic as it must be rigid enough to give the basic support. Where as the branches can afford to be elastice and may swing with the wind depending upon their strength!

Thats the economics of life! What a strange example!

Who Is A Good Teacher?

2009-04-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

Of late, there have been rounds of attempts to assess the effectiveness of various teachers and several comparisons have been drawn to the faculty faced so far. I pondered over it and assimilated my thoughts after googling the topic. Although the site I refered to had an article from children aducation domain, most of the qualities mentioned are applicable to all sections and I am highlighting some of them below. As per my understanding, a good teacher is one who -

Plans well before the class has an exact idea of the class agenda, resources required and objectives to be met
Organizes and manages all the required resources, including time, properly in the class
Presents the knowledge effectively
Interact and cooperate with all the students
Provides guidance proactively, maintains discipline and drives the whole class towards the desired objectives
Customizes the curriculum based upon the requirements of the class
Assesses the performance of the students judiciously and creatively

I feel this summarizes the high level qualities a good teacher must possess.
Opinions?

# Reference - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3614/is_200407/ai_n9454489/?tag=content;col1

I have a bum.

2009-04-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

(Source of inspiration - Martin Luther King's Speech)
I have a bum and I want to save it from the bus that goes very close from behind when I am sitting while buying vegetables at Thakurpukur bhaji market.
I have a bum and I want to save it from getting torn apart from the onslaught of assignment and reading material.
I have a bum and I want to save it from the rigor and vigor of IIMC so that I can enjoy my one year here with my batch and family.
I have a bum.
Go back to family hostel, go back to bachelor hostel, go back to library, go back to new family hostel and do whatever you can to save your bum.
Let enjoyment ring from the PGPEX class room, let enjoyment ring from the placement cell, let enjoyment ring from the convocation to be held at audi after one year.
Happy at last with intact bum, happy at last! Thank God Almighty! We'll be intact at last!

One Shoe Factory

2009-04-10T20:52:00.000-07:00

Jarnail Singh threw one shoe at Chiddi Man and I started wondering what happened to the other one! And how did Jarnail Singh walked thereafter. Jarnail Singh's problems were solved as he was picked up by local police chaps and he didnt have to walk on his own. But I have something else to think about now.

This is an opportunity for all of us entrepreneurs. I expect one-shoe-flying to become an acceptable norm of communication pretty soon. And it is a very effective way of expressing disagreement. So how does that translate into money making for us? And whats the driving factor?

The driving factor is that only one shoe is required, not the pair. As, it not practical to throw one and spoil the pair that you purchased with lots of preferences and attachment.

So guys, all we need is to start manufacturing single shoe unit of different types and varieties such as one which can fly for long distance or one that can hit harder or maybe one thats got sensors in it which can hit the target precisely, like anti missile weapons.

Any takers of the idea, please contact me. Leave a reply.