Human Behavior in Organisation: Corporate Culture

On the second day the subject for our class was Corporate Culture. As every CAN group has to come up with a presentation on the subject; our group went in a thinking mode on how to make the presentation more interesting and innovative rather than showing the slides and giving one more example on death by powerpoint. I came up with the idea of performing a skit on Corporate Culture through which most of the students will identify with the corporate culture they had previously experienced. I think the IDEO video and Prof. Coloma’s insistence on being innovative really helped me to come up with such an idea. I would also like to thank my CAN group of being receptive and open to such a weird thing and backing the idea completely. The way our CAN group performed the skit got the audience engrossed and laughing all the way. Everybody loved the part of Joh where he was the ideal boss, who encourages innovation, tries to emotionally engage the employees, is concerned about employee’s growth and reciprocates to their intangible needs. The skit was an instant hit but what shocked me was the reluctance of many of our batch mates to believe that such a corporate culture can in fact be made possible in the real world. They thought that it was too good to be true. I think the reason for such a response was the shear absence of such a corporate culture in the real world in most of the organizations. Till the other day I also thought that such a corporate culture cannot be implemented in the real world, but watching the IDEO video made me realize the power of being open to change and making things change rather than waiting for things to change. Prof. Coloma was highly supportive of our Idea and explained to the class the difference between the normal practices in the Corporate World and the defining moments which tests the responsible people in the organization (especially Managers) for their ability to take judgments which may seem to be against the status quo and irrational but are fair and rational for that particular situation. These are the differentiating values of an Organizations Corporate Culture.

Human Behaviour in Organisation: Best Employer Values

It was a new day in more than one ways (03/11/08). The first reason being, after one week of much deserved break, the MBA Batch-3 started their second innings. The second reason, we had two new subjects - Human Behavior in Organization and Financial Management-1 starting on this day. Financial Management is one of the toughest subjects we have in our MBA course and the 1st session corroborated it. However, Human Behavior in Organization (HBO) brought the necessary relief, as Prof. Coloma came up with a flexible attitude towards the course, making the course more participative than lecture based and case based. When I think of the reason for the success of the 1st part of the HBO course which ran the entire week, this flexibility proved as a boon for the students.
Our first day was about the Best Employer and what makes the company a Best Employer. The case given to us was of Mindtree Company, India. I studied the case and looked at the website of Mindtree to know what makes this company one of the Best Employer in India. Also its Founder, Mr. Ashok Soota, being an Alumni of AIM increased the curiosity within me. I also went through the website of Hewitt Associates. Hewitt Associates is an HR consultancy firm and comes up with regular survey results of the Best Employer in various parts of the globe. The one thing which was common in Mindtree and Vanke (a real estate company in China which was rated by Hewitt as the Best Employer for 3 consecutive years) was its emphasis on creating an emotional bonding within the organization and making leaders which can help the organization
Grow at a faster pace.
What struck me the most on the first day of the course was the Deep Dive video which demonstrated practically how bonding and good leadership helps the company in succeeding. The company featured in this video was called IDEO. I would like everyone reading this blog to visit the IDEO website, if possible arrange the video from any source and watch it once. The video was so thought provoking; I immediately decided I would try to bring about similar values in my organization which makes an organization a better place to work in, which satisfies the innovative urge of the people, which helps bring harmony and mutual respect and finally which improves the productivity and profitability of the organization.