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.

A month at AIM..........Still a long way to go.

On this 17th of September, I completed exactly one month at AIM. However it is now 26th of september that I am writing this blog. It took me 9 days to take some time out and write this blog. I would also like to thank a friend of mine to inspire me to write this blog. Inspiration is one thing you require when you want to do things other than lucubrating and analysing loads of data while at Asian Institute of Management.
This one month has been like a roller coaster ride. There were times when I have felt a high which was when I have been upto the mark and performing to the best of my potential, while other times I have behaved like a mediocre. The standard deviation has been very high but believe me I am trying very hard to make the mean, median and mode of my performance equal and reduce the variance and standard deviation. Please forgive me for using this B*******t because this is what I have gone through in the last few weeks and also accused of the same by my batchmates. But as it is said-"the first step towards correcting a problem is acknowledging it". Luckily I have made good friends within this month who brought to my notice this weakness and made it imperative for me to overcome this weakness. I have learnt a lot in these last few weeks and came out with the conclusion that this world is all about continuously adding to your qualities. You can always ask for a premium if you can produce quality consistently.
Normally people have a dream before embarking to their journey of becoming an MBA; that is to make it high in the corporate world, open a new industry or become elite consultants. But my dreams have changed to solving accounting problems , determining whether it is a debit or a credit , solving and analysing cases with my CAN group and sometimes waking up in the middle of the night and looking at the clock to make sure I am not late for my classes. The common assumption in all these condition mentioned above is that I was lucky and have had the time to sleep. Many times it becomes difficult for me to decide whether the activity I performed the previous night is actually called sleeping. However I have managed to survive and hope I shall do it for the next 15 months. But for the moment I can claim I am 1/16th of an MBA. This term instills a feeling of value addition in me and also reminds me that there are just 15 such similar fractions left for the rigour to end. Who knows after all this rigour I may again start dreaming about the dreams aspiring MBA students often see i.e flying high, making it to the top of corporate ladder and ofcourse riding that elusive Mercedes , Ferrari or BMW(ofcourse the hybrid model when it gets launched, crude at 130 dollars is driving me crazy).

Recruiters Night 2008 @ AIM.............

Guys Please do appreciate this particular blog and the blogs on the recruiter night by other 4 guys of our batch - Rajdeep,Yuva,Ghosh and Johan. The two reasons for that are, firstly We were officialy not allowed to be a part of the event. Especially Yuva took a good initiative to get us all to be part of the event and finally Regnard helped us to sneak into the hall where the event was taking place. Secondly, We all had our CAN group timings changed so that we can attend the event. So special thanks to our respective CAN group to make this bit of sacrifice.

The event was scheduled to start at 6:30 pm on 3rd Sep and the venue was SGV hall in the AGCM building. We had MBA and MM students looking really bright in their formal attire's. Compared to these guys the 5 of us looked out of place in our casual dresses. However we were told by Regnard that it was a part of the plan to get us dressed up in casuals. The highlights of the event were Welcome Remarks by our president Mr. Francis G Estrada, followed by speeches from Enrollment and Placement Cell Executive Managing Director Mr. Santos and Students representative of MBA Dec.2008 (Mr.Madhusudhan)and MM 2008(Mr. Rajan Ananthanarayan). Everybody in their speech explained the importance of the rigour that students go through while they are at AIM. The representatives also gave presentations on the background and diversities of the current batch. This was quite necessary as to bring home the point to the recruiters, the quality of AIM students as compared to other B-Schools. One particular point that Madhu rose (which was followed by a huge applause) was that, the Students of AIM have Energy, they Inspire and they Create. The companies who took part in the event included QTEL from Qatar, First Gulf Bank from Abu Dhabi, Ayala Group-Philli., IBM-Philli., Pfizer-Philli., JP Morgan-Philli., L&T, RCBC Bank, Telus-Philli. and first time at AIM, Deepak Fertilizers -India. All 5 of us were under the impression that this event is going to be like a Placement event that happens in Indian B - Schools. However CV's were not allowed at the event and the only things you could do is to talk with the recruiters personally while you are taking your dinner and exchange your visiting cards(so guys be ready to make your visiting cards till next year). This was something which came to me as a surprise(commom how can recruiters judge you without your CV). The other thing which bothered me was this event came to an abrupt end with Prof. Ricardo Lim giving the closing remarks immediately after the speeches while the recuiters still remained unintroduced. The event started at around 7:00 and people were taking their dinner at 7:30. I was told that the idea behind it was that more people can spend time with the recruiters, one on one, while everyone was having dinner(By the way the Dinner was the best thing that night as told to me by Johan). I dont know how many students would be able to take advantage of this event however the good news is that the recruitment at AIM has started on a positive note this year with Cognizant Technology making 10 final offers and HCL technology making 2 final offers even before the recruiters night. The Seniors still have 4 months to get placed and I wish them all the best. For our batch there are things to be done at a large scale as we have May batch this time and also have more students in the Sept batch. But looking at the Quality of Learning at AIM and particularly the quality of students in our batch I dont think we would face much difficulty if we can get our acts together. Do shoot in your queries in case you need some more details regarding the event. You are also free to chip in with your suggestions about how would you want the recruiters night next time. So that we can have a good database for the things to look forward to for the event and which would help us plan in a better way.

India strikes gold..........

Please guys always remember the date 11/08/2008. This is the date India was waiting for the last 112 years. After such a long wait its Abhinav Bindra from Chandigargh,who got India the elusive gold in an Individual event- 10 mtr air rifle event.
Since Olympics began in the year 1896 in Athens India has never won a gold in an Individual event while accumulating many gold medals in Hockey(I would like to mention here that Hockey is the national sport of India). Its a great irony that it was the first time Indian Hockey team could not qualify for the Olympics in 112 years and to make amends for the ignominy India underwent, Mr. Abhinav Bindra decides to win the Gold medal.
Why I am so excited about this Gold medal is that, it has given a ray of hope to a population of 1.3 billion Indians that we can make it big if we are focused and determined. What people may not be knowing about Abhinav Bindra was that this guy worked so hard to accomplish this dream for the country that he had built a shooting range inside his own house where he used to practice day in and day out.
India has always been frugal when it comes to producing role models for the country to follow. But this particular moment of glory would be sufficient to encourage many upcoming role models in the days to come. When Olympics were announced in China for the year 2008, India went in a mood of high hopes and no expectations. But this day could change the mood to high hopes and high expectations as Saina Nehwal (the 18 yr old shuttler ) has also reached the last eight after defeating world No.5. For me the feat achieved by Abhinav Bindra is similar to Vasseili Zaitsev (The hero of Soviet Union(watch the movie enemy at the gates)) who defeated the Germans in World War-II with his sharp shooting. Abhinav Bindra is the new face of hope,expectations,reliance and optimism for Indians in Olympics to come. It can translate to Indians conquering the Wimbledon and probably the Football World Cup some day. This is what Abhinav Bindra has led me to think, I hope it makes the same impact on the minds of others.

Black Tuesday for Indian Democracy.

I had made up my mind to write blogs a month back. I had also decided that I would write blogs which donot provide a window to my personal life(as many of my colleagues do) but which would provide a medium to junta to be aware about the issues which are of national interest or which would help people with some information they require. I may write some blogs sharing my personal experiences if my near and dear one's like them. But today I am embarking my journey towards blogging with this blog.

I was waiting for an opportune time to go ahead with my first blog and thought that it should send a positive message to the few who would read my blog. I waited for a month to finally end up writing this disparaging blog which is absolutely against my nature. I hope you guys would understand the stress and embaressment I would have experienced when Indian Democracy was ridiculed on our Idiot boxes.

"Fact is always stranger than Fiction"- It may sound a cliche but the drama that entire nation, and even the world at large witnessed, inside the so called sacred premises of "Indian parliament" on this historic confidence vote for the UPA Governement has besmirched the nation. It was in many ways known to the nation that the UPA would come out victorious in the confidence vote but what was not known is the means it would adopt to win this crucial vote. It was 4:10 pm on 22nd July 2008 when the proceedings inside the Parliament were going on abnormally(amidst lots of commotion) when these three god send(I am using these words because I wont use foul language in my blogs) MP's of BJP came out from nowhere with bags full of 1000 rupee note bundles as if they have won the lottery and would like to share them with their colleagues. Than started the game politicians play so well which is called the blame game. I had been grooved to my television set since morning as this drama was far more interesting than Ekta Kapoor's daily soaps. But viewing these scenes was similar to watching people having beef inside a temple. Please excuse me if I am using such metaphors, but I cant help it as people in India identify with an issue only if it has some communal sentiments attached to it. For me it was a mockery of Indian constitution and India as a whole. I went through a phase of Introspection and could not stop thinking who is responsible for all this and how is this going to stop? The answer to the former is ofcourse "We" but I would like all the people to find out the answer to the latter. I dont know how many people share the same feeling and how many people really have the time to think about the country. But its high time we do something about the way Indian Politics is being run. The smallest bit which we can start with is to vote for the right candidate and educate others around us to do the same. We are in a minority as far as education is concerned in this country(only 6% population in India goes for graduation courses) and hence majority of the responsibility lies with us. It would take time, infact a decade or two, but the more we delay the situation would be much harder to tackle. But I am positive that things would change and we would bring the change.