How's my Luck now?

Forward March!

2006-03-25T03:34:00.000-08:00

Here's the link to my new blog: The Generalist

Ending it all...

2006-03-17T20:10:00.000-08:00

Today is the last day of my MBA course - the Convocation day. Preparations have been completed and only the last few finishing touches are being put into place. The campus is filled with people as parents and other relatives & friends of the graduating batch visit the place for the convocation.

With this must also come the end of this blog, which was meant specifically to capture some of the things that I experienced during my stay here, and occasionally, my views on them. I have found blogging to be a good way to relax and mull over things, and I plan to create a new, absolutely general (i.e. non-specific) blog soon. I will not delete this blog, since it might prove interesting to some people.

And that's that.

Placement season

2006-03-08T21:59:00.000-08:00

The placement season has come and gone. The placements for our batch were successfully completed yesterday, a day ahead of schedule. Although I will not reveal the details here, the whole exercise was a lot less taxing than the summer placements had been. I do not have the numbers with me, but from the general reaction, it seems as if most people have got jobs in the field (and even sub-field) that they wanted. Whether this translates into less attrition (say, within the first year) from this first job remains to be seen. I did not have a personal stake in the process, having secured my position earlier. So I had a ringside view of the process and this was filled with a lot of different emotions, experienced vicariously - hope, despair, anger, frustration, humour. Finally, the curtain fell yesterday late at night, and as the tradition goes, a dholi beat his dhol all the way from the academic block to the mess, leading a procession of students. Euphoria overflowed in the mess in a half-hour of dancing amid splashes of water. An institute party followed, the last for our batch, and this lasted well into the morning today. Memories to cherish...

Last class

2006-02-11T05:27:00.000-08:00

I just attended my last class of the course, and perhaps of all formal education. I say perhaps, because of the possibility that the organization(s) that will employ me might sponsor some or the other 'management development programme' or some such thing in the future :). There is no great feeling of exhilaration or relief or loss at passing this milestone though.

What's in an MBA? - V

2006-02-10T20:12:00.000-08:00

Run-ins with administration

Our batch had a few run-ins with the administration here on various matters, giving the batch an unwarranted bad impression and leaving a bad taste in most people's mouths, on both sides. I am mentioning this here because this kind of thing seemed to happen unusually often with us.

Faculty & teaching

Having recounted some of the problems from the students' side, I have to note the problems we have had with some of the faculty and their teaching styles. Some of the faculty, including that in Operations, Finance, and Decision Sciences, have been really great to study under and I will remember these professors for a long time. However, it's a pity that the same can't be said of quite a few others. Either their
functional knowledge was not quite up to the mark, or their teaching style was too drab (with no attempt to make a subject interesting), or they couldn't handle case discussions very well, or they made really good subject outlines & topic lists but didn't cover them well, or their marking & grading schemes were inscrutable, etc., etc. Admitting that teaching is not an easy job, and the fact that at a time when the
economy is booming, it is difficult to retain good faculty, we are still in a less than desirable position.

Here I end this brief exposition on my MBA experience. These were opinions only, (although reasoned ones, I hope), and so I don't expect everyone, especially all of my batchmates to agree with me totally.

What's in an MBA? - IV

2006-02-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

Grading pattern & emphasis on grades

Academic grading here, as perhaps in most other b-schools, depends a lot on term-end (and mid-term) exams. The exam question papers in most subjects were very disappointing - the same old descriptive questions where the length of the answer was important, and which failed entirely to make the respondent stop and think. The marking of the answers then caused quite a lot of grief from time to time, and the next stage - grading - was quite unpredictable as well, especially for those who had
middling marks. Add to that marks allotted to projects and term papers (see previous post), and that unfathomable variable - class participation, and you see why grades occupied most students' minds for a disproportionate amount of time. The number which came out of this process - the beast called CGPA - the number mentioned to top
recruiters on campus, then achieved mythical proportions. Relative Grading (RG) became a verb (to 'RG' someone is to do something that will take away some credit from the counterparty and/or gain valuable credit for oneself). Many people gave up and stopped giving much, or any, importance to grades, for various reasons. This further fueled the feeling among faculty and administration that this batch had hit
rock-bottom in terms of attitude towards academics.

So is there a better alternative? A grading system giving more emphasis on project work or similar non-exam components, combined with an evaluation process giving genuine importance to quality of work and, in case of group work, to share of work can be conceived with some effort. (yes, this is a 'process re-engineering solution' :) ). Accountability can be brought to academic work by making sure - by meeting students, by asking them pointed questions in presentations, etc. - that work done is genuine, well-understood, and containing some individual insight, however small. Subjectivity may not be removed completely, but the experience might be very satisfying for both students and faculty.

Recruitment

"We help deliver genuine business value to our customers by consulting them on improving their business processes" - a line many recruiters in the IT and consulting space parrot in PPTs. Well, to them I'll say, look at your own recruitment process first. Very few companies can boast of low attrition rates of fresh MBA hires, and apart from the employee's own attitude, the flaws in the recruitment process might be to blame.

Group discussions are a part of many recruitment processes. The problem is, these are not used for discovering any potential in the candidates, but more as an elimination mechanism when too many people have applied and have been shortlisted. When there is desperation to get a job during placement week, the quality of GDs is mostly pathetic. And then, many a times the selections made for the next round throw up surprises, as happened with me in case of a prominent IT company in the laterals process last month. I am not saying all this just because I am bad at GDs (which I am), but because the same kind of elimination can be achieved by more careful vetting of CVs by the recruiters and giving out a shorter shortlist (there's no redundancy here :) ).

Many companies also have more exotic formats - games, presentations, case interviews, etc. I am not saying that recruiters do not have a solid basis for having such components in the process, but all that a long-drawn out process can do for a candidate during those three days of placements is cause exhaustion. This also suggests that concentrating all placements in 3-4 days might not be the best way to do it.

What's in an MBA? - III

2006-02-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

And now let's look at the unsavoury part. It's not a litany of woes but still the grievances are very significant. I am mentioning six prominent points here.

Work ethic (or the lack of it)

Over the last 1.5 years, my lingering memory in academics will remain one of trying to goad fellow project group members to do their share of work and document it appropriately. I am no saint, but I can say that I have acquitted myself well as far as effort in academic projects, term papers, assignments, etc. goes. The more we neared the end of the course, the less people were willing to work. There remain a handful of people who are dependable and do their work willingly, turning in a good performance. Projects and term papers were delayed until there hardly was any time before the deadline, and then of course, hasty work was hardly ever of good quality. I don't think I will ever understand why people failed to get enthusiastic about their work, even when they had chosen the subjects and project topics themselves. I sincerely hope this 'mutual shirking equilibrium' changes for the better when we step
out into the outside world.

Attitude toward learning

The popular perception of an MBA is that of a 'smart'-looking, jargon-spitting person, who may or may not understand what he/she means. While Dilbert's way of poking fun takes a rather extreme position on this, one would not tend to disagree totally with Scott Adams if one sat through b-school presentations (and gave a few
oneself, to be fair :) ). Project reports and term papers, examination answers, presentations - all of these generally have oodles of what we fondly call 'globe' (not counting the quantitative courses, of course). I don't really know the reason for this predilection with half-understood or misunderstood concepts and jargon - is it because a lot of subjects are packed into a relatively short time, is it because
students feel these are not really going to help them in the real business world, or, is it because students feel that whatever you actually do, it is how you package and present it that matters most? But this attitude meant that most people switched off mentally when project presentations were going on, not hearing what others had to
say, assuming that it wouldn't be something vitally important, and then went on stage, and said similar things themselves.

The corporate world did not help much in this area. Most people from the corporate world who come down to campus for pre-placement talks (PPTs) talk in similar mind-numbing jargon.

What's in an MBA - II

2006-02-08T05:33:00.000-08:00

Continuing with the positives:

People

I am not a naturally gregarious person and so I do not know many people of my batch, and of my senior and junior batches, closely. However, irrespective of how many people I personally knew, I have learnt things, directly or indirectly, from a lot of people. This might seem like a 'global', and ultimately meaningless, statement. But it isn't. It's certainly not the first time I have been with people from all regions of India, but in terms of attitudes, behaviour and goals, the people I have met here form a much more varied bunch than that I met with during my engineering days.

I wouldn't count more than a dozen people here as my closest friends, but these people have been absolutely wonderful to be with. A very capable bunch of people who are also great fun to be with, and the shared experiences with them are memorable. Besides these close friends, the class I was in in the first year (Section D) has been a fairly close-knit group, with most people being comfortable being with each other. Overall, I have liked the variety of people I met here, and have liked observing their capabilities, idiosyncrasies, and attitudes.

Facilities & resources

I found the facilities and resources (the computer centre and network, the library, sports facilities, some essential services like banks & provision stores, the course material) to be very good overall. Of course, each one of the above has its own set of shortcomings, and have led to much heartburn at various times. But the services they have provided offset the difficulties, at least in my case. In fact, I have not made as great a use of the library as I would have liked to.

Quizzes, talks, etc.

I must make special mention of the great time I have had in quizzes here. I was fortunate that Samrat chose me for his quizzing partner, since that gave me the enjoyment of winning a lot of quizzes :). I was also fortunate that we had at least a dozen people in my batch who were very interested in quizzing, which made all quizzes very lively.

Many of the speakers from various industries that came to deliver talks during these 1.5 years gave me a lot to think about. I have written about each of the talks I have attended on this blog.

The 'etc.' part includes the fun, the treats and parties, tremendous additions to my movie, music, and reading material collection, the experience of the city of Lucknow, the walks around campus, and many other memories. Of course, this is not part of the MBA course, but I am considering my entire experience here, so these should be included.

What's in an MBA? - I

2006-02-08T04:28:00.000-08:00

This is the last week of classes here, followed by three days of exams next week, then 3 more weeks before final placements and a further one week before the convocation. It's a good time to look back and see what one gained from the MBA programme, and also to consider the flip side,
what one liked least about it.

Some people claim that there is hardly anything to be gained from the course, and that there are so many shortcomings and problems - with the course, with the institute, with the people here - that they overshadow any positives completely. But I am not able to take such a cynical view. Firstly, I believe that what one considers as gain and what as loss is, by itself, a personal thing. Secondly, and more importantly, I firmly believe that what you get out of the course (and
indeed out of any endeavour) depends strongly on what you are willing to put in. If you have a positive attitude, try to do things that you think are good and of interest to you, there is a lot to be gained from the course.

With this background, I will start this short series of posts reflecting on my experiences in the past one and a half years. I hope to write another series taking a more humorous view of all that happens in a b-school.

First the positives, in no particular order.

Functional knowledge

I opted for elective subjects in Finance & Systems (where I have a major) and in Operations as well as Strategy. I must say that I have had an exhilarating experience studying these varied subjects, getting a conceptual as well as practical view on various aspects of business. I cannot speak for the areas to which I have had no special exposure here (namely, Marketing and HR), but in Finance, Operations and Strategy, learning has been an enriching experience. The faculty has not always been great, my own contribution to the study of each subject has not always been the best possible, yet there is a sense of satisfaction on having understood so much that was previously mysterious. Even greater is the happiness at having so many avenues for further exploration having been opened.

Now, interest is not the same as aptitude, and I must admit that although I have great interest in most of what I opted to study, my aptitude or expertise at much of this is of a rather mediocre level. In each of these areas, I know of several people in my batch who have excellent aptitude and knowledge. Many people who know me might think I am being deliberately self-deprecating, but I am stating this categorically, as a fact. I have always tried to compensate for lack of natural aptitude by having a keen sense of curiosity and putting in some effort, and I think that is why I feel whatever satisfaction I do.

'Rang de Basanti'

2006-01-30T04:02:00.000-08:00

I watched this much-awaited and much-commented-upon film yesterday with the gang at Novelty theatre, Aliganj. Although much of the story was known to me thanks to a front-page story in the Times of India, I found the film to convey something more than can be captured in a telling of the story. Directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (who belongs to, what I have termed, the 'YACS Club' - Yet Another Curious Spelling, that is thriving in the entertainment industry these days), it conveys effectively the indecision in the minds of youth today, who, despite realizing that there is a need to do something to combat India's current problems, are not really sure of how to go about the task. This essence of the film is described well in this review by one of my batchmates.

Some of the more prominent issues in India today are lined up in the film - the moral police, communal hatred and distrust, politician-industrialist nexus, the irresponsible and callous politician, police atrocities. Urban youth, as represented by Aamir Khan (D.J. or Daljeet) and his gang, are shown to be cynical in their assessment of this country's prospects. That is, until a Britisher, ironically, inspires in them a sense of the value of the freedom that India got. Alice Patten (Sue) comes to India to shoot a documentary on Chandrashekhar Azad and other revolutionaries and casts this unruly group of friends in her film.

The device used to show the gradual transformation of the group into serious, thinking individuals is this: their actions, following an incident which brings them face to face with harsh reality, mirror those of their characters in the film. The path they choose to come to terms with the reality and to 'set things right' is one of violence, though the ending of the film is such as to preclude the conclusion that this is the only means left to solve our problems. It is this non-preachy nature of the film that actually makes it more effective by urging the viewer to think for himself/herself.

The performances are all very good, including that of Alice Patten (who does indeed speak nice Hindi). Aamir Khan, though not quite successful at looking young, infuses energy into his character of DJ, totally carefree initially and the angry young man later. Kunal Kapoor's performance as Aslam and Atul Kulkarni's as Laxman Pandey are essayed well. I am beginning to really like Atul Kulkarni's performances. Even Soha Ali Khan Pataudi (who resembles Tiger quite a lot, in some shots) impresses in the role of an optimistic young woman. Waheeda Rehman, as Madhavan's mother, does not have a major role, but carries it off with the dignity of an armed-forces-wife and mother.

A. R. Rahman's music is in keeping with the nature of the main characters and with the situations, and must be one of his most varied scores, though it is not really my favourite. Adman Prasoon Joshi's lyrics are quite remarkable, and it is clearly an inspired effort. A good description and review of the music can be found on J. Ramanand's blog here.

'Men, Ideas & Politics' - II

2006-01-25T21:09:00.000-08:00

Two very good essays emerge from Drucker's own experience with Japan and the Japanese. In 'Japan Tries for a Second Miracle', Drucker outlines the astonishing economic progress Japan made in the decade since 1952, and attributes it to five things: new investments, creating a mass market for goods, advances in agriculture, in education, and in health. He outlines the new challenges for Japan - creating new markets in Europe, and in return, opening up their domestic market to foreign competition for the first time; solving the problem of Japan's high-cost economy; problems caused by such practices as lifetime employment; and, the need for able political leadership.

Eight years later (in 1971), Drucker wrote 'What We can Learn from Japanese Management', very lucidly outlining three traits of Japanese management that made Japanese business so effective - the importance of consensus, not so much in making a decision, as in actually understanding a problem and the need for a decision; the practice of lifetime employment and how it harmonizes job security with flexibility in labour cost; the Japanese mentorship tradition in organizations and how that results in developing able leaders for the future.

Drucker includes two obituaries in the collection. The first is that of Henry Ford, who he credits with bringing together isolated ideas of the 19th century to evolve the technique of mass production, thereby solving a lot of the problems associated with typical capitalist society of the 19th century which led to the birth of Marxism. Mass production, Drucker says, was not just a production technique, it was a technique of social organization. It gave birth to its own problems, during Ford's lifetime - no worker having skills to produce something entirely on his own, etc.

The second obituary is that of John Maynard Keynes. Like Ford, Keynes is also seen as a great man in his field (economics) who saw the grand success of his theories but also the failure of his economic policies during his lifetime. Keynes' introduction of the idea of money itself being an important psychological factor in man's economic decisions (and not just the economically rational factors of supply & demand) was revolutionary. It helped explain the phenomena of depression and unemployment, at a time when it was most required. At the same time, the economic policies he devised for Britain, and later, proposed for the international economy, betrayed the fact that his political belief was still that of the classical economist - a laissez faire economy with government doing only some slight nudging and pushing, and even that on the basis of purely economic indicators and not political factors. The failure of such policies was immediately visible in America's New Deal.

'Men, Ideas & Politics' - I

2006-01-25T20:46:00.000-08:00

This is the first complete book by Peter Drucker (Basic Books, 1971) that I read recently. It is indeed quite strange that one can go through an entire B-school curriculum without encountering Drucker's writing anywhere. Reading this collection of essays, I also felt that Drucker was the only eminent thinker on management to have knowledge and interests much vaster than this field. Consequently, he could make sense of and understand the significance of things others would ignore, as far as management thought goes.

This is a collection of essays written at various times, but all revolving around the theme of 'social ecology', as Drucker called it. It refers to the interaction of economic, political and social thought and action. I will touch upon some of the essays here.

In 'The New Markets and the New Entrepreneurs', Drucker does what he was considered great at - prediction. It consists of insightful observations about the next age of markets and consumers, the new workforce (for which he uses the term 'knowledge workers', which he
coined), the age of the multinational company, etc.

'The Unfashionable Kierkegaard' is on a totally different wicket. It's about the philosophy of the 19th-century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard - that man's existence is one of constant tension between his individuality and his citizenship in society. It is therefore fundamentally different from Marx's, Rousseau's and Hegel's ideas of man's existence having meaning only through society. It is the fact of death which makes Kierkegaard's ideas more believable, for in death man is ultimately on his own. The philosophy envisions man's existence as essentially tragic, but Kierkegaard proposed faith as the means to overcome the despair resulting from the tension of existence.

In 'Calhoun's Pluralism', Drucker outlines how the American government at the Federal level works. He asserts that American democracy functions in a unique way - through allocating work on all important issues to various Committees and Sub-Committees of the Congress. Each
Committee actually represents a special interest group, and thus the allocation of work to different Committees itself gives an indication of what kind of legislation might appear. Thus, the US is governed by the principle of 'sectional and interest compromise', rather than a clash of different ideologies. It is the kind of pluralism that the 19th-century thinker John Calhoun first wrote about.

Manfest - IV

2006-01-24T04:35:00.000-08:00

Talk by Mr. Ashok Desai

On the 22nd, I attended an impromptu talk by Mr. Ashok Desai. He is a person who speaks his mind, and clearly expressed his irritation with the way the previous day's panel discussion had gone. Whatever he wanted to say at the discussion, he would say now, he stated. It was only a 40-minute session, but Mr. Desai put forth certain ideas related to India's position in the world.

The two main ideas that came out from his talk were: one, that corporate India's earnings growth over the last several quarters has been helped a lot by India's favourable forex reserve position and low interest rates, besides increase in internal efficiency of enterprises; two, that India should allow Bangladeshis free entry and exit into and from India, arguing that their contribution to India's GDP would be more than the cost to the country of maintaining them, and of the cost of keeping them out. Dwelling on the first idea, he predicted that this high earnings growth pattern would slow down some time in the next financial year itself. It was a little difficult to agree with his second view. He argued that the Bangladeshis who came to India would go to places where jobs were available (like Mumbai and Gujarat) and do something, anything. Mr. Desai said he did not believe that there was a labour surplus in India, as everyone was involved in some kind of work (even if it was vending peanuts) to make a living. He did not consider the social cost of even more people emigrating to already overcrowded cities, competing with Indian people, and creating social tensions thereby.

Finance panel discussion

A panel discussion on the Indian financial markets went much better than the earlier discussion, but that too, was only because of the first two panelists mentioned below: Mr. Arun Kejriwal, equity market analyst and founder of KRIS, who also moderated the discussion (incidentally, his son is our batchmate here); Mr. Harihar, from the Derivatives unit of Karvy Stockbroking; Mr. C. V. Rao, a senior executive with SIDBI; Mr V. K. Garg, CMD of Power Finance Corporation; and Dr. M. Ravi Sundar, V-P of Morgan Stanley India, and till recently, professor of finance at IIML.

The first two panelists fielded most of the questions on the Indian equity markets, like: the regulatory setup and how it compared with the rest of the world; the valuations in the markets today; whether the current bull run is sustainable; whether and when global liquidity might stop flooding India; the trend in specific sectors like sugar, etc. They answered the questions very crisply and made their position as clear as possible. As for the other panelists, their contribution was not substantial.

Performance by Naveen Prabhakar

Naveen Prabhakar is a stand-up comedy artiste who has appeared in the TV show 'The Great Indian Laughter Challenge'. His hour-long performance was quite amusing. His jokes were pretty crude actually, but I liked his mimicry skills. The highlight of his performance was the way he produced the sounds of the ankle ornaments: the paayal and the paazeb.

What I missed

Apart from attending or participating in all the events mentioned above, I also missed a few. I missed the opening ceremony with a talk by Mr. Ishaat Hussain, finance director of Tata Sons. I also missed, though deliberately, a talk on the Indian retail sector by Mr. Arvind Singhal, MD of KSA Technopak. Due to a clash with the Business Quiz prelims, I could not watch the stage play. I could not attend a talk on trading and investment in equities delivered by Mr. Harihar of Karvy, which was crisp and informative. I gave the performance by the rock band Parikrama a miss. And I also missed the party which began in the wee hours of the morning of the 22nd, and which people say they enjoyed a lot.

Manfest - III

2006-01-24T04:09:00.000-08:00

Theme panel discussion

The theme of Manfest this year is "India: Global Torchbearers" and there was a panel discussion on this theme. The panel comprised of eminent people: Mr. Ashok Desai, currently consulting editor with The Telegraph, and earlier with Business Standard; Mr. P. Mohammed Ali, eminent NRI (or Pravasi Bharatiya) from Oman; Mr. C. R. Prasad, former Chairman of GAIL; and Ms. Shelby Quast, a visiting professor at IIML in the field of International Law and Business Transactions. The discussion was moderated by Mr. Chetan Sharma of NDTV. The panel discussion on Corporate Social Responsibility last year had set high standards and this year's discussion failed quite miserably to live up to those standards.

The problems were basic: one of the speakers had prepared a speech on India's energy needs and natural gas as the fuel of the century (which was great except that the connection to the topic was not absolutely clear; plus, it was a presentation, and there was no discussion). Another speaker spoke for quite a lot of time without really answering the questions posed by the moderator. After half an hour, the discussion was going nowhere, and I had to take the extreme step of walking out.

Session with Mr. Sunil Handa

We had an interactive session with serial entrepreneur and professor of entrepreneurship at IIMA, Mr. Sunil Handa. The session was totally free-form, as Mr. Handa, after a brief introduction to the course he teaches at IIMA (one of the most popular on campus) and the methodology he adopts (one-to-one interaction, no case studies), settled into a question-and-answer format. The attendees' questions relating to entrepreneurship were answered by Mr. Handa in a typical style which was at once entertaining and inspiring. Mixing Hindi and English freely, Mr. Handa gave his views: why it was not essential (or even desirable) to pursue a job for a few years before starting up one's own venture; how an entrepreneur had to have the ability to cope with failure, move on and identify new opportunities; the importance of negotiation, cost-cutting, and continuous improvement capabilities; the importance of honesty in the long run, etc. It was a relatively short session, so he could not deal in depth with questions like how to identify opportunities; how to select an opportunity from among several alternatives available, etc. On the whole, it erred a bit on the side of exuberance, but then, in a short session and talking in general on the subject, I suppose the job that could best be done was one of inspiration than delving into the nitty-gritties.

Musical performance by KK

The main attraction on the evening of the 21st was a musical performance by the playback singer and artiste KK and his troupe. I like this man's voice. It is fairly versatile, has a good bass, and is able to scale a fair range of pitches. As he performed one song after another, I realized that he now has a sizable number of hit movie songs to his credit. His performance was received quite well by people and it was clear from his face that he was happy with the response he got, although he did seem a bit tired near the end.

Manfest - II

2006-01-22T04:44:00.000-08:00

Stage play

Last year's stage play based on Vijay Tendulkar's 'Shaantataa, Court chalu aahe' was memorable. This year's play, again directed by Ms. Neelam Gupta of the NSD, and enacted by IIML students, was based on a comedy by the great French satirist Moliere. Its title in Hindi was 'Bichhchhoo'. Unfortunately, I could only watch the final 20 minutes of the play because of the (fruitless) time spent on the second round of the Business Quiz. So it's not quite right for me to pass judgment on the whole play, but somehow, I did not find it quite that good this year. As the director said after the play, comedy is not easy even for professional actors, and these amateurs were overacting, it seemed to me. This is not to say that they did not put in effort. The story too, did not seem to carry much import or make any biting comments on society, something that makes satire so insightful and enjoyable.

Sporting lessons

It was a pleasure and an honour to listen to two of India's best sportsmen in their respective fields - Geet Sethi and Lt. Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore. Incidentally, both their sports (billiards and shooting) involve the crucial faculty of mental concentration, and they both dwelled on similar themes of achieving success or excelling through emphasis on concentration and on the process of performing. What they said applied more or less to most non-sporting careers as well.

Geet Sethi emphasised the point that your lifestyle determines your ability to concentrate, giving the example of the lifestyles of himself and of Prakash Padukone when in their prime. To him, excellence in an area of interest, or a job well done, was 'success', and to achieve it, one might have to go to the extremes of austere lifestyle. Concentration, consistency, and co-operation or humility, were the three virtues of the sportsperson (and indeed apply to other fields of endeavour). He also dwelled on what he called the 'sweet spot' - something which gives immense satisfaction when achieved. The frequency of hitting the 'sweet spots' increased with one's ability to become more single-minded. He reserved a few chosen words for the mobile phone, which he believed was a curse to mental concentration. He also touched upon stress, whose cause he defined simply as the tendency of the mind to wander into the past or the future instead of carrying out the present task as well as one could. Setting tight deadlines led to increased stress primarily because the mind would then tend to have one eye constantly on the future, decreasing the total concentration over the task at hand. He spoke forcefully and put across his point quite well.

Lt. Col. Rathore too, dwelt on success as being a very personal thing. Pursuing success as defined by others or by society, would not be much different from chasing a mirage. Single-minded effort on the present task was again emphasised. He said he had an 'I CAN' (Improvement which is Constant And Never-ending) philosophy. He derived his inspiration from certain individuals as well as through books. The important point he put forth, and which I liked, was that of a personal value system and the importance of means. As much as ends are important, means are equally so, and so personal ethics were all-important.

Manfest - I

2006-01-22T04:23:00.000-08:00

As I had said in my last post, the last three days (including today) have given me some good material to write about, as IIML's annual management fest - Manfest - was held. Besides some thought-provoking talks and panel discussions and some entertainment, this Manfest has also enriched me monetarily :).

Capital gains

I took part in two quizzes and two other competitions, and won quite a lot of money. In the Business Quiz, conducted by Gautam Bhimani, the man from ESPN-Star Sports, our team consisting of Samrat and I did not qualify for the finals. However, we won the General Quiz conducted by one of our alumni of the 2004 batch - Gaurav Sabnis (he maintains a very popular blog here). In another contest billed the 'Battle of B-schools' - a team game consisting of solving a series of puzzles, etc. - we again did not qualify for the final round. And finally, in the well-known Beer Game - a game on supply chain and the so-called 'bullwhip effect' - we won and collected a handsome amount.

Quizzes

I'll dwell on the quizzes first. Last year, the Business Quiz was a hit with the general audience because of its entertaining character, while the General Quiz could not have been worse. This year, it was the opposite, at least for me. Gautam Bhimani may have given it his best effort, but it failed to make the quiz very interesting. In fact, it resembled the well-known 'Brand Equity quiz' more than a business quiz. Most questions were of the fact-based, you-either-know-it-or-you-don't variety. There were a few good questions thrown in, to be sure, but they were too few. Advertising, marketing, brands and sports dominated the quiz. To be frank, I had set a much better business quiz last year in the inter-hostel event called Tansen. I don't understand why connects and other more exotic formats generally used in quizzes are hardly ever used by these professional quizmasters. Business history and business environment are very fascinating subjects, and they deserve a better deal. No team from IIML made it to the finals, which decreased the popular interest in the quiz somewhat.

The General Quiz more than lived up to expectations. Gaurav Sabnis had set up a very enjoyable quiz, spanning a wide variety of areas, with intelligently set up connects. These were the best couple of hours of quizzing I have had in a long time. The contest was also close between our team and another IIML team which eventually came second, so the quiz was alive till the last round. We were both in good form, so winning gave added satisfaction.

A 'place' in the sun

2006-01-16T01:08:00.000-08:00

This ten-day long break is the longest that I have taken on this blog. The reasons are twofold and apparently contradictory (but not really so): nothing much is happening, and the lateral placements process (for which I am eligible) are going on. So something is happening - people are getting jobs, daily talk is dominated by who has got an offer from which company, whether he/she will accept it or not, and the merits and demerits of his/her decision. Yet this is not too different from the routine that placements in B-schools in India go through, so there is nothing extraordinary to report. I had applied selectively to only a few companies, and have so far failed to make any headway. So in the words of lyricist Shailendra (writing for the film 'Naukri'): 'ek chhoTii sii naukarii kaa talabagaar huu.N mai.n' :). Of course, students here don't desire a 'chhoTii sii naukarii' (expectations of IIM students being quite high and all that), so bargaining over pay and profiles is very common.

As IIML's annual management festival - 'Manfest' - approaches, there is hope of getting a lot of material to write about, as there are a lot of good speakers coming down to campus.

Sportsline

2006-01-04T21:47:00.000-08:00

The last week has seen little activity except in sports. The inter-section sports tournament consisting of table-tennis, badminton, volleyball, cricket, basketball and football has been keenly contested. Although the situation is that, with football yet to be played, the positions of the four sections have already been established, each game was played with a competitive mindset. Our section has not done badly at all, emerging second through the tournament. Every day, a couple of hours after dinner were devoted to watching some or the other match. The cold did not deter the players from staging some exciting contests. As always, I enjoyed watching, and, for a very brief while, playing, volleyball. The most keenly contested final was definitely the 5-set volleyball final. All in all, a good diversion towards the end of the course.

Happenings

2005-12-30T05:54:00.000-08:00

Just a few developments that I am noting for the record:

Academics are very light this term, but very interesting nevertheless. Management of Financial Services being a very practical course, International Finance having great intrinsic interest value and ERP having value in the lateral placements and being important otherwise too, the going is good so far.
Lateral placements start next week and some time has been spent in thinking about where to apply, in looking up information on companies and in actually applying.
After-dinner hours have recently been devoted to sports as an inter-class sports tournament is on based on the first-year class distribution. Old section loyalties have awoken and the competition has been good.
The cold has intensified in the last few days, largely unaccompanied by fog. This morning there was a heavy fog but it dispersed very quickly.
I completed another P. G. Wodehouse book - 'Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit'. It shares quite a lot, perhaps too much, with 'The Code of the Woosters', in terms of the plot, the roles of different characters, the situations, etc. Some excellent uses of the language fetch good laughs, but still the latter is much the better work.
The power situation has been abysmal here for the last few days. The computer is bearing the brunt of sudden and frequent power outages.

'Soros on Soros'

2005-12-26T10:21:00.000-08:00

I completed the reading of this highly interesting book by famed international investor George Soros (John Wiley & Sons, 1995) today. The book, as Soros says, is a summing up of his life's work. Set in an interview format, the book has three parts: the first part on 'Investing & Global Finance' (with Byron Wien); the second part on 'Geopolitics, Philanthropy and Global Change' (with Krisztina Koenen) ; and the third part on 'Philosophy' (with Byron Wien again). But in this description, I think I will start with the third part first.

Soros comes across as a 'first-rate mind' (as Henry Kissinger has said, on the back cover of the book) when one reads his philosophy - not only his theory itself but also the clarity with which he has expressed it. At a time in life when he had made more money than he could possibly use in his lifetime through investing, he decided to pursue philanthropy by using his excess money for a worthy cause. That worthy cause was that of helping countries of Eastern Europe develop into 'open societies' after the collapse of communism around 1989. Soros unifies these two main fields of his activity - investing & philanthropy - by means of the theory of reflexivity that he developed several years ago (around 1962), after he had studied under the great Karl Popper.

The theory of reflexivity relates to socio-economic fields of activity, as opposed to the pursuit of natural science. According to Soros, and unlike Popper's assertion, theories of natural science cannot and should not be applied to the 'social sciences', including economics. This is because, in socio-economic fields, human beings are thinking participants and not objective observers. Their perceptions influence reality, and in turn, reality influences their perceptions (reflexivity). When this realization is combined with the assumption made by Soros that all human understanding is imperfect (and hence all mental constructs flawed in some way), it means that participants' perceptions and reality can never be identical. However, the gap between thinking and reality tends not to be very large much of the time (near-equilibrium conditions). This is particularly so when participants adhere to some fundamental values or purpose. But occasionally, the gap becomes large (far-from-equilibrium conditions). The latter kind of conditions can in turn be of two types - static disequilibrium (when the thinking is systematically following, or being forced to follow, a dogma while reality is something else); and dynamic disequilibrium (when continuing self-reinforcing biases reach a peak and turn self-defeating).

Using this theory, he explains, in the first part of the book, the boom/bust sequence that is observed in many financial markets. Here, we see Soros' great financial acumen in picking the far-from-equilibrium conditions to speculate and make money. In the second part of the book, we see the same theory being used to justify his advocacy of an 'open society' (where man's imperfect understanding leads him to respect other views and where human beings have genuine alternatives in life), as opposed to 'closed society' (e.g. communism). In this part, we see his superb grasp of international economics, as well as of the politics and socio-economic conditions prevailing in particular European countries after the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany.

The book gives a detailed look inside a complex mind capable of thinking critically, by his own admission, and in terms of abstractions. Soros' development of the idea of open society and its desirability, benefits and pitfalls is highly readable. Also interesting are: the speech he gave in Berlin in 1993 on how he could predict the breakdown of the European exchange rate mechanism after Germany's reunification and make money on it, and the testimony before a US House of Representatives committee on hedge funds and the inherent instability of financial markets, increased by sophisticated new instruments like derivatives.

I miss mentioning a few important points, but I think I have captured the gist. Although the book may not be that easy to read for a wide audience - the aim of the book - I definitely think it is worth a committed attempt for anyone who wishes to understand the perspective on a changing world and the right attitude towards it, of a man who has been in the thick of change.

'Julius Caesar' and Asimov

2005-12-24T04:03:00.000-08:00

During the term break, I watched the Hollywood classic 'Cleopatra' at home. This reignited interest in knowing the exact story of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony & Cleopatra. After coming back, I decided to satisfy this curiosity by reading my first Shakespeare play in the original - 'Julius Caesar'. I chose to read the play rather than find a historical source directly because I have an electronic version of 'Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare' in 2 volumes, wherein sci-fi great Isaac Asimov annotates, in lucid and interesting detail, each of Shakespeare's plays. In these two wonderful volumes, Asimov fills in historical and mythological details not obvious from Shakespeare's plays, explains finer points in Shakespeare's use of language, provides nuggets of trivia, points out anachronisms, etc.

This simultaneous reading of the play and the annotations has now made the events of the pre-Caesar, Caesarian, and post-Caesar periods and the role of different characters in these clear to me. The way Julius Caesar rose to prominence late in life, was killed as much due to fear of his ambition as due to envy, the tremendous vanity and consequent foolishness of Brutus, and the end of the conspirators achieved by Antony and Octavius are fascinating to read about. One does feel sympathetic towards Caesar because of the egregious way in which he was betrayed, even though he was a dictator and had ambitions to proclaim himself king.

Much of the play is based by Shakespeare on Plutarch's original version of the events. The play has several famous lines and passages, and it coins some phrases which are in common use now. Cleopatra does not enter the play, and Asimov only mentions that when in Egypt, Caesar met Cleopatra. The film shows that Caesar had a son by Cleopatra and that Cleopatra had entered Rome in a triumph as ordered by Caesar. These do not seem to be historically correct. To complete the story which the film covers, I will read Shakespeare's 'Antony & Cleopatra' next, but not immediately.

'The Code of the Woosters'

2005-12-20T01:07:00.000-08:00

Believe me or not, this is the first P. G. Wodehouse book (Rupa, 1992) I read while travelling to and from home to the institute recently. How this author, so popular among Indian readers, as I have been able to note, came not to be read by so voracious - if that is the word - a reader as I so far is rather inexplicable. I knew this bird wrote well, but somehow I always came to prefer reading something else. Finally, this time, I thought it might make a good travelling companion, and "Right ho!", I said, and borrowed the book.

Bertie Wooster, as usual I suppose, gets himself embroiled in a growing web of difficult situash-es, implicitly following the code of the Woosters ('never let a pal down'). He has to rely on some of his own skills of oration and a lot of Jeeves' quick thinking to wriggle out of one difficulty, only to find himself immediately landed in another. Overall, quite humorous, this PGW.

(In the above, I was just trying my hand at imitating Wodehouse's writing style :). As stated in the foreword, though I found the reading humorous, I initially thought its appeal would be limited. That is, after a few novels, the reader would feel bored by the same nonsensical situations and the same turns of phrase. But every time I left the book, I had an urge to go back to it and have a good laugh. And having immediately borrowed another Wodehouse book now, I think I am beginning to understand why people enjoy his humour so much, even though the situations and the settings are typically British.)

Last hurrah

2005-12-18T07:10:00.000-08:00

After an extremely brief vacation lasting only 4 days, I am back at campus for the last term of the course. A shorter term, lasting 2 months and consisting of only 3 subjects, means that there will be a lot more time to utilise for some (hopefully) useful purpose. Of course, with the lateral placements happening during the term and the final placements following the term, activities related to these (like CV preparation, filling application forms, etc.) will take up some time. Let's hope this term also offers as much variety and opens up as many avenues in terms of studies as the previous two terms.

Nearing the end

2005-12-12T05:03:00.000-08:00

Term V ended for me today with all exams going surprisingly well. Now we are left with less than a 100 days to go before the course ends. The need to take stock will soon arise and then I plan to write a series on the lines of 'Making sense of my MBA experience', which was one of the assignments in a course on Leadership this term (I hadn't opted for it). The last term will, hopefully, be a breeze, with only 3 subjects and no mid-term exams. The break is extremely brief this time - less than a week - and I don't think my time home will be felt sufficient.

Task scheduling

2005-12-09T03:57:00.000-08:00

The end-term exams are on. There's nothing particularly interesting happening. Given how things work here, it's ironic how the last one or two weeks before the exams are very hectic with the project submissions and presentations, and when it's exam time, one actually feels relief :).

Normally hard-pressed for time in many descriptive exams, I have completed each one of the 5 exams so far ahead of time. Of course, the papers were a bit shorter this time. But the main difference is in how I went about writing the paper. Normally, I would look at the watch, see how much time is left, and calculate backwards based on safe estimates of how much time each remaining question would take. In other words, I would backward-schedule, and set intermediate deadlines mentally for each question.

This time I am constrained as my watch has run out of battery power and I don't have the time or inclination to go to the city and get a new battery. This means I have no time reference with which I can set intermediate deadlines (cell phones are not allowed in exams and the wall clock is generally too far away for me to make out the time). So I just do each task (e.g. reading a case, then writing the answers, etc.) as fast as I can (without too much loss of effectiveness, I hope). And I find that this way I am finishing papers faster.

Exactly the advice Eli Goldratt would have given me, and a good practical experience of the project scheduling methods outlined in 'Critical Chain', about which I have written earlier.