The journey begins….!

It was the morning of 8th of April, when in a lecture hall in a sprawling campus in the NCR, a diverse group of professionals had gathered to embark upon a new journey. Looking at their enthusiasm, one could hardly figure out that they had already been in the industry for more than 6 years (some of them for about 18 years!). The occasion was the induction of the 6th batch of International Programme in Management for Executives (IPMX) at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (Noida Campus). The fledgling managers had taken their designated seats and fastened the seat belts, fully aware of the roller coaster ride lying ahead of them in the next one year! It was supposed to be just the curtain-raiser!

 

During the few minutes of quiet before the commencement of the induction program , the last one year(journey to this place)must have  flashed through the minds of many students. It had taken them about a year of preparations – GMAT, application and interview, to get to this coveted seat. Each one of them was visibly pleased and looking forward to the next one year, the grueling schedule notwithstanding.

 

Sharp at 10 am, the IPMX Chairperson, Prof Archana Shukla, along with the Faculty members, walked into the lecture hall and extended a warm welcome to the entire batch. The students took the IIML pledge to be worthy members of the IIML community. Dr Devi Singh, Director, IIM Lucknow, lit the lamp along with some of the students and then addressed the batch. He emphasized the need of quality education in the country and that the aura of IIML was built around its ability to churn out world class managers who could fit into the global management scene.

After a short tea break, Dr Shalini Lal, Director, HR, Escorts Ltd enlightened the students about managing career transitions, citing various examples from her own career. The students had the great opportunity of meeting one of the alumnus of IPMX01 batch, Mr Sridhar Turaga, Program Director, Polaris Software, in the post lunch session. The induction program continued the next day and the students had management insights from another eminent business leader, Mr Sanjay Dutt, VP, HR, EXL Service. Day 2 also saw sessions from a few professors(Prof Manoj Anand and Prof Sushil Kumar) who gave the students a glimpse of the pedagogy that would be followed in the next one year.

To quote one of the students, when asked about how he was feeling on the first day in the campus, he said “ When I woke up this morning and looked out of my window, I found peace. And I felt that this is where I had always wanted to be”. I am sure the entire batch echoed his feelings!

Contributed by : Amitava Saha (IPMX06)

Guest Post: My trip to IIML, NC

This post was long due.

When Deb(Debolina Mukherjee - IPMX05)'s younger sister,Antarlina Mukherjee visited our campus a few months back, I requested  her to write a guest post. I thought it would be interesting to see our programme from a potential candidate's eyes.

So, here it goes!

When people spoke of IIM graduates “taking over the world” I hardly understood what they meant. But my 8-day trip to IIM Lucknow- Noida Campus helped me see light.

I arrived at the campus gates at around 4pm where my sister (Debolina Mukherjee, currently a student of the IPMX05 batch) took me in with my luggage.

I wondered what it felt like to walk through these gates as a student, after having qualified with outstanding GMAT scores, then prayed for the prestigious institutes’ call for an interview and finally getting the offer letter in their mail after successfully clearing all the hurdles coming in the way. Being a fresh engineer, I was a little apprehensive about the crowd I would witness here. They were Software developers, CEOs, doctors etc. who had already made their mark in their respective fields of work and now had chosen to make their journey from “boardrooms to classrooms” in order to instil and hone their management skills. I dumped my luggage in the hostel and Debolina took me for a walk around the campus. I loved the greenery and serenity that prevailed amidst the various buildings.

The next day, just as I stepped in the canteen for breakfast, I stopped short at the door and looked at the crowd. It was the same hustle, the same clangs of the cutlery and chatting. They all looked like a bunch of students starting their day with breakfast and sharing a laugh over this and that. I sat down with Debolina and a few of her friends. They talked about studies, the upcoming quizzes, projects. “That’s all they talk about”, I thought.

My idea changed when I saw a poster that read “Kakkar Ko Takkar- Ad war” on the notice board, which was the annual ad contest wherein participants formed groups and prepared an advertisement on topics related to environment, politics and society. It was very astonishing to watch the students’ endeavour in putting up these ads despite having all their quizzes and classes as per schedule. I was lucky enough to witness the various ads that were prepared on River Pollution, E- Waste, and Save Electricity among the rest.

The programme which I thought to be the best was the LTS (Leadership Talk Series) wherein the top executives of various companies were invited to the institute to deliver a lecture to the students on how they made a mark in the industry and what ideals and strategies they followed to succeed.

Quizzes, examinations, projects, case studies, assignments, competitions, LTS, “they have too much on their plate” I thought. But ask an IIML student and all they have to say about it is – ALL IN A DAY’S WORK. We enjoy it. That was enough to inspire me for my IIM Entrance Examinations.

The day I left the campus and boarded my flight back home, all I thought to myself was-If these bunch of students don’t make it large in the industry, then who will?

Today's Politician : Marketeer or Social Reformer

Some say, 'Raajneeti means- Bas Raaj Karo, koi Neetinahi'

However, Netas do have a fool-proof Neeti.

Neeti - NOT on how to better the lives of citizens in their constituency, but on, how to keep selling their political ambitions to the voters.

Marketing has been seeping through political mansions ever since India attained freedom. In fact, it has been there since freedom struggle. Politicians carved out their niche positions, with Jinna opting to focus his politics on Muslim diaspora and Nehru on the rest.

 Today, to keep winning elections, politicians majorly concentrate on the 2 generic (Michael Porter's) strategies, notably :

-Mass marketing to a broad segment of population (which our national parties such as Congress and BJP do)
-Focused marketing to a narrow segment of population (which our Regional Parties such as DMK,NCP, Shivsena etc. do)

In pursuing this, they keep discovering new baits, to trap their Target Market Segment(voters), each time elections come. Just the way companies offer Diwali-discounts to customers, these politicians distribute television sets to poor and cycles to school children before elections.

When companies dole out discounts to their customers, they start price wars. Quality takes a back seat. Same has been the fate of politics; it is increasingly becoming more of a commodity. As the 5 year term approaches an end, politicians plan on how to draw voters near them. Just the way, marketeers devise strategies on how to gain market share, politicians too, resort to all gimmicks to capture maximum market share.

Marketing at play in the History of Indian Politics:

Peeping back into history, Congress had a monopoly that led the nation to freedom. Soon, Muslim League parted ways by creating a new market 'Pakistan', in just the same way as, companies such as Hindustan Lever create new markets to sell their soaps & detergents.

Congress was the tent-pole (as we say in marketing) of Indian Politics, under which varieties of values,culture and ideologies thrived and it encompassed the Rich & the Poor, the Industrialists & the Trade union socialists.

Each product has a Life cycle, as it travels across Development, Growth, Maturity & Decline stages. Post that, the process of Segmentation begins....

Congress too, had come of age. Indira Gandhi made the first major split in Congress. During the days of  Emergency, Jan Sangh came into picture and later got transformed into BJP. Later on, Congress witnessed further fragmentation in the form of Sharad Pawar's NCP and Didi's Trinamool Congress. At BJP too, there was a split, with Uma Bharati's Bharatiya Jan Shakti. And parallely, regional segmentation brought about Chandra Babu Naidu's TDP, Lalu's RJD, Jaya Lalitha's AIADMK, Mulayam's SP, Mayawati's BSP and many more..

Too many competitors within a limited market space.... drive the players towards Differentiation.

In Strategy lessons, it is said that 'when the Concentration-Ratio (the sum total of Markets shares of top significant competitors) in the market reduces, monopoly diminishes’.

The best strategy then is to merge with key players so that each party in the merger benefits due to a consolidated chunk of the market. Think of how Petrol and Automobile complement each other. Imagine what if, all the Petroleum companies start venturing into Automobile manufacturing and vice versa. There would be utter chaos and total loss, just like what is happening in the Indian Aviation sector.

This is the age of alliances and Joint-ventures as resources are scarce and competition is high. Politics too is treading a similar path. National political parties form coalitions with regional parties and run the government through a Common Minimum Programme.

Social development has taken a back seat at the moment, what lies ahead on the road is for all of us to see... Who knows tomorrow there would be a separate Brand Modi .. Whatever the case maybe, the marketing gimmicks will keep on going.

- Malay Ghosh

Source : www.ghoshmalay.blogspot.in

Aqua-nomy : Visualizing 'Water' through Strategic Lens

Newton in his 3rd law states that - 'For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction'.

We apply this law in every facet of human advancement but when it comes to nature we just seem to forget the essence of it.
Take the instance of 'water usage'. Water is the most important, most under-priced, most undervalued and easily accessible, of all the natural resources we have on planet 'Earth'. Since it is available in plenty, we have been unlimitedly exploiting it. So much so that, in our part of the world we seem to pay the due reverence to the 'Jal Devta' and 'Godess Ganga' only during Worships.

We are using water at a rate higher than its rate of replenishment. Our Industries don't hesitate to draw water from dams recklessly. Our farmers don't refrain from switching on the gen-set because power to them is absolutely free, diesel to them comes subsidized and there is no tax on drawing water from underground. Our urban citizens too don't really pay the real price of water. But this 'marginal gain' at one side is offset by the similar or in fact higher 'marginal losses' at the other side. The oil subsidy bill is one such example, that comprise costs accruing due to sheer extravagant usage of water and in turn ramps up the oil consumption.

Kids in our schools are taught that water is a renewable resource. But water is seemingly, getting finite. It's sources such as polar caps and glaciers are melting day by day. The excessive, unwarranted and free usage of water is making us pay that cost of water some-where else.

So, the question is that where then does the common man  pay the cost of water?  Well we pay the price of water on :

Vegetables and Fruits Prices 
Courtesy poor monsoon, the water is procured from underground water table using pumps. Consequently, due to declining water table, farmers need to dig deeper and water is pumped from deep inside earth. This increases energy consumption per hectare for the farmers and hence increases the cost to the farmer which in turn is passed on to the end consumer when the consumer purchases food grains, vegetables and fruits etc...

Electricity Costs 
Due to rising demand of water and receding water tables , water is transported from far-off places to the water starved localities. This long distance transportaion through pipelines soaks up lot of energy , which could have been used for some better purposes. Hence causing the electricity shortage .

Crude Oil Prices 
As we need more and more crops to feed our burgeoning population , we need more energy to draw water for our agriculture, consequently we need more oil . In a way, agriculture is converting oil into food. Urban consumers too rely on oil for water. Most cities are transporting water from far off sources. Electric generator sets, backed by diesel ones, pump water to the end consumers at a price that is rising with each hike in energy tariffs.
Water that trickles from our tap every morning has a high correlation with the crude oil docking at port.

Government Subsidies 
Due to erratic monsoon , the farm output decreases. This leads to lower contribution of agriculture to the GDP, consequently pulling down the overall GDP. Which pushes government to take some measures to instill confidence in the market, thereby it spends more of its tax collected in providing relief to farmers rather than investing in infrastructure and other employment generating opportunities.

Reduced Exports
Agriculture in India contributes over 10% to the national exports. Over drawing of water and unpredictable monsoon leads to imbalance in the water supply needed for agriculture and impacts the farm produce. Thus paucity of water impacts the agriculture production, and hence the exports, which ultimately impacts our Balance of payment.

What can be done therefore, to increase the SUPPLY of water?
Our industries suck up more than 50% of water from dams. So they need to lead the show, by consuming water economically. Our Government can help by rectifying leaking pipelines, using treated waste water for agriculture and industry, more fuel-efficient gen-sets. Our farmers can do their bit, by responsibly drawing water for their land and our urban population can assist by resorting to civilized usage of tap water.
Need of the hour is that we build as many Desalination (a technology which converts sea water into drinking water) Plants we can, along the coastal belts, that we are blessed with. More projects such as that in Minjur (Tamilnadu) or the upcoming one at Dahej (Gujarat), needs to be created on war level, so that more sweet water can be made available to industrial use.Middle east countries are mitigating their water crisis by investing in desalination. Today, Saudi Arabia uses 85% of water from the desalinated plants for the purpose of  irrigation.

On legislature front, requisite Water Policies should be rolled out of the parliament , which guides the consumers on its usage and price etc..

After all Water is Life. And we are playing with it......  Aren't we?

Source:  www.ghoshmalay.blogspot.in

- Malay Ghosh

International Immersion - Skopje, Macedonia

"Deriving Business Value from Analytics" was the title and the focus of the workshop organized by Kelley Business School, Indiana University in partnership with South Eastern European University (SEEU) at Tetovo, Macedonia.

The primary purpose of this workshop was to accelerate the understanding of business at functional and strategic levels. However, the programme also aimed at global understanding of business and the importance of cross-cultural experiences. Although the impact of analytics in current economic context is talk of the town, Prof.Vijay Khatri and Prof.Goker Aydin (Kelly Business School, Indiana Univ.) further emphasized its significance by coupling its potential to augment business value. The course was designed in several short modules such as Revenue Management, Managing the Data Lifecycle, Demand Models and Estimation, Designing Smarter Customer Acquisition Campaigns, the Art and Science of data visualization, data governance etc.



The course also involved a competition – where teams were given engaging cases from real life. Teams presented their business analytics insights to solve Business cases. The winning team of Anupama Shukla, Somya Sharma, Uttara Kumar Verma, Nithin Subhakar and Siddharth Asthana was presented with Certificates and SEEU t-shirts.

The entire week passed in a blink of the eye. On the final day at SEEU, a grand graduation reception was arranged by the Kelley School of Business rounding off a hectic but interesting week with rich and relishing food & drink and some more fun-filled moments with the warm and wonderful hosts.
It was not all business though!

As far back as I can remember, people were looking forward to the trip since the end of term II exams. Once we were done with end terms, project submissions and Deloitte's maverick contest we were all set for the international immersion. We took the flight to Skopje, Macedonia on 7th September. Some of our batchmates utilized the stop-over time in at Istanbul to take a short trip of the beautiful capital of Turkey. For the girls and for some guys (too!!), it was the start of a great shopping season.

In Macedonia, the arrangements at college campus, hospitality and weather made our stay extremely pleasant. Industry visits to Ecolog and Renovo - two of the largest organizations of the country and the visit to the City Mayor at the Municipality of Tetovo during our field trips gave us a better socio-economic perspective of the country. We had a sneak-peek into the history of Tetovo while visiting mosques with mesmerizing architecture, artistic works and historical significance..

We visited Skopje, the capital of Macedonia a few times during our stay. You hardly find a city with so many joyful, lively and warm people with an eternal surrounding of celebrations and festivity - Skopje is certainly one such. We all were quite enthralled by whole experience in Skopje – food, shopping avenues, clubs and night life. The centre of the city is being re-built on a massive scale which is grand and elegant. It is also the birth place of Mother Teresa, in whose name we can find a museum showcasing her work and the Nobel Prize.
The trip ended on a cool and calm note with a visit to Lake Ohrid – a serene tourist destination with breathtaking scenery.



In the end, calling this international tour a “memorable” or “exciting” would be an understatement as every one of us enjoyed in his/her own ways and this experience will stay embossed in our memory forever...

Prijatno!

- Anish Verma

Udyam 2012: HR Strategies and Leadership

Day 2 started with the thought provoking insights of Prof. T.V Rao on Human Resource Development (HRD). Listening about “Emerging Challenges for the HR Leaders in the globalized corporate landscape” from the father of HRD in India was as mesmerizing for students of IIM Lucknow as it was for student participants from other B Schools, the esteemed Professors of IIM Lucknow, and Industry executives who took part in Udyam 2012. Prof. T.V Rao’s each word of wisdom on the subject illuminated the audience in understanding the roots of the actual problems in the current corporate landscape. Dr. Rao concluded his speech by impressing upon the importance of high value culture for the success of modern organizations and the need to increase the occurrence of two way communication between organizations and employees.

The second debate on Day 2 of Udyam 2012 was focused on “Building leadership and Management Excellence – Spotting young Leaders”. The debate diversely captured the views of the industry stalwarts like Mr. Ashish Kumar Chawla, Country HR Director, ST Microelectronics, Ms. Kavita Rao, HR - Head, Unisys,Ms. Malvika Verma, Sr. VP HR, Max Healthcare,  and Mr. Ashok Bhat, Director of MindShare HR Consultancy Pvt. Ltd.  



Mr. Chawla in his introduction speech stated that the Job of HRD department is to make the employees feel motivated. HRD can’t be separated from the rest of organization as it is one department through which all information or transactions pass within an organization. Ms. Kavita engaged the audience by elaborating on Whys, Whats and Hows of leadership. She explained why an organization does needs a leader and what traits separate a leader from a manager. A leader is visionary and innovative and one who leads his organization to success.

Ms. Malvika Verma, aptly used an anecdote to the need for right recruitment for right position using right hiring policies. She stressed that today’s organizations face two major challenges in terms of hiring right employees and retaining the star performers. Mr. Ashok Bhat emphasized that the role of HRD practices has now more or less settled in the current organizational landscape. We don’t really need an HRD department as HRD practices have become routine for most organizations.

Overall in the end of the debate the respected speakers agreed that the organizations need to understand the need to enhance the leadership quality. It is important to have lateral mobility within organizations as it motivates achievers to perform better to grab underlying opportunities.

The next session was “Rethinking HR Strategy: Impact of social media” by Mr. Vivek Tripathi, Chief Human Resources Officer, Lava International Limited. Mr. Vivek apprised the audience of the challenges faced by employees, recruiters and companies due to the impact of social media. Intricacies of HR strategies entwined with social media evoked good interest among the audience.



Jack Welch once noted – “Globalization has changed us into a company that searches the world, not just to sell or to source, but to find intellectual capital - the world's best talents and greatest ideas.”

In the afternoon session, we had an interesting discussion on "HR challenges due to globalisation of the work force".

The panelists for the discussion were:
Mr. Manmohan Bhutani, VP - People and Operations, Fiserv Global services
Mr. Prashant Bhatnagar, Director- Hiring and Staffing, SapientNitro India
Mr. G V P Rajan, Director, Vardhnam Consulting
The panel discussion was moderated by Dr. Abad Ahmad, Chairman, National Committee at Aga Khan Foundation



The panel felt that the key challenges can be overcome mainly by dealing with ‘Intercultural sensitivities’ adeptly and handling situations with ‘Contextual Awareness’. Clear explicit communication is most important to reach a common understanding. Mr. Bhutani noted that sometimes personal meetings are very essential to experience and understand culture and sensitivities of other nationalities/diverse backgrounds. Mr. Bhatnagar was of the opinion that we should be ‘global’ while being ‘local’. Values may be global but contexts should be local, he opined. He also said that organisation should move towards centers with no center of gravity – meaning an organisation which is completely decentralised in taking decisions with no single center of authority. Mr. G V P Rajan expressed that HR managers have to define global career paths and facilitate aspatial careerists. He also stressed on the need to have appropriate compensation plans and understanding of the local laws while framing local policies for the organisations in various countries.

With this, Udyam 2012 has concluded and we are satisfied with the exposure to various facets of human resources and current challenges. The event has provided excellent food for thought and equipped us with knowledge passed on to us by the eminent industry practitioners that will hold us in good stead in the coming years.

- Shekhar Kumar, Karthik Bharadwaja

Nobody can build you unless you are ready to build yourself!

The second day of Udyam 2012 was kicked off by none other than the father of Human Resource development in the country, Mr. T. V. Rao. The topic of the session was "Emerging challenges for the human resource leadership in the globalized corporate landscape." He started the discussion by illuminating the audience with his talk on the evolution of the human resource department in India. He described how the   first dedicated HR department, comprising  mostly of psychologists and social sciences experts was established in Larsen and Tourbo in 1974 with the sole aim of promoting all round development of employees. In the 1980's most of the US companies renamed their training department to HR department.  Other countries including India followed the trend.

In today's context, Dr. Rao emphasized the fact that the line between family life and professional life is blurring. With employees spending most of their waking hours in office and then carrying office discussions to home, corporations are fast becoming their second families. The real role of HR is to ensure good mental and emotional health of its employees. He further questioned the classical definition of HRD and discussed how most of the classical HR functions such as employee mentoring and development are today taken over by individual line managers. He opined that the focus should now shift from HR Department driven HRD to user driven HRD. Mr. Rao emphasised that the success of HRD function is when it has attained status of self liquidation. It is not needed any more to promote learning among line managers or other employees. It only provides a milieu and mechanisms and learning happens on its own.

He categorized leaders into the following four categories:

Doers: This class of people (around 80%) need explicit push in the form of Job Descriptions, Job Specifications or WBS.
Achievers: These leaders not only do what is asked for but some more
Visionaries: These leaders have all the characteristics of achievers and they achieve results faster by applying their own thinking. They see opportunities in problems. He explained this class with the example of Dr. Verghese Kurien (Amul revolution)
Missionaries: These people are wedded to work and undertake everything with absolute single minded purpose.

In the 70s and 80s, technology was scarce and hence it was the main strategic variable based on which companies competed. In current times, human talent is in short supply and thus it is the new strategic variable. In today's world it is easy to buy talent but it is very difficult to develop and nurture talent from within. Mr. Rao believed that buying talent would lead to poaching of talent. The present day manager has to plan for long term but deliver results in short run. Since there is no fixed formula to achieve that, every manager has to develop his own heuristics. In the present context, every manager has to manage multiple stake holders including his direct boss. Dr Rao gave two golden rules to better manage bosses - give your suggestions to him only before he has taken any decision. Any suggestion after he took a decision is taken as an open criticism.

He winded the session with 7 strategic challenges faced by HR today

HR should think ahead of the CEO.
HR should influence the CEO's thinking.
HR must restructure their role appropriately.
HR must work on developing leaders and leadership.
HR should focus on continuous learning, including learnings from gen Y.
HR must inculcate values and culture in all employees.
HR must work on developing intellectual capital of the orgranization.
He said that it is easy to determine a company's intellectual capital (Market capital-book value) but it is very difficult for an individual to calculate his intellectual capital. Dr. Rao shared his HRD mantra of "a person's IC is no where except his own mind."

The biggest take away from this session is that no matter which technology, domain or industry we eventually land in, we all need to develop strong HRD skills to become efficient managers.

By Nikhil Bhargava (Media Committee)