WTF!

I was appalled to see this appear in today's newspaper. If you did not figure out what I am trying to point out, it's the details of the student's caste next to one's name.

I am not sure whether the esteemed IIT coaching insti thought atleast for a sec that this is supposed to be a personal (and confidential) fact as far as the student is concerned. If the head of an IIT coaching insti is unable to sensitize himself on this issue, god only knows whats in store for us.

Help!

I have a yahoo email ID which is now totally junk that I do not even want to open it these days. I also have a gmail ID which is more sane, thanks to gmail's much better spam protection algorithm. The problem is that I login to orkut using my yahoo ID and somehow I have a google account, the username of which is "rpradeephere at yahoo.co.in". My orkut and this blog is associated with this account. However my saner google account rpradeep.kumar at gmail.com is associated with my picasa and email stuff.

I want to shift or change my yahoo-google account's orkut and blog to my saner google account so that I need to just login once. Every time I login to check my gmail, my orkut or blog will sign off since I cant keep two google accounts open at same time. Also the computer is confused over which password to save and crap and hence everytime I end up typing my username password. I am going bonkers coz of this!

Office timings

Before liberalization offices worked from 830 to 1730 hrs.

After liberalization most work from 1030 to 1800 hrs.

"Synchrony 2009", IIMA's Annual Alumni Meet

"Synchrony-2009", IIMA's annual Alumni meet is happening on May 9th. We are actively looking for sponsorships. It will simultaneously take place at 8 cities across the world.

Sponsorships start from Rs 20,000-Rs 25,000 and extends upto Rs 150,000. There will be just 2-3 companies sponsoring the event and hence brand visibility and brand recollection will be very high among the audience. There will be 150-200 Alums participating in every city and many senior alums (CEOs/MDs/Sr VPs/Partners) would be coming. Hence its a great opportunity to showcase your product/brand.

Please do get in touch with me ASAP at +91 96502 75308 or rpradeep.kumar@gmail.com for further details.

JK on Schools

"Surely a school is a place where one learns about the totality, the wholeness of life. Academic excellence is absolutely necessary, but a school includes much more than that. It is a place where both the teacher and the taught explore not only the outer world, the world of knowledge, but also their own thinking, their behavior."

-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Read it somewhere and liked it!

I strongly believe schools have just become machines which churn out students ready to join college and eventually the corporate world with absolutely no focus on morals and ethics. Schools have commercialized to such an extent that it just means business, a view we had on colleges 6-8 years back when engineering boomed. If students by any chance get to inculcate good habits and character in the future, its going to be inspite of the school and not because of it.

Quote

You must not let your life run in the ordinary way; do something that nobody else has done, something that will dazzle the world. Show that God's creative principle works in you.

-Swami Paramahansa Yogananda

The Genius called Ilaiyaraaja - God of Music

Ilayaraja - How to name it

Music Composer: Ilaiyaraaja
Violinist: VS Narasimhan
Album: How to name it?
Year: 1986



Film: Johnny (1980)

No words to say

The paper 'you' and the real 'you'

At NIT Trichy, CV making was more of creating a 3 page "I did all these in life. Hopefully I would not have forgotten most. And yeah, I don't think adding deleting a few details here and there matter much" affair. I remember making my CV then in 6 minutes flat and never modified it even once. However, at an MBA institute, its an altogether different ball game. The reasons are obvious and I would not dwell upon it*. We end up spending too much time making the CV perfect.

However, this post in not on CV making. It is to do with how a person is in real life and how he comes across based on his CV. There have been many a times I have been surprised how those two don't match even remotely. I wonder how. I see really intelligent and smart people with very average CVs and I also see extremely average junta in real life having super CVs. Sometimes it makes me wonder is it the same person represented on paper? They are like split personalities in a sense.

The other aspect about CVs is that it does not tell anything about the 'person' as such. I mean, you can have a superb CV but can be a jerk to work with.

The reasons the above two became observations is that, during initial days, sometimes or many a times, junta here are judged based on their CVs i.e. based on shortlists etc during summers. But as days pass by, the impression one creates in the batch overshadows the information in CV by a large margin. The information asymmetry no longer exists within the batch and each is judged based on the real 'him' rather than the paper 'him'.

___________________________________________________________________________________
*However, for the benefit of all, 2 reasons why they are more important in MBA instis:

1. There are no written tests. You get shortlisted for the interview based on CV for almost 100% of the jobs. Whereas in engineering, most companies had written tests and many did not even collect the CVs before that. Shortlisting was based purely on performance in written tests. And the interview is mostly technical and less to do with your CV.

2. The variability of pay packages and job profiles is pretty high in IIM A/B/C and hence the opportunity cost of making a bad CV is pretty high. In engineering colleges (non IITs) where there is not too much variability in job profiles and almost all land similar jobs (3-6 LPA for 80% of the batch). Hence the motivation is also pretty low.

And its all over..

Attended the last class of 1st year, WIMWI. I had absolutely no senti. (who would get senti on submitting 1 assignment almost everyday for 6 weeks or giving 5 surprise quizzes in a row?). I would not say it was that horrible as I had thought. Some slots were tough. Overall it was manageable.

Chetan Soman took the last session and ended it in style. Awesome session it was. He had modeled a funny quiz in KBC style with the same music and stuff. A memorable last day.

We still have a memorable 7 exams left to officially end 1st year.. With 4 exams being 'globe' (which means the question paper would be a case and we write as much as possible like 12h standard kids hoping to be randomly allocated some grade!). My internship starts immediately after that with a 3 day break in between.. aargh.. no time for rest..

They should not have made this slot so hectic. I am tired and don't feel like working my ass of during internship.

Snapshots from hell!

Just finished reading the book. Someone who is already doing an MBA wont find it very interesting. The only reason I found it way too interesting was that I initially (and seriously)thought US MBA is way too different from the Indian ones and the junta who end up studying there exactly know what they want out of life and yada.. yada...

After reading the book I was seriously surprised. Almost everything written there has happened here. I mean the dark underbelly of an MBA. I idealistically thought only we guys end up frauding a lot and all these top US educated b school junta would do the course a lot more seriously. But I was proved wrong. This book was an eye opener in that sense. Its the same everywhere.. :)

Boston Post's wonderful photos

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/signs_of_spring.html

Just amazing!!

Slot system

There has been a change in the academic system at IIMA from our year. 3 terms have been converted into 6 slots to increase course flexibility. There has also been a change in the subjects handled in each slot/term.

1st slot - Enthu levels are high. Workload is relatively less. The pressure from the PGP office is limited. But students put fight and most work hard.

2nd slot - Tougher than 1st slot. But students start making CVs and getting a hang of things at A. If I am not wrong, endless hours spent on marketing assignments in groups. Slot ends with tnite. :)

3rd slot - Very tough. Summer ppts + CV making + Summer preps + Class assignments. In addition, marketing assignments and OM assignments. Life was real tough.

4th slot - Post summers slot. Chillest of all 6. Nothing much to do. Most subjects had no quizzes.

5th slot - A tough slot definitely. Enthu levels are low. Assignments are more in number. Sub groups within groups are formed to handle assignment load. Some groups start meeting less since it may be inefficient at times. A lot of fight compared to previous slots.

6th slot - Hell. You don't know what hit you. Everyday there is an assignment which is graded and assignments are there in almost all subjects and range from simple ones to extremely complex. Very high workload. However you are better equipped to handle it since you are used to case studies and know how much and what to prepare, if at all you decide to prepare!

4 stages of life

Case Methodology of teaching

It has taken me almost 9-10 months to understand how to make the best use of business cases! The case methodology is extensively used at IIMA. On an average if we have 18 classes/week, we do almost 10-12 cases. i.e. reading atleast 2 cases per day.

I have gone through different thought processes, not necessarily progressively, while reading cases.

a. Read each and every point in the case to answer the questions effectively: This methodology was the norm in the 1st 1-2 months. The thought process was that every point given in the case is important and one must know all points to "answer the questions" effectively. The end objective was satisfactorily answering the key questions.

The following 2 methods are used regularly based on time constraints or prof constraints.

b. Browse through important case facts: The objective behind this method was to survive through the class and also minimize input (time given) and maximize ROI, not by maximizing output.This was the usual objective when time available was too less or motivation was at an all time low (which is the case 60% of the time ;) ). This method of reading is the most used and abuses case methodology of studying to the core.

c. Read case as fast as possible by skipping the boring theory part and attacking the crux (which means concentrating in the crucial 2-3 pages out of the 15 page case): This method was at times used when one is a bit more serious about studying or the prof is someone who will not listen to arbit CP or this method of studying has become a habit. This method is used 30% of the time. (All numbers have been statistically arrived after cross tabulation multi cultural analysis).

The 4th method of studying cases is I believe a very good method and something which I am trying to do after a revelation when chatting with a prof. He commented that "Case method is an extremely good method of teaching because you read and learn about more than 100 companies within one year and how they function". I have never read a case passionately to understand what a company did! The objective was always to analyze the problem facing the company. The objective was never to learn what all the company has done and why they did so.

i.e. for example, if I was reading a case on Toyota in Operations, I would have usually skipped through the marketing part, company history etc to go to the core Toyota production system and see what problems are there in it.

There is a significant difference in the "problem searching" approach and the "Understanding company" approach. The former method employs a "consultant mentality" and the latter, "entrepreneurial mentality".

Reading the case as an open ended experience of an entrepreneur gives so many insights about the business that a problem searching approach misses out on. I have nowadays started reading cases with such an objective i.e. reading the case as a story to know what all the company has done. It is like reading a biography of many companies and I am enjoying it a lot more.

And no, this does not take much time also. It maybe takes 25% more time than (b) or (c). Note that this method is very different from approach (a). (a) cannot be sustained due to the efforts which we need to put in. In (a) one approaches the case with "what all did the company do" and one tries to remember each and every fact whereas in (d) one reads the case with a "how and why did the company do these" where case facts are less important.

The method (d) requires a bit more effort than (b) and (c) but the learnings are much higher. I anyway skip answering the case questions while following approach(d) since its anyway discussed in class and also would require too much effort which I cannot sustain!

Method (d) is best for those courses with bad profs but good cases!

Aargh.. Bad day.

845 to 1:10 - Three 75 minute classes
2:30 to 3:30 - Surprise quiz in a predictably boring Information Systems
3:30 to 4:45 - Extra class

Shucks! Why have they become so sadistic in the last slot! I don't remember us having any classes in evenings during first 5 slots!

Evening classes are against fundamental rights.

Short Story - 1

“Yes Madam, Your name please” asked the beautiful girl behind the ticket checking counter. “Ms Anamika” said I, curtly. I wondered how long she will look beautiful enough to continue in this job.

“Yours?” I though she will ask my spouse. Surprisingly she did not. Rita still looked as beautiful as she was when we got married 11 years back.

The girl looked at both of us and she was trying to hide a smile. I felt I could read her thoughts. I know these people. She was thinking how we managed it. She was wondering how we had sex and whether we did not have the desire to have kids. She must have also wondered what we would do in old age.

I was used to these. They are always there wherever I go out with her. Rita smiled at me. We collected our boarding passes. After walking a few steps, I turned back to see her. She was whispering something to her colleagues. I was visibly upset and was going to bitch about her, when Rita spoke.

“Gita, my daughter. Long time since I saw her. I guess you are seeing her for the first time. Harish and his relatives have warned her against speaking with me since I left home. He does not want her to become our type.”

I looked again at the girl. She was issuing the next pass. I somehow felt her eyes were wet.

I bow to thee - ARR's rare interview

I have learnt something in management called level 5 leadership. He comes across as one. Truly great personality.

Superb song!

I love this song. What a sexy voice!



Could not find a good audio+video version for this song though!

About options and life..

What is the cost you pay to get options in life? What is the cost of having choices?

There are always two lives I think of. The first one is the life I get. The second one is the life I make it out to be. The first one is relatively secure and a good life. The second one is an insecure and a tough life. The first one comes on your way. The second one, you search and fight for it.

For time immemorial, I have faced situations when I has to make a choice about the life I want to live. There have been few instances when I chose the former and there have been many instances when I chose the latter.

These days I think more often than not about these choices.

People are not your most important asset. Right people are.

In determining "the right people", the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience. Not that specific knowledge or skills are unimportant, but they viewed these traits as more teachable (or atleast learnable), whereas they believed dimensions like character, work ethic, basic intelligence, dedication to fulfilling commitments, and values are more ingrained.

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Aah.. I am getting Senti now..

http://aparna-a.com/2009/02/10/in-love-with-madras/

http://dandilsa.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/the-r2i-conundrum/

http://aparna-a.com/2007/08/23/madras/

I love Chennai :)

Ideal life

My definition of ideal life:

I just thought how would I define my ideal life to be and came up with this:

I should be staying in Chennai or Bangalore with my family (spouse et parents). I would not like to stay away from my parents.

I would want to stay in a place where there are a good mix of middle class and upper middle class makkal (Interior T Nagar, Mylapore, Triplicane too). I would not like to stay in a high class society like malabar hills or Adyar in Chennai.

The society in which I am must be simple. I would definitely not like to be in a society where one is measured by what one wears, what car one uses and how big one's house is.

I would like to have priory of pie, trichy day scholar gang and other close NITT makkal within same city or nearby. (The friends I made at NITT were awesome and I would never get bored cracking vivek and vadivel level jokes with them).

I would like two other friends, sid and charu to also be nearby. We get along very well and my sense of humour matches with sid's. We all also seem to have similar outlook towards life in general.

I would like my relatives in Triplicane to be accessible and close to us. I believe they are the ones who truly care about our family. They are honest and extremely simple people.

I would like to make enough money such that I don't have to bother much about money in life.

The job I am in must be exciting and most importantly the people must be fun to work with. I would like to work from 0830 hrs to 1900 hrs and the weekends must be free. The weekends must be free for friends, family and self.

I like eating good tamizh brahamana saapadu and hence that is a must. :)

In simple words to sum things up: In a society of simple makkal, best friends staying nearby, decent amount of money for an upper middle class lifestyle, nalla saapadu, staying with family and finally a good work life balance to enjoy all these.

Am I asking for too much? ;)

My first and last WAC run...

..We had a WAC submission today. I always complete them well before time. Today we had the last submission for the year. And as they say, No one gets out of WAC alive. The final submission was preceded by a printer jam, printer ink over, stapler unavailable, a paper missing in final report, 9 minute 50 second delay and everything else possible!

And yeah, a reduced sub grade too!

I'm luvin it!

Make your own road - Good post

I liked this a lot! Inspiring in these tough times.

http://youthcurry.blogspot.com/2009/03/make-your-own-road.html

First year courses at IIMA

I received a mail asking for the list of courses in the first year over here. Its as below (Read as subject; credits; slot in which course is offered):



The total number of credits is 24.5 in 1st year. Each credit involves 20 classes of 75 minutes each.

Hence total number of classes in 1st year would be 490 and equivalent class hours is 612.5. I understand this is approximately 40% more classes than equivalent other MBA courses. But I understand from seniors that it helps a lot during the summer internships.

We usually have 3 classes in day. 845 to 1000; 1020 to 1135; 1155 to 110. The first 20 minute break is for snacks/chai. 2nd break is timepass break. By 130,we get to know whether there is any surprise quiz for the day. If there is one, it will be at 230. 130 to 230 is time spent mugging for quiz. :) Quiz duration is from 20 minutes to 30 minutes, rarely touches 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Will edit again and update.

Sidenote:

I would prefer comments to mails. Please mail if you need any personal help and comment if its a general request.

Identifying "Globe"

I would say this is the single most important takeaway I have had at this place. :)

"Putting globe" refers to making global statements i.e. putting together a stream of jargons which do not make any sense.

In MBA courses, there are usually CP components. CP refers to class participation and usually the weightage is 10% though sometimes it is as high as 40% in select courses. I strongly believe that 10% is the ideal weightage since at that %age, the incentive to put CPs is less and hence only genuine CPs are made in class. Moderating CPs in class is a very important skill the prof must have. The following simple formula holds true:

High CP component + Bad prof/Non moderating prof = Class discussions suck!

The more the weightage given to CP, the more Arbit CPs are made. If the prof is good or shrewed he can cut the crap. There are some profs who rip a student apart if an arbit CP is made. :p

Now coming to the point, most students here would have come to the point where they can differentiate between an Arbit CP (tangential to the topic being discussed), Globe CP (jargons put together) and a Good analytical CP. This is an extremely important skill according to me. Many senior people get away by making global statements with no information content. Initially I used to think I am the one who is unable to understand what these people are speaking. But now I feel there are many who speak without knowing what they are actually speaking. Unfortunately doing an MBA also contributes to the ability to put globe and many a times this ability develops more than the ability to identify globe and hence eventually the end result is disastrous. :)

However, these days the moment a student puts a Globe CP, the whole class starts murmering "Globbbeeeeeeee" and its fun. :)

There are also many authors who put major globe in their writings and it does sound good while reading and its even more difficult to identify them in writings.

Sidenote:
Among the many authors I have read, someone who actually has been able to write sense in his articles in an area which can be considered "globest" is Michael Porter. His writings on "Strategy" are very good to read. I was really surprised to figure out what "Strategy" actually was through one of his most famous HBS articles, "What is strategy". This article was way focussed when compared to many other crap we read as strategy. I am not sure whether any background reading is needed before reading the article.

Moving

Blogged at:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/one-more-reason-to-be-nice-to-your-children/#more-4491

I’m reading a biography about Buckminster Fuller written by Lloyd Steven Sieden.

Fuller had a 4-year-old daughter Alexandra who caught the 1918 flu, later got meningitis, and finally was afflicted by polio. Though frail, she managed to survive all these illnesses until the age of 4. It was the fall, and Fuller headed off from New York to Boston by train to attend the Harvard-Yale football game. Fuller walked with his daughter and wife, using a cane both because canes were in fashion and he had suffered a knee injury playing football earlier in life.

As Sieden writes:

Before he got on the train, little Alexandra looked up and asked, “Daddy, will you bring me a cane?” Bucky [Fuller’s nickname] promised he would bring back the souvenir as he set off for an enjoyable day of football and friends.

Harvard won that day, and Bucky spent most of his time lost in drink, camaraderie, and parties, forgetting his troubles as well as his family on Long Island. When he arrived in Pennsylvania Station in New York the following afternoon, Bucky telephoned Anne [his wife] who could barely speak. She told him that Alexandra had suffered a relapse and was in a coma. Stunned, Bucky caught the next train to Long Island. Arriving home, he found Alexandra still unconscious and a doctor doing all he could to save her life.

Bucky could only sit near her bed looking on helplessly as the doctors and nurses continued their work well into the night. Eventually, the situation calmed down, but Alexandra’s condition did not improve. Then, in the early hours before dawn, she opened her eyes and smiled up at Bucky. As he bent close to his daughter, Bucky heard her tiny voice ask, “Daddy, did you bring me my cane?”

Fuller could only turn away in shame and agony. In the furor of drinking and celebrating, he had forgotten his daughter’s simple request. Following her question, Alexandra closed her eyes for the last time and died in her father’s arms a few hours later. Bucky never forgave himself for that incident, which, even in the last years of his life, would bring tears of remorse to his eyes.

Will there be students who now think..

...doing an MBA from IIMs is not useful since it anyway doesn't assure great jobs?

Just came back after..

.. a bad surprise finance quiz. Life Shucks! :(

My post in Pagalguy.com

I made this post in PG.com loooong time back. At a point in time when I was depressed and bugged. It became some major thing and stayed so for quite sometime. I was extremely happy after making that post. Here it is.

Link

When I made that post, I had a different set of worries. I have a different set of worries now.

I wonder.

Guess there is some message in that.

I don't exactly understand when..

..someone tells me at IIMA that they learnt a lot more speaking with other students and interacting with them than from studying. I believe it is a way to justify what one is doing is correct. I feel that way since I used that excuse way lot in engineering.

I am reminded of Rene Descartes quote:

“It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.”

Usually those who make that statement never put in much efforts behind studies. So technically, yes, one did learn more by interacting with others than from studying since the time put for the latter was bare minimum and hence the chance to learn was also very less! Now justfying that it was the "better" thing to do can be argued upon, but I cannot win that argument since "better" depends on how one wants to spend his or her time. But I do feel its not the best use of time at IIMA.

Technically one is using only one set of resources ("peers") and believe he or she is making the best use of it. Whereas I believe this place has atleast equally, if not more, to gain from the other set of resources ("profs/books/learning atmosphere" and what not).

One who makes the best use of both the resources has ideally taken out the maximum out of this place. The one who has only studied or the one who has only spent time chit chatting has missed a good opportunity and more importantly, taken away an opportunity (a seat) for someone else who could have made a better use of this opportunity.

Attended a very interesting session today..

by 2 of our reknowned profs; Jayanth R Verma, also known as JRV and Sebastian Morris known as Seb on the beaten to death topic "Financial crisis". Everytime I attend a session on this topic, there is something new I learn. But today I learnt "many new things".

Today was the first time I sat through JRV's session and it was just amazing. The way he explains complex happenings in an easy to understand manner by building each and every point logically is just amazing. He is considered one of the Gods of fin here. T T Ram Mohan is another one in the same league. JRV blogs here and TTR blogs here. JRV is floating a course in 4th term on Modern Investment and Portfolio Management. I hope I get it through bidding. Seems to be a high demand course. TTR too floats a course on Managing financial institutions. But I guess I would be on exchange then during 5th term.

The year that was... Part I

I almost did not realize that 'famed' first year at IIMA is going to come to an end ! It has been a wonderful journey till now and the learnings have been tremendous. Even now I cannot exactly tell how it has made a difference to my life, but I am extremely happy that I have actually learnt so many things in the last 1 year.

The reason I am enjoying my MBA a lot more than engineering is primarily to do with the fact that one need not memorize for 80-85% of the subjects. The papers are conceptual and usually tests one's understanding of the subject. In equivalent words, the paper standard oscillates between the CBSE level and the JEE level. It rarely touches the State board level. This also ensures that one need not be over tensed before any exam that one will forget something. Yes. Last day preps do matter ! But just that isnt sufficient to score well. Also one is thought by proper professors whereas in engineering 50% of courses were taken by MTechs, sometime BTechs!! Yes, some profs may not teach that well. But most know the subject matter really well and are extremely knowledgeable.

Another reason I am enjoying the course is because I genuinely enjoy learning about management. I seem to be enjoying all the courses!

Unfortunately most students when they come to do an MBA, they think about specific sectors where they want to work in and concentrate only on those subjects and do not bother about the rest.

I remember an advice from an NITT alumni before joining IIMA: "Do an MBA assuming you are going to be an entrepreneur 10 years down the line". A very good advice indeed!

The first year rigour of IIMA is well known. In fact, it has reached the peak this slot with one assignment every other day. Before joining IIMA, I somehow did not appreciate how this system would benefit anyone. However, towards the end of the year, I strongly feel that the system works! The system does not make you study the whole day (baah! - average study hours now is 1.5-2 with minimum 0 and maximum 4-5 for a few). But it introduces constraints, the kind of constraints which one will face in real life and challenges you to adjust to it. You need to take a call. There are always trade-offs.

Eventually one becomes efficient under time pressure.

Will try posting more.